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Benford on Space Exploration
gid-goo writes "Gregory Benford looks at what we should do in the aftermath of the Columbia accident. Is the shuttle, or the International Space Station for that matter, useful? Or just payola to aerospace interests and a means for keeping Russian rocket scientists employed?" Benford's comments about the necessity of a closed biosphere and of some way for astronauts to stop muscle and bone loss are far more insightful than the usual discussions about where our space exploration priorities should lie.
That the failures are not repeated. I am from India and the first 4-5 attempts by my country to put a so-called 'whistler rocket' failed. But ISRO learnt from the mistakes and successfully launched multiple rockets and are now into commercial launch of satellites. The moral? Never give up, and if you commit mistkaes, find the reasons and learn from them.
From the article:
"the [current space] station recycles only urine... it is camping in space, not truly living there".
Last time I checked, my crap got recycled in the great outdoors.
"This [going to Mars] is what we should be doing. Such an adventure would resonate with a world beset by wars and woes. It has a grandeur appropriate to the advanced nations, who should do it together."
I disagree. At the risk of sounding jingoistic, I believe that nations should compete with another to explore. This competition is the only way to foster space exploration until space becomes commercially viable.
Last point. What was something on Iraq doing in a space article?
We must revive efforts to design the next generation space shuttle. The current design is far behing what current technology is capable of producing. With enough research, we can build a launch vehicle capable of fulfilling the promises made by the shuttle program.
We must not, under any circumstances, abandon human space flight. We as humans are explorer by our very nature. We cannot allow tragedy to sway us from our neverending quest for knowledge.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_246696.html Scientists say they've discovered that cats purr to help them get better when they're injured. The researchers at the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina call the purr a natural healing mechanism. They say the purr helps their bones and organs to heal and grow. It works in a similar way to ultrasound on humans. Exposure to similar sound frequencies are known to improve bone density. Dr Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, the president of the institute, said: "Old wives' tales usually have a grain of truth behind them and cats do heal very quickly. The healing power of purring seems to explain their 'nine lives'." She told The Sunday Telegraph: "We are starting to solve a 3,000-year-old mystery as to why cats purr. The next phase will be to explain the mechanics of the process." Story filed: 15:49 Sunday 18th March 2001
That reminds me of an old Popular Mechanics I found asking the question "should we be going to the moon?" There were lots of "fix things on earth before going to space" arguments...but, what if we tried that? Would things be better on earth? Don't we all benifit from the technology developed during the space race? There will always be homeless...there will always be poor. If we wait to fix every problem we will never make progress.
"The shuttle and the International Space Station are not helping us. They do remarkably little science--and, as far as I can see, next to none that could not be done by unmanned missions. Like vampires, they suck NASA's entire budget dry."
People who want robots to do the work in space and see no need for humans miss the point - we have no need for humans because of our lack of ambition.
regardless of what the Americans do or don't do in space, I'll be cheering _anyone_ who launches humans and / or robots into space for the purposes of exploration.
-calyxa
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
We need to put a foundry and a small biome on the moon. From those, we can build from those supplies.
A new spaceplane, designed for crew. See the Orbital Space Plane.
A new technology, reusable launch vehicle. See the Space Launch Initiative.
Continuing with the Prometheus Project. We fucked up when we stopped persuing NERVA/Rover.
Mars. Need I say more?
I'd also like to see a space elevator persued, but I don't know that we have the tech yet. Then again, I haven't looked into it that much either.
Yeah, so that's my wishlist. Only a few hundreds of billions of dollars in imaginary cash NASA doesn't have...
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
It's tragic to watch the current fallout of the Columbia disaster. Certainly NASA, relevant manufacturers, and the United States Government will be asked to answer for any negligence which may have caused the loss of the shuttle and her seven crew. But I would implore anyone reading this not to conclude that the loss of the Columbia should mean the end of human spaceflight.
If anything, our commitment to space should be radically expanded. The current problems in the space program are the result of all power and authority over the development of space exploration being held in a single decision-making body. NASA, which is a marvelous organization and which certainly provided the basis for the early successes in space, is simply not equipped to move space exploration ahead. It is a government entity, unbound by market considerations, and weighed down by bureaucratic inefficiencies which make radical changes - such as the introduction of new technologies in a cost-effective manner - impossible.
The question, however, must be posed whether space exploration in itself is valuable enough to transfer to the private sector. This question is analogous to the gradual shift in the control of earthbound exploration schemes from sovereign control to chartered corporations. To answer the question, however, without respect to the analogy, no, space exploration in itself is not particularly valuable. It is another medium, another vehicle for transporting humans and their commerce, as well as seeing what's out there. I doubt any private venture at this point would find this to be a profitable scheme without, to be circular, some way to make profits from it.
Thus the analogy: space travel is valuable only insofar as it brings benefit to the people of this planet, or, more specifically, to the shareholders of any corporations which undertake it. In near space, the profits are easy to identify. The GPS system which allows boaters to find their way to fishing spots provided the "spiritual" basis for private venture such as XM Radio. Government-financed spy satellites showed private corporations that money could be made selling space-based imagery of the planet.
But none of these requires human space flight. In order for there to be profit in the human expansion into space, there must be some market for the products which can be produced exclusively or most efficiently in space, whether directly in the case of manufactured goods or indirectly in the case of products developed using experimental data acquired in space. As one discussion group poster noted in response to a question on the necessity of humans to supervise space-based experiments, "It's hard to count ants from 140 miles down."
The International Space Station is a fiasco, and so is the space shuttle. Given the radical developments in materials sciences and knowledge of the effects of space on human bodies, it is as unlikely that the shuttles would have remained in private service for twenty years as to consider that Boeing might continue to build aircraft using the processes and materials perfected during the development of, say, the now-obsolete 727. Even a plane that has had a 30-year lifespan such as the 737 is today not the same plane except in the most superficial way as the first model that flew out of Everett Field.
My plan for space would include the following broad steps. First, ground the shuttle fleet only as long as is necessary to conduct materials review of the launch equipment (fuel tank and rockets), the cooling tile system, and any particularly vulnerable areas of the shuttle's structure (particularly any structural elements on the bottom of the spacecraft). Second, apply any changes rapidly - within no more than two years - with a national commitment to redeploy the shuttle as a stopgap measure in the interests of national security and commerce (as well as prestige). Third, set a hard deadline to retire the shuttles by 2014 at the absolute latest - perhaps 2012 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of American spaceflight. Fourth, provide incentives to corporations to begin manned space flight outside the scope of NASA oversight. Fifth, turn NASA into a regulatory agency for the purposes of establishing safety guidelines; and a science agency which would fund and oversee pure science activities in space. Sixth, provide ongoing incentives for the next two or three decades to promote human exploitation of space by private corporations.
The money for such incentives could probably be found in the monies freed up by the unfortunate loss of Columbia. I would name two incentive packages: the Challenger Fund for the rapid commercialization of space exploration, and the Columbia Fund for the ongoing support of pure science exploration by government or commercial entities. A third package, the Apollo Fund - deriving its name from America's other fatal space mission, Apollo I - would subsidize development of safety mechanisms and alternative propulsion schemes for space exploration.
Our planet is small. Our resources are limited. Only a hundred miles above our heads is the gateway to, literally, a universe of options. There are planets packed with natural resources and room for human habitation. There are asteroids which at once pose a direct threat to our planet and could be a staggeringly rich source of raw materials for the improvement of human civilization. And, as always in a new realm, there is a near infinite space which will provide further insights into this incredible and complex universe in which we are such small but special players.
Now is not the time to draw back from our commitment to space. If anything, we should conclude that the loss of Columbia means that we have reached the limits - after 40 years of remarkable successes - of government monopoly over rich space exploration.
I suspect that the crew of Columbia and their families would agree. After all, they were drawn to the space program because of the opportunity to do something revolutionary, brave, and necessary for our world, not because they wanted to get rich. They would - I hope - support any initiative which would have given them more opportunity to do the work they loved. If we could demonstrate that private control of the space program would, in fact, radically expand that space program - in the same way that private corporations increased and improved the reach of the automobile, the airplane, telecommunications networks, and the Internet - I believe that those astronauts and the astronauts who remain would support us.
Don't give up on space. It is not only our future, but also our present. Make it better, do not declare it dead with those men and women who have died in their ongoing quest to expand the reach and the value of our lives.
That's funny. The word "Iraq" seems to be mentioned only once in the third paragraph. And it does have relevance: a major war would both shift public attention away from NASA and could cause budget constraints.
the space shuttle IS over-rated.
and personally i hope to see a space-elevator someday. a much cheaper and perhaps a much more environmentally friendly way to escape this gravity well
Logic, macros, and more
I'll be cheering anyone on who launches humans and / or robots into space for the purposes of exploring the more efficient recycling of urine.
Tonight on Studio2, a 3-member panel debated the virtues of the manned space program from a cost-benefit stance, from the human-wonder-fulfillment stance and the most interesting, from the "all of humanity's eggs in one basket stance".
SciFi author Robert J. Sawyer [link] explained that the space program is more than just about vanity, or the desire to prove worth. If it weren't for curiosity, none of us would have left Africa some 6-7 million years ago.
I believe the space program is necessary, because it allows us to test new technologies to their limits. Like pens that can write upside down...
I would also like to point out that NASA seems to be ignoring the first A. That's a great error in my eyes. Atmospheric transportation will always be more common than interstellar imo.
The final thing I have to add, is the fact that humanity will reach a population impasse. Even if (hopefully when) all of the world develops, and rates of population increase drop, consumption of natural resources will eventually deplete reserves. I believe space exploration is but one link in the chain that will lead us away from Earth, and towards a new home. Maybe one with track lighting?
The payoff for continuing involvement in the expensive field of space exploration lie not in the development of a commercially viable model from the exploration itself. Rather, our incentive is a contribution to the great body of knowledge known as basic research.
While I won't deny that it's great to gain knowledge for its own sake, that's really not the point. Governments for years has understood the value in making significant contributions to basic research so that private firms can capitalize on those findings and bolster the economy of the nation making the investment. Whether or not that model is viable in today's global, instantaneous information-sharing age is debatable, but to continue in that mentality, we must look beyond such tragic, yet short-term disasters such as Columbia and understand where we would and would not be without our ventures into space experimentation if we were to cease. Leadership demands sacrifice.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
I have never really heard a good explanation, why we need the ISS and Shuttle, and how exactly are they supposed to help us achieve bigger goals like spreading life elsewhere in the Universe or making spaceflight commercially viable.
Going to the Moon was a good example of the opposite - we picked a real high target, of which we weren't really sure how to achieve it, and set it as a clear goal. And when working toward the goal, we made tremendous advances in science, creating many new practical technologies and materials.
ISS, on the other hand, has never been a grand target, we have always played it safe, always known how it is would be achieved, so basically it is just an expensive toy, there is nothing fundamentally new to be discovered by building it.
If we concentrated our efforts on something bigger, like flying to Mars or creating a Moon base then we might not get immediate gratification. But working towards these tough but clear goals would create a motivation for making all kinds of smaller advances that would all support the main goal, just like they did in the sixties. For example, we could solve the closed ecosphere problem, the technologies from this advance alone would have the potential to significantly improve everyday life.
But instead no one is willing to take risks any more, and we are stuck with doing the same stuff over and over again, putting all sorts of junk in low Earth orbit, something that we have known how to do for ages, and trying to convince ourselves that we are making great progress while actually being stuck in an Escher house.
When men used to be men
The space station provides an excellent oppertunity to inspire and motivate others into science fields. So even if it costs billions of dollars or even trillions, if it means that some kid is motivated into science so that they perhaps discover something like a way to stop ageing or a new metal type, it would be worth it. Plus there is the moral issue, if we can put a man on the moon, and launch people into space and have them live there, doesn't it just show how much we have progressed? I mean if it means more girls end up like the ones at Digital Teenz then perhaps it is worth the risk and expense. But judge for yourself, and remember its your tax dollars at work!
According to this article mentioned earlier on Slashdot:
I code, therefore I am.
i hate to be a cynical bastard, but i can't get past the fact that the columbia tragedy is little more than a glorified car accident. i don't want to belittle these deaths--because death is an awful thing--but people die everyday by much more inhumane and unnecessary means. the columbia explosion is sad, yes, but these astronauts are no more saints than the hungry children dying of malnutrition in africa everyday. and we sure as shit don't memorialize them, the thousands that die because instead of buying them bread and milk we use our billions to research why our flying tower of babel got too hot and caught fire on reentry. instead of creatively finding ways to get AZT and other retrovirus drugs across the atlantic, we perfect an unmanned plane capable of launching smart missiles from a few hundred feet at whoever it is we feel like assassinating.
maybe--just maybe--we rally around national tragedies± because we need to create a pain to counter balance the numbness of our mundane life necessary to keep from hating ourselves. or maybe we really are the navel-gazing, imperialistic gluttons that the world thinks we are, incapable of imaging a world beyond Must See TV and the Cosmo sex quiz, too callused to even give a damn. how did we get here? where are we going? where have we been?
boy, this generation needs a hero.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The main part of the Benford's article is that the primary problem of space travel is dealing with the lack of gravity to maintain human bone and organ health.
Cats spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping and yet still manage to stay fitter than most human gymnasts.
Purring creates vibrations through the cat's body helping to maintain muscle and bone density.
Transducers in an astronaut's suit could produce similar resonant vibrations. These vibrations could simulate the stresses of g-forces by rapidly moving the astronaut a very small distance back and forth.
Sorry I didn't connect the dots for you in the original post.
If NASA came to my house, and said, "dude, we need YOU to go to the ISS to replenish their store of toilet paper."
Without any hesitation, I would agree. Without ANY hesitation.
I think that this is an excellent point. Having grown up in the 1980s and 90s, I watched NASA's budget drastically shrink relative to the GDP and I watched NASA stumble along at a terribly slow pace with minimal public support. One can't help but think how great it must have been in the 60s and early 70s when the public was jazzed and scientists were having fun. But this is a frightening point...
Can it really get worse? I personally feel there might be something to this: what happens when a large part of the population suddenly retires, the nation goes broke? Can interest shift further away from space exploration? Is this our last chance to get people interested in NASA before we see an even greater decline in public support?
What do you think?
Die Menschen verhoehnen was sie nicht verstehen. -- Goethe.
Benford apparently isn't aware that centrifuge experiments *have* been conducted on the space shuttle. Or that Columbia was carrying a physiology experiment that would have done a lot for revealing just why exposure to zero-G causes orthostatic intolerance [inability to stand or remain standing].
Specifically, the 1998 STS-90 mission [Neurolab], among other things, studied how humans perceived centrifugal motion in the absence of an existing 1G gravity vector. This mission was designed to study the vestibular system, but others have looked at cardiovascular effects.
The long and the short is that it helps some, but the inertial problem is still sticky. Worse, it tends to make the astronauts sick. Losing track of your vertical tends to make your body do bad things.
A simple review of Pubmed/Medline would have showed all of this. But then, Benford's strength always was was fiction, wasn't it?
Actually, I've read his work. I don't think fiction's really a strong-point, either.
This article on spacefuture.com has a pretty good analysis of what centripetal forces we should be looking for in deciding to build a rotating space station. It takes into account not only the physics, but also the effects of this artificial gravity on humans (since there is a significant effect due to Coriolis forces that make it behave differently from natural gravity).
One thing I have noticed on looking at information about the space programs for various country's
I have asked many people lately who was the first woman in space. Invariably the answer is either "I don't know" or "Sally Ride". This is such a pity
The world is amazingly ignorant of the history of space exploration. This is saddening. Considering the absolute minor number of injuries and deaths involved in space exploration compared to what has actually been happening, it is all rather amazing.
I have to say that I agree with you, I think it's important to continue space exploration at all costs. I doubt we'll live to see the discovery of alien life form or interplanetary travel, but that doesn't mean there aren't quite a few reasons to keep humans in space if not other "objects".
For one, how many technological advances have been created from our desire to reach into space? How many products have reached the basic consumer market because people at NASA (or wherever) thought them up.
Second, there are too many unknowns. Money aside, there are many reasons to continue space exploration (including the space station) and almost no reasons to stop it.
Third, we have no need to stop exploration. When the gov. runs out of money then maybe I'll concede, but for now, we're all fine and there's no need to stop the programs. If it's not broken, then don't fix it.
So, I don't feel that the Shuttle accident should have any negative impact on any countries space programs. Astronauts know the risk they take, and certainly they understand far better then me how insanely difficult it is to fly into space and back. Frankly, I'm amazed we can do it at all, but hell, the internal combustion engine boggles me sometimes.
I feel that in this situation, it's better to learn from the mistakes that were made instead of refusing to take any more risks.
The problem at the moment is that space is too expensive; even the Russians charge thousands of dollars per pound, and they've got the cheapest launchers going.
The reason for the high cost? We don't launch enough. The point is that if you look at the technologies out there, this one might save you 20%, that one 10% etc. But each doubling of the number of launches typically saves you 15%; and it's a gift that carries on giving. The minimum cost for launching into space appears to be very low; comparable to the cost of a Concorde flight, the amount of fuel used per person is somewhat comparable.
Therefore we need a purpose for space that requires launching a lot. Space Tourism is likely to meet that niche.
Reliability is of course the second question after price. However, take the Shuttle; it's extremely likely that both crashes are caused by design flaws in the Shuttle; and that the number of flaws that remain undiscovered will decrease over time. Therefore the reliability of the Shuttle should increase, and there's no known limit to how reliable launch vehicles can be.
It seems from surveys that many people would like to go into space, so the interest is certainly there. If the low cost vehicles are available, then it permits travel to low earth orbit. Mars, the moon, the asteroids would then be possible, and it seems that LEO is more than halfway to these places.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Especially in the space program, you can not, never in a million years, expect any launch vehicle to have a 100% safety record. Fine, how about 99%? Well for every 100 missions, you'll have another Challenger/Columbia. You figure it out. Disasters like this will happen because in order to get out there, get where we want, do the research we desire, advance ourselves as a species that (sadly too little of ourselves) desire, the risk will have to be taken to get out there.
The internal combustion engine... wonderful invention, and how many people went on to die from trains, cars, and planes. Numbers by now in the *taking a stab in the dark* hundreds of thousands, but look at the benefits, how much more quickly goods and people can be moved from point A to point B. Took a lot of suffering, a lot of checks and rechecks, a lot of "well person x was killed so kill project x" noise from people who can't accept change and their mouthpieces in the media.
My largest hope from all of this is that the end result that is achieved is better, faster, safer, cheaper, more technologically advanced space vehicles will be spawned, and the exploration shall continue.
Read your alternate history... there should have been a story on slashdot sometime in 2000 with a title like "Man Lands On Mars".
We can do a heck of a lot more than we currently do. Somebody just needs the balls to get the ball rolling.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
I say we should turn the asteroid Eros into a space colony. Drill into one end and hollow out a burrow. Add an airlock. Power it with power sats. Then you have a space station. Over time you can build a larger alcove to house hundreds of people. Spin it up to one G. Strap some nuke drive on it and you have a real spaceship.
Having been born in the mid-60's, I really don't have any memory of the golden era of space travel. For my generation it seems that NASA has always been struggling to keep it's budget and to find some purpose worthy of its original mission to get to the moon in one decade. The planetary missions of the late 70's and 80's were exciting to people like me who were interested in astronomy and space, but even these missions seem to be a fading memory.
Now that I have young children, I would truly love to see this nation embark on a bold adventure that will ignite and challenge their imagination. Even if NASA started planning a Mars mission tomorrow it would be at least a decade or more before the first landing. I would relish being able to raise my children against the backdrop of having such a mission planned and follow with them each step necessary to take the next giant leap for mankind. From such an ambitious mission perhaps my children and their generation will learn by example that with planning, courage and commitment this nation can continue to achieve great things. Perhaps, just perhaps, their generation would then be inspired to take the next leap beyond the inner solar system, and so on, and so on.
As I see it, we pay so much in taxes for things that are mundane and temporary. I would not object to a small sliver of my taxes going towards something that is not so much for us, but for the generations to come. Just as our generation does not lament the money and resources spent by our parents four decades ago to reach the moon, our children will not lament the money and resources it will take to reach Mars. They will only lament if our generation fails to have the vision and courage to take the next steps beyond those taken by our parent's generation.
Let's take a holiday from crewed space exploration and put the $ and effort into developing cheaper and more reliable launch and recovery technology, and continue our robotic missions in the meantime. Shuttle launches at $300-$500+ million each are a ticket to bankruptcy for NASA, not a stairway to space. Money matters - ask the folks who used to run the Soviet Union.
We've learned a lot in the third of a century since the Shuttle was designed - new refractory materials, thermal flux reduction by better aero boundary layer control, simpler and more reliable boost propulsion systems (hybrids), aero control through surface plasma generation, orbital reboost using solar electric magnetic thrusters, autonomous robotics, etc. We can build a far better launch system today than we could in the 1970s.
The Shuttle is old stuff. It's neither as good as we need, nor as good as we can do. Whenever we launch one, we loft about 180,000 pounds of mass into orbit that we have to bring back, after delivering a payload of around 55,000 lbs. If the Shuttle were operated as an expendable vehicle, we could put nearly a quarter of a milliion pounds into low earth orbit every time we push the button. Wouldn't you rather put the ISS up with 10 launches than 50 launches?
Rethinking the Shuttle doesn't mean scrubbing human presence in space. It simply means thinking for the long haul, considering how best to get the "stuff" (infrastructure) up there (expendible launch) and add human presence for assembly, test, and operation only as really needed (Shuttle follow-on systems). Expendible launch systems operated in intelligent balance with crewed systems will give us routine access to space lots sooner than "manned every time" systems.
However our nation decides to go forward, we owe a debt of gratitude to our fellow Americans who are willing to hazard their lives in going to space. They are among our best and bravest. For the Challenger and Columbia crews, I hope within the next couple of decades, somebody writes your names on a cliff on Mars in remembrance. With any luck, it will be one of your sons or daughters who does it.
So, als long as there are Communists, manned space flight is safe...
The escape velocity of Mars is 5.03kps as compared with Earth's 11.2kps escape velocity. That figure is based on its gravaty.
As for the atmosphere, here is more info out of a Newsletter from the Coconino Astronomical Society about what is in the atmosphere and how they know. You may want to read the whole letter at http://www.lowell.edu/cas/news/2002_sep. pdf (warning! it gets boring fast).
In order to determine if a gas is retained by a planet, the following formula is used.
Escape velocity of molecules = the square root of (2 times Boltzmann's constant times the effective temperature / molecular weight times the mass of the hydrogen atom).
The escape velocity of Mars is three miles per second. Therefore, Mars has carbon dioxide and no water vapor in its atmosphere. Carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 44; water has a molecular weight of 18. Obviously, water vapor requires much less energy to escape the Martian gravitational pull than carbon dioxide. Hydrogen and helium molecules are not present in any of the inner planets because of their atomic weights of one and four, respectively
I have never really heard a good explanation, why we need the ISS and Shuttle, and how exactly are they supposed to help us achieve bigger goals like spreading life elsewhere in the Universe or making spaceflight commercially viable.
I'll take a wack at this.
The ISS will allow the space based construction of larger space craft. One of the biggest problems for long range exploration is the cost of sending up large crafts. If instead we can blast small crafts up to the space station with components and build the "Enterprise" in space, it will cost much less.
The Shuttle and its Human payloads are a means for us to learn about the dangers and physical consequences of space on us. Not to mention, that the shuttle is necessary to supply the ISS with the supplies it needs to expand and preform research.
Both the Shuttle and ISS have been used for space based research. It used to be the case that the standards of measurement were based on earth. These were imprecise due to gravity and other constraints. Thanks to research in space (where there is no gravity) certain new measuring standards are being used in scientific study on earth.
The two together work as baby steps on our quest to tame the wilds of space, something that we're approaching responsibly.
My prediction is that it will happen.
They failed 6 times before succeeding in stringing the first telegraph line under the Atlantic Ocean.
They barely had steam engines running and they were already linking Europe to American across an OCEAN. THat is the power of human innovation and drive.
Now everytime we lay down wire across the Atlantic it can hold more bandwidth than all of the other wire previously put down.
This sort of incentives-based policy is in the tradition of American values. It should be no surprise that such values are being eroded as the 'nation of immigrants' changes from pioneering independence to bureaucratic dependence. The use of a socialist bureaucracy to explore space is a fundamentally different experiment that other proven American approaches to expanding the resource base available to humanity.
In 1989 I was working on grassroots legislation to reform NASA's launch services policies. This led to the passage of P. L. 101-611, The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990which required NASA to procure launch services from private vendors whenever possible. This is common sense if proper boundaries between public and private functions are to be maintained. As radical as this may sound to many who see NASA as a space transportation company, it was, in fact, Presidential policy at the time and the legislation was therefore, in fact, redundant, but bureaucratic inertia demanded separate acts by the Legislative branch to reinforce the Executive's own command structure. This legislative effort started out as an attempt to passsomething along the lines of the Kelly Act of 1925 (which formed the basis for Jerry Pournelle's recommendations first put forth by his Citizen's Advisory Council for Space Policyin 1980), but compromised when it became clear that resistance from NASA, and its contractors, to citizen involvement in space policy was so intense that serious reform would be impractical. My testimony before Congress legislative follow-up to P.L. 101-611 made recommendations for a focus onincentives for commercial investment, rather than plans or "programs". An example of incentives-based legislation, applied to fusion energy policy, was recommended for passage by Bussard, R. W., one of the founders of the US fusion program in a letter confessing some of the subterfuge to which technical leaders resorted. It is still quite relevant today given the reliance on Middle Eastern oil and problems with fission energy. The point here is that incentives are more effective in general than governmental programs.
The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost. The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America. America's frontier wasn't built by a centrally controlled bureaucracy -- and there is no reason to expect such a bureaucracy will take Americans to their next frontier.
Space policy is a touchstone of American values since Americans are spiritually a pioneering culture. Let's not forget who settled the frontier, how those "immigrants" differed from later immigrants, and what sort of "program" they had to settle the new frontier.
Seastead this.
I couldn't understand at first why the Columbia crash was such a tragedy when so many people are suffering all over the world.
But if you look at the lives of any one of the astronauts you'll see that every day of their lives they worked hard to be the best that they could be. They reached for the stars and sacrificed the comforts of earth to help all mankind in our pursuit of a higher goal. They knew the high risks of space travel and went anyway...to help all of us. I don't mourn their loss, but appreciate their lives for how they lived them. Each of them was a hero.
Wherever you have people you'll have conflict and corruption and evil. The space program gives us some hope of getting away from all of that. Colonizing new places and having new beginnings where just maybe the world won't turn out the way the Earth has.
It'll be a cold day in Hell before we solve ALL of mankind's problems. Giving people hope and a sense of wonder may just help that cause more than throwing money at all our other problems.
I think NASA's current paralysis can be explained in part by their attitude towards money. What I have in mind is the famous space pen story - the Americans spend millions of dollars developing a space-pen, the Russians use a pencil. The article makes some interesting comparisons between the two programs, and it seems that the very budgetary constraints that are causing the Russian program to decay were the driving force behind some of its better/safer innovations. The Russians have always done clever things on a shoe-string, whereas the Americans have tended to go for the white elephants. Perhaps NASA should employ some of those Russian rocket scientists? IN SOVIET RUSSIA.... naah.
I agree with having a long term goal of going to Mars. If it takes 100 years to solve the problems, so be it. However, if we're ever going to do anything noteworthy in space after going to the moon, we need to start getting today's kids excited about space again. I remember how much I was wrapped up in all things space as I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, but I don't see any kids today being engaged the same way.
We need as many as possible to buy a telescope and use it, show what's there to our kids. Share it with the local elementary school (I did this last year and 99% of those attending we're just astounded with seeing what's up there). Attend local astronomy star parties. We need to buy rockets from the hobby shop and launch those things with our kids. Take them to see real rocket launches (like we did recently at Vandenberg) and show them what's happening when they go into orbit (via a space sim like Celestia). Go to see IMAX 3D space shows. If you're in Southern California at the right time, take the kids to JPL's open house or to Vandenberg's open house. Launch ballons with a camera on it and take pictures from the edge of space!
Just do something to get more and more people excited about space and going to Mars. Don't let kids think that Star Wars is the true model of space flight. Don't let people think we know everything there is to know about space. Just do something. Everyone who gives a crap about space should do something, and not just sit there.
This is so lame...
What is the point of NASA and the Space Administration;
1. Military space support
2. Space-based business
3. Learning about the nature and evolution of the universe.
4. Getting a significant number of human beings off the planet before the sun get's too toasty to support life on the third rock.
The first three items need a cheap and reliable facility for getting hardware up as often as possible. The shuttle was never designed for this duty. The next generation human transport won't be either. There has to be two tracks for getting stuff up there. One track for hardware, flown by wire and robots, managed with a minimum risk to human life.
The next track needs to be a safe, effective, relatively inexpensive way to get large numbers of people off the planet and back again safely. By separating the tasks intelligently we should be able to cut costs and design time, and build optomized systems for the appropriate tasks at hand.
Next we need to stop pissing billions away on pointless millitary spending designed to blast little brown people into giving us their natural resources. There're plenty of resources circling the sun, and the first ones to begin mining them are going to get filthy rich (that includes enough hydrocarbons to float the Iraqi's in an ocean of oil.) We need to stop playing footsies with our neighbors and get the heck off the planet. If we diverted 25% of the millitary budget to space exploration, development, and utilization, we'd be visiting substantial cities at L5, the Moon, and on Mars within all our lifetimes. Things on the big happy checklist of skills to develop include;
1. Protecting people from hard/solar radiation outside the earths magnetosphere.
2. Creating a sustainable, portable biosphere (3 feet of water surrounding a living enclosure would stop virtually all of the hard radiation, as well as insure sufficient water for living in sustained trips into space, and providing a barrier to high velocity microparticles.)
3. Providing artificial gravity, the problems of bone loss are the tip of the iceberg for long term exposure to zero-G. We are optomized for 1 G living and less will causes serious long term problems. We already have the research to indicate the long list of problems associated with zero and low G living. We may even need to build rotating structures on mars and the moon to provide suitable gravity (building structures on rotating arms like a centrifuge, to provide additional artificial gravity.
4. Isolating or biology from their biology. Until we actually begin the serious process of teraforming a planet... we need to make sure their bug don't infect us, and our bugs don't infect them. This is going to be a solid gold bitch. We don't even have a clue how to do this (bacterial sporse can survive vacuum, high temp, hard radiation, and deep cold. In short, we don't even know how to sterilize our tools and ourselves to the degree necessary to indure the saftey of our people and any rare ecologies we may contact.
5. We have to improve our ability to move through space... we have to move so much faster. Chemical rockets are just not going to feed the bulldog, we need to do so much better.
6 We need to come up with a sane means to explore space, in such a way that the entire world receives a share of all the benefits, while those who put up the big wagers, receive a fair portion of the rewards. As it stands, international law, UN conventions, and a variety of treatise, make truly rewarding exploration of space virtually impossible.
7. We need to have a 5, 20, 20, and 50 year plan that suggests we haven't somehow lost our Father's testicles somewhere in the haze of Lunar exploration. Our parents and their parents, had more testicular fortitude in their little fingers that the entire damn nation has in it's 50 states. What kinds of stories of hardship did the persevere through to get to this country and to succeed here, ultimately planting human foot step on the moon. How many of them died striving for something better for themselves and the children's children. We run out of steamed milk for our lattes and life ends are we know it...
I feel for the men and women that died so bravely. I especially feel for their families... now suck it up, don;t make their sacrafice a popcorn fart in the wind, and let's get on with the business of advancing the entire species.
The answers my darlings are out their waving at us...
Genda B.
P.S. If it comes out that this was another avoidable tragedy resulting frmo the cutting of cost and cutting corners by greedy contractors... I suggest the next shuttle be tiled with high level managers from both the guilty corporation and NASA as an indication that we are not amused.
You know, another great thing about the Moon over Mars is the decorating possibilities. No, seriously, it's all grey, so you can match that with any colours you want in your habitat. But Mars, all that orangey-red, you know _that's_ gotta reduce your available colour choices something awful!
Plus, check out the view from the Moon versus the one from Mars. The Sun is a spec in the sky from Mars, but the Moon not only has the same view of the Sun as from Earth, it's also got the Earth in the sky - how fantastic is *that*?!
And for the "This Old Habitat" crowd - all that Moon dust should make for some schweet mooncrete mix for making places to live. I dunno about the Mars dirt...
And that's not even _talking_ about all the free green cheese...
Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. This is about a newspaper article I read yesterday, that I think fits in this discussion.
In the Dutch paper "Volkskrant", there was an opinion piece by a biologist yesterday. He explained that currently, the experiments done in the Shuttle are nowhere near worth their money. The experiments done (like what's the effect of zero-gravity on species x) test no important hypotheses and the outcome is usually not published in high profile magazines.
Once in a while, every scientist working in a field that could possibly have something to do with zero gravity research gets a request for ideas for experiments. They're basically begging for things to add to shuttle science missions. He doesn't really take these things seriously, since these experiments never test anything important. The important stuff (what's the effect of long term zero grav on humans) has been pretty much covered by now.
Also, a Shuttle flight costs $500 million. You can run his institute on that for a hundred years.
So his proposal is to give the $500M to the scientific community instead, to be used for pure science, and see if the scientists themselves spend it on experiments in Shuttles. "Of course they wouldn't".
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
You said:
In 1989 I was working on grassroots legislation to reform NASA's launch services policies. This led to the passage of P. L. 101-611, The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 [google.com]which required NASA to procure launch services from private vendors whenever possible.
You're admitting to this?!?
You must be be asking for a beating. Either that or confessing your sins.
The biggest problem in our corrupt government is that our agencies are forced to farm out to the lowest bidder instead of building the parts that they need themselves for one tenth the price.
If Government agencies were allowed to run their own factories for essential military and space exploration equipment we wouldn't have half of the failures that we do from shoddy equipment in our military. _AND_ it would cost less (in the long run).
But I guess greasing the palms of politicians and getting your buddy or your district a lucrative government contract at the expense of space exploration and US tax dollars is worth it.
I'd like to see them build a few simple bridge cables before trying a space elevator. Those would be a good proof-of-concept before tackling the much harder job. And Catch-22 is that in order to build a space elevator, we'd need fairly good conventional space capability. (Fetching and positioning the counter-weight, etc.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It may be feasible, but it's also insane.
- It would be a money sink that would never pay back its construction costs - a tax money sink, because no commercial firm could ever get investment funding (not this side of AD 3000 anyhow).
- It would be the worst sort of governmental monopoly, a choke point where everyone must bow and scrape to the groundbound owners, in order to get a lift.
- It would be The Definitive Terrorist Target - and the bad guys only have to get lucky once. It would be utterly indefensible from a simple kamikaze attack, being so long that no weapons installation could keep cover over its whole length without weighing it down.
- It would be a murphys-law magnet, untested technology carrying staggering tension loads in atmospheric, vacuum, radiation and electromagnetic conditions that would be experimental at best. And that's even before an orbiting piece of space junk slams into it.
- And it would be a catastrophe waiting to happen, when (not if) it snaps and rains megatons of carbon cable down upon the ground below.
Bleh.
Honorable Representative,
The good men and women of the lost shuttle Columbia must be honored. There can be no better way to honor these heroes than by honoring the dreams that led them through the many trials of becoming astronauts. These accomplished men and women dreamed of space exploration with the truest American pioneering spirit. This dream must be honored. The dream must be enacted into reality. It is a most American dream.
We honor the dreams of the astronauts of the Columbia by supporting an aggressive and visionary policy of manned space exploration beyond earth's orbit. No statue or monument can do better justice to our fallen heroes, for a statue or plaque would represent little other than the failure of our American dream; and would commemorate merely the mediocrity of the American spirit. Dream big. No excuses. We must go to Mars.
We must go to Mars. Not for profit, though profit will come by it in the end. We must explore Mars. Not for the glory of America, though glory will come of it. We must embrace Mars as the first step in the destiny of Mankind. That is, outward.
America. She is not Great by Her name alone, but by mighty deeds and kindest embraces we may show the Sadaam's of the world that their cruel hands lead not to greatness, just to mediocrity of human potential. We may make them fearful of our weapons, but weapons will not inspire their dreams of what can be.
Come let us pay tribute to the crew of the Columbia
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
As a South African I am extremely grateful to the USA, and other nations who can afford it, for their continued exploration of space, near and far.
I cannot help but believe that there will no alternative but to find alternative accommodation for a large portion of the human race within the next few generations. Without exploration that will never be possible.
The article says:
The big question that NASA never talks about is: what are we doing dinking about with humans--instead of teleoperated robots--in near earth orbit anyway? What can people do in near-earth orbit that is worth doing that unmanned remote-controlled craft cannot? It never talks about it because it is a question that has no answer.
If NASA has no answer (which is hard to believe) then how about this: there is still a LOT we have to learn about how the human body has to adapt to make life in space possible. Surely each mission outside earth's atmosphere completes another tiny piece of the puzzle?
I salute the astronauts who are prepared to risk their lives to ensure the long term survival and growth of the human race. Thanks, guys.
The real tragedy of the space shuttle is that, as Benford says, they were up there doing trivial stuff that we likely could have had machines doing at this point.
His article is spot on. He calls for an era of space exploration akin to that of the late 60's. People died. We had a GOAL. They were heroes. Yet we kept going and we made that goal.
Not only does he call for a return to space exploration, but he points the way - centrifugal gravity and long term stand alone bio-support, aka a biosphere.
So what does it take to overcome this tragedy? I dunno, would a million people sending copies of Benford's article to @whitehouse.gov addresses be a start?
Are we just going to putter around for years and turn this into a double tragedy?
Please let's not.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I think we need to first focus on humanity.
Humanity has to become better at fulfilling our ideals as a species. We need to be hardier, capable of extended periods in micro-gravity without any drugs to keep us from pissing out our bones.
We need NASA to help big energy companies safely deploy technologies which will enable a hydrogen economy, not just for the seven wealthiest nations, but for everyone, because there's no prize for half-assing global technology like automobiles and power-plants. We need to get that stuff out there.
We should park the ISS at L4 and take a decade to scour all our rubbish out of low-earth orbit. Wouldn't it suck if the shuttle was struck by something someone accidentally dropped while working on the ISS months before?
The cool thing about all that "cleanning up LEO" would be that while a bunch of flyboys are playing RPV with radar and massive glad-bags, we could still be doing all the bullshit science that's made NASA and graduate students slaving away at research colleges happy for years.
Maybe we could take a good thirty years to finish that clean-up job, and by that time we'll have the kind of genetics technology which permits us to endure complete weightlessness, and maybe even allow us to hibernate just like bears so we don't need as much food, air, or have to worry about all that pesky psychology and some reality-tv producer buying all the NASA footage and making a tv series out of it.
And everyone here knows that there's absolutely no reason why we can't engineer perfectly good stuctures at the bottom of the well, develop the technologies to sustatin life in them. We could wrap up that knowledge, send it into orbit and create a civilization.
What stops us?
We do. We let clerics and technologists tell us fairy tales and we wet ourselves. Some of us have been trained from birth to entertain them.
We let politicians and their day-to-day pissing contests and in-fighting hamstring us in everything from feeding ourselves to enabling us to justify stepping on someone's face.
We let merchants push our buttons, control what we do with things we own, and we enjoy being controlled in so many different ways that it's become woven into the very culture...what we wear, what we play, and what we drive, what we want to wank to.
Our biggest problem is us.
And since we're quite happy being dipshits, until something happens to change that, solving any of these other little problems isn't going to matter.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
In a big way. Well put, my feelings exactly (spelling errors and all
As for the article, pure rubbish. Unrelentless ranting. Science fiction.
Space is about as safe as a highway of drunk drivers, always has been, always will be. How can you say for one minute NASA should make it look easy to go 100km up at 17,580mph, in 394 degrees K tempatures, sustain it, and then accurately drop back to the planet and hit a runway in Florida, startng the decent as far back as the Pacific?
NASA and all the others who have worked on the Shuttle have worked miracles over the years. I for one am glad they went ahead at whatever the cost, because wasteful or not, we're further ahead of where we were.
Perhaps then, along the articles lines of thinking, we should ban cars, because they have failed more than once, and the auto industry is just pissing awaay our hard earned dollars. I suspect the author uses a computer with Windows? Better not save any data on it, as "Microsoft wants us to believe our hard drives are safe, when in fact they are not. Once is an accident, twice is a defect."
(OK Maybe he'd be right on the last one.)
My point is: Shit happens. There will be accidents. Build a new space plane, it will crash at least once. So will the next one. And the one after. Let us not forget, launching a rocket into space that comes back down safely is the most dangerous, costly, complex thing mankind has ever done. And with good reason: It is the greatest thing mankind has ever done.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
> Is the shuttle, or the International Space Station
> for that matter, useful? Or just payola to aerospace
> interests and a means for keeping Russian rocket
> scientists employed?"
Even if it's true, what's wrong with that?
If you are making a list of Pros and Cons about the space program, "keeping qualified but unemployed people from working for the bad guys" definitely belongs on the Pro list. Access to space, just like nuclear weapons, is something that not all countries have. And it's something that we don't want our enemies to have.
The "payola" thing is just plain stupid. It's a blatantly loaded word that doesn't even describe what he is trying to say. (Payola is a bribe, or an extorted payment. How does that apply here?)
If the aerospace industry is important to national security -- which it unquestionably is -- then so what if the space program is a "subsidy"? It's part of a much larger, overall equation that Congress has to keep in balance. That belongs on the Pro list too.
People who argue that the space program is "too expensive" and "not paying off" don't understand basic economics. The race to the moon didn't really pay off when we landed in 1969. It paid off in the 90s when microchips changed everything.
Charity vehicles are stolen (by both sides) for use as soldier transports in some parts of Africa. Which do they need most: food and shelter, or another war?
And yes, heterosexuality (or for that matter lesbianism) doesn't spread AIDS anywhere near as fast as male homosexual practice, but the only real blocker is the kind of social arrangement practiced by Christianity or Judiasm. Horrors! We'd much rather die slowly and painfully, taking others with us, than learn from the bigots!
Jews survived the black plague singularly well because they adhered to the `silly' rules in the books of Deuteronomy and Numbers, while their Catholic neighbours didn't. Those rules have reasons behind them. There's a lot that the ancients knew well, but we refuse to learn. At our cost.
Common sense isn't, is it?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The worst religion of the lot is materialism. More deaths directly attributable to that throughout history than any other single belief group (except possibly people who believe that smoking won't give them cancer).
Even the Cattleticks fall short, they only (directly) got somewhere between 60 and 100 million, not counting starting or provoking numerous world and `civil' wars. Materialism is evil, convert someone away from it today.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Robert Zubrin puts forward a credible scheme in his (rather biased but scientifically thorough) book "The Case for Mars". You send an unmanned return vehicle ahead, with a fuel generator to make fuel from the Martian atmosphere (yes, it's possible). The crew only goes once there's a ticket home already there. For added safety, you send two return vehicles. The crew has a rover so they can drive to the nearest ascent vehicle when their time is up, and everything's cool. Meanwhile, there's a habitat left behind which you can use to start a persistent presence there.
Freedom: "I won't!"
ok, apparently we've gone to the moon, and thats great, but what is the preoccupation with getting away from, quite possibly the most naturally harmonic, and stunningly beautiful place in the universe. Here the plan guys, lets explore a few barron space rocks, so that we have somewhere to go when we're done wrecking this one!
Mars exploration is a thought, at least it's dramatic enough that it might grab people's attention. I submit that we would be better off pursuing a goal in space with some obvious practical benefit, e.g. this scheme of Robert Kennedy of the Ultimax Group:
Apparently NASA "studied" the SPSS idea again a few years back. They said it looked good, but they needed to reduce launch costs "a problem which is being addressed" (by the space shuttle?):Mirrors & Smoke: Ameliorating Climate Change with Giant Solar Sails;
Topic: Mirrors & Smoke, and Other Shady Schemes
Bright Future for Solar Power Satellites
Complete bollocks. Specficially, if it cost $20G to build (they say $10G), it need only make $2G/a to handily beat bank loans and stuff as a payback means. So double the $100/kg lift costs to $200/kg, big deal in the face of the $10,000-$30,000/kg it is now. $2G / $100/kg extra profit == 20Mt/a, 55,000t/day, 2300t/hr, a 400t load every 10 minutes.
Need to halve that load? Triple the price instead of doubling it. Or use the elevator to build more, and amortise the costs between them.
And we don't have one now? Go ahead, build your own Saturn V or Energia-Groza, be my guest.
Once they have half a dozen of these up, owned by 3 or 4 countries or consortia (I'd guess USA, EU, China, Russia, India, Brasil), that starts to break down anyway. If Australia wanted to build the first one, that would cost us $10,000 a head. If it built the 8th one, maybe $500 a head and every Australian gets their first 2kg hauled to space for free. If the people living in Perth pooled their gree kilograms, we could loft a 3000 tonne satellite.
Ever tried to hit something a meter wide from 10 km away? With defenses on the elevator shooting back at you and at your shells?
Clearing a corridor 10km wide around this would be no problem, and keeping it clear with SDI technology (near the ground, a perfectly ordinary Vulcan radar-guided cannon would do the job) relatively simple. Can you outfly a laser? Could your aircraft or missile survive several hundred unexpected megawatts of microwaves tuned to some vital dimension? How about a smart remote-targeted crowbar dropping in on you from LEO at mach 20?
Any concievable replacement would be worse.
It would have to be a clever piece of space-junk, smaller than a peanut and yet more destructive than a nuke. You haven't had a look at the design, have you?
If they were kind enough to put the elevator up on the Equator (not necessary, but it helps), it (or more specifically the defenses on it) would actually make a pretty good street-sweeper for the space industry.
That statement just betrayed your complete ignorance of how the elevator would work.
Of the 100,000km length, less than 100km would be in atmosphere. Take what is presumably the worst case: the cable snaps about 50km up. 50km of cable fall to earth, the top 30km or so burning up on re-entry, the balance stays in orbit. That's right, losing 0.05% of the cable makes very little difference to its orbit. Soon the lost 50km is replaced by shipping it out along another cable and unreeling it off the next segment above the damaged one.
But what about the bottom 20km? Even if it were heavy (did you read the line saying `paper-thin?'), it would fall into the ocean. Even if they anchored it at, say, Kununurra (in the far north of Western Australia) and it were heavy, you'd still only lose a stripe of desert a few m wide and 20km long. Big deal.
Now, important step, visit High Lift Systems and RTFM. Then come whinging back here.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The Problems with the shuttles:
1. They cost inordinate amounts of money
2. They provide no significant gain (If your goal is to study stuff to save human lives, the money is better spent researching stuff on Earth)
3. They're obselete(going to space in the shuttle is like going online with a PDP-11)
The Gains from the shuttle:
1. Nearly meaningless science that has very little, if any, practical value.
2. Vast numbers of jobs.
3. The ability to say, "Hey, we're in low Earth orbit!"
The problems with going to Mars:
1. Radiation
2. Physical effects of prolonged zero gravity.
3. Actually getting there and getting back alive.
The gains of going to Mars:
1. The ability to say, "We're on a whole nother fricking planet!"
2. Entry in every history book
3. Vast numbers of jobs
4. Science that is actually worth doing and justifies the cost.
5. Knowing that we have taken a step forward and not a step back
Which would you pick?(rehetorical Question)
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
When I was about 6 years of age, I used to live in Houston, Texas, with the
Johnson Space Center around the corner. I remember my parents used to take
visitors from back home (The Netherlands) to the center so they could marvel at
all the huge rockets and such which they keep around there. I have a fotograph
of me sitting in one of the seats used in the Apollo craft. And after every
visit we made, I remember thinking "When I grow up, I want to sit in one of
those chairs again. Go out there. See the Earth from orbit!" - Basically, become an astronaut.
Then, one morning as I and my mom were watching TV in the kitchen,
the program got interrupted.
"We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin: The Space Shuttle Challenger has just exploded during take-off."
From that moment onward, I never wanted to be an astronaut no more.
Now, being grown up and all, I realise that the only way to go is up.
Everything we as humans do on this world is messing around in the margins.
As some poster before me loosely stated, exploring is embedded in our genes.
NOT going up there would be a grave mistake.
And all those people saying that we should try to fix up stuff here on Earth first, well,
I'm sorry to have to be the one to point out that every time humans have explored
outside their "set" boundries, their own "world" was pretty messed up.
Still they went forward, with a vision that what they were doing might just change their world.
And hasn't the Space Program, even though it's been underfunded for most of it's life,
given us a lot of benefits? Think about medical applications, literal wonders have been worked
in that field just by the Space Program alone. Almost in every field of science has the
Space Program made a contribution. The list of applications directly or indirectly derived from
space development is a very very long one. A lot of common household articles are derived from
the very Space Program that some of the users of these articles attack so fiercly.
If I really thought I could make a difference, I would love to try and convince people of these facts.
Sadly, I know that can never happen. Some people believe so firm in their idea that Man should
not go to space same as some people believe so firm in the Church, or other affiliated mind numbing
programs.
My final point, and one that seems to be forgetten every now and then:
Before everyone starts talking technical stuff, we should be trying to change
the global populations view about space. Things would be a lot easier if large partions of
the world's population could share our firm belief in space and it's benefits.
Sorry if this post seems kind of a mess, I'm not a gifted writer.
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
I keep saying this, hoping to convince others and thus to start us moving in the right direction.
/.'ser and K5'ers.
A reusable orbital delivery system makes about as much sense as reusable toilet paper - yes it is possible, but the cost to make it reusable far exceeds the savings. Every kilo you boost to orbit costs about ten kilos in fuel. Therefore, adding any weight that is not payload is extremely wasteful. If you add one kilo to make something "reusable", that is a kilo of payload you give up.
The rocket engines on the shuttle are very complex - turbopumps, combustion chambers, cyrogenic fuels. The solid rocket boosters are MUCH simpler - why did NASA not use just them? Simple - solid rockets are not throttleable - one lit off, they make as much thrust as they want to, and while you can to an extent control that thrust by how you design them, there will be unavoidable variations in thrust from unit to unit. You cannot get several of them balanced out - in the shuttle, the main engines are used to balance the load out by shifting their thrust to make up for variances.
However, we have for some time known how to build hybrid rocket - solid fuel, liquid oxidizer. These rockets are throttleable and can be made restartable.
Imagine this: We start making hybrid rockets, roughly the size of the shuttle's SRB's. They are NOT designed for reuse (if they can be made reuseable without weight penalty great, but otherwise fugetaboutit).
For normal, unmanned payloads, you use 1 or more of these rockets (one for smaller payloads like a comsat, up to five or more for big chunks of the ISS). If they go foom on launch it is unfortunate but not catastrophic.
For manned missions, we launch a MUCH SMALLER vehicle, big enough for the (astro|cosmo)nauts and not much else (if they need a big experiment, you launch it as an ummanned launch). Because the launch vehicle is much smaller, you don't need as many of these boosters. You can therefore inspect the HELL out of the ones you use.
Since you are making the boosters by the truckload, you can quickly get the economies of scale to bring the cost down. This argument was also used for the shuttle, but since the shuttle is such a complicated bird this promise never materialized. I assert that BDB's (big dumb boosters) would be able to achive this goal.
Also, since these boosters are standard parts, you could farm them out to several companies (hell, GPL the damn design!) This would allow for competition, as well as innovation. We could even allow them to be build in other countries (e.g. Russia). How about getting a degree of commonality between the Russian space program and the US?
Finally, given the fact that you could use a non-cryogenic oxidizer, you could relatively safely ship these things into orbit, thus allowing (lunar|Mars) missions to use them to provide the delta-V to leave orbit.
NASA keeps focusing on "sexy" technologies like SCRAMjets and such, and those are find as research projects. But for workhorse applications, why not K.I.S.S.?
Big Dumb Boosters. Beat that into NASA, beat that into your Congresscritter, beat that into the National Space Society and the Planetary Society, beat that into your fellow
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, Lockheed-Martin beat out others and won a contract to build a half-size sub-orbital prototype of a single stage to orbital next generation shuttle. The prototype was called the X-33. The full blown bird would have been VentureStar.
It had a lot of new techonologies. One has a new design fuel tank make of a new composite material. The first time they tried filling it up with liquid hydrogen, it ripped open. They told the government that they needed a ton of money more, over and above the original bid to fix it. The government said, forget it and the project was abandoned.
The moon is a day or two away by chemical rocket. Mars is somewhere between a few weeks (if we build something really futuristic like an Orion drive) and eight months (if we do a minimum-energy Hohmann orbit) away. Mars has an atmosphere, so you can do aerobraking and make propellant out of it, neither of which you can do on the Moon. Mars has a nice diurnal cycle, the Moon doesn't. The temperatures are totally different. The science you want to do on each place is totally different.
If you want a less challenging target for your initial mission, try a near-Earth asteroid. Much more science return - and learning more about NEOs might give us the chance to figure out how best to deflect them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Tethers ( 1, 2, 3 ) attached to counterweights can be used to transfer spacecraft from one orbit to another. The first tether has an orbit that skims the atmosphere, where a craft catches and connects to the end of the tether. The craft is lifted into low earth orbit and subsequent tethers help it to reach escape velocity. Using the tethers takes energy out of the orbits of the counterweights, some of which can be put back by using the tethers for descent as well as launch.
J. Storrs-Hall (once moderator of sci.nanotech) envisioned a space dock, a linear motor suspended 100 km above the ground that accelerates spacecraft to an elliptical orbit. He computes an amortized cost of reaching low earth orbit of 42 cents per kilogram. From the elliptical orbit, it's a relatively small safe step to escape velocity.
A space elevator ( 1, 2 ) is an excellent long-term solution. A cable is hung from a weight in geosynchronous orbit, reaching down to the Earth's surface. The elevator climbs the cable, carrying a craft. When it reaches GEO, the craft detaches and spends only a little fuel getting to escape velocity.
Tethers and the space elevator require novel materials for strong cables, probably using carbon nanotubes. The frame to hold up the space dock is in compression, and something we could build with little or no advance in material science. Any of these alternatives would be vastly cheaper and vastly safer than putting human lives on the noses of fuel tanks subjected to unreasonable speeds and stresses.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
* This was a letter I wrote to Mr. Bush 3 weeks before the Columbia disaster.
/costs.
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to you about my disappointment with the stateof affairs in America today. While the media is constantlychurning up images of our faltering economy, corporate CEOs being led away in handcuffs and the constant spectre of additional terrorist attacks. There remains little focus or attention on what made the United States the greatest country in the world.
America's spirit has always been great ideas...ideas that unite the nation and provide a rallying point to focus ourskills, determination and ideals. It began with the Declaration of Independence from Mother England, a bold and audacious move against the Superpower of that era. Later the expansion west and claiming of a continent drove the American dream. World War II and the universal struggle against the Axis forces pushed this country yet futher in greatness. And then in the sixties and seventies it was the Race tothe Moon. It galvanized a generation...I remember as a young boy, being called to the TV by my parents one hot July evening to see live pictures of the first steps on themoon. That moment and the steps that led up to it made me so proud to be an American.
No other nation can or could have done this...yet. While we have forsaken the Moon for other 'scientific pursuits in space', China recently anounced that they intend to put men in space by the end of 2003 AND set up a moon prescence by the end of this decade to in their own words, "exploit its resources" . The thought of that is at best an affront toour astronauts and engineers that made the original journey possible, and at worst a possible threat to our future inspace and our security here on Earth.
NASA's priorities need to be radically re-organized...theyshould be doing great things again, making heros that our kids can look up to , not spending valuable research dollars on hair-brained anti-gravity research, not launching repeatedly the 'Space Truck'(Shuttle) to do heavens knows what and building this so-called International Space Station, that us U.S. taxpayers are paying the lion's share of over $10 billion dollars at last count.(and called by a recent article in New Scientist magazine, "the aimless, cash-guzzling International Space Station" )
Not only has this space station been hideously expensive,and fraught with numerous cost overruns, but what will it really accomplish? What are thy really doing that we really didn't learn or do with SkyLab back in the 1970's, exceptmaybe planning to host pop-stars and other super-rich tourists..?
This nation's destiny is to return to the Moon , and live there...establishing a research station like MacMurdo Station in the Antarctica. The first step in learning how to 'homestead' in space's hostile environment. Mining minerals and water ice for fuel, building materials and life enabling oxygen. Somewhere from which we can properly explore the Moon's history and hidden riches. And re-ignite the American people's imagination of going to the stars. I havea one year old son now, and I want him to imagine and dreamof going beyond earth's problems someday to a bold new frontier and destiny for mankind.
Currently NASA's manned space program is focused only on Mars....a destination we are not ready for nor as economoical as going back to the Moon first. NASA's own people have said the following..
"NASA is misdirected by setting its sights too firmlyon Mars and the search for life on the red planet, said lunar scientist Paul Spudis. NASA's own Office of Space Science, as well as former space agency chief,Daniel Goldin, have "suppressed this [ lunar science ]community in favor of Mars," he said.
"I don't think you can conduct a human mission to Mars for less than a $100 billion in any time shorter than ten years," Spudis said. "The technology base will only marginally support a human Mars mission. It's justa bridge too far. I contend that NASA doesn't have a politically viable mission."
Spudis said that buried within NASA is a progressive plan for placing humans back onto the Moon. NASA Exploration Team (NExT) members at the Johnson Space Center, he said, have scripted a breakthrough strategy.
There is a plan already started, what we need is the will to in these troubled times think of a loftier and bolder goal, that of retruning to the Moon - to stay. Are we too distracted and busy with the war on terrorism and other ills at home? I think not, as we did it the first time through the heyday of the height of the Cold War and its stresses
To summarize, here are the key points I'd like you to consider:
1. Make returning to the Moon a new national goal , to stay this time...to explore , learn its secrets and pave the path to eventually living in space.
2. Immediately re-organize NASAs management, expendituresand focus to pursue this task.
3. Halt the run-away spending on the International Space Station. I don't really think we are getting our money's worth.
What NASA needs a is grand vision in order to survive. "Right now, NASA is just one big accounting problem," saysJohn Pike of the Global Security think tank in Washington DC. "Unless there is some other reason for its existence, some other goal, the easiest way of solving this problem isto shut down NASA."
By setting a new direction and bold agaenda to return to the Moon we can turnaround NASA's flailing , and re-chart its mission as a great quest, one that will capture the imaginations of all Americans, youg and old, to renew the pioneering spirit of America. Additionally, the technologyand lessons learned about living of the Moon will be directly applicable to the next logical goal of a Mars mission.
Thanks for your time, I hope you give this some thought.
Sincerely,
a citizen