The Next Fifty Years In Space

MarkWhittington writes "2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Space Age, agreed by most to have begun with the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik, on October 4th, 1957. While some are taking stock of the last fifty years of space exploration, noting what has been accomplished and, more importantly, what has not been accomplished, others are wondering what the next fifty years might bring."

Except we can change the launch costs.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Use nuclear rockets, e.g. this one [nuclearspace.com] (the good tech stuff starts in section 7). With that, we can lift a thousand tons into orbit in a completely reusable and non-polluting craft that even eliminates not only its own nuclear waste but also waste generated on Earth.

Yes, I said non-polluting, because the exhaust is non-radioactive hydrogen. (Read the article before denouncing, please.) For in-system work, we could use Orion or variants, or even the nuclear salt-water rocket [washington.edu]. Those do have radioactive exhaust, but out in space that's not exactly a major problem. With that level of specific impulse [wikipedia.org] along with high thrust, the costs of developing space resources are drastically reduced.

Colonies on other planets may or may not be a good idea (though with a big enough space economy a moonbase becomes attractive). But mining asteroids and putting dangerous industries in space is a very nice idea once we're not bogged down with just chemical propellants.

Future Planned Moon Missions

[phobos13013]

Most of these endeavors from TFA may be pie-in-the-sky, literally; however, according to this article from the Economist the other week, [economist.com] the Goddard Space Flight Center has some serious plans for missions to the moon under direction of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. [whitehouse.gov] Going for the pie-in-the-sky plans may sound exciting and adventurous, but reality needs to set in eventually. Making gradual steps and acting when the technology is developed is the best plan to ensure safety and success in the space in the future.

Re:Except we can change the launch costs.

[Illserve]

Except we can change the launch costs

Err... the article refers to solutions starting from LEO. That's the easy part.

Getting the whole thing into orbit in the first place is the hard part, because the fuel has to lift itself out of the gravity well.

The space elevator is the answer to the *launch* cost problem, not nuclear power.

What the Experts Think on Next 50 Years

[mattnyc99]

The cover story in the current issue of Popular Mechanics deals with this same concept of looking ahead to the next half-century of spaceflight, and they've just posted a round-up of "expert" predictions [popularmechanics.com], with everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Arthur C. Clarke and Burt Rutan to Tom Wolfe. Good stuff...

Re:Imagine if the World Trade Center...

[elmartinos]

I highly doubt that. Do you know where the asteroid came from? Who cares, it clearly was an act of terrorism! Iraq has terrorists, so the only conclusion can be that we have to invade Iraq.