Japan's 20-Year Plan for Space

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."

Cooperation

[Shadow Wrought]

I wonder how much cooperation is going to be forced on the space faring nations over the next couple of years as they vie for more expensive technology with ever shrinking resources.

Spiral Development Might Be a Good Idea...

[ThreeE]

All this Japanese talk of the moon and beyond is great -- and welcome, but I think Japan should concentrate on simply putting a human above 62.5 miles safely first...without cancelling the program.

Re:Uh-oh...

[Rei]

Honestly, while they wouldn't say it publicly, they're getting involved because of China. China has been very successful with their space program as of late, and as a strategic foe of Japan, and with some high-profile failures recently, Japan has to play catch up. Not that it's a bad thing, mind you - I'd love to see both of them dump all of their money into spaceflight and related research that they can, so that everyone else will reap the benefits. Research is expensive. Hardware is expensive. Testing new designs out is very expensive. Let the Chinese and Japanese pay for all that they can ;)

Lowered cost?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You make the assumption that space flight is going to be cost driven with discounts and frequent flyer plans.

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.

Meanwhile...

[Wiktor Kochanowski]

...oil is almost at $57 per barrel and going up.

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.

Japan and aerospace.

[LWATCDR]

Aerospace really seems to be the one place that Japan is behined the US, the EU, Russia, and even China.
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.

Re:Why Repeat Our Mistakes?

[rewinn]

>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.

Re:Wow.

[MBGMorden]

Fuel costs can vary tremendously. Some aircraft can be run on high-grade automotive gasoline, and some require aviation grade gasoline (well, jets don't run on gasoline at all, but most private pilots are going to fly with a piston engine).

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 (some of the small Rotax engine planes) to as high as 33 gallons per hour (the Lancair Sentry, though that plane will cost about $400k anyways, so it is in the upper class bracket). You'd be hard pressed to find a kit-craft that burns more than 10 gph though.

As to hangar costs, it's something that I haven't looked into myself. I'm a county employee and we have a county airport so hopefully by the time I get done building whichever kit I decide on I'll get a discount on a hangar :). Until I get my plane built though I'll just be taking joy rides in the rentals (which range from $40 to $100 per hour for a single engine, depending on the model. That includes all fuel).

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. If my engine management computer quits on my Civic, I pull over and call a towtruck. If the engine on my plane dies, I have to quickly find a safe place to land, hope I can make it there, hope it really is an ok place to land, and hope I don't come up short.

Also, you can drive a car in any weather short of a hurricane. Try landing a small plane in strong gusting crosswinds without hundreds or thousands of hours experience. Now try doing that without a working engine. Now try doing that with thousands of other rush-hour pilots trying to get home at the same time.

A previous poster mentioned that a kitplane can be put together for ~$18,000. That's certainly not going to include the instruments and electronics to make high-traffic-density flying possible.

Those glass-cockpits in some high-end small planes don't come cheap. It's not just a PC and a monitor hooked up to a few sensors. A basic glass cockpit system capable of showing artificial terrain and flightpath along with airspeed, altitude, trend data and local radar info will easily run in the high five figure range. And that's just for the display. Add in the sensors, driving electronics package, autopilot, and backup systems, and you're looking at more than your average 4-bedroom house, just for the avionics.

Oh, and then you need to buy the plane to put it all in.