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Ummm... The US has proven that we can do ASAT, well before the Chinese did. We strap a missile to an F-15, fly up to about 80,000 feet, invert, and launch (then you hope that the pilot can recover the aircraft at high altitude and low airspeed). We successfully destroyed a satellite in 1985 using this technique, but Congress canceled the program in 1988 because they were afraid of the diplomatic implications (and it was getting expensive). Link and Link

Well anthropomorphizing the rocket equation doesn't really help him, but he has the following to say about SSTOs:

"The rocket equation tells you that an SSTO booster using LH2 fuel and LO2 oxidizer needs a fuel mass fraction of around 0.92. That means that 92% of the take-off weight needs to be ascent propellant, and only 8% is left for everything else.

This is a very demanding requirement. The second and third stages of the Saturn V actually achieved a dry mass fraction of about 10%. But these are not complete spacecraft, only expendable stages without payload or recovery gear.

But the Space Cadets want a reusable booster than can quickly return to its launch site and take off again in a few days with another payload. This requires the addition of large amounts of weight which renders the vehicle incapable of orbital flight"

He does indeed deliver no definite proof that SSTOs are impossible but lets the reader come to his conclusion by giving the Venture Star and the DC-X example of NASA development leading to infeasible results. This is all trial and error so nothing definitive.

As I understand it you want to land vertically and rocket assisted. Don't you think that in vacuum you would have to achieve the same weight ratio for going up as for going down with the engines being the same. I don't know how much aerobreaking is going to happen but my gut feel is that you end up with impossibly small payloads and/or some other mechanism of landing. Bell made that point too with the DC-X and the Venture star.

Then you are still hoping for high turnaround times. Ok, you could pipeline the whole rebuilding effort which you will probably need as much as the shuttle but you still have to pay for it.

You would have to prove that your vehicle can operate cheaper despite more frequent launches which the smaller payloads will require. Don't forget the only cost you won't have compared to the classical design is the launcher cost.

Actually there is a nice article here about launch costs:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/233/1

With your larger number of launches to get the same mass into orbit you can easily cause higher costs for labor per mass in orbit which is going to kill your SSTO dreams.

Anyway, I didn't calculate much either, but increasing launches to get the same mass into orbit is a fact if you want to reenter the atmosphere with the whole vehicle in good shape. With that your only hope is some increased efficiency in spacecraft operations. As the article above shows this is hard to achieve since some costs are fixed and won't go away anytime soon. I can already see it happening that even if you are successful with your project you will notice that despite your increased efficiency you won't have gained much because all your efficiency gains have been eaten up by an increased number of less valuable launches.

BTW, looking at that "cold hard equation" I would rather increase the exhaust velocity than fiddle with petty spaceship masses ;).

"Significant"? NASA's funding is a tiny, tiny part of the budget.
From the following: Putting NASA's budget in perspective, July 2007.

• According to budget documents obtained from the Government Printing Office, the national budget for 2007 totals about $2.784 trillion. At $16.143 billion, spending on NASA accounts for 0.58% of this.
• For every $1 the federal government spends on NASA, it spends $98 on social programs. In other words, if we cut spending on social programs by a mere one percent, we could very nearly double NASA's budget.
• The 2007 budget allocates roughly $609 billion to defense, not including the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. This is nearly 38 times the amount of money spent on NASA. If you include funding for the Department of Homeland Security, defense spending adds up to $652.5 billion, which is more than 40 times NASA's budget.
• Then there is the matter of paying the interest on the national debt. As I write this essay, according to the US Treasury office, the United States is in debt to the tune of $8,835,268,597,181.95. Merely paying the interest on this massive load of debt every year costs a fair amount of money. In 2006, the federal government had to allocate about $400 billion to this task, which adds up to more than 23.5 times the amount of NASA's 2007 allocation.

The House of Representatives version of HR 3093, the bill that determines NASA's funding for 2008, effectively bans the study of an entire planet:

Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

The House committee report mentions the proposed prohibition: Finally, bill language is included prohibiting funding of any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

Now, this leaves a loophole large enough to drive an M-1 Abrams through, but it's still just plain stupidity.

According to this, it hardly matters, as Congress feels the need to ban at least manned Mars missions altogether. It seems stupid and pointless to me.

You have missed some interesting postings of late. here and Here. COTs 2 is going to be awarded shortly. That will PROBABLY go to spacedev. The real issue for NASA is astronaut launches, not cargo (EU's ATM and hopefully Japan's can carry the load). That pretty much means that spacedev will win COTs 2 (assuming that this is not another awarding to friends like kistler was). Spacex and Bigelow are not really leapfrogging. They are just getting marketing and they are the closests to launch. Scaled/virgin will have passengers to LEO by 2011(2012 at the outside). No doubt bigelow will be making heavy use of that. While I do not know, I think that scaled has the cheapest approach to space for LEO. But it will not carry beyond it, nor carry a saturn's worth of cargo. As to t/space, they strike me as being a LONG way back. Spacedev has the launcher (atlas or delta) as well as they have a CURRENT safe engine (their hybrid). In fact, they have already designed and built a tug boat for it. I believe that is what they are looking to launch on spacex's falcon 1 (as small version). So all that is left is the ship itself. Of course, the wind studies on it have already been done. They have built a mock up and are ready to go. Basically, they might be able to have human launch by middle 2010 if they win the COTS now. They might also have a tug boat to boot by allowing the service module drop off prior to returning. But this is all just guessing on my part.

So why the others? Armadillo and blue origin are looking at recreating the DC-X/lunar module. Basically, an engine that carries a load on top. But when you think about it, that approach really will not work for cheaply going to orbit from here. The reason is that we can carry the load part way up via plane (scaled) or simply use a big rocket from launch pad. But armadillos/blue origin/dcx is great for a place with lower gravity and you do not have a launch pad. IOW, it becomes a good lander on the moon/mars. Neither Bigelow nor Spacex's really will do that. So if these 2 change their set-up (a space truck for other smaller planets), then one or both will be in there.

Good point on the NEOs. But I would think that we would send a robot to those to simply push them into orbit here.

And now our lack of vision as a nation and bureaucratical hassles have pushed the date even beyond that. It's a sad time to be an American. If only we had the drive of the Apollo era.

It's in a bold step of aggressive direction that the 'Prez has led us to this great vision of greatness, to reach Mars sometime in about 15 years! Children not even born yet will be in Junior High when we make it!

Er, not.

This is just political posturing. The lame-duck President gets kudos for being "visionary" without actually doing anything but talking out his arse. NASA gets some (much needed) press, and the Chinese get a message that maybe we aren't completely out of the race to space round II.

But it means nothing, the administration will change, priorities will change LONG before we even get a prototype ANYTHING constructed, and the "vision of the trip" to Mars is half-hearted, even if its proponents aren't.

Personally, this hurts all involved since NASA will end up with ANOTHER black eye of "Well, you didn't get us to Mars, either, did you!" while the real underlying problem, which is that NASA gets about 1/2 of 1% of the budget that the US Military gets.

But most people think of NASA as this huge, labyrinthine gubbmint agency with nearly unlimited dollars. But when you look at it, we spend 200 times as much money killing people as we spend putting anybody in space.

And yet, space projects have had an amazing ROI. For example, the amount of money spent deploying the GPS system is dwarfed by the taxes earned by all the products and services based on the GPS system, notwithstanding its original military-oriented benefits. Research that went into solar panels, rechargeable batteries, materials research, etc. continue to provide incredible economic benefits today, year after year.

It's like somebody upstairs is intentionally shooting us all in the collective foot - just pisses me off to no end.

Imagine what giving them just 0.5% more of the US budget would do in comparison to how little the last few additions of 0.5% did to improving the situation in Iraq. :-/

That's really depressing to think about, IMHO...

(the total NASA budget is about 0.6%... err, that is, not 24% as estimated by an all too large share of the US population)

the problem with nasa is that it IS a government run institution, which means that politicians have a decently sized say in how it's run.

now this wouldn't be a problem if politicians were well educated or atleast made an effort to learn about a program before saying "let's take in a new direction," but they're not, they're dumb as hell and love to change things at the first sign of trouble.

of course this might just go straight back to john q. taxpayer, who isn't very smart either and doesn't understand what CNTs are and doesn't see NASA being worth the "DoD sized" budget that they think NASA has http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1000/1, but john q. taxpayer understands "nasa goes to moon again" as something tangible and worth while. while i won't argue against it being tangible or worth while, it definitely isn't the best way to spend the limited amount of time/money that nasa is given

... you can't send a cockroach into space, even if you would use all of it.

Honestly, check the numbers: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/233/1

As it turns out, any computer that any of us has is ~50 years more advanced than sputnik also. As for launching into space yourself, that's a bit expensive, something like $700-$1000/kg with 1000 kg payload...plus the 30 million in r&d for the launch vehicle and related reconnaissance. (source: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/395/1)

Maybe we should use the money to start slaughtering existent populations in the developing world then, instead, and nip this problem in the bud.

You so don't want to learn the lesson about honey and vinegar, do you? Well, your bitterness has convinced me not to donate to any charities you're involved in, for now. (This is not a threat, or a challenge, or an insult; it's simply my judgment as to where to spend my resources. You seem to be charity-minded, but your tone belies something different altogether.)

Citation/evidence?

Sure, here is is:

Still, if an average asteroid had several trillion dollars in precious metals, which is entirely possible, according to Tumlinson in a 2000 exchange, that lode could be used to underwrite, conservatively, several hundred billion dollars for projects of various kinds. That potential for good is from one average nickel-iron asteroid.

[...]

Projects that might be initiated under such an extraterrestrial plan are varied. The establishment of a modern healthcare system throughout Africa, now being devastated by various diseases, including AIDS, might be one. That continent will have strong political systems only after healthy national populations exist. Another possibility would be an international program to clean badly polluted sites left from the old Soviet empire. Such an effort would lift a huge burden off the backs of maturing democracies in the area, allowing them to allocate resources to other areas. The Middle East is the home of the three great monotheistic religions of the world--and increasingly a viciously unruly place. If there were a financial or development component to a future peace settlement there, it could be underwritten by wealth from asteroids. All of these suggestions are international in character, as befits the source of the wealth being tapped, and all aim to give people realistic hope for a better immediate future.

So, no, the idea isn't to kill off the population. The idea is to help them, without going about it all short-sighted and destroying ourselves in the process.

Sorry about your fish.

You know what? When I first read your post I thought you must be a freaking whacko nutjob who needed to be protected from the terrible secret of space.

Then, I did some Googling just to see if there actually was any information on SPS.

Whaaaa? TONS. Oops. I was completely wrong about your post. Thanks for an enlightening comment and please let me apologize for almost chucking you in the virtual loonie bin.

The tickets are $15. Shipping and handling is about $10 billion and your estimated ship date is in 15 years.

Ever since van Braun teamed up with Disney to get kids interested in space, NASA has had this tradition of lame "education" programs. The idea is that if you get people enthralled with the idea of space at an early age then you don't need to make any sort of compelling argument as to why we should be bothering with space exploration. When the kids grow up NASA tells em it is all about the science and exploration is just maintained for the intangibles it supplies. Essentially, it's a big bait and switch.

Now, am I the only one who has read Dennis Wingo's MOONRUSH? He not only explains what space exploration should be about (hint: a lot of the resources on earth come solely from ancient meteor impacts.. why not go to the asteroids directly, or to somewhere they are not degraded by geological events?) but he also describes an architecture for doing it that is cheaper than anything NASA ever does and actually makes sense: assembling spacecraft at the ISS and putting another space station (much smaller than the ISS) at the L1 point.

I remember reading about the Apollo era arguments over what was the best way to go to the Moon. van Braun was of the opinion that doing lots of launches to Earth orbit, assembling ships there and then heading off to the Moon was the only sensible option. Other engineers were of the opinion that going direct from the Earth to the Moon was the safest approach and therefore the best option. Of couse, this limits the size of your vessel to something that can fit in a single rocket and be lifted by it directly to the Moon.. and so we ended up with these impractically gigantic rockets that now rust on NASA's lawn. Oh, and in the end they didn't even do a direct flight, they did lunar orbit (if you're going to do lunar orbit you might have well done earth orbit too, where it is actually useful as a staging position).

All in all, NASA is a testimony to what happens when you let nerds manage themselves.. they form endless committees and argue over what colour to paint the bikeshed.

Plenty of folks with a decent background say that there is much to be gained by making the moon an intermediate step.

And there are plenty who don't. For example, this fellow feels that "Currently, this author believes that there are few, if any, efficient reasons to use the Moon as a stepping stone for going to Mars", since "Mars is a planet with an atmosphere and resources that preclude the Moon from acting as a relevant analogue, and our current space program is quite adept at operating spacecraft in the vacuum of space for timespans that double the most modest estimate of the one-way transit time to Mars."

Perhaps you have some material which counters these points in some meaningful way, rather than simply appealing to authority?

Secondly, you're a Canadian, so I do not see why it concerns you.

Because, like it or not, the United States is our best hope for getting humanity into space. So I'd rather they didn't waste 20 years putting a man back on the moon when it is, IMHO, and the opinion of many others, a waste of time, energy, and resources.

If a dominant civilization, or group of civilizations, bans colonization throughout the galaxy, then it will not take place, no matter how much other civilizations protest.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm - Quayle's history of this sort of thing

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/106/2 - Details of Quayle's involvment with NASA

He understood, he just couldn't explain it.

Coincidentally, a pretty good article analyzing the planned launch architecture was published yesterday. Here's the link.

Additionally, aerospace engineer Jonathan Goff over at Selenian Boondocks has a post titled Lunar Much Sooner (and Better) which discusses a number of alternatives to NASA's current plan.

Finally, Selenian Boondocks also has another post about some things revealed by one of the architects of NASA's plans, suggesting that several of the design constraints imposed on the architecture may be somewhat dubious, (arguably) making the whole project much more expensive and unsustainable.

Indeed, seeing this first hand was quite interesting (I was there both days, and spent some time in neighboring Truth or Consequences, Aguirre Springs Recreation Area, and White Sands National Monument). I was really impressed with the high school space elevator team, as their device made it all the way up without much of a problem. I wish I was able to get more videos of the Tripoli rockets firing, as those were really neat. I was a bit under-whelmed by the lunar lander challenge though, if only because of the lack of teams competing and the problems encountered. But I suppose that is the nature of experimentation! :^) I thought the rocketman was going to fly around the crowd (like at other events)... Just seeing him float up 30 feet and back down was not too impressive. Seeing NASA astronaut Mike Foale's presentation about life aboard the ISS was really interesting and humorous. It is really neat to see the general enthusiasm surrounding rocketry and space exploration/travel at the event. I would like to go again when Virgin Galactic sets up shop in Upham, NM at the New Mexico Spaceport...

I wonder if they couldn't have been a combined effort for an even greater return. Then again, I'm just glad both of them are fulfilling their goals instead of both burning up on entry due to a conversion of units error.

Since Mars Express used an earlier launch opportunity shared by the Mars Rovers your suggestion is pointless. Also MRO is collaborating with the Italian Space Agency with the Subsurface Radar experiment. Otherwise NASA collaboration with ESA is on the wane for many reasons.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a rather fascinating talk at this year's Mars Society Conference, where he talked about his plans for the Dragon capsule, his long-term vision for private spaceflight, and his hopes of eventually helping to enable Mars colonization. An article at the Space Review, Dragon Uncloaked, gave a nice summary of the talk. Here's some interesting quotes from the article:

The large number of engines needed for the Falcon 9 will provide SpaceX with notable economies of scale, Musk believes. "Next year SpaceX will manufacture more rocket booster engines than the entire rest of the US industry combined," he claimed. He estimated they will manufacture 25-30 engines in 2007, when Falcon 9 tests are scheduled to begin, growing to 40-50 engines in 2008. ..

At the same time, Musk is dismissive of some of the proposed applications that could take advantage of such a powerful rocket. "I don't believe in the mining of stuff in space. The transportation costs are so horrendously high that I don't think there's anything... if there were packages of purified crack cocaine in orbit right now, I'm not sure it would be financially viable to go and retrieve them," he said, to gales of laughter from the audience.

He was similarly dismissive of another popular proposed application, space solar power. "I know a lot about solar power," he said, "and trust me, space solar power is not a good option."

So what might be the "killer app" for space? Musk has an unconventional answer. "I think there's some number of people in the US and other countries that would pay to move to Mars," he claimed. "They would sell everything that they've got, and they would move to Mars." If the cost of a one-way journey to Mars could be lowered to the "single-digit millions" of dollars, he said, "I think enough people would pay that to actually make the business plan quite viable. I think thousands of people a year would pay that." Needless to say, that got a loud round of applause from the Mars Society conference attendees.

That concept might seem way of out left field for an industry that is only now accepting space tourism as a realistic market, but it also fits into Musk's personal philosophy. Early in his presentation he spoke of the importance of becoming a multiplanet species, calling it "one of the most important things we could possibly aspire to". "I think it's really incumbent upon us to extend life beyond Earth," he said. "Basically, to help make that happen is why I started SpaceX."

If Kennedy was the only thing keeping the Democrats from KO'ing the moonshot/space program, then how come NASA's Houston command post is called Johnson Space Center?

And listen, mac. Maybe you don't want him to be one, but that still doesn't change the fact that JFK was a Democrat. Not a single history book I've ever read attempts to claim otherwise. If you judged a President's party affiliation by how in sync he was with the rest of the gang, then this country hasn't had a Democratic President since Andy Jackson. That party has just never worked that way; remember what Will Rogers said?

And I found a history article here that sez:

Dealing with the origins of the Apollo program, Kay points to the lack of any direct, proven relationship between the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Kennedy's decision to go to the Moon. He does, however, note that in early 1961 the new administration suffered one blow after another, including Gagarin's first manned flight. The author also explains how, for once, the White House and Congressional leadership were in agreement. This gave the Moon program powerful political momentum that allowed it to survive the inevitable crises and loss of Congressional and public enthusiasm.

So if Congressional favor for the space program eventually waned, it was more a reflection of growing voter cynicism in general than a knee-jerk Democratic Party hatred of all things space-related. Such an attitude clearly wasn't there at the beginning; and with a full five years of post-Kennedy full Democratic control of the government, you'd think they would have gotten around to shutting the program down sometime, if they'd really wanted to.

In fact, the (Democratic Party nominated) Kennedy-Johnson ticket campaigned on a pro-space platform, and against the Eisenhauer-Nixon Administration's (unjustifiably) perceived ineptitude at it -- if only as a sideshow to the "Missile Gap" Big Dog issue of the 1960 elections.

we never went to the moon! ;-)

It doesn't work that way. Orbital mechanics often works counterintuitively. There are no figures in this article, but it states that a good push off from the ISS would send you perhaps 3 kilometers away from the ISS, inot an orbit that would intersect with the station one or twice per 90 minute orbit. The space suits are good for 7+ hours, so provided you didn't do it at the end of the EVA there would be plenty of time to pick you up.

according to Virgin Galactic, the number of people who have expressed interest in taking a suborbital spaceflight with them is in the tens of thousands, while 100 "Founders" have already paid the estimated $200,000 ticket price to secure a place at the front of the line.

from The Space Review. So yes, I think there's a market.

Stop with that freaking urban legend!

The space pen was developed wholely without prompting and without money from NASA, by the Fisher Pen company.

The ONLY way that we're going into space permanently is if we forget about government taking the lead, and focus on capitalism.

I agree to an extent, but it's interesting how much the average person overestimates the amount the federal government gives to NASA. From a recent article in the Space Review on the government and business case for space activities:

http://thespacereview.com/article/644/1

One question asked people to estimate what percentage of the overall federal budget went to NASA. At the Capitol Hill event Unland showed several video clips where, to few people's surprise, focus group participants overestimated--often grossly--NASA's sub-one-percent share of the budget: answers ranged from five to fifteen percent, with one person saying "somewhere in the thirties". Those anecdotes confirmed previous surveys where people also overestimated NASA's budget.

2. Helium-3, fusion catalyst that's only found on earth as a by product of nuclear reactions and is about 50,000 a pound. That alone makes it worth it moneywise.

In his book "Moonrush," Dennis Wingo argues that besides Helium-3, platinum-group metals would also be a critical resource. From a review:

In the first part of Moonrush, Wingo makes the case for how lunar resources are critical for meeting the increasing energy demands of terrestrial civilization. Most people are aware of the fact that the quantity of fossil fuels, notably petroleum, is finite, and will run out sooner or later. Wingo discusses this in detail in the book, noting that even the most optimistic assessments of petroleum reserves--ones that make assumptions unlikely to be borne out in practice--would be insufficient to get the world through the 21st century. One alternative to gasoline-burning engines currently under active development is the hydrogen-powered fuel cell. Even these, though, have a resources problem that Wingo describes in the book: they rely on expensive, scarce platinum-group metals (PGMs). If the world tries to make the transition from gasoline engines to fuel cells, it could exhaust the supply of PGM elements on the Earth.

Of course, there is no shortage of such metals in space, particularly in asteroids. The Moon, on the other hand, would seem to be an unlikely place to find PGMs: the collisional process that formed from the Moon left it mostly devoid of heavy metals. However, Wingo makes an ingenious case for finding PGMs on or near the lunar surface, in the form of debris from asteroid impacts. While conventional wisdom has argued that impacts of large asteroids would vaporize most of the impactor, modern computer modeling has shown that a significant fraction of an asteroid impacting the Earth would survive in some form. In fact, some major sources of PGMs on Earth, such as Sudbury in Canada and sites in South Africa, have been linked to asteroid impacts. The Moon's lower gravity would mean slower impacts, making it more likely that significant portions of asteroids could survive. PGMs mined from those impacts could meet the fuel-cell needs of the Earth for centuries; the mining process would, in turn, also generate other metals like iron and nickel that could be used for settlements on the Moon and beyond.

I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

To answer the question, they could boost it somewhat higher, but have chosen not to. Lower orbits give leave more payload for visiting craft, although that must be weighed against extra fuel for reboosts. Reboosts also affect the launch windows for visiting craft. You might look at the graph the GP posted and think "OMG it's falling out of control" but that is not the case. It's at the current altitude because thats where they decided they wanted it. Reboosts are normally done with Progress and Shuttle engines, not the SM engines that failed.

They can't put it too high or it would be out of reach of the spacecraft that are supposed to service it. Even if they could reach it, you reduce the payload they can get there. Also, if you go too much higher you start hitting the lower edges of the Van Allen belts, which is bad for both the equipment and crew.

BTW: another good description of the recent failure can be found at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/619/1

TFA is somewhat out of date - and misses the point mostly.

Much better coverage can be found in Jim Oberg's essay at The Space Review.

Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)

*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4

Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?

Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)

*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4

Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?

Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)

*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4

Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?

Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)

*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4

Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?

I mean, star trek is cool and everything, but until we're close to being able to teraform other planets, it's not going to be terribly useful to send people to live in space.

Please, don't insult me with your Star Trek comments.

There are TONS of resources out there for the taking, resources that would make expensive technology inexpensive.

the problem is preventing us from turning earth into a rock. How about we focus on that instead of being in such a hurry to leave it.

Are you only capable of doing one thing in your life? I'm all for making things better here but don't act like we have to choose between the two.

Very true. If you want to attribute anything to Von Braun, attribute in-orbit assembly. His proposals for military installations on the Moon in the late 50s were elegant and advanced. He relied on what today we would call medium-lift launch vehicles and in-orbit assembly. At the time the army had a proven capability to fire off hundreds of these rockets a month and had shown they can man and supply outposts in much harsher conditions. The only thing lacking was a mandate. From an economical point of view medium-lift launch vehicles make a lot of sense. See The case for smaller launch vehicles in human space exploration by Grant Bonin, part 1 and part 2.

Very true. If you want to attribute anything to Von Braun, attribute in-orbit assembly. His proposals for military installations on the Moon in the late 50s were elegant and advanced. He relied on what today we would call medium-lift launch vehicles and in-orbit assembly. At the time the army had a proven capability to fire off hundreds of these rockets a month and had shown they can man and supply outposts in much harsher conditions. The only thing lacking was a mandate. From an economical point of view medium-lift launch vehicles make a lot of sense. See The case for smaller launch vehicles in human space exploration by Grant Bonin, part 1 and part 2.

And exactly does one come to own an asteroid? Is planing a flag good enough?

Space property rights are a very murky and ambiguous area, but one which should get resolved if we want to have any hope of expanding out there permanently. An article by Sam Dinkin in the Space Review on Property rights and space commercialization has a fairly nice overview of the issues. A quote:

Space property rights will probably not spark a space transportation boom that will rival the railroad boom, the airplane boom, or the automobile boom. But there will be no boom if there are no property rights. Leaving the regulatory regime the same is a recipe for continued sclerosis.

If we do nothing, space will look a lot more like Antarctica than Alaska. Without property rights there will not be adequate investment and space resources will be underutilized. Establishing property rights in space will cost millions, not billions, and can be done decades ahead of any commercialization or colonization. It's time to set the stage to break out of the exploration mode of Columbus and get on with establishing the regulatory regime to lay the foundation for the next Plymouth Rock.

you state "there is no fuel on the moon for cars... there is nothing on the moon that we can't get here. "

I think it is a little easier to acquire helium-3 there than here.

Read about the Russian plan to harvest helium-3 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/551/1

Just because you're ignorant of major space exploration events doesn't mean the rest of the world is. Take an occasional read of something like The Space Review. Although there's much debate about the planned manned space architecture there's still plenty going on.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/368/1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1718125.st m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1862779.st m
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/spac-j25 .shtml
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_44a.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fa/fa_mayjune01a.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/163821 2&tid=215
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/2 5/1356202&tid=160
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/12/16/1324209.shtm l?tid=126&tid=103
and in particular : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/01/122620 7&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=99&threshold=-1

just what i found with a little effort....

The government has never been interested in competition in the booster market. For a history of government attempts to quash such competition, take a look at this recent article by Wayne Eleazer.

Seeing as the Kliper has been in development since before Bush took office I think not. The Kliper is a response to the space shuttle not the CEV. The sole reason why the Kliper is expected to be worth the cost is that, unlike the space shuttle, it will actually be highly reusable. This gives it a major advantage over the Soyuz, although I personally think the Soyuz is the "little spacecraft that could" and the RSA should focus on reusing modules of the Soyuz in space instead of letting them burn up in the atmosphere. David Anderman has suggested that spent Soyuz/Progress modules could be used to build a space station at the Moon/Earth L1 point. The RSA recently said they could take paying customers on a trip around the Moon within the next 5 years and that, with sufficient funding, they could land paying customers on the Moon within the next 10. That is, they could land a sufficiently enthusiastic billionair on the Moon before the CEV has even launched. Of course, talk is cheap, but the RSA has proven they have the skill and experience to provide manned space services.

Is linking to a page about a launch which hasn't happened yet, in a language that most slashdotters can't even read, some kind of sick prank? In any case, as of now (0018 GMT, 4:18 PM PST), the launch has been delayed a couple of times today. The first delay was due to overcast skies (they were afraid of possibly generating a lightning strike with the rocket plumes), and the current delays are due to problems with their liquid oxygen fuel boiling off during the first delay.

Here are some good sources of up-to-the-minute coverage:
* Spaceflight Now's Falcon 1 Mission Status Center
* Liveblogging by Out of the Cradle
* Liveblogging by space reporter Michael Belfiore
* SpaceX's official launch info (good info, but not updated as often as other sources)

They just got an extension on their launch window, and are still hoping to launch today (5pm PST at last report).

I've been eagerly awaiting this launch for the past couple of years. If it succeeds, it's going to change everything. Although their first rocket is relatively small, they're already working on much larger successors, all at a selling price which is a small fraction of their competitors'. Drastically cutting launch costs, increasing the launch rate, and enhancing space accessibility is crucial to SpaceX founder Elon Musk's long-term goal: helping humanity become a spacefaring civilization.

If it doesn't succeed, well, Musk has stated that he can afford up to three consecutive launch failures before calling it quits.

The following have some more background info on what Elon Musk is trying to achieve with SpaceX:
* Hopes of Start-Up Rocket Company Are Riding on First Launch (LA Times)
* SpaceX wikipedia article
* Big Plans for SpaceX (The Space Review, discusses plans for human spaceflight and building world's largest rocket engine)
* Shooting the Moon (Discover Magazine)
*

On a serious note, there's currently no valid suggestions as to what we can do about global warming. People are still arguing about whether or not it exists instead of thinking about what we can actually do about it. So far a grand total of one proposal has been made as to what we can do about global warming. It involves building spacecraft to hover at a stable point between the sun and the earth to divert sunlight off into space. Sound crazy? Ok, what the hell else can we do? Regress to living in the trees and hope it sorts itself out?

$15,000/kg to the lunar surface. How much do you weigh?