Give Space a Chance, Says Phil Plait

The Bad Astronomer writes "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true. The budget will call for a new rocket design, and a lot of money will go toward private space companies, who may be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares being ready anyway."

Losing Constellation is a set back

[physburn]

Years of work have gone in Ares I,5 and the capsules. Yes is was just a bigger Apollo with more modern components, but if its cancelled and NASA have to restart then those years and dollars are gone, any moon or mars mission is setback at least 5 years. But as Phil said, these are just rumours, we don't yet know what will happen to NASA.

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Space Craft [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[wizardforce]

The volatiles, metals and ceramics are only worth mining for industry/economies already in space. Only the precious metals and various other materials would be sent back to Earth. The volatiles etc. would be used for space tourism and colonies as sending up those cheap materials to orbit is very expensive.

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[icebike]

Precious = Rare.
Cease being Rare = Cease being precious.

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[Idiomatick]

"They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it. Government funding is the only way space exploration can go forward."

Good thing you read the summary. "...a lot of money will go toward private space companies..."

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[Trepidity]

That's not strictly true: a lot of the value of precious metals, especially gold, is simply derived from the fact that they're rare, and thus seen as a store of value. If some major change happens that causes people to no longer perceive gold as rare (for example, we discover huge piles of the stuff elsewhere and a practical way of transporting it to earth), its price could fall precipitously as people stop considering it valuable, and all that's left are industrial uses.

Re:Obama Is Right But for the Wrong Reason

[QuantumG]

Leaving aside your stupidity (or should I say gullibility) what you've just presented here is the old "spaceflight will be easier in the future so why bother now?" argument. It's true that there may be new technologies available tomorrow, or next week, or next decade, but the majority of evidence suggests that chemical rockets remain the only known technology to produce high enough thrust to get out of planetary gravity wells, and to perform short duration missions beyond LEO. It's lovely to think that maybe we're on the verge of some breakthrough that will render chemical rockets unnecessary, but even the greatest optimists of alternate propulsion techniques are unwilling to claim that. Even if we develop cheap, reliable, compact and light fusion reactors tomorrow, to get high thrust you still need a rocket nozzle with a high temperature propellant flowing through it, and most likely that propellant will be even higher temperature than in chemical rockets (otherwise, what's the advantage?) and that's likely to involve an even more complex design. Even if the design isn't more complex, it is necessarily more *new* and that means most likely less mature than needed for a human rated booster.

The future of spaceflight only gets easier than today if we fly today.

Re:Yeah, orbit!

[FleaPlus]

The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today.

This is a common meme, but unfortunately quite false. Private industry has been successfully designing and building new orbital rockets for years (Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V, Falcon 1, Pegasus, etc.). In contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed a new orbital rocket in ~30 years, although they've had several severe management-related failures (X-33, X-34, NLS, etc.).

Also, keep in mind that NASA already uses commercial rockets for all of its unmanned launches -- craft like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers weren't launched on NASA rockets, but on commercial Boeing Delta II Heavies.

They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it.

Which is precisely the reason the proposed plan is better. By letting private rockets handle the routine problem of accessing low-Earth orbit, NASA can use its limited funds to focus on actual exploration instead of rocket-building.

Re:Bravo.

[sparkydevil]

Oh, oh, I've got it!

Social problem: Corrupt government
Technological solution: The flintlock
Result: The United States