Where Should Space Exploration Go From Here? 1159
Since Congress has been steadily cutting back on support for NASA, Nick suggests this idea: "I'm sure there are many taxpayers out there like me that would love to see NASA's budget doubled. The problem is there isn't enough support to get congress to increase the budget by that amount, and I really don't want people to pay that don't care to. I propose an opt-in, one-time contribution box added to tax returns. I would require that my money be used only to advance the space program with either a shuttle replacement, an extra crew compartment for the space station, or a launch vehicle for a manned trip to Mars. Would you support a bill that would allow taxpayers to voluntarily contribute money to NASA? Are you ready to put your coin where your Dreams are?"
MONEY gets in the way (Score:5, Insightful)
Let NASA make the decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Next gen vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
private sector (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the decisions of what it's going to do in the future are not made by its experts, it is made by the politicians, which (at least indirectly) are influenced by our democracy.
Why? It all comes down to funding, which comes from the government.
For example, why do you think the shuttle is the way it is (part reusable, part disposable)? Politics. The fully reusable one was too expensive. This article [washingtonmonthly.com] outlines the compromises that were made, and is an overall interesting read.
A quote from the article, "But you're in luck--the launch goes fine. Once you get into space, you check to see if any tiles are damaged. If enough are, you have a choice between Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is hope they can get a rescue shuttle up in time. Plan B is burn up coming back. "
Note that this article was written in 1980.
Moon and mars, but not too fast (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Mars, our (I speak as a human being) succes rate at going there isn't very good yet. Almost one spaceship out of two that tries to enter Mars orbit is lost. We need a "welcome" infrastructure: communication and meteo satellites around Mars so that the following probes (and crews!) can safely reach destination.
We also need something strong to cruise rapidly (I don't believe yet in 3-years-plus missions). Prometheus (nuclear propulsion) would facilitate the trip a lot...
Choose with your taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people signed in the campaign, but the government, of course, did not change anything.
Now imagine if something like this could be done in the USofA, which spends on weapons as much as the 10 next most-spending countries put together!
(All this data is taken out of UN reports, which I'm now too lazy to find...)
With just one year of the DoD budget, famine could be erradicated forever in this planet, and you'd have enough spare change to build another shuttle and send a mission to Mars!
Of course now the important thing is bombing Iraq because the stupid dictator there tried to kill someone's daddy *and* has huge amounts if oil...
Only a space elevator makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's nice to think that we'll be pulling some cowboy bebop style shit and just pulling back the throttle on our Swordfish II and going orbital, we need at least an order of magnitude more efficient power generation, power storage, or drive technology, or some combination thereof. The bottom line is that it takes a huge load of energy to build an orbital craft, and it takes quite a bit to launch it. Piggyback designs have thus far not proved to be a solution though there is hope there, I will admit; Still, I don't think it's worth making craft capable of launching from a planet until materials technology improves considerably.
A space elevator would make it downright inexpensive to put things in orbit. If you reserve space, when it becomes cost-effective you can run a superconducting strip down its length (That's a long-ass strip of superconductor! But eventually it will become worth it) and plant nuclear power generation at the other end of the tether where you can simply eject the core if it fissions out of control. (Mount it on a rocket; If the pile goes bad, fire it at the sun.) You could also just put a gigantic solar array there; It should be affordable if it is cheap to put into orbit and has obvious advantages in terms of required maintenance.
In any case, the first step towards building a space elevator is building the massive structure which will have to sit at the other end. If we are going to accomplish this, we need to be working on ways to mine asteroids, smelt ore, form steel, and build structures in space. In other words, we need to be thinking about supporting mining engineers, steel workers, steel fabricators, and so on. It just doesn't make sense for us to be mucking around in space too much (more on this in a second) when it costs us so much, and it costs so much because of the fuel required to lift a given mass. Reduce the amount of mass you lift, this reduces the amount of fuel you have to spend, and the whole thing gets cheaper. Build a space elevator, and you don't even have to use fuel any more; The direct cost and the long-term environmental cost (Putting that much energy into a system always has some effect, and some of the stuff we're putting into the atmosphere is nasty) of a space elevator is essentially nothing when you consider how much traffic you will have if you make it cheaper, and how much less energy must be expended.
Here comes the later: It still makes sense for us to be sending out probes, and testing new technologies for space. But it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money on that. We should be spending our money on technologies which will bring us the space elevator.
is this a shetorical question? (Score:2, Insightful)
Guess what... it doesn't require an act of congress for you to donate money. Instead of supporting a bill, just send your damn money to NASA.
It should go on. Period. (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, the overall economic contribution that the space program contributes is not just in scientific advancement. People often overlook the fact that while NASA takes billions of dollars in tax revenue, they also provide thousands of jobs. Not just to astronaughts like the heroes (yes, heroes) we lost with the columbia, but people from console operators, to sysadmins, to ground keepers.
Nothing in the history of the US has been a symbol to peaceful cooperation like the space program has. At the height of the cold war, we were able to work with our biggest enemy on a joint Apollo-Soyuez (sp?) mission. It represents triumph and advancement against odds, from the story of Apollo 11 and 13, to the tragedies of Apollo 1 and Challenger. It's given kids something to dream about, and actually tells us more about the universe we live in.
The answer is not where it should go, but rather how it should go on. Personally, I would like to see some privatization in the Space Industry, because that would greatly lower the costs of development and space travel. We also need more exploration missions like the Galleleo and Pathfinder projects, which brought a great deal of positive public spotlight to NASA.
The Pathfinder mission showed that NASA could get something done using economic constraints. However, there is a legitimate need for money just to get some of the basic maintinence done (such as the housing facilities for our remaining shuttles). We need to press farther out than the distance that our shuttles and the space station hit.
As a personal recommendation, I'd like to suggest a little reading that I found years ago. The Case for Mars by Dr. Robert Zubrin is an excellent book that shows both the feasibility, need, and purpose on manned exploration beyond our local little planet. It shows, realistically, how we could get the project done without an outlandish budget. While the project talked about at the end is no longer around, the MarsDirect project still exists. http://www.nw.net/mars/ Give it a look.
Remember, NASA is not just about Space Shuttles, but also about exploration and education. Things like those great space picture backgrounds would not be possible without them.
Jet fighters and Missle Defense (Score:4, Insightful)
Before you poo-poo Defense Spending remember that you have an Internet because of a certain DARPA project started in the late 60's. The Moon Walk was cool and all but how did it change your daily life? I would argue that the Internet has had a much greater impact on mankind than the moon walk.
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:3, Insightful)
More specifically, Congress should instruct NASA to expose all its science programs to the normal process of peer review used to make funding decisions in the sciences. Congress should then abide by those decisions. This would have the effect of eliminating the manned space program, which has a ridiculously low ratio of scientific results to funding. Unmanned probes are the real workhorses of space science and planetary exploration.
That's just science, of course. NASA shouldn't even be involved in commercial stuff, which can be handled more efficiently by private enterprise than by a government agency.
Re:Use Anti-Matter drive (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I think it sucks? You bet. Do I think the answer is to throw more money at NASA? No. I think NASA should be acting as a technology incubator. The X-plane program is really good, and getting much better since the aircraft no longer need to be man-rated to explore the flight envelope. I would like to see a private venture use NASA technology to build a rapidly serviceable, man-rated heavy launch vehicle, whether or not it is SSTO. (Me, I think that SSTO rocketry is not yet viable. I would prefer something like a reusable staged system, or else a cheap disposable booster pushing a reusable people capsule and/or a disposable payload section).
Shuttle's "one size fits all" approach is not ideal.
And yes, that is my professional opinion.
Manned Spaceflight is important. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article in Time Magazine (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people have died trying to get into space? 14 from the challenger and columbia, shoot from the hip says no more than double that have died?
That is only the start of it. Many many more brave men and women are going to die trying to turn us humans into a spacefaring race. This is hostile, hostile environment and we aren't supposed to be going there if evolution has anything to say about it. Playing a game of tortise and retreating into our shell "for a decade" every time there's a problem is defeatist, not going to make space a fluffy paradise where children run free, and will in the long run increase the costs of space exploration because we get so wrapped up in our politicaly correct bureaucracy that nothing revolutionary ever happens.
Every man and woman who's died in space did it with the full knowledge this was one of the most dangerous jobs they could have picked. I see no reason to insult their sacrifice by scurrying under rocks, pretending like it's only a matter of time before a 100% safe route into space evolves.
Re:Manned Spaceflight is important. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have the ability to, in a pinch, come up with solutions to problems that no machine technically can. When they had to build a CO2 scrubber from spare parts on Apollo 13, do you think a robot with the same computational power available in those days could have done the same? Of course not.
Additionally, humans seeing an anomalous phenomena would be immediately intrigued by it (such as nebulae, et al), and would set to studying it about as quickly, possibly even discovering something otherwise completely unknown. A robot would see known gasses, shrug because it's known, and ignore it, going on its way (forget about human intervention, when you're talking outside the solar system. By the time we find out it found something, it's long flown by).
And one other critical factor: Humans have a survival instinct. Robots do not. Humans, when threatened, can respond almost immediately. Robots cannot.
Re:Only a space elevator makes sense. (Score:1, Insightful)
If it broke (accident, engineering miscalculation, stress) -- or worse yet, was deliberately destroyed by terrorists (9/11), wouldn't it leave a LONG, LONG trail of absolute destruction in its wake?
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, in the 80s, it became about military projects and defense initiatives. Putting up surveylance stations and communications arrays. They still have exploration, but they are essentially at the bidding of the military for a lot of things.
NASA right now lacks a goal. The last (successful) big project they had was the unmanned Pathfinder mission. It was a great success for them, but was followed by two failures (Mars Global Surveyor and it's sister lander). The Galleleo showed that they could get over major technical hurdles (damage to main array and then an extra-long mission life), but these are not pushing how far man can go into space.
What NASA needs is a dream to get going, something that won't be cut down by beuracracy and red-tape. A non-military initiative that can get both the world and the government behind it. There is not really a bigger government PR entity in our country (the Military only has PR for recruitment), and that is something that NASA hasn't been using effectivly lately.
I think if the project was risky, but captured that same spirit as the Apollo and Early Space Shuttle missions, the people would step up to get it done, despite those risks.
Tether (Score:1, Insightful)
2. put a $1 deduction checkbox for NASA on the tax forms
3. build a tethered space elevator with carbon nanotubes or whatever
4. use the elevator to build a REAL space station like the one in 2001 with "gravity"
5. build ships at the station for Mars, Europa, etc..
6. start commercial operations for mining asteroids and collecting orbiting debris and stuff
7. use the ISS to store crap that won't fit on a real space station or deorbit it into the Pacific
Where do you want to go today... (Score:4, Insightful)
if (!deadAstronauts)
nasaMoney += moreMoney;
else
nasaMoney = 0;
But, looking at the situation, it's about as logical as having Congress make air travel illegal after 9-11.
But no, instead Congress desides to throw gobs of money at national security to prevent terrorism, and yet they think that it's wise to pull funding from a program which does a much better job of uniting the word together.
What Congress should do is pay NASA $20 million dollars (I think their current budget is about that much) to paste a big warning sticker on the entrance door of each shuttle saying "You fly at your own risk." That way, they state their beliefs, the world has a chance to unite people from around the globe once again, and NASA gets extra funding. Problem solved.
Re:Simple way to move 10x faster (Score:3, Insightful)
Real quick. it costs $10,000/lb to put something in orbit. You weight 100 pounds? It's going to cost $1,000,000. $200 mil? Puh-lease. The shuttle costs darn near close to 450$ mil to launch. NOTHING IS PROFITABLE AT 10,000$/lb shipping COSTS!
No, it costs NASA -- a bloated, unbelievably inefficient organization that has absolutely no vision to radically reduce costs -- that much to launch payloads.
The advantage of having a huge prize is that allows EVERYONE no matter how crackpot the idea to try a lot of different things. NASA will never, ever get us cheap access to space, much less profitable access to space. It simply is not in their mission.
With all due respect, quoting NASA or any government figures as somehow carved on stone tablets is a sign of the problem, not any solutions.
the timeline of flight (Score:5, Insightful)
"It took man 66 years to go from Kitty Hawk to the moon, and in the 34 years since were have gone absolutely nowhere."
That was a pretty good summation of the problem with the Shuttle. It is a proof of concept, but hasn't expanded man's horizons.
I say that the tribute to Columbia's astronauts should be a man stepping on Mars.
Another idea (Score:5, Insightful)
First, one of the stated goals for the space program is to develop new technology. But when are you more likely to use the latest and greatest bleeding edge experimental engine? On a manned spacecraft where loss is catastophic to the whole program, or a relatively cheap robot? Fact is, the pathfinder mission used some of the fastest processors and lots of new off the shelf technology. They had some bugs with it, which is why it can't be used with a manned mission. Sometimes this approach (known to the press as "better faster cheaper") fails, but the point is its SO much cheaper than a single manned mission a failure is not really that big an issue. For the price of one year of shuttle launches we could send dozens of probes to mars (as said before).
Be honest here. While its said that manned exploration is a precursor to manned colonization, the hard fact is that it takes too much energy to put people in orbit. For a very long, long time it will be easier to use advancing technology to support more people on this earth than move them to space. Besides that, humans aren't adapted to live in space. The basic plan has always been to go to the final frontier...then build a huge enclosed, sheltered colony that the human colonists huddle in 99% of the time. Its like going to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone then huddling in your Winnebago all week.
A far more realistic plan is to create a life that can live there. I imagine "big clanking replicators" : a huge factory with fairly familar machinery, all of it automated and only requiring human supervision to perform repairs. Mining machines, robotic rock haulers, nuclear power plants, smelters, presses, lathes, ect...most of the robotic tech similar to what you would find in a general motors plant. This facility would be built on the moon, remotely operated by people on earth. It would be capable of constructing the parts to build another facility (and so on). While expensive, it would be a fraction of the cost of human missions, and after enough replications be able to produce useful products.
Unmanned boosters blow up 4% of the time, and its nothing but a finanical nuisance. I've just described a plan that would develop far more advanced, bleeding edge tech than anything that could be used in a manned mission. The technology developed (better industrial automation, better artificial intelligence, better remote telepresense) would be immediatly useful on earth. A manned trip to mars would involve mostly old, proven technology, with a few exotic exceptions necessary for the mission. (such as a nuclear propulsion system, something NOT usable on earth)
I understand why noone will listen to me : there's an incredible glamour about blasting off our heroes into orbit, sending a man out in space to get the job done. Hell, I want to go too. But the truth is, without all the overhead associated with minimizing the risks to said heroes a lot more could be accomplished with the same money. In addition, the new tech and perhaps even real products from space would eventually provide a real return on investment, enriching us on the ground.
Space travel isn't feasible (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just barely possible to overcome this limitation. But the costs are enormous. Desperate efforts to reduce weight are needed to make it work at all. The result is spacecraft that are both incredibly expensive and fragile.
That's where it's been for thirty years. And it's not getting any better. In fact, it's getting worse. The Saturn V had the best cost per unit weight to orbit ever. The Shuttle costs far more, and this latest disaster runs up the cost per unit weight even more. All of NASA's attempts to design replacements for the Shuttle have been flops. (There have been three major attempts.)
Heavy-payload spaceflight is an ego trip for superpowers, not a useful technology. Commercial small boosters have been built and launched successfully, but that's the limit of commercial interest. Single stage to orbit remains a fantasy. (Roton looked promising, but a bit of weight growth made the thing; it was that marginal.) The spaceplane idea goes back to the USAF's Dyna-Soar in the 1960s, but still hasn't worked.
We either have to go to nuclear propulsion or give it up. Those are the options.
Epic Thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
The grand plan after Apollo was going to Mars. This needed a couple of key things:
1) Reusable vehicle to ferry cargo and personnel to
2) Space Station that could be used to house personnel and behind a vehicle to go to
3) Mars
After Apollo (during the end actually) funding was cut back and each of the steps listed had to stand on its own.
So instead of building a reusable vehicle to ferry personnel and some cargo to orbit we got the Shuttle. So it was beefed up to spend 2 weeks in orbit, self contained, and big enough to carry ridiculous amounts of cargo and satellites.
We then got a re-re-re-redesigned space station with a primary mission for science instead of a place to build an interplanetary vehicle.
The Mars mission you ask? Well that's just a pipe dream since each of the parts necessary to get there were meant to stand on their own instead of working together for the big payoff.
Re:game on! (Score:2, Insightful)
You seriously need a new accountant.
JFK got away with going to X by Y because we were trying to beat the commies there. That, in the particular time and place, warrented nearly unlimited funding and risk-taking. It wasn't just national will to get to the moon and see something different -- it was about getting to the moon and seeing something different first. And yes, we did get a lot of cool inventions and innovations out of the space race, but it was at a pretty considerable cost.
Since then, NASA's been lucky to get funding to endlessly circle the globe; there's no opponent, you see, and no real overriding fiscal incentive for anyone in particular. The only way the space program is ever going to pick up again is if (a) we get into another space race (the Chinese, maybe?) or (b) we find a really good reason to go out and get what's out there, and by "good" I mean "lucrative".
That said, I've never seen a man walk on the moon. I don't know if I'll ever see a man walk on Mars. I feel like the middle child of American history, like I'm coming along only after all the cool stuff has been done already but before we move to the next thing, and I would like to see that change.
I watch the Daily Show pretty regularly, and the other night John Stewart said that he'd like, for a change, to experience a national emotion that wasn't sadness. I'm with him on that. I just fear that we as a nation are not visionary or daring enough to make it so.
Re:Jet fighters and Missle Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Walking on the new world was cool, but how did it change your daily life?
[1] Or "European who led to a massive wave of immigration" or some other explanation.
Re:Why aren't his arguments convincing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exceptions:
Buran was a 3/4 scale duplicate of Shuttle, not the same size. It also never carried a crew...its one mission was unmanned. Read more here. [astronautix.com]
A crew escape section (a jettisonable cockpit, for instance) is a good idea for launch related problems. Howevet, on reentry, it would be absolutely impossible to get the capsule a) protected from the reentry heat and b) away from the Mach 20 reentering shuttle. It would also be absurdly heavy as a retrofit. I do believe that it should be considered for next-generation reusable spacecraft.
The reason that the Challenger problems were left up to the "old boy" network is the same reason the same engineers that crashed Mars Pathfinder builts its successors: There just aren't a hell of a lot of people who know how to do this stuff. It's horrifically complicated, and the stakes are impossibly high. You don't just let a recent graduate (like I will be soon! Yay!) design a new Shuttle. Or even a system on the shuttle. You use experienced, seasoned engineers, checking and cross-checking each other. And you still have fatal mistakes.
He's also wrong about his (rhetorical) contention that throttling up Challenger's engines was fatal. The solid rocket boosters were already burning (fatally), and they are not throttled. As soon as those things were lit (that is, before it left the ground), the fix was in. That ship was going to die.
I do disagree with a lot of his conclusions. This fellow doesn't seem to be committed to manned space exploration. His discussions about going to the Moon (which is a dead end: Been there, done that) are red herring arguments.
My personal feelings on the future of the space program are very ambiguous. I use that word in the sense that I have very strong, opposing opinions on the topic.
I believe passionately in
However, I think NASA is doing a very bad job of stewarding our resources. They're given a budget (although I certainly wouldn't call it lavish), with the understanding that that budget will be returned to the communities around major NASA installations, and the contractors that supply them. Good engineering or no, that is the only way you can get any sort of large-scale project done in this country: Spread the wealth to as many congresscritters' pork barrels as possible. I don't like it either, but I don't know how to change it.
So, I want people in space. But I don't think that going over and over to LEO accomplishes anything. If I thought it would be possible to say "OK, we're not going to fly any people for five years, but then by God we'll start flight testing our Mars hardware!" I'd be a happy guy. However, I believe that if we don't keep in the habit (if you will) of putting people in space, we will lose the political will to do it. I think that would be Bad, because we (America and its partners) would cede to somebody else (China?) primacy in solar exploration. I think that's a Baad Idea.
Robots, drones, remote control vehicles, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, the goal is not to explore space. That is a side effect of the real goal, which is to _colonize_ space.
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm familiar with all these programs, and unfortunately for those opposed to military spending, a good argument can be made for all of them. Military spending suffered massively in the last 10 years under the Bush and Clinton administrations, and the result has been a lot of insufficiently maintained and obsolete equipment. About the only program that you mention that probably should be abandoned is the F/A-18E/F purchase (and possibly the Trident II if you're convinced that we've found "peace in our time" and no longer need a nuclear triad) and maybe Crusader.
These are known as "cold-war relic" programs
No, they're not. They're necessary purchases if the US is going to have an effective military. The DDG-51 and Virginia programs are vital for the Navy (we've already gone from Reagan's "600 ship Navy" to barely 100 combatants). The Air Force needs the F-22 in order to replace planes that are probably older than most of the people reading this (1970s technology).
We could probably lose the Crusader (in fact, we probably already have in the FY2003 budget) and the F/A-18, but the rest of these programs are sufficiently vital that cancelling them would just result in having the money spend elsewhere on similar programs (for example, cancelling the F/A-18E/F would just mean a purchase of its follow-on aircraft unless you expect carriers to go to sea without any aircraft). There are lots of places where the budget could be cut (for example, Bush's proposal for an extra $25 billion for AIDS assistance to Africa would more than double the budget of NASA), but there really isn't that much pork left in the military budget.
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:5, Insightful)
So much money wasted on such a stupid, bureacratic-minded, committee-designed contraption. Well, now is the time to use all the badass technology the last 2 decades have brought us, and end the misguided shuttle program.
Re:A better way to explore the cosmos (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:4, Insightful)
It's amazing how many people I would have considered economic conservatives think it's a great idea to spend billions and billions of tax dollars on manned spaceflight because it's "cool." I'm happy with the government spending huge amounts of money on actualy research, but the space station and shuttle involve very little research. This is readily observable from the naked PR stunts like sending up the first Israeli/Saudi/schoolteacher/senior-citizen astronaut. (Of course the moon was a naked PR stunt too. . . I'm very conflicted about that. How do you reconcile the greatest scientific and technical acheivement in human history with the 30 barren years that followed?)
Some people argue that we need to continue manned spaceflight because the technology will improve to make it easier. Um, no. The technology can improve plenty without risking lives and wasting money; nuclear propulsion sounds like a great idea, but can be tested with robots. Once we can reliably send a probe to Mars quickly, let it roll around and do research, and have it return safely, with relatively little expense, then we can send people.
Re:Next gen vehicles (Score:4, Insightful)
A scramjet is a ramjet that works above about Mach 5 (it's a ramjet with Supersonic Combustion; hence, the name). You use it _instead_ of a rocket for as much of your early launch as you can, because three quarters of the weight of rocket fuel is oxidizer. If you can get oxygen from the atmosphere instead, your specific impulse goes up by a very large amount (so you need less fuel per unit craft weight).
As Moofie pointed out, though, nobody's been able to build one that works (yet).
Friction is a problem, but it's a manageable one. If you can survive dropping back down into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, you can survive friction on the way out. It just slows you down (i.e. above a certain speed, drag will equal scramjet thrust, and further air-breathing boosting doesn't help you).
To recap, the benefit of doing any of this is to use air as the oxidizer instead of carrying oxygen with you. Altitude isn't the issue (from orbital height you'll still fall like a rock if you aren't moving very, very fast *sideways*).
what about a nuclear powered plasma system? it works in space (theoreticly) would it not work in the atmosphear?
All electric propulsion drives studied to date (ion, and many plasma variants) have thrust far, far too low to use for launch. They're designed to work at moderate power and very low thrust for a very long time. Specific impulse is great (lots of delta-v for a small amount of mass), but thrust isn't (thousandths of a gravity).
Other nuclear drives have been investigated for launch, but they have problems, and are very messy. NERVA style drives - where you feed gas through a reactor core to heat it instead of forming hot gas by burning fuel - work, but because of temperature limits specific impulse is at best about twice that of chemical fuels. You also have to lug a lot of very heavy shielding and other reactor material, so the effectiveness for launch starts looking questionable. You're *also* spraying radioactive crud out behind you, because the flowing gas is hot enough to etch the reactor away over time.
In space, NERVA drives are a bit more practical, but you're better off using the nuclear plant to power an electric drive (better specific impulse).
The other ground-to-orbit scheme proposed for launch was to detonate fission bombs beneath the craft and let the shock wave drag you along, but a) minimum craft size is _large_, and b) this is messy enough to not have a prayer of being used.
In short, nuclear drives won't be useful for ground-to-orbit in the forseeable future. Wait a century, and we'll have a space elevator. Until then, chemical will be good enough (and very good if we get scramjets working).
Re:MONEY gets in the way (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! We need to have cheaper spaceflight and cheaper vehicles. (I guess they go hand in hand, of course)
Manned spaceflight these days is not cost effective for the scientific knowledge gained. The shuttle costs 500 million dollars per flight, including upkeep, the shitloads of people at Cape Canaveral, etc. Considering that Mars probes have been launched for 250 million, it ain't such a good deal.
Low earth orbit is not a worthwhile place to bother sending people to anymore. We've done most useful experiments that justify the huge cost of launching somebody into space (ie, longterm effects of weightlessness on the human body) Now we're just finding excuses to keep people in the ISS or put launch people up in the space shuttle. The Columbia's main experiments with last week's mission included ant biology in space, and I believe biology of 2 other animals. Who the fuck cares?
Manned spaceflight is worthwhile. However, before we should resume manned spaceflight, we should get a practical way of launching people into space! IE, a way that doesn't cost $5000 per pound of payload. NASA should cancel the shuttle program, and parlay the money into development of a cheaper launch method, such as the cancelled X-33, a SCRAMJET-assisted launch vehicle, a low cost "big dumb booster," or a ribbon-style space elevator.
Also, we should discontinue manned spaceflights to LEO. We should focus on human habitation on Luna and Mars. Once we got a cheap launch method (~$500/lb or less, achievable with any of those methods listed above) we could build a relatively low cost moon base. Moon habitations could be simply constucted with an inflatable fiberglass stucture, which would be inflated and allowed to cure. After curing, several feet of rocks would be piled on top, shielding the inhabitants from radiation and extremes in temperature. An excellent inexpensive, low weight method of lunar construction. Anyway, if water ice is available on the moon, the ice could be used for growing crops, drinking water, and, perhaps most importantly, it could be electrolyzed into rocket fuel.
For the long, long term, I can envision Luna as kind of a shallow gravity well springboard to Mars and the rest of the solar system. Trips from Luna to Mars (although not necessarily from Earth to Luna) would be very inexpensive due to the plentiful electrolyzed rocket fuel and Luna's shallow gravity well. Mars could eventually become even more viable than luna. It has the advantage of a thin CO2 atmosphere, which could actually harbor special genetically engineered plants in the equatorial areas. In addition, water is widely available, both frozen in the ground and in the ice caps.
I'm not quite sure other places in the solar system will ever harbor more than a few scientists and researchers. To get people to move en masse, there would have to be some kind of economic opportunity in space. I can't see how it would ever be economically feasible to leave a planet with a breathable atmosphere, food, good climate, etc, to a planet which would kill an exposed human instananeosly.
Re:Let NASA sit tight (Score:5, Insightful)
People should go to space to explore.
Both are important to us as a species.
Re:Manned Spaceflight is important. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let the humans on the ground be imaginative and send commands to the vehicle. Then we can afford to send 10 vehicles instead of one.
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Disposable missions have been economically sound, and the space shuttle had proven that point well. One of the most interesting points of the pathfinder mission was the landing method that was chosen (take this thing and let gravity do the work. Kinda playing bouncy ball with a planet and our little rover).
Any mission involving people will be a huge mission. Our way of life puts the value of human life higher than that of machines, so that is what complicates matters greatly. Unmanned missions are wonderful for scientific advancement and testing, but they have never held the interest of the public as long as the manned missions.
Ameliorating risks. (Score:3, Insightful)
A space tether would be a huge structure. Yes, it would be thin. It would nevertheless be very tall. As a result, it would be easy to hit. A cruise missile, ICBM, or an airplane that struck the tether would break it. An explosive device, including either a conventional explosive or a nuclear device, would break it. If the tether were stationed at sea, a submarine could clip the tether, or shoot a torpedo at it.
Clipping the bottom of the tether, or firing a missile at it, would do next to nothing. The single-ended tether (with counterweight) is 40,000 km long; the double-ended one is twice that. Low earth orbit - which is the maximum practical range for things like ICBMs, unless they're built specifically to be anti-geostationary missiles - is in the 200-300km regime. Lose the bottom of the tether? Just send down a replacement segment from the hub, and you're back in business.
There would be no way to defend the tether from terrorists. You would have to create a large no-fly zone and a no-sail zone around the perimeter. This would create a humongous, circular no-commerce zone that would harm the global economy.
Not really. What is the maximum distance a hostile craft could travel from detection to interception? That's the radius of your no-fly zone. This is tens of kilometres at most if you're dealing with civilian craft. Antimissile interception range is left as an exercise for people with more military background than I have. Either way, impact on trade is next to nil. Commercial flights fly *thousands* of kilometres - why would a 10-km detour have any effect at all?
Natural events are also dangerous. A lightning strike could break it. An earthquake or volcanic activity could result in enough stress on the tether to break it. A tornado, with winds in excess of 400 mph, could damage the tether.
Extreme weather only exists in the lowest 10km or so of the atmosphere. 99.97% of your tether is above this level. If you see the storm coming, pull up the bottom 20km or so until it passes. If you get blindsided, send down another small segment as a replacement.
I'd worry more about space junk, myself. More of the tether could fall.
If a tether ever became damaged or underperformed its design specs, there would be no way to repair it. Should we ever decide to remove the tether, there would be no way to take it down without it causing a catastrophe on the ground.
How do you figure this? You can just spool the darn thing back up to the counterweight/hub in geostationary orbit! That's where its center of mass is.
As for repair - how do you think the cable would be built in the first place? You aren't going to lift a full-thickness cable on chemical rockets - you'll lift a very thin leader cable, and send crawlers up it with extra strands/ribbons to thicken it with.
To repair a damaged (but still holding) cable, send down a patch, connect above and below the damaged section, and remove the damaged section. Or, if multistranded, remove the damaged strands and send down replacement strands. You've overspecced the cable strength, so the undamaged strands will hold. Any given strand breaking isn't a big deal with a multistranded design.
Even if you're foolish enough to build a difficult-to-repair elevator, there's nothing to stop you from lifting materials for a new one up ahead of time. Keep a backup elevator - spooled up - in geostationary orbit for use as a replacement if anything happens to one of the elevators currently in service. Only the first elevator will be expensive to build - cost of lifting matter goes down drastically once that one's done.
In summary, I find your claim that an elevator would be fragile or impossible to repair puzzling.
Any breakage of the tether would result in catastrophe. First, there would be damage to the ground. Anything that big (about as long as the circumference of the Earth) is not going to totally burn up in the atmosphere.
Firstly, since it'll wrap around like twine as it orbits (speeding up tangentially as it falls to conserve angular momentum), it could easily burn up - it's impacting over a very large area.
Secondly, there's a strong upper limit on the amount of damage it can do - that limit being the gravitational potential energy of the cable. Potential energy per unit mass for something most of the way outside the gravity well is on the order of 10 times its equivalent weight in TNT or other high explosive. Declare a maximum acceptable explosive yield for the whole cable coming down, and that gives you the maximum weight of the cable. Simple enough.
Any real disaster would be far _less_ severe, as a) it's unlikely the whole cable would come down; most logical point of breakage is within easy reach of the surface, and b) even if the whole cable from geosynch onwards came down, it would impact over a large and mostly-uninhabited area (if you've placed your cable with any sense at all). Only the fraction that hits populated areas matters.
Our economic security and probably our military security and national security would come to depend on this tether.
The big problem is that once the tether is destroyed, you're probably looking at years before a replacement tether could be erected.
If the tether's that important to the economy, you'd a) have more than one in service at any given time, and b) have replacements stashed in geosynch, ready to unspool. If space travel is that widespread, then you also have the manufacturing facilities off-planet to produce a new one. Build it, send it to geosynch from wherever else it's built, and spool it down.
In summary, all of the risks you've pointed out have easy workarounds.
Lastly, there's a very compelling argument for a tether being much better in the long run than a space plane. An *ideal* space plane would have a specific impulse of perhaps three times that of chemical rockets. Lifting cargo is still expensive with such a beast - on the order of thousands of dollars per kilo even under ideal conditions (and likely much more, given the industry's track record with other launch vehicles). Lifting cargo with a space elevator is orders of magnitude cheaper, if you have high volume. The theoretical limit (cost of the gravitational potential energy paid in electricity) is absurdly low (on the order of $1/kg). The practical limit is determined by how fast you can haul cargo up the cable (no more than, say, an amount equal to the cable's weight can be in transit at any given time, and it has 40,000 km to travel before being unloaded). Haul fast enough, and you can make the cost per unit weight as low as you please. All of your hauled weight is cargo, because your fuel can either be burned on the ground with electricity sent up the cable, or (more likely) produced at the counterweight by solar or nuclear generation, and sent down.
The long-term rationale for building a tether is clear.
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:3, Insightful)
How about a rapidly serviceable, man-rated _light_ launch vehicle? Its arguably a mistake to have combined the freight transport needs in the inappropriately named Shuttle with the passenger "shuttle" vehicle. So NASA would be better off having a separate human passenger vehicle solely for transporting humans, perhaps something that gets launched from an airborne platform, like the old X-nn concepts. Then NASA avoids the expense and demand of making a 140 ton vehicle man safe (a goal that apparently has not been met). What would we do with the current shuttle craft? Modify them to fly as un-personed freight transports.
Make it cheap, and they will come (Score:5, Insightful)
And the sad part is, there are hundreds of designs that could and would reduce the cost to orbit from its exorbitant $10,000/lb to less than $100/lb. But you know what? All of the aerospace contractors have lobbied for years for these advances to be underfunded, never considered, or just plain cancelled.
I agree with the Cliff, I'm pinning all of my space dreams and hopes on the advent of mass-produced carbon nanotubes. Once they become available, the entire economics of space will change radically. Finally, it will make economic sense for even the most conservative corporations to invest in space industrialization.
Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.
Re:Are you sure? (Score:3, Insightful)
America's social experiment wouldn't have worked if it were not geographically separated from the monarchies of Europe. While I would be the last person to argue that America's system is perfect, I do believe that it's a damn sight better than even a constitutional monarchy.
There's nothing to say that the citizens of another world wouldn't go ahead and charter a new social contract. That, more than anything, is what makes me want to travel to the stars.
No, don't (Score:3, Insightful)
A whole bunch of private companies have wanted to make space access cheap and sensible, with definite corporate goals in mind, but NASA has blocked every single one. I imagine cost to orbit could be a tenth what it is now, and safer to boot, if NASA had not stomped on them.
The best thing for NASA is to get it out of the space transportation business altogether. Auction off the shuttle and space station, if no one wants them, abandon them. Let private industry have a shot at it.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. NASA won't do the first, they need to be made to do the second or third. Satellites, Mars exploration, nice political and scientific goals. Space stations and space transportation, get gone.
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately for Bush, he was mostly wrong. Yes, some of the systems could be cancelled, but they would just have to be replaced with something else because there is a necessary role for each of these programs.
Now I want the USA to have the best weapons in the world. I also want us to have the best space program. I think we can do both.
I agree. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years both the military and the NASA budget have both been cut; the place spending is out of control is on social spending, and that is a situation that doesn't seem to be changing under Bush (although, to his credit, at least he's increased military spending enough so that some vital programs are going to finally be funded).
Do we "need" all of the weapons I mentioned in my post? Do we need all of them now? Probably not
That's the problem with modern warfare; and NASA is suffering from the same mentality. National defense is a "come as you are" environment; if you don't "need" them now and thus don't spend money on them, you won't have them when you do need them. The same is true with NASA. We didn't "need" an improved orbiter in the 1990s, so Clinton cut the space budget back and killed off all the many, many promising programs that could have provided alternatives (Delta Clipper, etc) now that we do need them. The result of such policies is the tragedy we've just witnessed.
Clearly, we need to spend more money on space development (although perhaps, not necessarily NASA, who hasn't shown a willingness to embrace the state of the art technology as it did in its infancy). But we can't do it by cutting the military budget, because there simply isn't enough money there to cut. However, there ARE a lot of places in the social spending sector where money could be spent without such a risk. Bush's $25 billion for Africa/AIDS is one such place. Medicare/Medicaid is another. Considering that the long-term payoff for space (new pharmaceuticals, geriatric research, etc) development is more likely to solve these issues than direct funding would be in any case, it is simply more logical to spend money from these sources than to risk national security.
Re:Don't blame the doorknob (Score:3, Insightful)
Manned and unmanned space exploration should go hand in hand. Without unmanned missions, space is hella dangerous. Without manned missions, we're just wanking.
Need both to advance the species.
You don't quite get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Your arguments are even less convincing. I'm sure you could come up with equally dramatic descriptions of the environment in which early airplanes operated, and they killed people, too. Airliners are a bit safer than they were in 1910. The early sailing craft were dangerous.
The technology has improved quite a bit since the 1970s. Perhaps we do know enough now to build a shuttle craft with safety comparable to that of an airliner.
We've been putting people into space since the 1960s. Surely something has been learned since then about getting to orbit and back safely.
Every man and woman who's died in space did it with the full knowledge this was one of the most dangerous jobs they could have picked. I see no reason to insult their sacrifice by scurrying under rocks, pretending like it's only a matter of time before a 100% safe route into space evolves.
Don't insult the ability of our engineers and scientists, either. 100% safety is impossible. You can get killed on a trip to the mailbox. Humans have paid for the right to explore every new domain we have taken with their lives, and there are a few of those people buried or lying around within a few miles (kilometers) of every reader of this post. However, as a result of those sacrifices, most of us can walk safely to the mailbox without a gun and without watching our backs.
When do we get out of the human sacrifice stage with respect to the kind of trip that should have become routine with the second generation shuttle and something you buy tickets from your travel agent for the third generation available Real Soon Now? We've been putting people into orbit for 40 years. I think it's time to find out whether or not we can do it right now.
It's time to honor our pioneers and move on to the future. It's time to get out of the status quo. You know as well as I do that if we keep flying a shuttle that's been kept running longer than the average city runs a public transit bus that more and more of these vehicles are going to fall out of the sky. Will the public support NASA if one of these deathtraps hits a public building full of people?
It's time to either start putting real money into the manned space program or shut it down. It's wrong to ask people to give their lives to solve problems that should be solved with money and engineering skill no matter how dedicated or brave they are. If America doesn't have the will to do this right, we don't deserve to keep our technological leadership and we won't be allowed to.
Your argument in favor of the status quo is pointless at best.
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The upshot of all this spending is a few thousand jobs for engineers, programmers, and others in the tech field.
Just think of the millions of job openings for these same people if space were to become an industry rather than a curiosity.
If you want something to achieve commercial success, don't let the churches or the government dictate how to do it. Give it to some greedy, money-grubbing parasitic corporation (like MS, or IBM) and they'll find a way to bring it to us (and then jack up the prices).
For the record, I'm *not* suggesting we entrust future shuttle missions to Microsoft. Keep in mind, I want this to *succeed* with a *minimal loss of life*.
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let NASA sit tight (Score:3, Insightful)
The big problem to solve is NOT what to do in space with current (expensive) technology. The big problem to solve first is how to make it cheaper so it's not such a big deal whether a mission is manned or not.
Flame away... (Score:3, Insightful)
maybe--just maybe--we rally around national tragedies± because we need to create a pain to counter balance the numbness of our mundane life necessary to keep from hating ourselves. or maybe we really are the navel-gazing, imperialistic gluttons that the world thinks we are, incapable of imaging a world beyond Must See TV and the Cosmo sex quiz, too callused to even give a damn. how did we get here? where are we going? where have we been?
boy, this generation needs a hero.
Re:The asteroid belt. (Score:4, Insightful)
But who would do this? Only private enterprise would be this dedicated (and cost oriented.) And, if you don't give private enterprise a reason to go up there (exotic fuels, tax incentives, profit), they won't go. Giving government this goal would result in the most costly pork-barrel projects known to man (ie, the ISS and the space shuttle.)
Declare space off limits to taxation. In 10 years, every major multinational corporation will have a presence there, and we'll all benefit from the infrastructure necessary to loft people into orbit and maintain livable conditions there.
Moonbase (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost of space is getting out of our gravity well, as most here point out. So let's build a moonbase instead.
Once there and operational, the rest of the solar system is open. The cost of getting from Earth to the Moon is actually higher than getting from the Moon to say Mars, or the asteroid belt.
Then refine the minerals on the moon and drop them down the gravity well for use on the earth.
In the long run it will probably be less expensive to produce minerals down here on earth. So why go into space at all? Mainly for the technological returns. An active space program generates technology for humans everywhere. And we are suckers for tech. Not only geeks and hackers, but the entire global economy are fueled by thechnology. If we don't want do go Amish we go to space. And we will. Eventually.
There's no question that the moon will get a base on her face sometime in the future. What language they will use in the command centre is uncertain though. It might be chinese, or hindu.
Re:Next gen vehicles (Score:3, Insightful)
Scramjets have been designed which will take pitch/yaw of +-4 degrees. That doesn't sound like much, but remember that you're going pretty danm fast.
Nuclear rockets work by superheating steam. It's not radioactive. The problem is when a nuclear rocket explodes.
Re:Let NASA make the decision (Score:3, Insightful)
You are so right. I'm currently reading The Case For Mars [amazon.co.uk], written by an ex Martin Marietta engineer. They designed and priced a manned mission to Mars using technology available off-the-shelf in the 1990s - in fact, most of it was available in the 1960s. It would cost $20B to develop and $2B/mission, and made use of seemingly obvious common sense. For example, why cart all the fuel for the return trip with you, when you can send an automated device there years beforehand to manufacture rocket fuel (methane + oxygen) from the Martian atmosphere (carbon dioxide) using a process that's been around since the 1890s (not a typo)? And if you don't have to carry all that excess fuel, you don't need to assemble your craft in space, you don't need an orbiting shipyard, etc.
And there was the problem. NASA wanted $450B for a project that did involve orbiting shipyards and fueling stations, in-orbit assembly, a stop off on the moon en route, etc. His proposal faced enormous opposition from all the little cliques and empires within NASA who accused him of "de-justifying" their projects, and who sought in inflate mission requirements in such a way that only their fiefdom could meet.
Why? It all comes down to funding, which comes from the government.
Right now, NASA (in its present form at least) is an obstacle to space exploration. The problems aren't technological any more, they are organizational! But there is a better way. If the governments responsible for funding NASA and ESA were instead to fund a (say) $40B prize for the first organization - private or public, it doesn't matter - to land a team on Mars, carry out a list of experiments or explorations and return safely, then the game changes radically - and we could see humans on Mars this decade.
Re:Simple way to move 10x faster (Score:4, Insightful)
The disadvantage of having every crackpot trying out his own favorite launch vehicle is that sooner or later, someone is going to drop his launch vehicle on a school or a neighborhood...
There has to be some kind of space agency to regulate and review the crackpots, so that the inherently dangerous ideas are at least moderated. The space agency would also need to manage launch facilities for the better ideas, so that in case of failure there's a large body of water to drop the fireball into...
It shouldn't necessarily be NASA, though.
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
there really isn't that much pork left in the military budget.
I'd like to argue with that. Not in terms of cutting military development programs, but in terms of efficiency. A good friend of mine works for a large defense firm (baesystems), and by all reports they LOVE the US military. Why?
It seems that when they score a big contract from most countries, they have set delivery dates and tightly controlled budgets, as one would expect in a contract a modern, state-funded institution. Get value for money for the tax payers and try not to let things run over. It's just common sense. Under this system companies start to lose money if they go over time or over budget.
The U.S. military works differently. Defense firms love contracts from the US military because they just keep on paying and don't seem to care much about deadlines. The reasoning behind this seems to be "We want the best, we don't care if it costs the earth and takes until the end of time", which is all very grand and powerful sounding but ends up wasting money and time, all at the taxpayers expense.
Surely money could be saved by tightening controls on defense contracts and could then be diverted to other ventures such as space?
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the USAF fields plenty of old aircraft. The problem is, these aircraft are costing more and more to keep running. There comes a point where it's more cost effective to buy new ones.
Once production of an aircraft ceases, most its production tools are destroyed, leaving you with a limited number of spare parts, and making it very hard to produce more of that model of aircraft.
Also, you can't compare the B-52 and KC-135 to fighters. The stresses on a fighter are much higher (especially for 'planes that operate from a carrier) than for these transports, which results in a shorter life.
There was a cheaper way (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Space Shuttle you could launch payload cheaper using NASA's rockets:
Link [washingtonmonthly.com] For $23 million, for instance, you can buy the services of a Delta, a rocket that will toss 2,750 pounds of whatever you have into the 22,000-mile geosynchronous orbit used by communications satellites. For $33 million, you can get the more powerful Atlas-Centaur, which could kick a small payload out of earth orbit altogether. If you plunk down $50 million or more, you could probably arrange to get a Titan III, the rocket the Air Force uses to launch military satellites. A Titan III, the Clydesdale of space horses, will heave 29,000 pounds into due-east, low orbit.
That was in 1980. The Space Shuttle was a Very Bad idea. It should be buried.
Safty (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think the failure rate was for the FIRST hundred or so manned atmospheric flights?
Manned space flight is still young, and you can call me a dreamer if you will, but I think it will get safer, and safer as time goes by and we gain experience, and we will continue to do so, it is human nature to want to explore. Accidents are unavoidable, no amount of preparation can prevent all accidents. Astronouts know this, and go up anyway, that is why you have to be brave to be one. Ultimatly sending people into space is the only way to get good at sending people into space.
Sponsor a soviet design international spaceplane? (Score:2, Insightful)
A google search for spaceplane turns up lots of articles. Another slashdot reader already recommended Gregg Easterbrook's 1980 article on Columbia's first launch. [washingtonmonthly.com] I guess one lesson from looking back on it is to take the claims of the designers with considerable skepticism. Fity or more launches per year? Cost a third or less per ton of the cost of single shot rockets? Ha.
Yet, I would guess that the general public was seeing the American shuttle as being a big success. I expect people will see it as a success again.
I like the idea of putting aerospace workers from the former Soviet Union to work. I like the idea of putting them to useful, peaceful, dignified work. I don't like the idea of them being owed six months of paltry back-pay. Not when some of them have skills developing WoMD.
I like Dennis Tito's answer to one of the questions he was asked when he returned from being the world's first space tourist. He was asked whether it was frivilous to spend $20,000,000 on a vacation, when the world faced terrible problems, like grinding poverty. He said something like:
I read an article [google.ca] some time ago, by a tourist, who knew something about aerospace, who dropped by the Buran that was being turned into a cafe, in Gorky Park, while it was still being converted. The security guard who stopped him, was quite knowledgeable -- because he was a former aerospace worker who had worked on Buran. This seemed like a terrible coincidence at first, a terribly ironic one.But then it turned out that the Buran cafe project was a project [attbi.com] of the former Buran workers. They were all involved.
I couldn't help really feeling for these men and women. I imagined they had traded back-pay they were never likely to see for the Buran mockup they were turning in to a cafe. (Cafe patrons were going to get to order real cosmonaut space rations.) But they hadn't given up. They hadn't given up on aerospace. They hadn't given up their dignity. They hadn't given up on peace. They hadn't given up on their country.
The Soviet Union had a space program any former citizen could be proud of. I'd like to see their talents put to use. This isn't charity. They were talented.
Plus, there is the peace factor. Everyone is worried that "rogue states" are going to acquire weapons of mass destruction by subverting penniless former defense workers from the former Scviet Union. Well, why don't we address this issue by making sure they weren't left penniless?
Yes, I know organized crime is (was?) a terrible problem throughout the former Soviet Union.
Still, would the dollars, yen, euros of the international community be better spent in the former Soviet Union, where paying an aerospace worker $1000 a month would be a ten-fold pay increase, then in, let's say, the USA.
The USA, or more precisely, the US aerospace industry, is the land of the $1000 spanner. Let's be honest. That too, is a kind of corruption.
The US's milltary-industrial complex built many weaspons systems over the years. Do you know which one provided the greatest invulnerability?
That would have to be the one with a sub-contractor in every congressional district.
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Jesus, you already spend 40% of the worlds total spending on arms. and you want more? Look, pretty much all other countries got even older equipment than the stuff you're phasing out. Calm down over there for christ sake, noone can touch you anyway if it comes to a conventional war.
We can't do it alone anymore. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Budget Sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The obvious answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Start with What We Got... (Score:3, Insightful)
The X-38 provides a blend of some proven methods, along with newer technologies. It takes advantages of the materials science, aviation, and computer imporvements over the last thirty years. It can act as a real-world demonstrator for these technologies, that can later be rolled into the next vehical. Plus, some of the burden could be taken off the shuttle for crew transfers and basic science.
Speaking of science, the ISS should be expanded to allow a full crew of seven. One common critique of the station is that there is not enough crew to do meaningful science. This seams plausible: if a diverse skill set is required for some of the experiements, a larger crew would be the logical fix. By having the crew and capability to perform experiments, launching shuttles, with large cargo bays for space labaratories, will not be required for pure science.
Gradually, as the station is built, the dependence on the older shuttle is reduced, the newer vehicals (starting with the X-38) can take up most of the work of transfering crews and experiments. Progress can do the initial work for providing supplies. As other demonstration systems (X-43, other runway-to-space type of sytems) become more viable, unmanned versions can take on supply delivery roles. Grandually, as experience with these grows, manned versions can take over for the X-38.
Truethfully, this is the way it should have been all along. An evolution of systems is how both technological improvments and economical capabilities are realized. Unfortunately, the entire history of manned has been one of fits and starts. Since the first shuttle launch, it's replacement has been proposed, funded for a while, then cut. A year or two later, we start again. A commitment is going to have to be realized.
A historical note: it has always been this way. Way back when, we were going to create a spaceplane known as the X-20 DynaSoar. It would have launched on a conventional rocket, and landed like an airplane. However, the space race forced us to use Mercury capsles first. Then, JFK decided we should go to the moon. Rather than creating a sustainable space capability, we created Apollo. What if we had stuck with the X-20?
Re:The obvious answer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:There was a cheaper way (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a world of difference between a man-rated launch vehicle and an unmanned one. Between the increased design redundancy of the vehicle itself, and the additional personnel and ground systems required for crew safety, the cost difference between a $50M unmanned launch and a $400M shuttle launch dwindles rapidly. There is merit to the argument that man-rated, expendable boosters could launch a manned vehicle more economically than the shuttle. However, it is misleading to compare the shuttle's launch costs to those of current, unmanned rockets.
The cost efficiency of the Russian space program is impressive, indeed. The last I heard, their entire annual budget was on the order of $300M or so. NASA could emulate that, if it could find a suitable workforce of scientists, engineers, and technicians willing to work for months at a time without pay.
AFAIK, the manned spaceflight accomplishments of the ESA are related to the International Space Station. They do not currently have their own operational, man-rated launch vehicle.
FWIW, NASA's original concept for the shuttle was much more sensible. The eventual design was a compromise necessitated by budget restrictions and significantly increased payload requirements levied by the DOD.
Re:orbit sucks, moon rocks (Score:2, Insightful)
"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System."
-Robert A. Heinlein
Private Biospheres (Score:3, Insightful)
First, fix the funding issue: cancel all government funding, except perhaps for military applications. Most of it should be done privately.
That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be all commercial and profit-generating. There's no reason philanthropists and "regular people" like you and me can't make voluntary donations like we do for PBS, etc. Money is already being taken out of your pocket, whether you like it or not, and being spent in a manner that you don't have any control over. That is the primary thing that needs to change. If someone else has a plan that you think is better or more valuable than what NASA does, then you should be able to send your money there instead of to NASA.
I'm sure NASA is full of a lot of bright people, and if they were spun off and had to be accountable, those people would still be able to attract a lot of interest.
As for where I would put my money, if I had a choice: Biosphere type stuff. It is ludicrous to even think about permanent lunar bases or trips to Mars, right now. Show me you can live in a closed system, and then I'll maybe believe that you can handle space. Show me you can live in Antarctica without periodic supply drops. This kind of practical research is dirt cheap and low-risk, compared to anything involving a spaceship. I don't even want to hear about long manned missions until these techniques are proven.
Until we have the capability to have people up there long-term, I am sceptical that there is much value in having people up there at all. I can see a case for some medical research (e.g. what happens to a person who lives in low-grav for a long time), but that's about it. The "science" that the shuttle currently does can be done cheaper on spaceships that don't need to worry about life-support. More importantly, it needs to be not a huge paralyzing catastrophe when some sort of technical problem causes a spaceship to be lost. The fact that some people are even considering dropping the shuttle, shows what is wrong with it. If space exploration is going to happen, then spaceships are going to keep blowing up; we need this to not be a big deal.
Re:Put me down for the space elevator. (Score:2, Insightful)
The theory seems sound enough but I have yet to see the solutions for the practical issues regarding construction... current launch mass is limited to around 50k pounds with shuttle.... 200k pounds is the limit of most design ideas using checmical... and even thrn I doubt you could launch a 200+ mile long cable into orbit. and it seems a single strand system that long is a fundamental requirement of the theory.
If anyone can explain better how to implement the theory I would love to hear it.