Can Commercial Space Tech Get Off the Ground? 133
coondoggie writes "While NASA's commercial partners such as SpaceX and Orbital have made steady progress in developing space cargo transportation technology, they have recently fallen behind their development schedules. Combine that with the fact that the most critical steps lie ahead, including successfully launching new vehicles and completing integration with the space station, and you have a hole that will be tough to climb out of. Those were the two main conclusions of a Government Accountability Office report (PDF) on the status of the commercial space world this week. The GAO went on to say that after the planned retirement of the space shuttle in 2010, NASA will face a cargo resupply shortfall for the International Space Station of approximately 40 metric tons between 2010 and 2015."
Speaking of SpaceX, reader Matt_dk sends along an update on the company's Falcon 9 flight efforts. "Six of the nine first stage flight engines have completed acceptance testing and all nine flight engines are on schedule to complete acceptance testing by mid-July."
Answer: (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
I really hope so (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)
Geez, here we go again.
Yes, the bottom line is that getting to space is really, REALLY expensive. Which in turn means that exploiting resources up there is almost certainly not going to be economically feasible for the foreseeable future.
Re:The problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your quotes around security reasons are probably unwarranted. The research in question could probably also be used to create ICBMs. At least that's the only reason that would seem justified.
Re:I really hope so (Score:3, Insightful)
Very true. The thing to keep in mind though, is that economic issues are more or less a proxy for where society needs resources and skills the most. There are a lot of people who would like to see private space flight succeed for no other reason than "because it's cool". But society doesn't really place much value on "because it's cool", at least not enough to send things like engineers who might otherwise have been working on projects like climate change or new energy sources to go work somewhere else.
The one real reason to be funding space exploration right now is mainly because there are a lot of potential benefits that we can;t really quantify yet. However, private enterprise is not very good at working towards potential breakthroughs in the distant future. Sure every once in a while a company takes a leap of faith on something big that pays off in the long run, but more often than not private investment is on a much shorter time frame than we're talking about here with much less risk. That doesn't mean that such research isn't worthwhile, just that most of the time it's more suitable for governments to undertake than the private sector.
Yeah, but it's worth it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The take home is that space is, and always will be, very $ relative to ground; therefore there has to be some compelling reason to go to space.
Sadly, there are few compelling reasons.
I am compelled to disagree with this.
There are plenty of compelling reasons to go into space:
Growth of the species - Humanity is expanding in population very quickly. Eventually, assuming that holds, the planet will reach the point where sustaining that population is impossible, even with advances in technology. Your choices, then, are either to limit/reduce the population (sterilization, limitations on childbearing, war, disease, organized extermination, etc) or expand off the planet. The second option seems a little more friendly and ethical.
Survival of the species - There are several things which can cause the population to be essentially wiped out. Asteroid impacts, war, deadly pandemics, biowarfare (which I personally consider the greatest threat at the moment), and so on. It's possible that some may survive these things by digging deep underground, but I doubt enough infrastructure and population will survive to maintain society as we know it. The best long-term solution I can see is to expand off-planet and establish self-sustaining colonies. You don't keep all of your company's data and server hardware in one location, do you? The same should hold with humanity as a whole.
Additional resources - This fits with the first point. There is only so much stuff available to us on this planet. Whether we use it all up, or decide to preserve it, we will eventually reach the point where we can't use any more. What are we to do at that point? Well, I see a whole bunch of stuff sitting up in space just waiting to be used. Now before anyone starts, I am not promoting the "strip earth bare and trash it, then move on" approach. Instead, I'm promoting the "let's make use of all those barren rocks out there so we don't have to trash earth" approach.
Overall, unless we're going to take that self-ridiculing, defeatist position that humanity should draw down into a little ball and live the remainder of its existence shut in from the universe as a whole, like a pathetic and sick individual afraid to even get out of bed*, we will have to go into space eventually. It's just a matter of time. The only question is "when?"
Some will argue that it's too expensive, that we should wait until we have better technology. But how will we get that technology in the first place? It doesn't just fall into your lap one afternoon; you have to work for it. Imagine if we'd decided 100 years ago that trying to develop airplanes was stupid, that airplanes at the time were too dangerous and impractical, and that we should wait until we had technology like the 777 oir A380... I'll tell you right now, we probably wouldn't be to that point for a couple hundred more years. You don't learn how to build entirely new stuff or do new things by sitting around dreaming about it or making powerpoint charts... you learn by doing that stuff as best you can, learning from your mistakes, and doing it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yes, doing it is expensive. But it's worth it. The only reason it seems like it's not is that the payoff takes a little longer to come. Corporations don't undertake it because the shareholders probably won't see the benefit within their lifetimes. Governments don't do it because they don't think beyond the next election. Joe Public doesn't think about it because his attention span lasts for 20 seconds and all he's interested in is what keeps him entertained. The benefit is there, but it might be a few generations before it's realized.
Remember, too, that money spent on developing this stuff isn't just launched away into the sun or something. It stays on earth, paying the engineers and mechanics and managagers (spit) that work on it. It fosters a need for more engineers and mechanics, driving bet
Re:Here we go again (Score:2, Insightful)
What can we get more easily?
Let me count the ways:
Hafnium, gallium, indium, dysprosium, neodymium, terbium... shall I go on? All the things that are running out *fast* (try 10 year supply left) which we need for things like cell phones, LCD monitors, and semiconductors.
Many rare earth metals are contained in Near Earth Orbit asteroids. At least one of objects has been visited and was not terribly hard to land on.
Robotic mining might not be *easy*, but we've landed and controlled a number of craft on Mars. It doesn't seem like a terribly far cry to send larger, more robust equipment to asteroids to mine them.
Now, finding those rare earths may be a bit dicey. Getting to them could be a challenge on an asteroid. However, with all those resources out there and our supplies dwindling somewhat one has to believe that someone will want to get to those.
Re:The problems... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problems are that NASA because of "security reasons" can't give out a lot of the taxpayer funded research that would help these companies get off the ground. So, what took NASA many years to do doesn't have to be reinvented by a private company.
The bigger problem with "security reasons" that commercial companies like SpaceX has is with things like ITAR export restrictions; these are the same regulations older slashdotter might remember from the late 90s, where strong encryption was regarded as a munition as people were tattooing encryption code to themselves along with the text "this man is a munition." [treachery.net] A recent example is with SpaceX's delayed launch of Malaysia's RazakSat satellite [hobbyspace.com]:
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.
"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.
Also, if anything, reinventing from the ground up is a big part of why SpaceX has been able to get costs as low as they have. Instead of designing their rockets to satisfy the politicians' fetish for spreading assembly over key congressional districts across the country and the engineers' fetish for maximizing performance at the cost of all else, SpaceX has been able to design their system from the get-go to minimize production costs, minimize the size of their ground crew (SpaceX Falcon I just needs something like 20 personnel at the launch site, instead of the 100 or so needed for EELVs), and maximize potential reusability.