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Japan's 20-Year Plan for Space
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Apr 06, 2005 02:38 PM
from the build-up dept.
from the build-up dept.
rwven writes "Japan has just released information on their new space plan which will take them through the year 2025. Included in their plan are robots and nanotechnology for moon surveys as well as an eventual hydrogen powered mach-5 capable plane, a mach-2 capable passenger airliner and a manned mission to the moon. They will consider missions to mars and other planets after 2025. Space.com is also carrying this story."
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Good for them! (Score:5, Funny)
Lowered cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cost reductions will only happen if there is significant competition from cost consious buyers. The space market will have to change a lot before that happens.
Parent
Re:Lowered cost? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah? Tell that to the oil industry....
Re:Good for them! (Score:4, Funny)
only downside is that we'll have to deal with the oversized Hello Kitty decals flying overhead
Screw Hello Kitty! I eagerly await the 500m wide advertisement starships flying overhead featuring hot Japanese babes a la Blade Runner! Imagine, though, all the auto accidents below as the world's Asian fetish types come out of the woodwork and gaze upward instead of forwards.
IronChefMorimoto
Parent
Re:Good for them! (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think the four of them that actually go outside will make that much of a difference. Especially since two of them don't even drive.
Cooperation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cooperation (Score:3, Informative)
Nanotech? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought Nanotech was still in its infancy. What are they going to do, dump a bunch of buckyballs in a crater?
Re:Nanotech? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nanotech may indeed be in its infancy, but isn't that a good reason to plan ahead?
IIRC, Apollo was planned in the punched-card era. Compared to the beloved IBM 1138, my cellphone is practially nanotech.
Re:Nanotech? (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, that sounds more like it.
Re:Nanotech? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought Nanotech was still in its infancy.
Right, which is why they're developing it. In ten years, a human infant is no longer an infant. Of course, it remains to be seen whether nanotech can sustain a similar level of growth.
Parent
Spiral Development Might Be a Good Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Spiral Development Might Be a Good Idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Noble on paper, but thats not really how things are done. I grew up in a country [visittnt.com] where about 30% of the households had a landlline phone up until about 1998 (which is when I left)I went back in 2002 and about 80% of the had atleast one cellphone and even less people had landlines.
It isn't always neccessary to follow the line
Japan is a small island. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Robotic moon surveyors, indeed!
20 years!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google Maps (Score:4, Funny)
Robots in space (Score:3, Funny)
Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should Asian space efforts go for "manned" space flights?
I love Star Trek as much as anybody but the human body is a very difficult payload to sustain. If Japan is going to do serious planetary exploration (...and I wish them well at this...) then the first step should be to define goals and discard things with a low payoff
Apart from publicity stunts and tourism (... which should be self-funding ...), what goals are served by putting humans on the moon or in cislunar space?
Robots can explore far more cheaply than humans, so for any particular amount of money, we can do more exploration with robots than with humans.
The idea that humans can make on-site decisions better than robots can is simply an artifact of time-scale. That is, while there is some necessary time-lag between a robot noticing a funny rock on Mars or Titan, reporting back to Mission Control on Earth, and then acting on directions ... so what? The robot is patient, doesn't sleep, and if properly powered doesn't have to worry about food supplies.
Like I said, I love Star Trek but until we get really, really serious advances in technology, lunar and cislunar exploration is more sensibly done with robots.
But I'd be interested in contrary views.
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Other viewpoints include the utility of human decision making vs. silicon decision making. Today, and for the foreseeable future, it is superior.
For long round trip transmission you are right (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:5, Interesting)
>human decision making vs. silicon decision making
I certainly agree that 'artificial intelligence' has, so far, been an oxymoron
However, any really big project has to match its means to its objectives. The choice today is never human vs. silicon, but the appropriate mix of Human AND Silicon (SF fans cf Asimov's 'Robots of Dawn').
Let's get down to cases, in exploring, says, Mars or Pluto:
*Task: Map That World!
Orbitting Robots can do this already, much better than humans. While human photos of Earth from space may have a slight advantages as to artistic and sentimental value, if you need a photo for business purposes, isn't it usually from a robot satellite?
*Task: Land and Pick Up That Rock:
We can drop a couple hundred Rock-grabbing robots for the cost of 1 human. OTOH, if *I* get to be the person, I'd favor the human option. Otherwise, do I want to pay for 1 human to pick up a rock or for 100 robots to pick up 100 rocks?
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Involving Destruction of Explorer
Humans are better than robots at dealing with unexpected events that threaten to destroy them. So what? Apollo 13-class disasters have happened to several unmanned missions and no-one makes a movie out of them because no-one cares that much when a robot dies.
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Not Involving Destruction of Explorer
Now this is the canonical events for which SF fans cheer the human brain. "Look, a Face On Mars! Shall We Go Inside?"
In novels, the answer is "Yes" and we have adventures resulting in crowds of cheering women when we get home!!!.
In reality, here's what happens:
Astronaut: Houston, we've found a Lost Temple on Titan with a Beckoning Door.
Several Hours Go By
Houston: Ok. Send in a robot.
This is not because astronauts are not heroic. They are. It's because successful explorers have a fine sense of when to take a risk and when to send in the expendibles.
Parent
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
People are allowed to be people, you know. Naturally curious and sometimes doing dangerous and expensive things that have no obvious economic interest.
Parent
Re:Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
there are far bigger problems we need to resolve on earth, such as oil dependency. if these countries dumped this money into a "alternative fuel race" instead of a space race, we would have more expendable income because we would be free from the harness of oil. lets worry about this planet first before we start wasting tax money again.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem is two dimensional. In the real world, society is intertwined, you change one part of society, you can and usually will change it all. It's in part reflected in the law of unintended consequences. It is unreasonable to look at the worlds problems from a purely utilitarian point of view. It doesn't reflect the fact that yes we are humans and as such there are no simple answers.
This kind of reasoning is the same kind of reasoning that leads to people cutting funding for theoretical scientific work because there is no practical use for it, as you clearly are suggesting. How to use knowledge typically is not obvious when it is discovered.
I suggest you examine the possibility that people can tackle multiple problems at the same time. It is also worth considering that attacking problems from a two dimension point of view will end up causing new problems and is not the most efficient way of running a human society.
Parent
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
-JFK, 1962
In other words, it's inspiring. If not for the moon landing, a generation of scientists and engineers would've become something else, and our civilization would be the worse for it.
The reason we're seeing independent human spaceflight and governments starting to talk about ambitious space programs again is that those people have grown up and are wondering what happened to their dreams. If we get humans out to the moon and Mars in the next few decades, we will fulfill some of those dreams and give new ones to our children.
Parent
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions of tourists travel yearly to well documented locations. Would their $5,000 vacation to tour Italy be better spent just reading some books and looking at the pictures. I mean then you don't have to worry about lost luggage, weather, being robbed, getting lost etc...
I know most geeks don't really understand but there is more to life than knowledge.
Parent
Because we CAN. (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA has one man rated vehicle that is grossly expensive to launch, has a turnaround that is at best seasonal, and is currently used to service a barely sustainable habitat that is essentially a badly under-crewed garbage barge orbiting too low to avoid reentry without constant readjustment.
NASA, assuming they have ANY interest in the future of manned spaceflight, just isn't getting the job done. Competition is good. It took getting our ass handed to us by the Russians with Sputnik, etc. for us to even start giving a shit about space- if China or Japan puts a man on the moon, you can bet we'll be busting ass to beat them to mars.
500 years ago you probably would have been insisting on a land route to china, since it's Safe And Proven and Doesn't Risk Equipment Or Lives, etc, etc.
Parent
Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, I think space exploration should be driven by a long term plan for giving a solid payback in science or even profit. This will not be done by having mechanical toys drive around in ditches or staying in low earth o
Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to solve a problem is one of the fastest ways to come up with solutions to that problem. We are currently enjoying many of the technological advances acheived by (or for) the manned space program. Waiting for technology to advance enough to do something doesn't make as much sense as actively advancing it.
hondaship (Score:4, Funny)
Re:hondaship (Score:3, Informative)
Schoolgirls of Mars (Score:4, Funny)
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Interesting)
It really strikes me that nobody evaluates the feasibility of things like Mach 2 air travel in the face of the end of cheap oil era on the horizon. Even as anybody can observe the total failure that today's airlines already are -- due to that very factor.
Screw the Mach-5 planes... (Score:2)
Where's the friggin' VERITECHS!?!?!
Japan and aerospace. (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a look at there "plans".
A Mach 2 airliner? The Concorde already did that. A Mach 5 unmanned aircraft? The shuttle and X-15 already beat those speeds and they where manned.
The year 2025? (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, though, it's weird because 2025AD used to seem like THE FUTURE!!! Whereas it's actually now only 20 years away, which isn't really all that long. Computer tech aside, was 1985 all that different from today?
[Activates DeLorean, goes back to 1985] ... ...
Me: Hi! I'm you, from THE FUTURE!!! 2005, to be exact!
1985 Me: Wow, the 21st Century! So, did we get our flying cars?
Me: Um, no.
1985 Me: Jetpacks? Bionic implants? AIs? Robot servants? Semiballistic airliners allowing us to reach anywhere in the world in two hours? Space holidays? No more poverty or hunger? A cure for cancer? World peace? No more self-serving shitwicks in high political office?
Me: Sorry, no, none of that. But on the plus side, our videogames kick ass, there'll be a new Star Trek TV series and there's this thing called 'the internet'.
1985 Me: What, like William Gibson's cyberspace?
Me: Again, no, not really.
1985 Me: Wow. The future sounds really shitty. At least tell me I get rich in the next 20 years.
Me:
1985 Me: Laid on a regular basis?
Me:
1985 Me: Okay, find me a bottle of whiskey and some pills. I'm going to create a time paradox.
Re:Uh-oh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Uh-oh... (Score:2)
Re:Uh-oh... (Score:2)
"Gee, but everybody on Slashdot already knows that manned space exploration just isn't worth it! Everything we could possibly want to do in space can be done by robots!"
Was that sarcasm? I hope so. There are very good things that could eventually come from manned exploration of space. It could lead to the eventual colonization of space which could be an escape from the whole hell's kitten affect. Not to mention that there are things the humans might be able to adapt if som
Dreaming and hoping != plan (Score:2)
I think there is a fundamental difference in thinking between corporate USA and much of the rest of the world. US corporations are increasingly quarterly driven and "long term" is starting to mean thinking two or three quarters out. I have not RTFA, but I expect the Japanese actually have a planned program.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh. Heh. The problem with flying cars isn't so much the technology, it's the pilots. Higher class people can afford their own planes, but they're not exactly selling like hotcakes. Why? Because it takes a lot of hours to get your pilot's license. In order to make flying cars practical for mass-audiences (like they promise in PopSci), cars have to basically fly on their own. That sort of automation isn't all that practical today. GPS is helping, though...
Parent
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
What se
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Naturally the automotive gasoline will be cheaper, but you'll need to look at the fuel consumption of your plane which is usually measured in gallons per hour. In general many of the kit aicraft burn 5-6 gallons per hour, though I've seen as low as 3 gallons per hour (
Re:Wish We Had A Plan (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, most of your six points are part of that plan -- except for the maglift sci-fi you propose.
Respectfully, it looks like you have some reading to do.
Parent
Re:Wish We Had A Plan (Score:2)
comparing the shuttle fleet to consumer automobiles is disingenuous. A much more honest, but not perfect example is commercial aircraft. With proper maintenance, aircraft are kept flying for decades [faa.gov].
Re:Catapults vs. aircraft (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there's the issue of "what type of carry"? Carrying on the underbelly may seem attractive, but it requires a custom-designed plane with a huge degree of ground clearance - it's not a nice shape to work with. There can be problems on deployment as well. A basic tow-launch system seems attractive (minimal aircraft modifications), until you consider the landing gear and structural penalties needed for supporting the weight of the fuel during takeoff. A better option is either tow to altitude and then fuel from the towing craft (fuelling lines attached the whole time), or take off with minimal fuel and dock like a fighter. One additional effectively demonstrated method is to stow your spacecraft inside the body of the aircraft, and then launch it out the back with a drouge chute to maintain stability. While this gives clear size constraints, it requires almost no aircraft modifications, no extra drag during ascent, it can be pre-fueled, and it doesn't have significant landing gear/structural penalties.
Parent
You don't read enough of 'em (Score:2)
yes, typo, I know. But still....a real Otaku would use a japanese to engrish spellchecker.
Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent