NASA's Commercial Plans for Kennedy Space Center 106
coondoggie writes "Whether or not NASA launches two or three more shuttle missions, NASA's venerable hub of operations, the Kennedy Space Center will need a new mission. That's why NASA today said it was looking to morph the center's unique space rocket facilities into a new more commercial role after the shuttles stop flying. While its facilities would likely rise far above others, NASA could find some competition in any commercial launch venture."
Re: (Score:1)
No one rebuts your posts because doing so would dignify their existence. Much like if someone claimed that the earth was flat, I wouldn't bother citing a few thousand years of empirical evidence to prove them wrong. The fact is, you can't fix stupid, so sometimes it just makes more sense to ignore it.
Re: (Score:1)
Yea, the US just launched a rocket on 1-20-11 from Vandenberg.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, the US just launched a rocket on 1-20-11 from Vandenberg.
Florida condos just in time for the housing bounce-back!
So they're openining a theme park? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All the tourists going there will finally have space-o-rama roller coasters and extraterrestial-terror-haunted-space-shutte train ride?
Houston has already gone that route. I was there last summer and the main attraction was a giant Clone Wars playset. At least they still had the actual historical artifacts available off in a corner.
Rust (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully they don't intend it to continue on simply as a history tourist attraction. When I visited last summer, the "rocket garden" left me sad. Everything was terribly rusted and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the people working at NASA are over 50 years old. Nobody new was hired for the past 15-20 years.
I think they were talking about the displays, not the employees.
Re:Rust (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it was meant to be symbolic of the agency itself.
I mean, let's face it, man may one day set foot on Mars. But the odds that he'll be wearing a NASA patch on his suit has been dropping pretty steadily ever since the early 70's.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Hopefully they don't intend it to continue on simply as a history tourist attraction. When I visited last summer, the "rocket garden" left me sad. Everything was terribly rusted and so on.
In all fairness to the staff there, that's what happens to any metal that's left outside for very long in that environment. So their options are:
Recycle it instead of displaying it.
Display it outside, and clean it up every once in awhile.
Spend a bunch of money building an enclosed space for it, like they did with the Satur
Re: (Score:1)
Actually, the planet can't afford it. There's actually nothing to pioneer in space, it's empty.
Re: (Score:2)
if I take some gold and put it in a huge tank of air, I could then say there is so much more air in there than the gold, that the gold is not relevant. That is obviously false. The only thing that matters is the cost effectiveness of going and getting it.
Along those lines, there is a *lot* more stuff, just in our local solar system than there is on earth itself. So drop the "ratio" argument.
Now is it cost effective to go get it?
*That* is a reasonable qu
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get out much, do you?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
except for all the raw materials that we will need to continue onward. all those rare earth metals? guess what they can be found on other planets too.
For all we know there could major deposits of the rare minerals on mars. The real trick is getting it, and getting cheap enough to be useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the southern baptists claiming there are hidden sex messages in the moon landing videos!
Re: (Score:1)
Proposals to restore a country (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You should google "immigration gumballs" to see how increasing immigration will do nothing to solve the problems of the world. It also addresses how trying to attract even more of the "best of the best" from other countries can cause more harm than good when you consider the effect of the drain on their home country.
You are better off trying to help those developing country "help" themselves through increased international trade and providing aid for development of infrastructure in those other nations.
Foll
Re: (Score:2)
Let's face it, we, the US of A are a declining power and can't afford our former glory as a space pioneer.
Let's take Kennedy Space Center, turn it into an amusement park with the over priced tickets and food, get some sort of mascot like an alien, market it towards kids, and make some money.
They're already doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
What we can't afford are two wars, one utterly baseless, and the other having been dragged on way too long.
NASA's total budget is less than Northrup Grumman's (the THIRD largest US defense contractor).
Commercial space missions alone can't quite cut it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm all for it, but I have my doubts that anyone is going to invest several million to launch a Mars exploration mission with no profits whatsoever in the forseeable future.
If you or anyone else has even the rough outline of a workable plan to get to Mars for anything close to several million I expect you'd have to beat investors off with a stick, many would do it just for the publicity, without any expectation of direct ROI. The trouble is getting a man to Mars would likely cost more on the order of several Billion and that's to do it badly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Outer Space Treaty pretty much makes it clear that legal title to the resources of the rest of the solar system won't be available to any private individual or corporation.
Which means that there's no incentive whatsoever to bother developing the capability to go there and extract said resources....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given parties with enough cash/clout, any treaty can be set aside. I'd bet that if a party well-heeled enough to get a mining system set up to get rare minerals from the moon to Earth on a fairly inexpensive basis (perhaps with a space elevator), the Outer Space Treaty would be shelved or amended to nothingness by at least one country.
Re: (Score:2)
Given that you'd have to spend a buttload of money first, convincing people to invest in an operation that can't ever make a return on investment without overturning a Treaty,
TREATY?! We don't need no steenkin' TREATY! (Score:3)
And realistically, at this point in the game, I foresee absolutely nothing that would be exported back to Mutha Eurth except information and energy. Anything you build out there is most likely going to be local support infrastructure or outward looking.
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me, if we did build one, wouldn't that prove we have ALL the resources, energy and technology we need, RIGHT HERE????
Building a space elevator is more a matter of finding a material which actually works than finding energy and resources... and right now I'm not aware of one.
In any case, a space elevator would be pointless for bring material _down_ from the moon since you can just drop it into some empty part of the planet and process it there. A space elevator would be good for taking bulk cargo up, and delicate things like people and manufactured products down, but if you have a kilometer-sized asteroid or lump of moon r
Re: (Score:2)
No one is proposing that NASA disappear. Well, a few people are, but they're mostly ignored as the fringe.
Commercialization means that for a potential Mars mission, or Asteroid mission, or anything else, most of the lifting from the surface to LEO would be done by commercial providers where possible. Some people still think a customized NASA-specific heavy lift vehicle would be necessary, so I'll go with that. However, imagine if you could just launch all the heavy stuff on that, and then put the people u
Re: (Score:2)
Not necessary, but potentially a lot cheaper if done properly. Sadly, NASA is being prevented from doing it properly.
one small step (Score:2)
Adding a coffee shop with free wifi would be a good start.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They took out the coffee shop? When did that happen? (I haven't been there since 1985)
Makes sense ... (Score:2)
I guess it makes sense it should continue to be used ... isn't it's location fairly optimal in terms of placement within the US for take-off? I see to recall reading that anyway.
Sad that NASA is being squeezed out of the game to a certain extent, glad to see they can still play a role.
Re:Makes sense ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Probably also because of mild weather, year-round, too.
Well, except for the hurricanes.
But the weather, at least, is generally pretty warm, so you don't usually have to watch out for frozen o-rings. Usually.
Re:Makes sense ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.
Doesn't mean as much as it seems on first sight. If the flight fails badly, the equipment will fall within a few hundred miles of the launch site. Otherwise, it will reach orbit and then the earth is rotating away from the orbit plane. You don't need a full great circle to abort a mission.
The key point here is that orbital velocity is the main factor. In order to be reasonably efficient, a rocket must reach orbital velocity as soon as possible. If a rocket isn't in orbit within about 500~1000 miles from the
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Makes sense ... (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA is no more geared to commercial spaceflight than Red Bull's Formula 1 team is geared to making SUVs. NASA is, however, geared towards research and design, non-terrestrial physical sciences, deep space communications, etc.
Specialists are capable of going further in a specific field than any generalist. It would be suicide for them to try and compete with fly-by-night rocket groups that can launch satellites from disused oil rigs. It is seriously doubtful they could seriously battle for the LEO passenger market, or even with the Russians on the millionaires-in-space front. Frankly, I don't think they should.
NASA should not go commercial. They should invest more on ion drive research (how else will we get TIE fighters?), more on reliable landers (reusable spacecraft and/or colonies won't be possible until we improve the reliability aspect), more on deep space missions (commercial vendors won't bother mining asteroids until we find asteroids that we can profitably reach and mine - nickle isn't nearly valuable enough), more on alternative launch technologies (turbine-assisted ramjets, ski-jump ramps, cannon-assisted ramjets - all areas NASA is working on or have done), more on computational fluid dynamics (it's bad enough designing aircraft for atmospheres you can actually test in).
These are areas where the commercial value is next to zero until AFTER the results are in. The private sector won't invest in this stuff. Or if it does, not nearly enough. But the private sector can do bugger all until those results are indeed in.
NASA should be devolved from the Government, much in the same way the BBC is devolved from the British Government (via charter and as a source of funding but not under the control of nor under the sole funding of), but it should not be privatised or seek to use commerce to make the gap between what it needs and what scraps the politicians will give it after funding military escapades.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with everything you wrote, and I must add that Florida is absolutely not the best place for a commercial launch site.
The most interesting orbit for commercial launches is the geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The highest cost, by far, in a launch for GEO is inclination control. The added fuel a satellite needs to compensate for inclination in a launch from Florida costs about as much as a complete launch from an equatorial position. Launching from Florida doubles the cost, it's as simple as tha
Re: (Score:2)
NASA should not go commercial. They should invest...
Yeah, I stopped here.
NASA has no money, because Congress doesn't fund them for crap. What they would do if they had money is immaterial. They can't invest in blue sky (or starry sky) research when they are barely keeping up with existing research programs--and indeed many valuable programs have been cut in the past few years because of it.
The move to put NASA in a role supporting commercial spaceflight is entirely a cost- and/or face-saving measure by politicians. Nobody at NASA needs to hear it. Talk t
Kennedy Space Center Bed & Breakfast (Score:5, Interesting)
If you RTFA, it sounds like how cash-strapped British Lords open up parts of their country estates to provide a little cash-flow to finance maintenance and repairs. Or like some kind of NASA garage sale. At any rate, it doesn't sound like NASA is planning on launching anything there real soon.
So if you want to get yourself into space, learn Russian. Ha! It's like the Tortoise and the Hare Space Race . . . congratulations, Russia, in the long run, you have won.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame that NASA has to play into commercialism to stay afloat. Back in the 60's when we were racing to the moon NASA got all the money they needed, but once that was won the well dried up. Like Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13 answering a question about why funding should continue after having already beaten the Russians: Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.
NASA needs a new mission alright, but it needs to include more trips into space and not selling toy shuttles and rides on roller coasters.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the analogy for the Moon and Spanish exploration in the New World is simple.
There was money to be had, hand over fist in the New World, going back and forth to the Moon was a money sink. Even if Apollo 19-20 had been funded and Saturn V production had continued, the Oil Crisis of 1973 would have killed the funding.
NASA needs to get out of manned spaceflight and back to what it was founded for, developing technologies for civilian aviation and aerospace applications.
Re: (Score:3)
The difference between Columbus vs the Apollo crews is that Columbus brought back gold/ Silver/ spices with him.
The spices not so much but there should be decent quantities of raw minerals out there that we need on a regular basis. The problem becomes how much does it cost to setup mining out there and return. (rememebr the moon has lower gravity so you can send more back easier)
Re: (Score:2)
We need to convince people that you can get high off snorting moon dust......
The moon will then be colonized by drug cartels....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.
There isn't gold and half-naked hot Indian women on the moon.
Re: (Score:1)
"There isn't gold and half-naked hot Indian women on the moon."
Darn!!
Maybe not on the moon, but how about on Slashdot.org? ("Hea-hea-hea." -- Igor - Dracula - Dead and Loving It or was it Love at First Bite? Ah well.)
hea - way it sounded.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
You're misinterpreting what commercial space transport means. It doesn't mean that NASA tries to sell what it has to any millionaire looking for a joy ride.
What it means is that rather than designing and using one-off vehicles for its own uses, NASA will instead try to purchase launches from commercial companies where possible. It already does this in fact -- all unmanned NASA missions, as well as all DOD missions, are launched on commercially acquired Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles, mostly purchased from ULA (i.e. Lockheed/Boeing). Now it is just moving a step further and providing a framework to do the same thing for manned spacecraft. In addition to reducing the abuses inherent to cost-plus contracts, it also opens up some reduced savings by letting other customers subsidize the development costs. For other customers, don't let the 'space tourism' thing get you down. While there may be some of that, the most likely 'other customers' would be other countries looking to do their own research without being as dependent on the whims of NASA.
NASA will continue to be on the forefront of exploration for the near future, funding missions and designing the hardware to do what hasn't been done before. What the commercialization proposals do is try and make the first step (getting to LEO) a little cheaper. Going with your Columbus analogy, he didn't have to design and build the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria himself, he bought them with the funds provided by the crown, and we can hope this provides NASA with the same opportunity.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, Christopher Columbus never set foot on (what was to be) US soil, but I get your point -- Cuba would never have been settled without him.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
It has more to do with NASA's shifting its focus from space exploration and science to race quotas and muslim outreach.
http://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+muslim+outreach&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&safe=active
Stop acting like NASA has been choked of funding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
The Air Force is getting it done now because they can do it without as much left-wing drag.
"best and brightest" (?) - driving us into a ditch (Score:2)
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.
It's more like when Captain Thomas Bladen Capel came back from Rockall [wikipedia.org] in 1810, and no one returned until 1896. Somebody made another visit in 1955, and put up a plaque. There was another visit in 1985. Someone is planning a visit in 2011 as a promotion for a charity.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
wish I had some mod points! Good call :-)
we testing the private space market now (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I fear the 2% astronaut fatality rate will sour private space travel when the first disaster happens.
Only a government could get away with building a space vehicle that kills the crew one time in fifty; any private space vehicle will have to be much safer than that.
Abandon in place (Score:3)
Time to stencil "Abandon In Place" on Pad 39A, as has been done with older unused pads at Kennedy. Maybe put in a Son et lumière (show)" [wikipedia.org], like the Pyramids. Future generations will come to look at the ruins.
Re: (Score:2)
Man this is depressing.
So this is what its come to...? (Score:1)
The lack of leadership in this nation is amazing, and its only gotten worse with every election.
Re: (Score:1)
Funny. Yes, Obama did some stupid things like killing eLORAN research and destroying Loran-C infra that could be used for eLoran. GPS needs backup. Among other things.
But I have to agree with Obama's Space/NASA strategy.
Space should be explored for profit and scientific advancement that makes financial sense.
The USA isn't great because it can waste billions of dollars in its space program. You need to be careful how you spend your dollars, or the USA will cease to be great real soon.
If you analyze the recen
Kennedy space center does more than (Score:1, Flamebait)
just launch the shuttle.
Shuttle or not, other space operations will go one at Kennedy space center, its a nice spot at a low latitude for the US so its got a good amount of speed already built in.
The main pads will just no longer be set aside for the shuttle. Eventually they'll recycle them for something else. Same with the buildings. We'll need them for something else crazy in a couple years.
As a geek... (Score:2)
This is all incredibly depressing. Outside of launching satellites, space is not profitable short term. Businesses are only interested in the (relative) short term.
If we stop publicly funding space research, there will be a lot less space research. Period.
Re: (Score:2)
No one is stopping funding space exploration. Commercialization in this sense means purchasing launch vehicles for people from commercial providers, just as we do for unmanned vehicles.
This should in theory free up *MORE* money to allow real exploration, technology development, and all the things NASA is good at. The commercialization policies proposed by the administration included an overall increase in the NASA budget.
Publicly funded space research is going nowhere, don't worry.
Horrible. (Score:2)
Astounding (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Wow, I don't think I ever rated a +2 troll before. What, exactly, does that mean?
Re: (Score:1)
Prime launching areas are in the equator. So much more economical that other countries developed Sea Launch. Regardless of their economic troubles, the savings in rocket fuel is very big.
Cheap launching areas are in South America. With French Guyana 100% operational, and launch areas in Brazil in small scale usage.
Could be in Africa as well, but not enough political stability.
Yes, the cape is probably good enough. But if the only object was launch cost, then all launch would be moved much further south.
The