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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.
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
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.
Did you read the article, Omkar? Evidently not; Benford wants humans to go to Mars. His objection to the current shuttle-ISS program is that it offers absolutely zero progress towards getting there: no experiments with true recycling, no experiments with generating artificial gravity by spinning the station. Instead, we're spending billions to have people do trivial stuff, and if you're going to do trivial stuff, it's better to have machines do it.
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
According to this article mentioned earlier on Slashdot:
I code, therefore I am.
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.
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.
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!"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.
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
A good point! Here's something that has stumped me for years: Why in bejeepers is everyone gung ho about mars? We've got a perfectly good stepping stone that's 9/10's of the way to anywhere in our solar system parked about 300k kms from us! Not only that, should the need arise, it's conceivable in time of need those stationed there could be evacuated. Perhaps I've just read too much Robert Heinlein (Methusalah's Children, for one. )
If someone wouldn't mind elucidating why the moon is such a poor choice, I'd appreciate it. Please, don't let it be merely that the moon is less interesting politically.
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 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.
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.
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
Astronauts risk their lives for the best of motivations-- they want to advance science. You can question if the space shuttle is the best way to do this, but I don't think you can question the motivations. And maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but the advancement of science is a great thing. NASA wants to make the world a better place by furthering our understanding of the universe. They want to expand the notion of what it means to be human. They want to visit the stars, and this is the first step.
And when the space program suffers a setback, when these men who are carrying the hopes and dreams of a better future for everyone die, it's pretty discouraging, and worthy of my grief. There's that moment of doubt -- maybe we are just glorified fucking monkeys who should give up and stop trying to be anything more.
But I'm convinced that man has done great things, and these great things always started with men and women willing to push the notions of what these monkeys can do. We need a hero? We already have them.
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.
No offence but _yes_, you SHOULD get modded down for this. Not because what you say is *unorthodox* but you have got the wrong *reasons* for your argument
Pushing the envelope is always done by a select few. Thats why they are heroes. Why are Formula-1 drivers heroes ? They are ready [sorry for the cliche] to "go where no man/woman has gone". Every advancement _especially_ space is taken with risks and the people who come forward to shoulder the risks for the first few times - cheaply put , those who are ready to be guinea pigs for the betterment of humans _ARE_ DEFINITELY heroes in my book. right ?
Why dont we mourn the death of starving kids? I come from India and I have seen what you say exactly. You bet I agree with you and we should mourn them. But you shouldnt ask why we _are_ mourning the death of the shuttle astronauts. They _were_ pioneers who died for a cause.
Thanks.
vv
- 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).
The cost is actually quite modest. Figures between $5bn and $40bn have been mentioned. At the lower end of the scale, this is about 15 shuttle launches. At the high end, it's a tiny fraction of the US defence budget. The benefits to the first company or government who does this are the ability to launch satellites at a tiny cost, build further space elevators for (relatively) next to nothing, and in the long term the full exploration and exploitation of natural resources in space.- 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.
This is certainly true in the short term. In the longer term, many elevators can be built by different companies and governments. (Only the first elevator is expensive - once that's working the others are cheap to build).- 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.
The proposal is to have an exclusion zone around of the order of 10-100 miles. It would be extremely hard to fly unnoticed into such an area. Attacks from underneath (submarines, etc) and attacks from people actually travelling on the elevator are harder to deal with. In the end it doesn't matter however. Once one elevator is up, you build more, and you keep a few reels of carbon nanotubes "parked" in space to cover this eventuality and natural disasters.- 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.
Yes, we've all read Kim Stanley Robinson too. He's a good writer, but not a great scientist. A break in the cable is most likely to happen in the first 20-40 miles (ie. in the atmosphere). So the 20-40 miles of cable drops down - into the exclusion zone which is just a harmless area of sea. The top part slowly drifts off into space. There's even the possibility of repairing a broken cable by lowering more down to earth before it drifts off.Rich.
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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