Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Varrent on 06 Jul 2011, 16:49
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Link to final shuttle launch page. (http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html)
For those of you who are not U.S. residents, I don't really know if you would've even heard of this at all, but NASA is launching its final Shuttle this weekend. And as it is real life space stuffs, I thought it would be interesting to get your opinions on the end of the Space Shuttle.
Personally, I'm just hoping they unveil a warp drive once this is all over! :P
Anyhow in all seriousness I'm sad to see the last Shuttle launch, gonna be watching it online though, so should be fun.
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Was covered on the BBC. Sad panda to see it's come to this. When I was teeny I spent hours reading books on the shuttle launches. Feels like the end of an era
Still, Europe's big for commercial launches at the moment, maybe things will kick off here in the future.
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Not true. It's only the last flight for the unarmed space shuttle. With the upcoming refit program, they will become the Earth's first warships in space, to better defend us against the alien menace.
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All good things... It's the century of commercial spaceflight anyway.
http://www.spacex.com/
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Will be sad to see this go, simply because I approve of a national space program competing with commercial ventures.
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Well, I'm sure one of the companies will end up being designated the "flag carrier" after a while. :)
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About time really... it got old and expensive to fly.....and the fact it existed prevented real commercial applications to be designed.
I hope we get a 5-year spree on booming space industries : 8)
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I am struggling to put my frustrations, disappointments, and hopes into text.
I think a poor, but inevitable decision was made in the wake of the Columbia accident to retire the last 3 shuttles following "completion" of the ISS. I think we handicapped ourselves in the wake of the Challenger accident. I think we muddled the STS development process and forced ourselves to abandon the largest single structure ever launched into orbit (Skylab). I think, despite general support for a national space program, it is the number 1 priority of a very small group of people and thus gets less than 1% of the Federal Budget.
I think American commercial space companies are going to rapidly mature and dominate the human spaceflight industry by the end of the decade. By the end of the decade, there will be at least 1 manned commercial launches (6-7 passengers) per month to 2-3 manned commercial LEO stations and possibly beyond LEO (L1 and Lunar surface). The launch rate for 2-3 manned commercial LEO stations will only help to bring down overall launch cost, with manned launches heading towards exceeding the current US total number of launches. (SpaceX Dragon, Sierra Nevada DreamChaser, Boeing CST-100, Bigelow Sundancer/BA-330/BA-2100)
I really should quit Eve...
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I sincerely doubt that commercial space travel will come into being at any point in the near future.
It already takes 5 hours for an American flight hub to decide whether or not and individual might be a terrorist, their industries are still failing, and let alone the discomforts of your average atmospheric commercial flight, imagine trying to make a comfortable flight through space. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that will probably be bitched about for decades.
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So now the Russian Federation will have to supply the ISS... with their classical rockets... :)
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I sincerely doubt that commercial space travel will come into being at any point in the near future.
It already takes 5 hours for an American flight hub to decide whether or not and individual might be a terrorist, their industries are still failing, and let alone the discomforts of your average atmospheric commercial flight, imagine trying to make a comfortable flight through space. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that will probably be bitched about for decades.
And yet it already has. All of those things are problems that developed for the airlines after many decades of commercial air travel. While their equivalents may eventually crop up and plague the average traveler on a sub-orbital flight, convenience and economy propelled commercial air from a novelty to routine and the same will probably drive commercial space. Anywhere in the world in 90 minutes? A lot of people will pay good money for that. There are also real and measurable business opportunities in getting to and exploiting Lagrange points for zero-g manufacture, lunar H3 resources, rare earth minerals stocked in asteroids, as well as building space elevators, and who knows what else. Let's not forget that there are still other governments out there in countries whose people/leaders are still enamored with spaceflight as a point of national pride and achievement (China). Competing with those powers is in the best interests of the "old" spaceflight club, but the poor efficiency of government-funded flight programs (especially in the current economy) will probably encourage greater subsidy of commercial ventures. So, in the West, a few daring companies will sink a lot of cash getting into the industry (they already have), but once they go up and start making money hand over fist, a new space race will get into gear.
So now the Russian Federation will have to supply the ISS... with their classical rockets... :)
Not exclusively. http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php
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I sincerely doubt that commercial space travel will come into being at any point in the near future.
It already takes 5 hours for an American flight hub to decide whether or not and individual might be a terrorist, their industries are still failing, and let alone the discomforts of your average atmospheric commercial flight, imagine trying to make a comfortable flight through space. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that will probably be bitched about for decades.
I am not entirely sure what you consider "commercial space travel" to be. When I am talking about it, I am talking about vehicles atop traditional rockets (Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon 9, Soyuz) launching 6-7 people per launch. The 6-7 people either paid 15-65m to get their seat (depends on the manufacturer) or someone else (a non-US government or company) is paying for them to go to space.
They are not going to sit in their cramped capsule for too long before they arrive at a station of some kind, ISS or Bigelow Aerospace or others I may not be aware of.
So now the Russian Federation will have to supply the ISS... with their classical rockets... :)
Except the Russian Federation is not alone in supplying the ISS with classical rockets. Both ESA (Automated Transfer Vehicle) and the Japanese (can't remember the name off the top of my head) have sent missions to the ISS and two US commercial companies have fixed price contracts to deliver cargo to the ISS (SpaceX & Orbital). SpaceX's first cargo flight will be before the end of the year.
The US does not have to depend on the Russian Federation, and will not have to for long for manned spaceflight.
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...the Japanese (can't remember the name off the top of my head)
JAXA resupply using their H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) (http://iss.jaxa.jp/en/htv/index.html).
Of course while people look to Europe, Japan and Russia to resupply the ISS it'll be interesting to watch the new space race between China and India.
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I sincerely doubt that commercial space travel will come into being at any point in the near future.
It already takes 5 hours for an American flight hub to decide whether or not and individual might be a terrorist, their industries are still failing, and let alone the discomforts of your average atmospheric commercial flight, imagine trying to make a comfortable flight through space. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that will probably be bitched about for decades.
Hence Europe :D
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Addendum to my previous post: Soyuz only has 3 seats & the US will also be buying seats from commercial crew providers.
Hence Europe :D
Except no European nation or the whole other than Russia has successfully returned an object from orbit of the size required for human space flight. A small US company with less than 2000 employees and less than 1 billion dollars (1/18 NASA's budget) has done just that.
I have high hopes that ESA's IEV ( http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1106/10ixv/ ) leads to more advanced and large vehicles, but it is sadly years away.
.
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I sincerely doubt that commercial space travel will come into being at any point in the near future.
It already takes 5 hours for an American flight hub to decide whether or not and individual might be a terrorist, their industries are still failing, and let alone the discomforts of your average atmospheric commercial flight, imagine trying to make a comfortable flight through space. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that will probably be bitched about for decades.
Hence Europe :D
Oh, whatevah, whatevaaaah. >:/
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Europe is not a nation. Some Americans seem to confuse the EU even for some kind of United States of Europe, it is not. Right now the big question is what to do with the banks that have destroyed the economy and want the taxpayers to pay for their failures. The consensus is that it's still cheaper to bail them out rather than let the trash banks collapse a few countries.
Admitted, the university where I work doesn't have a aerospace engineering department, so I am not very well aware of what's happening there. HUT (or Aalto University's faculty of technology, as it is now I guess) did have a project to build their own satellite, though. I'd assume it's still a lot cheaper to buy a commercial carrier to orbit and/or buy a suitable design than to start from scratch. One of the next big things scientifically, however, is trying to get the experimental fusion reactor going. (Welding lab in our university is involved in developing tech that may be used to build the thing.)
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Watched the liftoff today... damn, that is one beautiful thing to see. Hopefully some of these next-gen spaceplanes come into maturity soon.
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Europe is not a nation. Some Americans seem to confuse the EU even for some kind of United States of Europe, it is not. Right now the big question is what to do with the banks that have destroyed the economy and want the taxpayers to pay for their failures. The consensus is that it's still cheaper to bail them out rather than let the trash banks collapse a few countries.
Talking about space here, not Greece.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html
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Mithfindel, I recognize and understand that Europe (the European Union) is not a state. I am not confusing the EU for a modern United States of Europe. There are however areas where there is a European consortium doing things paid for by various European national governments. ESA is an example of this, CERN would be another. In the US, there are national level organizations that do similar kinds of work (budgets may vary).
We could list out every member of ESA (or CERN), but it is simpler to say Europe.
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This made me wonder when it was that we lost the romanticized view of Space Exploration. (http://www.wimp.com/goingspace/)
Then I realized... I didn't lose it. I just forgot it. I think I'll go outside tonight and watch the stars for a while.
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Thanks for the video Miz.
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<3 Sagan
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Thank you for the video.
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Thank you for the video, indeed.
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This made me wonder when it was that we lost the romanticized view of Space Exploration. (http://www.wimp.com/goingspace/)
Was I the only person who cried when seeing the disparity between the worlds military and space funding? :cry:
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Was I the only person who cried when seeing the disparity between the worlds military and space funding? :cry:
A little American centrism here, but it illustrates your point. It also is useful because the US spends the most money of any country on its military and civil space efforts (the politics of this is a different topic).
The US defense budget makes up ~19% of the US National Budget (2010). This includes some space related activities, some of them very much needed (debris tracking and notification for example), but that is also besides the point. NASA (civil space) gets ~0.5% of the US National Budget (2010).
In the United States, defense spending is nearly 40x that of civil space spending.
The question becomes what is the purpose of a space program (http://www.nss.org/resources/library/videos/ISDC11greason.html)? And what are people, a nation, the world, willing to spend to achieve those goals?
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Thanks for the vid.
Mithfindel, I recognize and understand that Europe (the European Union) is not a state. I am not confusing the EU for a modern United States of Europe. There are however areas where there is a European consortium doing things paid for by various European national governments. ESA is an example of this, CERN would be another. In the US, there are national level organizations that do similar kinds of work (budgets may vary).
This is not that far now. EU has its own legislative assembly, its own president, and has a lot more impact on laws in every member country that we could usually think. All the laws concerning customs, eco politics, money, etc, are at various degrees directly discussed and decided by the EU and not the member states.
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A little American centrism here, but it illustrates your point. It also is useful because the US spends the most money of any country on its military and civil space efforts (the politics of this is a different topic).
The US defense budget makes up ~19% of the US National Budget (2010). This includes some space related activities, some of them very much needed (debris tracking and notification for example), but that is also besides the point. NASA (civil space) gets ~0.5% of the US National Budget (2010).
In the United States, defense spending is nearly 40x that of civil space spending.
The question becomes what is the purpose of a space program (http://www.nss.org/resources/library/videos/ISDC11greason.html)? And what are people, a nation, the world, willing to spend to achieve those goals?
I view the space program like I do drug research. Working in a hospital I see the advances in medical technology and drugs and I also see the costs. With drug research they spend $$$ hoping to improve life down the road, sometimes with failure, sometimes with success. Space travel is like that in a way. It's a bet on the future nothing more. I know they use the I.S.S. to conduct experiments in a way much like a drug lab or a technology company. So how much are we willing to spend on the chance to make the future better.
Space is an easy target for budget cutters because gains are way way way down the road. Not years but decades. But look at what was accomplished in such a short time in the 60's & 70's. With that type of focus and the spending we could get to Mars. But America isn't willing to spend the money on that right now so it won't happen. It's a real shame because something like the Apollo missions created an entire generation of kids who wanted to be astronauts and scientists. Now we don't have that anymore. Likewise the national pride that comes from something like the Apollo missions doesn't come from anything else. It's even more then national pride it's world pride. I've talked to people overseas in their late 40's like me who can remember watching the landings as a kid and they'll agree it was "special" regardless of where in the world they were. To loose that is a horrible failure and misjudgement in my opinion.
Archie 8)
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NASA budget in 1966* - $32,106m
NASA budget in 1969* - $21,376m
NASA budget in 1970* - $18,768m
NASA budget in 1975* - $11,131m
NASA budget in 2011 - $19,450m
*adjusted for inflation to 2007 dollar value
NASA has actually had some very generous budgets since the 80's, after the lean years in the 70's. The space shuttle program was conceived in the 70's, when the US government was saying "Okay, now what?" and the spacey-wacey fellas had to come up with an answer. They managed to get it off the ground (literally) in the early 80's, apparently suitably impressing Congress enough to wrangle some cash out of it.
However, the space shuttle has really been a massive money-sink. It was just the other week when I read someone arguing that the scrapping of the space shuttle is the best thing that could have happened to get NASA off its ass. Their budget is ample, but they haven't been able to accomplish much because they've had this fleet of big whales on the launchpads and these costly missions made up just so the shuttle would have something to do. I'm inclined to agree.
The space shuttle was designed to be reusable, but the constant complications and expenses of maintaining a shuttle fit for re-entry makes the whole thing a big funeral pyre for money. One shuttle mission costs just as much as a whole modern rocket like the Taurus, for example (perhaps a rocket that's less of a complete failure would have been a better example, but it's a bit tricky to dig up launch costs for these things). And that's just taking the single flight into account. If you take the cost of the entire shuttle program and divide it by the number of missions, it comes out to one point five billion dollars per launch.
The shuttle was a milestone of scientific and engineering progress, but it was a dead end. Let NASA and the rest go back to the drawing board and come up with a proper, intelligent, modern solution.
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a proper, intelligent, modern solution.
I contend that there already is such a solution. :)
SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing that is the same for all customers, including a best price guarantee. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases. A half bay flight of Falcon 9 is available to accommodate customers with payloads in between Falcon 1 and 9.
Price* $54M - $59.5M
In the Washington, D.C. area you can actual hear ads on the radio to the effect of "Do you or your organization need to get a payload to geosynchronous orbit? Call us!"
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Yeah, private space companies will be able to make a lot more progress than the space agencies in that field, I believe. In a way, the NASA shuttle had become too big to fail, and that has prevented the development of smarter solutions like we'll start to see now with the behemoth gone.
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A massive incentive for the US to pursue manned spaceflight in the very early days was because the Soviets were trying. With this in mind I wonder whether China's ambitions for a lunar base might nudge them back into activity if it becomes a realistic prospect.
But should we all be looking to the US? It's an easy target with it's epic military budget but the same can probably be said for the EU, etc.
Private enterprise is likely to make great inroads here too. Already Virgin Galactic are pioneering space tourism and NASA sold a couple of seats on the shuttle for $$$.
This is the kind of thing I almost expect the multi billionaires to be investing in just like Branson is doing. I'd have thought there'd be a Gates-led project out there somewhere (I hope it's not MS working on a launch vehicle's OS... I wouldn't want to be that astronaut waiting for liftoff while mission control's big screen suddenly changes from technical data and live cam feeds to a paperclip saying "It looks like your trying to launch a rocket...")
Space is unfathomably huge. While states like the US, the EU and others can lead the way and provide amazing examples of inspiration I don't think the responsibility to push boundaries lies solely at their feet.
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SpaceX financial discussion (http://www.spacex.com/updates.php)
The total company expenditures since being founded in 2002 through the 2010 fiscal year were less than $800 million, which includes all the development costs for the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. Included in this $800 million are the costs of building launch sites at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral and Kwajalein, as well as the corporate manufacturing facility that can support up to 12 Falcon 9 and Dragon missions per year. This total also includes the cost of five flights of Falcon 1, two flights of Falcon 9, and one up and back flight of Dragon.
This means that for less than the cost of a single Shuttle mission, SpaceX is within reach of Gemini+ and is setting its eyes on Apollo-light in the next few years.
This is the kind of thing I almost expect the multi billionaires to be investing in just like Branson is doing. I'd have thought there'd be a Gates-led project out there somewhere
SpaceX - Elon Musk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk), money made from selling PayPal and other companies.
Armadillo Aerospace - John D. Carmack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack), money made from id Software (Doom, Quake, Cmdr Keen).
Blue Origin - Jeff Bezos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos), money made from owning Amazon.com
Bigelow Aerospace - Robert Bigelow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bigelow), money made from owning Budget Suites of America
Also note that MS co-founder helped fund SpaceShipOne upon which VG's SpaceShipTwo's are based.
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Mission is complete; the Space Shuttle Atlantis has returned to the Earth.
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(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/2011/July/110720/pb-110721-atlantis-space-eg-02.photoblog900.jpg)
The space shuttle Atlantis, appearing like a bean sprout against clouds and city lights, on its way home, as photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station on Thursday, July 21. Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background.
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(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loovthQBFp1qg68clo1_500.jpg)
This is what it was supposed to be.
By the time I was born, we'd already been to the moon, of course. The Shuttle was an exciting feature of my childhood. The logical next step, it seemed. This was Man's destiny. It was supposed to be the stepping off point for our continuing adventures in space. It was supposed to be the precursor for our Plan B. It was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the 'all our eggs in one basket' problem.
It all seemed within touching distance.
After all, we'd already achieved so much. By the time I grew to adulthood, we would have massive orbital stations where people lived and worked. Space travel would be commonplace, at least in a limited sense. We would be colonising Earth's orbit and the Moon, for sure, and we would be using these places as the stepping stone for greater human exploration of our solar system and beyond. I was going to be an astronaut, of course. What else would I be doing?
Maybe, just maybe, we'd find another planet somewhere that we could live on.
What did we get? A floating lab and a bunch of satellites so we could pay Rupert fucking Murdoch money to watch football and have a bossy woman in a box order us around in our cars.
We have fallen far short of our potential. But hey, at least a few rich guys got richer.
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If only that potential was at least used to fight against problems like global warming and all that scaring shit, i would understand. :bash:
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If only that potential was at least used to fight against problems like global warming and all that scaring shit, i would understand. :bash:
Well, yeah. It's a bit late for any of that now, though. Maybe it was always too late? We should have been acting years ago. Now, while a bunch of people are still swearing that global warming isn't happening, that the world is flat and the universe is 6000 years old, we should be taking action to save what we can from the inevitable wreckage. Instead, we are wasting time and energy arguing with idiots, many of whom are in positions of power.
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Prepare for the oncoming ice age.
Buy canned food and wool socks.
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Or just move to northern Norway and acclimatize. Once the ice age sets in, the area will be too inhospitable to live in, but when migrating south (raiding and pillaging on the way) you should be prepared for the climate.
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... when migrating south (raiding and pillaging on the way) ...
Only on Tuesdays, right?
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(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loovthQBFp1qg68clo1_500.jpg)
This is what it was supposed to be.
... we would have massive orbital stations where people lived and worked. Space travel would be commonplace, at least in a limited sense. We would be colonising Earth's orbit and the Moon, for sure, and we would be using these places as the stepping stone for greater human exploration of our solar system and beyond.
...
What did we get? A floating lab and a bunch of satellites so we could pay Rupert Murdoch money to watch football and have a bossy woman in a box order us around in our cars.
We have fallen far short of our potential. But hey, at least a few rich guys got richer.
A floating lab/assembly point is the critical first step and part of the station pictured above would be a floating lab and assembly point.
The Direct-to-Home data market (Television) has by far the largest Revenue of any space venture - $72.22 Billion. I will come back to this in a moment. ;)
As for the "bossy woman in a box" - the Global Positioning System (GPS) is incredibly integrated into all of our lives and paid for by only US taxpayers. The cost of your terminal is solely the cost of the terminal and profit that TomTom, Garmin, etc make. Automatic Teller Machines, digital gas pumps (the ones that take your credit card), power substations, and various other high-precision timing applications utilize the GPS constellation for timing. When initially established the US military had a means to turn GPS off. The international economic ramifications of such an act now make this impossible.
So, what happened? Why haven't we colonized Earth orbit and put an outpost or two on Mars and had a manned mission to orbit Jupiter?
The digital computing revolution happened. The technological means by which we are currently communicating makes the need to have humans on-orbit, on the Moon, or anywhere else more difficult to "sell."
The Apple II had more computing power than the Apollo spacecraft that took men to the Moon. We went from having fairly simple analog computer systems in the late 1960s to having microcontrollers and microprocessors in the 1970s.
But in the late 1960s the discussion of man vs machine/electronics was already being waged. The USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory (http://Manned Orbiting Laboratory) was a USAF program to put a manned observation post in orbit. This would allow for high-resolution imagery to be taken from orbit, analyzed by the on-station personnel, who would then report via radio or some other low-bandwidth medium what they saw in the photos. As a comparison the systems in use would take pictures on film over a period of time and return those to the Earth via a re-entry capsule. These re-entry capsules had to be caught upon re-entry or recovered from the ocean floor. The manned system would provide more rapid analysis of the images and allow for more timely action. 8)
But in parallel, unmanned systems were being advanced and digital photography was being developed. It was the only way to get pictures of Mars, Jupiter, etc on the probes. It also enabled the intelligence community to develop spacecraft that did not need a man-in-the-loop in order to gather timely intelligence. Eventually this technology found its way into consumers hands - digital cameras. :eek:
All the above is a short way of saying the same electronics whose development was advanced by space exploration and applications resulted in a reduced need for human beings in space. :cry:
And back to the Direct-to-Home television satellites on orbit. These companies are in the business of making money and they would rather offer their consumers (at a higher price point) an astronomical number of channels (most of which are never watched) at a cosmic resolution and refresh rate (something most people will not even notice). This means more satellites, preferably staying on-orbit longer. :idea:
A big limiter to a satellites useful life is how much fuel it has on-board. Even the first series of perturbations in Earth orbit require a measure of orbital maintenance and thus the expenditure of fuel. In addition, sometimes components fail and reduce the spacecrafts capability, but it is a single unit or two. Lastly, orbital debris threatens the continuing operations of these spacecraft in a very real way. A single bolt on a crossing orbit could destroy the spacecraft's ability to transmit the football game (whether it is an American in Dallas watching ManU in Manchester or a Britain in Manchester watching the Cowboys in Dallas) and threaten other spacecraft. :twisted:
Automated spacecraft fueling is already being pursued, but it is the next two were I think we begin to see the opportunity for direct human presence in Earth orbit in order to make money from the space environment. In order to protect their assets, these companies may pay good money. Whatever the task is, it must be a very complex task where telecommunications lag could result in mission failure. ;)
If we develop FTL communications prior to a significant human presence beyond the Earth, we may never grow beyond it. :(
And that is the real struggle - what product does an orbiting city provide to the Earth? Answering that simple question makes the future so close, but so far away happen. The technology exist and has for decades, it is a lack of will and/or need.
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And that is the real struggle - what product does an orbiting city provide to the Earth? Answering that simple question makes the future so close, but so far away happen. The technology exist and has for decades, it is a lack of will and/or need.
In essence, that'd require a consumer or military application where some of the components must be manufactured in zero-G (grown crystals or something like that).
[spoiler="About new European space exploration"]As a (not-so-)brief comment on non-commercial space research in Europe: It'll need backing from a nation-state. ESA will work fine if it's backed by billions from France, Germany and UK (and pennies from a host of other nations). Alone, no European nation does possess the money to blow off into something that doesn't provide immediate returns, such as manned missions to deep space. If NASA needs to wrestle with the Congress, ESA depends on a good number of independent parliaments, most of which will be quite happy to get extra populist points from the voters by axing unnecessary costs. Example: Galileo "is a stupid idea that primarily serves French interests" (according to a German CEO working in the industry). That's 20 billion euros that could be fed to somewhere else. I doubt developing a manned spacecraft is anywhere that cheap. If a major supporter withdraws their billions, you'd possibly see the whole program fail on the drawing board. As such, the only way ESA could hope to develop a manned spacecraft would be to buy old plans from NASA/Roskosmos and modernize the design. (Admitted, I'm not working in that industry, but I assume that my pessimism is warranted - and as such, in the near future men will travel into space on board vessels built in the private sector, China, India or Russia.)[/spoiler]
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The shuttle had some great achievements, but it was an unreliable craft.
May the next generation not cost so many lives.
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[spoiler="About new European space exploration"]As a (not-so-)brief comment on non-commercial space research in Europe: It'll need backing from a nation-state. ESA will work fine if it's backed by billions from France, Germany and UK (and pennies from a host of other nations). Alone, no European nation does possess the money to blow off into something that doesn't provide immediate returns, such as manned missions to deep space. If NASA needs to wrestle with the Congress, ESA depends on a good number of independent parliaments, most of which will be quite happy to get extra populist points from the voters by axing unnecessary costs. Example: Galileo "is a stupid idea that primarily serves French interests" (according to a German CEO working in the industry). That's 20 billion euros that could be fed to somewhere else. I doubt developing a manned spacecraft is anywhere that cheap. If a major supporter withdraws their billions, you'd possibly see the whole program fail on the drawing board. As such, the only way ESA could hope to develop a manned spacecraft would be to buy old plans from NASA/Roskosmos and modernize the design. (Admitted, I'm not working in that industry, but I assume that my pessimism is warranted - and as such, in the near future men will travel into space on board vessels built in the private sector, China, India or Russia.)[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I think that Bigelow Aerospace and commercial LEO manned transport (SpaceX, DreamChaser, & Boeing) will allow some of smaller nations to have actual manned space science programs. Sending a group of two or three scientist for 4 months every few years to conduct science experiments is more affordable when you only have to pay for those 4 months. When the company supplying the facility starts to have customer/renters rotating through on a regular basis the cost of the orbiting lab is amortized across those customers. The individual national publics do not see a $100B orbiting lab paid for with their money, but rather see money going to support science utilizing a commercial facility needed for the research. The company gets to treat all of its customers relatively the same, be they a national entity, another company, or an individual.
The "trick" to opening up manned space science to smaller nations is to make it affordable for them to have send astronauts/scientists/explorers interesting places. I have no illusions that the Finns, the Poles, or the Dutch (as an examples) do not want to fund a a full-up manned program if it is just for Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians to go. However, they may be willing to spend some money ($20m-$50m) to send an native astronaut up to a commercial station for a period of time.
I think this will be happening by the end of the decade, if not before.
By 2030, I think a small commercial outpost on the Moon will host a rotating population of scientist from a multitude of nations. There may be those who have a more permanent presence based on desire/funding availability, but anyone willing to pay for the 3-4 day trip there, a few weeks on the surface, and the 3-4 day trip back will be able to go there.
Lastly, the people calling the shots on these outpost/vehicles will not be the US or Russian governments, but the company providing the service. The contracts will be very clear and hopefully little in the way of political issues on the service providers end.[/spoiler]
And that is the real struggle - what product does an orbiting city provide to the Earth? Answering that simple question makes the future so close, but so far away happen. The technology exist and has for decades, it is a lack of will and/or need.
In essence, that'd require a consumer or military application where some of the components must be manufactured in zero-G (grown crystals or something like that).
The only way I see that happening is if governments and companies invest in studying what the free fall environment provides. Another area that many advocate is the development of Space Based Solar Power (SBSP). One of the biggest challenges of SBSP is collecting the required components in orbit. It either requires a lot of launches or a program to capture an asteroid or mine the Moon.
The shuttle had some great achievements, but it was an unreliable craft.
May the next generation not cost so many lives.
This is a touchy subject. Measured risk must be taken, it is something we all do everyday. It may be that more lives are lost in the next generation of vehicles, but not because the vehicles will be less safe or safer than the Shuttle. It will be because we, humanity, take a greater risk. The first Astronauts & Cosmonauts were test pilots for a reason, they faced death everyday and understood the risk.
The mistake is tricking ourselves into thinking it will not be dangerous, that we can somehow make ourselves safe from the dangers that abound.
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The shuttle had some great achievements, but it was an unreliable craft.
May the next generation not cost so many lives.
This is a touchy subject. Measured risk must be taken, it is something we all do everyday. It may be that more lives are lost in the next generation of vehicles, but not because the vehicles will be less safe or safer than the Shuttle. It will be because we, humanity, take a greater risk. The first Astronauts & Cosmonauts were test pilots for a reason, they faced death everyday and understood the risk.
The mistake is tricking ourselves into thinking it will not be dangerous, that we can somehow make ourselves safe from the dangers that abound.
A next-generation craft - or even, an upgraded shuttle - would likely be expected to do better on similar missions, if that is what is wanted. (Which, as Dex noted, might not be the case.) Also worth to remember that those missions that end in a big bang get a lot more visibility than most "routine" flights. I don't have the facts, but I have a hunch that flying into space is safer than driving to work.
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I don't think the economical power of the european countries is the real issue. France and Germany are the 4th and 3rd economical world powers. Like it has been said above, it is mostly a problem of priorities and "doctrines", which means the current goal is more to launch satellites to watch the big bang and the dark age following it, for pure cosmoslogical science (which is good, probably a lot more than space travel btw in term of potential results, and definitly less expensive). And priorities ? Well, space stuff is sadly one of the things that have the smallest priority in terms of investment to the eye of governements (and the national debts are nothing compared to the USA, so thats not even an excuse). Another problem is the EU in itself. It still lacks of power and coherence to fund something.
So unless the EU or some governements find a good and solid plan to guarantee advantages to private companies like Aerospace, and a solid help for them to start something, nothing will be done. But heh honestly I would like to see all the world nations that have something like a space programm to cooperate and do it together. It would be much more easier in term of resources.
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it is mostly a problem of priorities and "doctrines", which means the current goal is more to launch satellites to watch the big bang and the dark age following it, for pure cosmoslogical science (which is good, probably a lot more than space travel btw in term of potential results, and definitly less expensive).
I've never really understood why so much is dedicated to such (like a few of the supercolliders). What exactly are we to glean from knowing what happened in the first 0.000000001 miliseconds after the big bang?
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Basically, everything. Some optimists even think they can unlock most of the physical properties of the universe when they will be able to see beyond the Dark Ages. Things like what happened to antimatter ? Where did it go ? How does quantum and relativistic physics work for black holes and supermassive phenomenas ? What was before it, if we ever are able to see beyond ? Multiverse theories ? And ofc the graviton particule we have been trying to put in evidence since centuries and have yet to prove it, and black matter/energy issues related to Big Crush/Big Rip theories.
tldr : We learn by watching the stars, or the infinitly small. It has always been like that, starting with particules theory, etc. If you know how the universe works, then you can reproduce it.
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I've never really understood why so much is dedicated to such (like a few of the supercolliders). What exactly are we to glean from knowing what happened in the first 0.000000001 miliseconds after the big bang?
Basically, we learn more about the fundamental nature of the universe. Quarks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark), for instance, were demonstrated to exist by early particle accelerators. Research into that really tiny and strange level of physics (that advanced experiments like the LHC help us map out) is the pure science that leads to applied science that helps us realize potential future technologies like quantum computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing). Think about it this way:
Imagine that both common sense and the current scientific model of math tells us 2 + 2 = 5. Imagine that this has been observed, duplicated, proven, and widely accepted, but we know there's something not quite right about it (obviously). The model seems incomplete, if functional for our everyday purposes. When we look deeper and try to expand the limits and complexity of our understanding of maths we realize that our current model has allowed us to work only in integers. So we take a closer look at what's happening, throw out some wild theories, set up some experiments, and see that what our old model proved, 2 + 2 = 5, is in truth a more precise and complex equation: 2.5 + 2.5 = 5.
The same value is inherent in research conducted in the zero-g environment of space... not to mention all the practical (now) everyday devices that were born of necessity in order to get us into space in the first place. One thing to always bear in mind with science is that few experiments will ever be of the sort that break through to grand new discoveries and new realms of understanding. Most science consists of meticulous planning, testing, tweaking, re-testing, analysis, and publication of rather mundane confirmations that the Trusty Old Theory is still solid or that the Crazy New Idea doesn't really hold up. By no means, however, is that less cool day-to-day science unimportant or a waste of money. It is, in fact, vital.
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.
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As for NASA, they're still going out there (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html). Now, if only they had added a little Europa lander to this payload...
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Juno is a heavy bird and is amazing in terms of how little power it will have to conduct its science.
A Europa lander/digger is something being looked at, but it may need a bigger rocket and getting bigger than an Atlas V 531 means a Delta IV Heavy currently. All of this drives up mission cost; when some members of Congress are calling to cut the Agency entirely.
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And the reason (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-nasa-next-moonshot-20110805,0,4257663.story) NASA will not be leading the way in the next 2 decades.
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I do not understand the preoccupation with the moon. From an energy standpoint Mars is significantly easier to reach than the Moon. It actually takes less energy to get to the Moon from Mars than it does to get there from Earth.
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It actually takes less energy to get to the Moon from Mars than it does to get there from Earth.
Too bad we're not on Mars :)
Energy efficiency beside (although I would like to see your hard numbers on the energy needed for Earth-Moon and Earth-Mars transits and landings), the Moon is much closer to the bulk of humanity. We can reach the Moon inside a few days and have an endless supply of convenient launch windows. Lunar development would supply us with a convenient staging point for deep space flights that require--yep!--a lot less energy than any we'd have to lift out of Earth's gravity well first. In addition to being close and readily visible, I'd argue that the Moon is our natural "harbor" for striking out into the solar system and beyond.
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Delta-V Budgets Comparison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Delta-vs_between_Earth.2C_Moon_and_Mars)
You can use less fuel going somewhere with an atmosphere by using Aerobraking to slow down. Because of Aerobraking, an option is to it is 6.4 km/s delta-V to the Moon and that has to all be done with fuel & rockets.
In theory you can use areobraking to come out of the To-Mars transit orbit, enter Low Mars Orbit (LMO - it even has a Muppet mascot), and then to the surface. This means you have to create only 3.8 km/s delta-V to get to the To-Mars transit orbit.
In general, I disagree with the idea of going to the Moon to go elsewhere. Arguments in favor of mining the Moon for fuels or materials and refining and manufacturing parts there seem to forget the "getting to the Moon" part and how many Earth built rockets, delta-V, and fuel that will take.
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Isn't the issue with space travel right now is that there is no real point to sending humans into space, when robots can do the same job for far far cheaper?
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I have heard that you can find so much deuterium on the Moon with which one single ton of it could light the Earth for one year. Not sure though if it is harvestable yet in terms of technology.
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Dex hit the nail on the head. . .not only can you use the Martian atmosphere to aerobrake into LMO or a surface approach, you can ride parachutes almost all the way to the surface. With the Moon, you have to use rockets for everything.
Another factor is the relative orbital velocity of Earth and Mars. A rocket leaving Earth orbit can do so with a low velocity relative to the Earth and a high velocity relative to the Sun because it starts with Earth's orbital velocity as a base. On Mars approach the rocket still has a high sun-relative velocity, but because Mars is moving in the same direction it can have a low Mars relative velocity. You can essentially tailor the orbit to keep your Mars approach velocity low. You can’t do that with the Moon, because it moves with the Earth around the Sun so there’s no velocity difference to take advantage of. You can use the same trick going from Mars to either the Earth or the Moon. That’s why takes less energy to get to the Moon from Mars than from the Earth.
Finally, you can use the Martian atmosphere to produce both propellant and oxygen for life support. The propellant can be used both for a return space vehicle (sparing you from having to haul the propellant from Earth) and as fuel for combustion engines for ground vehicles. I don’t remember the specific reactants off the top of my head, but it is possible to build an air-breathing engine using locally produced fuels that will combust with the CO2 in the Mars atmosphere. The Moon may have a shallower gravity well, but you also need to spend energy to land the propellant you’ll need to take off again.
Using the Moon as a staging area for interplanetary missions sounds good, but the math just doesn’t work. Even allowing for a large quantity of easily accessible water on the Moon, it would still be easier to ship it in from Mars.
@Seriphyn: Yes. . .and no. The real problem with manned spaceflight right now is that it shares funding with unmanned missions, and money used in support of manned flight takes money away from robotic missions. But there are things robots just can’t do, not because the robot is incapable, but because of the 40 minute communications delay between Mars and Earth and the fact that even the best expert system is really stupid. Besides, at some point humans are going to have to learn to live off world. Moving from science to settlement requires humans. And there is good logic in the argument that advanced propulsion systems won’t be developed until there is an economic reason to get somewhere quickly. And that means a goodly number of people living on the other end.
@ Lyn: I think you’re thinking of Helium-3. Deuterium exists on the Moon (and on Mars) but also on Earth. It may be more plentiful on the Moon, but not to the point where it would be worth importing it. Helium-3, though, is deposited on the lunar surface by the solar wind (but not on the Earth or Mars, because of their atmospheres) and it is fantastic stuff when used for theoretical fusion reactors (De-He3 reactions are much “cleaner” than De-T reactions. Tritium is pretty nasty stuff, actually) but those fusion reactors do not exist and there will be no market for lunar He3 until they do. Someday, we will mine the Moon for He3, but that day is a long way off.
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@ Lyn: I think you’re thinking of Helium-3. Deuterium exists on the Moon (and on Mars) but also on Earth. It may be more plentiful on the Moon, but not to the point where it would be worth importing it. Helium-3, though, is deposited on the lunar surface by the solar wind (but not on the Earth or Mars, because of their atmospheres) and it is fantastic stuff when used for theoretical fusion reactors (De-He3 reactions are much “cleaner” than De-T reactions. Tritium is pretty nasty stuff, actually) but those fusion reactors do not exist and there will be no market for lunar He3 until they do. Someday, we will mine the Moon for He3, but that day is a long way off.
Mhh, I read it in some scientific review several years ago, they were saying He-3 deposits on the Moon are too insignificant to be really interesting, as much as De is on Earth (at the opposite of the Moon). Though I noticed that opinions and theories like this sometimes heavily change with time and science on very short periods, so this might be outdated.
Or maybe I remember very poorly, which is also possible.
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I think we're all missing the bigger picture. The cold war has been lost. (http://www.theonion.com/articles/ussr-wins-space-race-as-us-shuts-down-shuttle-prog,21007/)
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Righteous rant from Neil deGrasse Tyson on how Congress is mortgaging the future of America (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_F3pw5F_Pc&feature=youtu.be)
We have lost more than the Cold War.
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Yep, there are a lot of justifiably angry people floating around these days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5haTmLDjmE0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5haTmLDjmE0)
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Thanks for that link :)
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I'll pop another link:
http://www.universetoday.com/88060/spacex-mars-is-our-future/ (http://www.universetoday.com/88060/spacex-mars-is-our-future/)
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Awesome. :)