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Hurricane Threatens Shuttle Program
evenprime writes "Hurricane Frances may end NASA's space shuttle program. John Logsdon, a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the head of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., has said: 'If there were serious damage to one or two of the orbiters or the facilities needed to
process and launch the orbiters, I think it would raise a very large question about
the continuation of the shuttle program.'"
Dammit, dammit, dammit! Right now, Bush's ideas for a new space program are simply a pipe dream with some funding. If we lose our infrastructure for a manned space program, we may lose the space program all together! While I know of several people who would be happy about that, I wouldn't. Cutting off manned travel is short-sighted. Without manned travel, we're guaranteeing that the cost of sending probes will always be high. We're guaranteeing that we'll run out of raw materials in less than a century. We're guaranteeing that we will not have enough energy to sustain our civilization. And most importantly, we're guaranteeing that we will NEVER reach another star system.
Look up at the sky! You see that big ball of bright flame? That's a fusion reactor that generates at least 8e23 watts. That's enough power to send a five year Alpha Centauri mission every second. You know how you can do the same by staying on Earth? It's simple: YOU CAN'T. To those of you who think a manned space program is a waste of resources because exploration happens more effectively with robots: You are a selfish bastard planning your own demise.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Let's not get our knickers in a twist here, ya? The shuttle program is in its twilight years regardless but it's not the end-all be-all. There's a Return to Flight program.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
Of course it would be a disaster if the shuttle program was seriously damaged by this storm. But one positive by-effect would be that NASA would be forced to consider better booster solutions. A lot of the work done by the shuttles could be done safer and cheaper by a booster.
I doubt they (politicians and beaurocrats pulling the strings in NASA) ever planned to get it off the ground again. The direction NASA funding was going, I expect a lot of pencil pushers were relieved by the Columbia accident, since it made things a lot easier to shut down.
While i think that the space shuttle program itself is pretty ineffecient for what we need out of a space program right now. (why bring back so much of the stuff you just spent billions sending up there) I'd hate to see the space shuttles scrapped unless we had some plans to replace it with some other program.
I'm getting the feeling though, that it will not be replaced by anything for awhile to come, & this may signal the end of American manned spaceflight for a long time.
Honestly I believe they have had ample time to prepare for hurricanes hitting the NASA facilities. It's not like it rests in hurricane-prone waters, no.
What idiot reporter came up with the idea for this story. Hasn't Cape Canaveral ALWAYS been in Florida. Hasn't Florida ALWAYS gotten hit by hurricanes. Hello McFly?
Just a little while ago an article about missing the broadband boat (which admittidly I did not read) and now the space shuttle. I realize that we have not cancelled our space program, but this is concerning to me.
We are losing our low paying jobs to other countries and supposedly replacing them with higher paying research/science positions. How can we do this with a government that is not committed to science (Shutting down a space program) and is not committed to infrastructure like broadband. If we give up on the low paying jobs don't we then need a strong commitment to the high paying jobs of the future?
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Finally the shuttle boondoggle would die a long deserved death, freeing up resources for real space travel. (as if). A 5-digit number of unique tiles? And they criticize software engineers for bad design. Meanwhile, look how much the Russians spend to put people in LEO!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
no.. maybe it's about time the goverment took care of matters on the planet before worrying about matters in space. maybe they should get out of the space program entirely. leave it up to the commerical interests and private folk. look at all the private ventures we see now shooting up rockets quicker, faster and cheaper than what the government bothered to do.
would it be such a loss if we let the world's smart, bright engineers launch themselves into space and left the fat, dumb-ass politicans at home?
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Nothing like an overreaction to get folks upset...
"Hurricane Frances may end NASA's space shuttle program."
Please.
Even if the orbiters were damaged, or the launch platforms damaged, they can always be re-built, repaired, or whatever.
Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
Besides, the launch structures withstand regular beatings from the shuttle launches, and they've survived for years...
The VAB might take some damage, perhaps some of the other support buildings, but it's going to take more than a hurricane to destroy KSC & the shuttle program completely.
/sig
The question I pose is that why werent the buildings designed to withstand a SUBSTANTIAL Huricane. It is not hurricanes are a new danger, designeing buildings not to be able to stand up to direct hit isnt a smart gamble in my books.
If I wanted water, I'd ask for DiHydrogen Oxide!
I would think this does not eliminate ALL possibility that a catastrophic hurricane could do serious damage. However, why would this end the program in it's entirety - couldn't they move to say , Arizona? or would it just be too costly?
This is a very serious problem. The damage would have to fairly severe I would imagine, however it does have the possibility of ending the shuttle program.
I was lucky enough to be able to speak with one of the people in the group commisioned to investigate the columbia accident. He told me that one of the reasons they were adamant about finding the trouble behind the accident and making sure it did not happen again (beyond the paramount fact of preventing the loss of human life) was because it was a solid fact based on budgeting that NASA could not continue its shuttle program if it lost one more orbiter. He was fairly confident in the fact if one more was lost it would end program for good.
telnet://zombiemud.org:3000
I really doubt it... Do we pack up all operations in California every time there is an earthquake ? Hurricanes have been hitting the eastern seaboard and Florida for thousands of years - the Indians never left, the colonist never left, people still live in South Florida post Andrew, Nasa and CCAFS will still launch rockets from the cape after this hurricane. I live in Titusville right directly accross from the VAB and use to work at CCAFS and I can tell you that the facilites are very, VERY well constructed - the engineers who designed those buildings were thinking about hurricanes (and direct impacts from errant rockets).
Climatologists have been pointing out that weather patterns have been getting more extreme for some time now.
I'm sure we could all argue until the end of time as to why this has been happenning but I find it rather hilarious that, any time someone mentions the possible negative effects that mankind is having on his environment, hundreds of otherwise sensible people throw rational thought out of the window and refuse point blank to even concede the possibility - even the very smallest chance - that climate change for the worse might be partially our fault.
Here in Britain we've just gone from having the hottest August on record in 2003 to the wettest August on record in 2004. Climatic extremes like those experienced here, in the US and elsewhere aren't things to be taken lightly, they're things to be studied and, ultimately, acted upon. Collectively shrugging our shoulders and sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to finding out why these things are happening with ever greater frequency aren't model solutions.
But, hey, that's just my worthless point of view. Until there's more money in sorting out the problem than there is in exacerbating it, nothing's going to change. Well, at least not for the better.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Government has never been concerned about science, and this would make for an easy escape from the continuation of the program ("we can't afford the $$ to repair the facility). More and more it's looking like the privatization of a space program is our only hope. Then again, if private industry takes it over it will become mixed with the travel industry and astronauts and engineers will have to share their space with multi-billionaires seeking an adrenaline rush. Now THAT would make for an interesting reality series. Egads, what's the world coming to?
They're really just hoping for an excuse for something they are already planning. I had a chance to chat with a fellow from the Johnson Space Center a few months back and he said they were planning on ending the Shuttle program "soon." He is of the opinion that as we now try to reach further than "just" orbit, we will need to return to single-use vehicles, at least for a while.
Let's not get our knickers in a twist here, ya?
Sort of a geek reference - "Skip" (or whatever his name was - the security expert guy from the last set of missions) from 'Tomb Raider: Chronicles' used this exact phrase when talking with Lara about a problem.
Not sure who's the bigger geek - phearlez for quoting it, or me for identifying it. So I'll post AC. :-)
Hurricane David smacked head-on into Cape Canaveral in September of 1979, and not much damage to the Space Center. Nothing to worry about.
Hi,
NASA has been under budgeted, over managed, and terribly inefficient for decades. Having the government run space flight might have been a good idea during the cold war, when it was important to remind the world that everything the Russians can do we can do better. Today, it is not.
There are cheaper ways to get to LEO (Low Earth Orbit). There are private enterprises which try to get to space in a way that is economically viable. Economically viable means that you don't have to beg Congress for dollars and then use whatever contractors, locations, etc. you need to provide the right pork to the right congress-person. Instead, you can focus on doing what ought to be done.
What do we need manned flight to LEO for? It's close enough that we can remote control everything that a robot can do. Robots that are cheaper and more expendable. Let us send robots and find ways to use it to build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to the skies.
Eventually, we'll need manned space flight to get to resources that are too distant for a remote controlled mission. But now is not the time. Now what we need is less public excitement and more investor excitement. Less spectacles and more value creation.
Just my 2c worth,
Ori
-- Support a free market in the field of government
And here I thought the biggest threat to the shuttle program was the shuttle program.
to buy a decent Beowulf cluster to calculate and design whatever is needed for the space elevator.
Maybe the recent SETI find will bring some aliens to us, and we can travel "Contact" style.
GroupShares Inc.
-------
artlu.net
Let's suppose a lot of equipment gets ruined should this huricane pass through. Isn't most of the money spent on research and planning, not the building of spacecraft? For NASA, the actual building has to be the least of their burdens, especially if it's not the first time building it (because of advantage of hindsight after building it once has to be a great help).
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Did this guy just wake up from a coma? The shuttle has been around since the early 80's. Hurricanes have been around, right, since well, as long as any human can remember. Why is this even news worthy? It's always been a risk, it will continue to be a risk.
Why don't they just move the orbiters to a safe location? It's not like the hurricane is speeding towards them?
Now the facilities, that is another story...
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the Shuttle program (and yes, I use the article "the") and NASA, but this is pure fear mongering by someone with an agenda.
Sure, IF a large meteor slams into the Golden Gate Bridge it probably won't be rebuilt exactly as it was before.
If.
sPh
"Even if the orbiters were damaged, or the launch platforms damaged, they can always be re-built, repaired, or whatever."
Almost anything _can_ be done. It's a question of whether you want to pay for it. This is a point the article makes pretty well...
Essentially, the US is living beyond its means. Its deficit is unsustainable in the long term, as is the value of the US dollar. If China or Japan decides to pull the pin, your economy goes down the toilet for years to come.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
> Even if the orbiters were damaged, or the launch platforms damaged, they can always be re-built, repaired, or whatever.
...it's going to take more than a hurricane to destroy KSC & the shuttle program completely.
Sure, they can, but not without a huge expenditure that NASA really can't afford right now, especially when many politicians (and pundits, and some scientists) are already calling for the end to Human Spaceflight altogether.
> Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
It's looked like that for several days now, and they haven't done this. A good reason is that the shuttles are being retrofitted with safety improvements, and aren't really in a state to be put on a 747, let alone flown hundreds of miles away.
> Besides, the launch structures withstand regular beatings from the shuttle launches, and they've survived for years...
Sure, the launch structures, maybe. But the hangars that the Space Shuttles are housed in are only rated for a Category 3 hurricane. They might also survive a Category 4 or 5 Frances, but then again, they might not.
>
I love the shuttle, but KSC doesn't need to be entirely destroyed for NASA to decide that the program is too expensive to salvage.
Never trust any national priority to Florida.
--
make install -not war
This never occured to me before, but I wonder if anyone has ever looked into insuring the shuttle against natural disaster?
The cost of such a coverage would probably be on par with terrorism insurance for the olympics, but it would be interesting to see how the policy got written.
I'm pretty sure the dollar value is probably too high for a private insurance company, but it's an interesting speculative exercise. Anyone work for a big reinsurance company and want to comment?
(wonders if Warren Buffet reads slashdot)
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Manned space programs take many years to develop. Even if Bush 43 had made it his biggest priority, even 4 years later we wouldn't have a new orbiter ready yet.
A replacement orbiter should have been appropriated for and begun development during the Bush 41 or Clinton administrations. If they had done that, we'd have a new class of orbiters by now.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
"We're guaranteeing that we will not have enough energy to sustain our civilization"
Whose civilisation? The American Dream or just 21st civilisation in general? If you mean the former then maybe you're right. If its the latter then I would kindly suggest you go and by yourself an atlas because beyond the borders of the USA it isn't "here be dragons" but a number of countries that have the capability of manned spaceflight (russia and china) and a few that might very soon (India & Japan). Stop assuming that the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of the US. It doesn't.
Could it be possible there are some who are looking for a reason to shut down the shuttle program? Ala a graceful exit? I won't substitue my opinion for their judgement, but I've had the hunch for a long time they are looking to shut the program down -- for whatever reason, but most notably it might be time to re-invent the shuttle program with more current and efficient (and hopefully safer) technology.
or did I miss the newsflash that manned shuttle trips were back in business? This is just the current government-funded agency. It is not the various space ports from which privately-funded attempts are preparing (or have) launched.
BTW, one ultimate goal is to locate and return resources to the earth -- in the way of mining asteroids, for example. As we are currently going, humanity will use up much of earth's resources even without a space program (manned or not). Read up on consumption and overpopulation, choosing your own sources so you don't accuse me of bias. Check the numbers. You might just find that our space program can not possibly use up earth's resources at the volume necessary -- but typical American consumption can.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Maybe Dryden A.F.B. will finally start using the 'Backup' Shuttle Launch Facility.
The logistics of it will be tight, but VERY doable.
I for one welcome our myoptic leaders.
But one positive by-effect would be that NASA would be forced to consider better booster solutions.
One of those better booster solutions is sitting on the pad right now. It is even more vulnerable to damage than the shuttle orbiters. The Delta IV heavy or derivative is a likely candidate for a post shuttle manned booster. It would be bad news if it were damaged.
an ill wind that blows no good
I wish I had mod points, but I don't. Always the way when you really want them :-(
:-(
Heat = Energy
More energy/km^3 = more phase-space for the atmosphere
more phase space = more extremes
extremes in the phase space = nasty stuff.
Premise: It's not the probability of something happening that is important, it is the product of the probability and the consequences.
Problem: humans as a species are less likely to plan for infrequent problems or long-term goals than frequent problems or short-term goals. Combine with premise and consider asteroids, global warming, oil dependence, etc.
Result: we're screwed if the weather-scientists are right
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Rebuilding that critically flawed and obscenely expensive launch system would be the height of insanity.
Unmanned missions should have replaced manned ones 10 years ago. Our AI, robotics, and the mission effectiveness (more missions, more science, more payload, less dollars) would all have benefited. The Shuttle should be scrapped.
of course they could be rebuilt.
but the main thing would be that if there's political/financial pressure to NOT rebuild them they could use this as an easy way to shutdown the shuttle program.
not entirely sure if it's a bad thing either, the shuttle is past it's prime anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I still don't get how anybody can even THINK of abandoning manned space travel. Sure, humans are fragile and expensive. Sure, it's cheaper to send robots. But CRIPES, people. It's an adventure! It's a new experience for the human race. That, IN AND OF ITSELF, is more than enough justification for continuing.
I know all the arguements about how we should fix our problems down here on earth before we pour $$ into space, but I've got news for those people. We're never going to fix those problems. They are caused by human beings. If we wait for the day when everything is hunky dory on this planet, we might as well give up any exploration of any kind.
Dreams are IMPORTANT. That sense of wonder you felt as a little kid looking up at the sky, that's IMPORTANT. Exploration tests us, pushes us, forces us to grow beyond what we thought possible. It seems to be the only way we do that without killing each other in the process. Keeping the mind engaged and interested is essential to who we are as a species.
That's how I feel, anyway. I know there are those who's end vision for the human race seems to be having us all sit in front of the TV while robots do all the work necessary to sustain our physical existance. Well, no thanks. I'll head for the frontier. There's a thought from one of Frank Herbert's books which I consider relevant to both our present and the more degenerate visions of our future:
"It's because there is no Dune there are no Fremen."
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
That's a fusion reactor that generates at least 8e23 watts.
And you propose building a Dyson Sphere to harness all of that energy?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
that hurricane Frances will surrender before reaching the NASA facilities.
They are saying the hurricane could be the worst thing to happen to NASA since the fall of the Soviet Union? I personally think it would be great if they were forced to re-think their strategy...after all, "necessity is the mother of invention"
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
Most if not all of the manned space missions could be better accomplished by robots.
Yes. It would not only be less expensive but it would spur research in robotics and AI. In my opinion, AI research is a lot more important to humanity than space research. After all, it has been said that true AI is the invention to end all inventions.
If we get true AI, our space program would benefit immnesely from superior intelligence and a non-political approach to space exploration. Unless of course, our machines become political as well. That would not surprise me much but, at least, we would expect a lot more efficiency from robots than from the people (humans?) at NASA.
the shuttle will fly much sooner than expected
The infrastructure, personnel and procedures needed to MAINTAIN orbiters is ENTIRELY different from those need to BUILD shuttles. The shuttle building program has been shut down for over a decade.
My bet is the contractors that built the shuttles wouldn't even TOUCH a contract to try to build another set of them. The engineers and other staff involved in the shuttle building have probably retired or died by now.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I've never seen a "very large question" before.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
It turned into a jobs program. Why do you think it has been so hard to kill? The only remaining task the shuttle provides the BDBs don't is the ability to recover and return small satellites - and they don't do that because of the danger from those satellites.
Perhaps the hurricane would help end this waste of taxpayer money. If anything the shuttle program set the US space program back TWENTY years.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well, I am in Hurricane Warning, and the storm is going to hit us. My shutters are up and all. At least this time, NASA didn't have a shuttle on dock. With past hurricanes, they always had to move those. NASA is already ready, but I don't think they will have much damage. They put the sattelites in plastic bags and it's original packing *insert joke here*
s p?loc=usa&seg=StormCenter&prodgrp=TrackingCharts&p roduct=HurTrack1&prodnav=none&pid=none for a Hurricane map, path, etc.
See http://www.intellicast.com/Local/USNationalWide.a
mysql>SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 Rows Returned
From NASAs perspective, a disaster of this scale may be just what they need to raise public awareness and get a wad of "pity cash".
"Don't waste your time or time will waste you" -MUSE
1. The Vehicle Assembly Building is built to withstand a category 5 hurricane. The accessory and newer buildings are only built against a category 3. However, nothing will save the VAB from a category 4 that tears the roof off a nearby cat3 hanger and mashes it into the side of the VAB.
2. KSC at current projections is in the worst spot possible. The eye passing overhead would be merciful if it happens - the eye passing south is worse. The N.W. corner of a hurricane is the strongest in the northern hemisphere.
3. Otherwise, there is still a (anyone?) 30 foot storm surge to contend with.
4. Does anyone know if Atlantis is still in the VAB? I haven't checked. If you do check, make sure you shut the lights off when you are done.
Best case scenario - no one is hurt, and NASA files a gianormous insurance claim Monday morning for a new manned space program.
Kulakovich
I thought NASA's budget was reduced in the last go round on the hill.
If we lose our infrastructure for a manned space program, we may lose the space program all together!
This has never stopped members of the GOP from cutting or withholding highway funds. Funny how we'll do everything we can to ensure cheap petroleum, allow automakers to sell guzzlers with impunity (and even give people tax breaks for buying them) and then neglect highways until it costs 3x as much to completely replace sections than it would to have kept up maintenance. (Now that I think about it, maybe it's really a scan and the road replacement businesses are big contributors...)
While I know of several people who would be happy about that,
How do creationists (particularly those trying to get evolution thrown out of schools) feel about space? Is there a Connection to the Religious Right?
Cutting off manned travel is short-sighted. Without manned travel, we're guaranteeing that the cost of sending probes will always be high
Also casts cold water on my plans for a rocket car, but anway...
We're guaranteeing that we'll run out of raw materials in less than a century.
Petro probably, but other materials? Nope, they're just starting to havest much of Russia and former Soviet Republics, now that investment (if you're not afraid of another Yukos happening to your investment...) being possible.
we're guaranteeing that we will NEVER reach another star system.
I'm sure we can find all the Stars we need on American Idol, however, which probably (and even sadly) has a larger following than space exploration.
To those of you who think a manned space program is a waste of resources because exploration happens more effectively with robots: You are a selfish bastard planning your own demise.
I think disease or famine and maybe a nasty war will thin the herd at some point. If you'd like to consider space colonization, you might read the first few chapters of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, the author does go into a bit of the logistics and realities of space colonization...the rest of the book I gradually lost interest in, but may pick up again later.
With the federal budget in the sickly shape it's in, it's going to be tough to get additional funds to repair (and reasonably upgrade) the facilities.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Obi Wan is our only hope.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I thought one was in long-term overhaul at the Palmdale, CA factory (though this work might have been shifted to KSC, I'm not sure).
I tried looking at the Current Shuttle Status page, but that, along with everything at Kennedy Space Center seems to be offline, already...
Bush Lies On the Record.
Actually, we can fit the shuttles on top of a plane, why not fly them outta safely. I have a poster of a 747 with the shuttle attached to the roof.
SimonTek
The building was constructed during the Apollo era and has a roof designed to withstand 105 mph winds, Diller said.
Even newer facilities are at risk. The immense hangar where the space station components are tested and stored prior to launch is designed to withstand 110 mph winds.
The cause of most mistakes are that when taking under consideration the requirements for [insert whatever here] is that someone made an "assumption" rather than supporting all information with facts. When these buildings were built, I'm sure somewhere in the Flordia a hurricane came through with winds in excess of 110mph. What would ever make you think it *is* impossible for one to come through the Space Center? I'm mean you spend billions of dollars and do not protect it from hurricanes on the Flordia coast?
Ansari X Prize. Nuff said...
Do we really want to leave this rock? I mean, we can start exploring Mars, but I'm not sure we're gonna like what we'll find there...
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
It's about time someone put that program out of its misery. I'm not surprised it may take an Act of God rather than an Act of Congress. The government has betrayed America's pioneering spirit by making a government bureaucracy the single point of failure for space pioneering. At this stage, if they can't keep putting men into space all hell might break loose when people realize that more progress was made in 10 years without NASA's Shuttle program than was made in the prior 40 years of NASA hegemony over manned space activities.
Seastead this.
wheres moya when u need her?
I believe one major reason that NASA's and the Air Force's launch facilities are in Florida is a combination of lots of open ocean for downrange safety and testing, and the physics of orbital insertions that put the likely launch routes over that open ocean. Supposing Challanger had been over , say, Georgia when it disintegrated, and dropped all that debris on downtown Atlanta?
Network geek with a strong affinity for Telecasters
I'm in Orlando right now. (The reason I'm on /. instead of preparing is because I'm at work. :-) ) That said, if I find a big rocket or something on my lawn after Frances leaves, I am so totally gonna put in on eBay. Or else trade it on /. for a GMail invite.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I'm not blaming anyone. My point is exactly what your point is. That these things take time. The time they take is simply too long. By the time the program reaches completion, the politicians could have already cut the funding.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
My gut tells me you are a troll but none the less...
"Without manned travel, we're guaranteeing that the cost of sending probes will always be high."
Actually unmanned probes will continue to become more capable and cheaper as time goes on. They don't need bulky and expensive life-support systems and can go into very hostile environments.
"We're guaranteeing that we'll run out of raw materials in less than a century. We're guaranteeing that we will not have enough energy to sustain our civilization."
Run out of raw materials in less than a century? HUH? Were do you live, an asteroid?
Are you saying that in less than 100 yrs we can develop a manned space program that can return enough minerals to support the entire earth's industries? If you think we have energy concerns now just wait until you start that project.
Oil and gas may become an issue in my lifetime but raw materials and energy on the whole won't be for a VERY long time.
"And most importantly, we're guaranteeing that we will NEVER reach another star system."
Putting all of your efforts into manned missions will almost guarantee that you'll never reach another star.
"That's enough power to send a five year Alpha Centauri mission every second."
Thanks for that pointless statement. If we have the ability to capture the sun's entire output I'd say that our space program had advanced well beyond needing shuttles.
You REALLY need to stop reading so much sci-fi.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If this were a time when the shuttle program was going strong and morale was high, it would get rebuilt. However, this is a time when the program had a very major failure, when there hasn't been a shuttle launch for an extended period, when pulic opinion is against paying for the shuttle program, when the engineers want it replaced, when the beaurocrats don't want to pay for it (or its repalcement), when the government has its fingers in a lot of very expensive pots ranging from Social Security to Iraq. The threshold for completely abandoning the shuttle, or any other expensive program is much lower now than it would be in ideal conditions.
Not only that, but Florida is close to the Equator, so that a spacecraft can use some of the natural momentum of the Earth to help get it in orbit. Launching westward would mean you'd have to burn off your inherited rotation from the planet along with obtaining orbital velocity.
There isn't a spot on Earth that doesn't have some kind of natural disaster that could threaten a program this large over a long enough timescale.
...and I won't be the last to say it. But somebody's got to say it here: Florida is one of the worst places in the world to have set up a space program. Frances is just one in a long string of reasons why.
Proverbs 21:19
Scrap the florida space station! WTF decided to put a launch center in the middle of hurricane heaven anyways?
pack it all up and move it to some that isnt destined to be overrun with mother natures wrath 2-4 times a year.
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
1. The words "move" and "quickly" cannot be combined in a sentence that references a shuttle orbiter. I don't know of any real event involving the program that can happen with less than 48 hours of planning and preparation.
2. If you so much as look at a shuttle funny at this point, you have to x-ray the air frame for microscopic fractures. Do you think that if an orbiter gets knocked around in this storm, it will ever fly again?
If you put one on a flat bed and roll it at 15 mph over a speed bump, it is done for. Our best efforts at preservation would be to saw each in half and send them on freight trains straight to the Air and Space Museum with as much dignity as possible.
kulakovich
There has been some real progress in solar technology for spliting water. There has been work on solar cells (silcone technology) that would do this and they seem to be making progress on algae that would do the same thing.
The real problem with hydrogen fuel cells in safe storage of hydrogen. Think about that whenever you see someone smoking their cigs while pumping gas.
eric
If it weren't for the space program we probably wouldn't know as much about global warming, and we certainly wouldn't have these cool photographs of hurricanes about to trash part of the space program. :)
Do you really want someone in orbit with a weapon that could literally melt whole cities?
What I want to know is this:
Why didn't anybody think of this sooner?
How long has Florida and the East Coast been having hurricanes that are potentially dangerous and destructive? Although Florida may be an optimal place for shuttle launch, it's not the best place to build...anything.
What dumbass puts an expensive, irreplaceable piece of hardware that could be destroyed by a hurricane in an immobile state in Florida at the height of hurricane season ?!?!?!
I completely agree. As long as space travel remains a municipal project, it will forever lag, forever be subject to budget cuts, forever be subject to the whims of politics. It must move into the private sector. Everyone looks at cost of space flight, the resources of the government and that of private corporations and says "only a government can afford it." However, the fact is governments dont spend nearly as much as the private sector as a whole could afford to spend. Not to mention, once there is an economic reason to do private space flight (be it colonization, mining, etc.), it will fall to the prviate sector to devolope it.
to summarize, manned space flight will not move far beyond what we have now until the private sector is the wind driving it.
--Aaron
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
There are no hurracaines in Bangalore so far I know.
The EU has a much larger combined GDP than the US to play with - and even with the (relatively) paltry "central pot" (EU budget), has plenty of money to spend on spaceflight if they wanted to (scrap agriculture subsidies anyone?). It should be noted that it's doubtful that ESA (not the same as the EU, though mostly EU members), even with more money, would '''want''' to spend it on manned spaceflight - but my point is that potentially the resources are there.
China, much of the population may not have much, but it's a tiny amount of their GDP needed to have sufficient resources for even grander manned spaceflight than they are planning. But to do so would be a gross disservice to the people, for whom the money could be much better used. (The ESA members for similar reasons are unlikely to ever spend as much on spaceflight as the US, even if combined they can spend more by using the same % GDP)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
As much as nostalgia for the 60's counts for, publicly funded manned space exploration has been dead for a while. Heck, the way our fearless leader in the White House runs things, the only way they'll resume REAL interest in NASA is if one of their probes finds hydrocarbon deposits on the Moon or Mars.
Cynicism aside, resource hunting is going to be our only real shot to get private companies to follow in the the footsteps of the X-prize. It's a sad fact, but the 60's space race was fueled completely on Cold War fears and the simple novelty of our newfound abilities as a species. If we're really going to get off our asses and resume exploring with the same urgency we had then, it's not going to be ideology driven.
Take a look at the "Discovery" of the "New World". Do you think the Spanish, English, and Portugese would have spent all their bling on tall ships if the only result was finding an uninhabitable wasteland? No, they were convinced by the astronauts of the time that the New World contained resources galore, and the rest is history.
In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to you!
Apparently, at that location, it has one of the best ways of escaping Earth's gravity with a lot less energy.
There are physics prinicples to back that up, but they elude me. Coriolis effect or something similar.
The shuttle's wings allow a glide re-entry, which saves fuel. The tanks and various systems required for the additional fuel would mass more than the wings. RTFM.
The next stop after L5 is the asteroid belt. Resources galore, easily shoved into new trajectories for slow delivery nearly anywhere in the system.
Somebody show George Bush this post. Oh, wait, I forgot, the Bush Administration are the ones destroying the space program... first Hubble, now this moon base nonsense.
Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out...wait a minute.
Help find a cure for cancer!
no kidding
With comments like those in the article, it's no wonder why our space program is in tatters. The leadership at NASA is unsuitable for the challenge that is pioneering.
Wake up guys, space exploration isn't about economics.
Bill
the bulk of the space program needs to be relocated to a location less vunerable to hurricanes. brownsville or corpus christi still get them, but are subjected to far fewer storms.
in the event of a launch falure you would be able to land in florida or the gulf rather than spain/atlantic.
I know that this is mildly off-topic, but here goes nothing.
This is all well and good that the President wants to send a person to Mars and back, but the problem which exists, and to me is the most significant problem which we did not have with moon missions, is that Mars, unlike our only natural satellite, has a gravity about 75% that of earth. Meaning that the escape velocity is significantly higher on Mars than on the moon and that some tiny fire-cracker puch won't get you into orbit.
So, getting to Mars may not be a problem, but getting off, with enough feul to make it back will be.
In fact, I would guess that you'd need to construct a fairly significant lauch vehicle on Mars just to get off the planet.
Does this remind anyone else of some cheap sci-fi plot? Gigantic storm threatens space program, shuttles can't be moved in time, a dozen intrepid engineer-scientist-rogues trapped in the operations center... when they realize it's an alien-caused storm, the invasion is imminent, and it's up to them to stop it (storm & invasion)?
Maybe it's just me...but I'm expecting to see this on SciFi in a few months.
And so, I bring up the infamous space pen story, for those of you that don't know:
The US space program spent millions developing a ball-point pen that could write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, etc.
"In Soviet Russia" (This is where that comes from), they just use a pencil.
We need to 'just use a pencil', but get our stuff UP THERE nonetheless.
stuff |
Use everyone elses oil and save yours for last (then sell it for high prices / control everything!)
Even better, have business interests in the other countries selling oil.
Aye, the whole thing is a house of cards, and eventually even the American public might get burnt, but the "country"/economy/administration/millionaires won't.
The EU is doing well (we make quite a packet - irregardless of growth/unemployment figures, whopping HUGE trade surplus), but there is the problem that there's not so very much oil here (what there is doesn't cover domestic needs). So eventually, no matter about selling much more than the US (I think the EU is actually responsible for over half the world's trade) - it won't matter cause we'll have to spend so much buying it off the US. And people wonder why we actually take wind-power, fuel efficiency, etc. some bit seriously here (too little too late IMHO though)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
manned space programs are a bad idea. just look at how much more cost-effective the probes that JPL is sending up compared to the manned missions that don't accomplish anything for 10 times the price!
it's cool to say that we have gone to the moon and that we will go to mars, but does that accomplish anything worthwhile that our semi-autonomous probes can't do just as well or better?
>Even if it looks like the eye will hit KSC dead-on, they've still got enough
> time to stick an orbiter on the 747 and get one of them out of there...
>It's looked like that for several days now, and they haven't done this. A good reason is that the shuttles are being
>retrofitted with safety improvements, and aren't really in a state to be put on a 747,
>let alone flown hundreds of miles away.
Furthermore, at a cost of about $1 million dollars, and a weeks worth of time, I don't think there is time or money to afford the effort.
"...bolt the spaceplane to the back of a 747 and ferry it cross-country, an exercise that costs about $1 million and a week's worth of time" http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/dis
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
Didn't we go through this with less angst for
Hurricane Floyd?
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
The national hurricane center has just downgraded Frncis to a category 3 (maximum sustained winds under 130mph). This means even it if hits the space center optimally, there is a good chance the Shuttle pogrom will continue to destroy the American pioneer heritage.
Seastead this.
"The space shuttle is a very expensive white elephant."
-- Story Musgrave, astronaut.
Manned space flight is about ego and politics, not science. Right now we have a lot more pressing issues in this country that money could be spent on than toy plane pipedreams. Like most other government programs, the Space Shuttle is many hundreds of times over budget. It's time to retire this white elephant and get past our Cold War masturbation fantasies.
The launch structures are designed to survive 125 mph winds, and are the sturdiest structures at the cape. With winds currently at 145 mph, there's the distinct possibility that nothing may be left but twisted rubble.
Anybody want to put a price tag on replacing the investment in equipment and facilities that has accumulated over the past 40 years?
I think the loss will make the current expensive adventures in Iraq look like a trip to the gaming arcade.
NASA will be out of the manned space exploration business.
Why do most people (even NASA management themselves) forget that there is more to NASA than just the Space Program? The first "A" in NASA is for "Aeronautics" and the basic research done in NASA labs is responsible for most of the major advances in aviation.
They must really hate to lose the Labor Day weekend revenue.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/
An article in New Zealand places the three orbiters in the Orbiter Processing Facility as of August 9th.
Additionally, it would have been Discovery, not Atlantis, hanging out in the VAB, which it is not currently doing. I was under the mistaken impression for some reason that the 114 were going to launch aboard Atlantis next year.
kulakovich
The shuttle's wings allow a glide re-entry, which saves fuel. The tanks and various systems required for the additional fuel would mass more than the wings. RTFM.
What? Why would a sphere with a parachute need more fuel than a shuttle with wings?
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Given the enormous cost and dubious "real science" benefits of sending bald apes into outer space, perhaps the USA should spend the billions that the manned space program costs on more mundane things like, say, decreasing illiteracy, feeding inner city kids at school, and (golly) perhaps funding a worthwhile not-for-profit health system. The latest mars missions have shown that exploration by machine is less expensive and generates meaningful data. And, at the end of the day, it will probably be far more useful to fund advanced autonomous robotics research than creating habitats so that humans can live in the the near vacuum of space in microgravity.
The Florida coast allows KSC to launch into 39 to 57 degree orbital inclinations.
The one thing Florida can't do is polar and retrograde orbits. Those are launched from Vandenburg AFB on the California coast.
Originally, a single Gulf Coast area near Matagorda, Texas, was being considered to be the Shuttle launch facility, which would provide downrange safety for all types of orbit insertions, but the decision was made to go with a dual east/west coast model with existing KSC and Vandenburg sites.
After the Challenger disaster, a decision was made to end any Shuttle operations from Vandenburg.
Not true. 10,000,000 tons of water, and a near-infinite supply of radiation/meteorite shielding...at a minimum. :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I don't think JIMO or the Prometheus Project is a pipe dream at all. The shuttle is getting long in the tooth, for sure, and we need a newer one. Would a booster type apollo style spacecraft be really all that bad?
This is my sig.
Disney survived Hurricane Charley in August without much destruction other than landscaping. The rest of Orlando had more problems. Disney closed for a couple of days mainly because many employees were cleaning up at home.
Meatwad: Hey, you guys, did you say that it would be easy to get whatever I want, like faster upload speed, because that's what I really want.
Inignot: Getting it is easy. Filling it with illegal substances and sending it across the border is not.
Err: Yeah, see, those dogs, they can smell anything. So you gotta kick 'em in the throat.
Meatwad: Well hey now, guys, look. I do not want to do anything illegal here... but I would kill somebody... in front of their own mama to get even 128kb/s upstream. And if anybody testifies against me, I'll gouge their eyes out.
First hurricane ever? (Comic guy voice)
You'd think the shuttle facilities would have been hit by hurricanes before, seeing as how Florida has hurricances EVERY YEAR.
Are we seeing an excessive year, or is Florida just having bad luck? Some global warming pessimists predicted more hurricanes.
They're safe in space!
Florida stole the election for Bush in 2000. God got tired of hearing the republicans taking His name in vain, and is taking revenge.
However, we can move some smaller number of people. Then within a generation, it will be equivalent to having moved a larger number of people, as all their offspring are now already off the earth to begin with.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As you noticed, it matters more where you put your money than does your intent in putting money there. Putting more money into NASA programs will not result in more human space exploration. Taking money away from NASA will result in moer human space exploration.
Seastead this.
Tomorrow's headline: RIP Jane Goodall, attacked and eaten by chimps.
The next day: Stephen Hawking mysteriously disappears, strange radiation detected from unseen mass in his office.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From the NASA web site...
An interesting article regarding NASA preparations for Frances.
Check my journal for gmail invites!
perhaps shuttle Atlantis will make it to its namesake?
Where they shot the rescue vehicle through the eye of a hurricane. Perhaps the US should consider annexing a small portion of a land bound equatorial country in hopes of having a better launch site. Maybe Colombia, where at least they'd have good coffee.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Fischer made the pen as a marketing ploy, privately funded, and gave them to NASA.
The Soviets, on the other hand, had to deal with pencil shavings and graphite dust.
My bet is the contractors that built the shuttles wouldn't even TOUCH a contract to try to build another set of them.
I take it you've not worked for a defense/gov contractor? For better or for worse, if there's the smell of money, there's a bid.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
is "crossing your fingers" a valid contingency plan?
--When it's my time, I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather -- not screaming like all the passengers in his car
If the -thought- that a Hurricane might cause serious damage to a program is enough for someone to publicly comment that it could halt the program ... -that- is what gives me pause. They seem to be trying at every juncture to make sure we know how fragile the Shuttle program is. Right now I have to think that NASA is -hoping- that hurricane will come by and do just enough damage to call this one.
... but if it's going to die after the shuttle, it will die after the shuttle. If that is the case, better it do it now while no one else has been killed. The Shuttle program is too far past it's prime.
... at this point I feel like Shuttle work has not been exploring for some time. Space Station to some degree yes, but that is being fueled by Russian capsules. And yes, we could go back to our own capsule programs, but that will not be for exploration, it will be for maintenance.
If things are that bad, find a new vehicle. What? No funding for a replacement? Then have the balls -halt- the Shuttle program without one. The only way NASA will ever get the budget needed to take a next step will be if everyone knows that it is that next step or get off the track. As long as the Shuttles "just work" there will not be enough consensus to keep progressing.
I'm a supporter of manned U.S. space exploration
NOTE: "exploration" is the key word there
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
With all this talk about the destruction of the FL Launch site, does any one remember Vandenberg AFB? Somewhere in the back of my head, I remember there bsing mention of Shuttle launch capabilities from there. Can anyone confirm this?
For sufficiently small values of infinity.
X-33 was started and along the way. It was 90% done, with exterior and engines tested. What was left was the fuel tanks. Bush 43 killed the program (at least from the civilian program). Interesting that the tanks were completed. At this point, Bush could turn over everything to Lockheed, who asked for all of it to continue the project.
Blame clinton for a number of things, but it is time, that Bush43 start taking blame where blame is due.
Taking money away from NASA will result in moer human space exploration.
This statement is non sequitur. You may not agree with how NASA is run, or even government programs in general. However, that opinion doesn't turn Space Ship 1 into an orbital vehicle much less one that can get to the moon. There is nothing "waiting in the wings" to replace NASA. So if you killed NASA now there wouldn't be any organization that would be able to provide human access to space. The military might be able to create crewed vechile of its own within a 5-10 year time frame. Other than that it will probably be at least 15-20 years before private companies can offer more than a brief joy ride, provided they think there is a profitable enough activity outside of LEO to begin with.
So how will reducing NASA's funding increase human space exploration again?
Hmmm... the "greater than" symbol disappears when posting messages... didn't know that.
I'm surprised that there is so much worry over hurricane force winds against a launch vehicle that is designed to travel significantly faster than those wind speeds.
Unless, of course, the whole space exploration program is faked and the shuttles are just balsa wood models.
--When it's my time, I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather -- not screaming like all the passengers in his car
Be aware of Horricane!! They are real pain in the neck...
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
Among other things, as of 1:45 PM EDT the hurricane is still a solid Category 4 with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour (and gusts to more than that), no, they don't know exactly where landfall is going to be, (there's pictures here but the 4-5 day error has been up to 250 miles, and the 2-3 day error has been a tad less), and if you're anywhere within 80 miles of the eye you've got hurricane force winds.
There are disagreements in the meteorlogical community as to whether or not the hurricane will take the Vero Beach Path or recurve north to around Jacksonville or by the Georgia state line.
In any event, the likelihood of a direct hit on Titusville is a long shot, but then again, there's probably a forty to fifty mile length of the coastline that will experience major hurricane strength winds (110 - 120 mph) somewhere, and when you consider there's 350 miles of coastline warned, the odds are quite higher than they would normally be.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
You complain about hauling wings in and out of orbit and yet you want to descend the moon's gravity well to make a base? That's insane! Why waste fuel hauling your stuff up and down when there are perfectly good trojan points... the moon's resources are lame and not worth the fuel costs.
So, why bother with the Lunar Trojan points for a base? Nothing there at all. Better to build a station at geosynchronous orbit, if we aren't going to the moon.
The shuttle's wings allow a glide re-entry, which saves fuel. The tanks and various systems required for the additional fuel would mass more than the wings. RTFM.
And yet...Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, Soyuz, etc. didn't have wings, and managed to get down nicely. The Shuttle's wings are an enormous waste, unless we are planning to bring large heavy things down from orbit. And they're not optimal even then.
The next stop after L5 is the asteroid belt. Resources galore, easily shoved into new trajectories for slow delivery nearly anywhere in the system.
Hmm, ~2.4Km/s deltaV to deliver lunar raw materials to Earth. ~5.5Km/s deltaV to deliver asteroidal material to Earth. So delivering asteroidal materials takes longer, and costs more deltaV. Great trade-off, don't you think?
Seriously. We need the lunar base, as a construction point for more ships, if nothing else. Build the structures on the moon, add rocket engines and control systems made on Earth, add lunar oxygen and terrestrial hydrogen for lifesupport, water, and fuel (don't want to take lunar water for this - Moon is a Harsh Mistress, remember? Using lunar water for fuel/reaction mass would be disastrous in the long term).
After we have the moon base, we move along to Mars and the outer system. Venus can wait, unless we choose to terraform the place. Mercury would be nice, but requires too much deltaV to reach easily.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And alchemy, for all its occult silliness, was the necessary precursor to modern chemistry.
"I still don't get how anybody can even THINK of abandoning warm climates. Sure, fire is dangerous and hard to control. Sure, it's easier to stay where warmth isn't a problem. But CRIPES, people. It's an adventure. It's a new experience for the human race. That, IN AND OF ITSELF, is more than enough justification for continuing."
"I still don't get how anybody can even THINK of abandoning hunting and gathering. Sure, wild grasses and animals aren't very cooperative and don't want to be domesticated. Sure, it's easier to find things where they grow naturally. But CRIPES, people. It's an adventure. It's a new experience for the human race. That, IN AND OF ITSELF, is more than enough justification for continuing."
The truth is that expanding our horizons and testing our limits always pays off in big ways down the road.
Let's face it. Humans aren't built for the universe. Put down the science-fiction magazine and think about reality for a while, just because we want something to be so doesn't make it so.
We have to go and make it so.
DNA just wants to be free...
And then we flush all the commitments we've made to the ISS program completely down the toilet.
The STS program is the heavy lifter for ISS modules. Without that, you can pretty much write off the entire project... And the US isn't the only country with an investment into the project.
/sig
I don't know what's worse-- the Geraldo quality news story, or the slashdotter over-reaction. If everyone had waited a few hours (Noon Eastern, to be exact), the updated track forecast would have been out.
Guess what? It's going to track far southwest of the Cape by current estimates, and the local forecast, is only calling for tropical force winds to maybe category 1 hurricane winds at the Cape. Science will be safe. Only families and lives will be destroyed in the next few days. Comforting, huh?
The far bigger threat to NASA is the budgetary process in Congress. If every writer in this thread wrote a letter to Congress, rather than worrying out loud about the weather, maybe we could get NASA real resources. In the mean time, send a little support to the Red Cross.
Don't say your mama didn't warn you!
Todays edition of Sesame Street is brought to you by the phrases "white elephant" and "good riddance", and the word "boondoggle".
We've been stuck in a rut with the shuttle program. Since it is not likely that NASA will be putting the orbiters out for a yard sale, perhaps a hurricane would be just the thing to kick our space program in the ass and innovate.
The shuttles should not fly again. They missed all their design targets (being able to fly every couple of weeks for cheap deliveries to space). They are out of date. They have been massively over budget since the very beginning. They will not be certified to fly after 2010, so we can get at most five years of flights out of them. How many flights is that? A dozen flights?
Most importantly, they are not safe, and never will be safe. Would you want a family member to be on the shuttle? I wouldn't.
If Burt Rutan and his crew can get to space in a reusable vehicle on a budget of $20mil, then it seems clear to me that we should not continue pouring money into the black hole that is the shuttle program. I realize that Rutan's craft is not designed to achieve orbit, and it needs to be going about twenty times as fast as it does to actually get into orbit, but my point remains: let's look at some new technologies and innovative ways, or else let's look back in history and go with huge, cheap, reliable kerosene-burning Saturn rockets (perhaps Made in China(tm)), but let's not build expensive and dangerous missions based on layers of band-aids(tm) and duct tape. Wasting billions to squeeze half a dozen more flights out of an obsolete and dangerous launch system is absolutely the wrong way to spend money. I would rather have us all on the ground researching innovative ways to get to space, rather than wasting money on a known dead-end.
Posted anonymous of course.
Maybe if the Chinese kicked over our flag on the moon and planted their own we would actually get our collective asses in gear and accomplish something outside of Earth's orbit.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
The most obvious question that I need to ask: "Why aren't they moving the orbiters to safety?" I remember seeing them piggyback on 747s when I was a kid. While this does nothing to protect the launch facilities, how different are the facilities from others such as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California? Also, "why are the launch facilities in Florida in the first place?" I always thought the weather was more volatile there than in the Mojave of California, where the shuttle lands when Florida is unruly. It was amazing to once hear the shuttle roar above my house bound for the Mojave during its re-entry.
Total Loss of the old would be a good thing for the space program.
It might be expensive - but really its not.
When the US buys a Space Shuttle - it buys it from the US. Since the US is burning money to keep the economy afloat anyway - HOW it burns the money is moot.
WHERE is not moot. And spending it on NASA is a good deal from the money. Most jobs are in the US, much of the money perculates - rebuilding will advance the cause of education, and lift salaries for engineers in the US - which in turn will attract people who otherwise would become goddammn lawyers into the productive arts - which will boost the GNP which will increase the tax base locally - and which finally will pay for the new shuttle.
An act of God is a terrible thing to waste.
AIK
There is no economically, scientifically or technologically defensible reason to return Shuttle to flight and to complete ISS. There is no reason to keep going on these twin technological dead ends. Completion of ISS will cost about $40-50B. Wouldn't that amount of money be put to better use on basic and applied research in furtherance of the Moon-Mars program? Why waste the money on a dead end? The only obvious answers: political and diplomatic expediency.
OK, I'll admit that ISS assembly has contributed to the knowledge base of "how to live and work in space." But how much more will be learned by repeating the same sorts of assembly operations that have already been performed? Is that knowledge worth $50B?
How about the remaining research goals of ISS, namely the effects of microgravity and space radiation on humans? Given that we have one known method of mitigating microgravity (namely, centrifugal acceleration, presumably using tethers), it's hard to take NASA's research program seriously. They are searching for an excuse for ISS, not a practical solution to a real problem. The radiation problem is hardly isolated to humans: much more effective (and ethical) research can be performed on Petri dishes full of bio-goo than on human subjects.
If I offered $50B to go investigate these problems and propose solutions, no reasonable person would go about it this way.
I would have preferred for NASA to have turned away from Shuttle and ISS based on rational analysis, but if a hurricane does it for them, that's fine too. Maybe we'll see the Shuttles flying sooner than we expected.
And, yes, I do know how the game is played.
Seastead this.
Hello McFly?
Anyone quoting Biff Tannen to emphasize their argument automatically loses said argument. For more information see subsection 3 of Godwin's Law.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Bush didn't kill it. The X-33 prototype crashed. As did the Delta Clipper. I'd actually put more stock in the Delta Clipper than I would have put in the X-33. The composite tanks were not tested, the hydrogen slush was amazingly tricky, the body design had not been verified, etc., etc., etc. It was simply too many technical advances in one vehicle, and no wiggle room for technologies that didn't work. The X-33 ended the only way it could end.
Millions of dollars that were sunk into a prototype went up in flames when it tipped over during landing.
there never were any shuttle operations from vandenburg - sadly! would be really cool to be in a polar orbiting shuttle
on slashdot who gets how government funded research should work.
Your "parachute" might not resemble a normal parachute much... unless you plan to do like the Soyuz, and just bail out the pilot and flight computer while the majority of the spacecraft smashes into the earth like a hypersonic missile. A parachute that could decelerate something of the mass of a wingless shuttle doing a ballistic re-entry might be pretty gigantic, and would have to have some amazing strength and heat-resistance.
But you may be right - I haven't figured out the weight penalty for a sphere with a parachute. Your sphere would need to be much, much stronger than a glider (unless you use the Soyuz hard"landing" approach) so it might be heavier, thus requiring more fuel to boost initially.
Hmm... needs more maths. I suspect gliding re-entry is still going to win, though.
Every promising space system was killed, just as it was getting down to the demonstration phase. DC-X, X33, hell, the X38 lifeboat got killed too, and it was passing tests left and right.
Hell, with the X38 we could save a Soyuz rocket a year, and leave astronuts on the space station for longer than 6 months.
Well, I mean they do have a 747 used just for moving the shuttles around. They don't need to go far, and they have about 36 hours until this thing hits Florida. Load as much as you can, as fast as you can, and get it out of there! You can't tell me that they never considered this to be a possibility, in THE most hurricane-prone area in the country.
Or can you? Did nobody ever think that a kickass storm might come barreling through one day and wreck everything left on-site? Some moron actually put hundreds of billions of dollars at risk because of a lack of an emergency relocation plan?
Wow.
We spent millions of dollars and then threw it away because it tipped over? What the hell happened to putting the wheels farther apart and continuing?! Sounds to me like it damn well was Bush's fault!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Now, it's true that there was some inflation in the intervening years, so those nominal dollars weren't worth in the 1970s and 1980s as the Apollo dollars were worth in the 1960s and 1970s -- but it's still staggering. By the time Fred was finally cut, NASA had spent more money on it than on Apollo, with no metal cut and no structures built at all -- let alone lunar orbit achieved.
People don't hate the US because of the money, people hate the US because of the arrogance and ignorance.
I have met hundreds of Americans both inside and outside the US who simply can't understand that everyone in the world doesn't want to be just like them. Assuming that everyone wants to live there - we don't - I would feel safer in any third world country that most places I have been in the US. I'd probably see less poverty too.
If you want to have your own quaint system that's fine. You want to call it democracy when it clearly isn't, well I don't really care - it's just semantics. But don't start crying because nobody likes you when your nation systematically rapes and pillages the rest of the world.
The vikings and the mongol hordes did less damage.
To bring it slightly back on topic - fuck the shuttles. They are a monumental waste of money. A manned program is all well and good but how about something new?
And to the guy who said that if the shuttle program dies then we are stuck here forever - stop being so melodramtic. The shuttles aren't helping any of your hobby horses and the sun isn't about to go boom for at least a few years (5 billion??). Our entire "civilisation" could collapse and be rebuilt hundreds of times before we have to get off the rock.
and I won't be here so fuck it. Yes I'm an arrogant prick but at least I know it.
Please. Some of the Atlas V configurations are more than capable of lifting the remaining space station components. With the habitat module cancelled (arguably the heaviest of the remaining U.S. modules), Atlas V 551 (~20,000kg) (not yet available, IIRC) could lift almost twice as much as the Shuttle.
Personally, I prefer having some attitudinal control during re-entry.
Personally, I'd prefer to survive re-entries after losing control.
When that happens to the Soyuz, the crew is lost in the wilderness for 10 hours until a retrieval team eventually finds them. When the Space Shuttle messes up a re-entry, the crew is scattered into a pinkish mist spread over 3 states.
unless you plan to do like the Soyuz, and just bail out the pilot and flight computer while the majority of the spacecraft smashes into the earth like a hypersonic missile.
Yep. That's the way to do it. Considering that building a whole new disposable spacecraft is less expensive (and more reliable, and even more scalable) than refurbishing a reusable vehicle, that's the prudent approach. (Building the disposable vehicle is cheaper, because the vehicle itself is a lot simpler, since it doesn't need features to survive re-entry)
Hmm... needs more maths. I suspect gliding re-entry is still going to win, though.
Wrong. It's not even close.
The shuttle's glide re-entry is a totally useless, counterproductive feature. Even if the wings did cause re-entry to need less fuel, it's not enough of the savings to make up for having needed to lift those wings into orbit in the first place. The wings were a drag on the liftoff, and a drag on all manuvering done in space. Just having them there increased the fuel-usage of every other mission activity.
The winged spaceplane is a project that justifies itself in terms of itself. The wing features allow the Shuttle to be reusable. That's good, because the Shuttle is expensive. And the Shuttle is expensive because it has wings....
Isn't it ironic that NASA tried to cut funding for TRMM, a measly $28M for continued operations? Makes you wonder if hurricanes have a sense of humor.
However, even as a layman I can point to the weather as the single greatest reason the US Space Program needs to relocate.
Wrong. The most important factors are access to useful orbits and downrange safty. Cape Canaveral is well situated for geosynchronous launches because of its low latitude. Orbit plane changes take a lot of energy. It is also well situated for servicing high inclination orbits, like the one used by the space station, and Molniya orbits used by some intelligence satellites. The only thing you can't do well from the Cape is launch to polar or sun synchronous orbits. That is why we have Vandenberg in California. Together these launch sites provide superb access to space and unmatched range safety. The American south west is a lousy choice because so many people live along the ascent path.
an ill wind that blows no good
...in Japan!
[Why buy one when you can have two at twice the price?]
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So the solution to the problem is to use up our energy even faster by blasting enormous amounts of mass into space? And when we get to space, then what? Are there oil deposits on Mars that only you know about?
The point is, the amount of usable energy elsewhere in the solar system is no greater than it is on earth. In fact, there's probably less - almost certainly, there are no major amounts of hydrocarbons, nothing like coal, and probably no more fissile materials than we have at home. In any case, getting and bringing any potential energy supplies back to earth would be prohibitively expensive.
If nothing else, we have plenty of fission fuel on earth, and given the concept of the breeder reactor, energy is not a factor that forces us into space. The only way any large scale movement into space will happen is if it becomes profitable to do so, and I've never heard any scenario in which it does become profitable.
Sean
From one perspective you may be right about the outcome, the millionaires may be able to salvage something when the house of cards comes tumbling down, but unless we (and the rest of the world including Europe!) get a lot more serious about alternative energy very very soon, there aren't going to be many havens to run to.
Let alone a space program!
Delivering militantly anti-commercial music to all two people who care!
I'm sure the Space Center is an important national treasure, but I am more concerned about the lives of the people here, including my own. I wish the space shuttles well, please wish me well. I will be leaving for a shelter when the mandatory evacuation begins in 30 minutes. I'll be saying my prayers for all the rest of you Floridians, and hope to see everyone back here in a few days.
So delivering asteroidal materials takes longer, and costs more deltaV. Great trade-off, don't you think?
The factor supporting asteroidal materials is that the potentially could have high concentrations of useful metals. No proof of that, of course. But we do know that they're not common on the moon.
(don't want to take lunar water for this - Moon is a Harsh Mistress, remember? Using lunar water for fuel/reaction mass would be disastrous in the long term).
Not really. Water is water. Importing earth water to prevent using moon water is no better than using moon water first and then importing from earth to replace it.
We'll still have Britney Spears! We'll just pull her out of cryogenic storage and RULE THE WORLD!
Nicely? I don't think I've ever heard a Soyuz landing described that way. But in any case those are non-reusable craft, if you're going to compare them to the shuttle we shouldn't even be discussing wings at all. The argument you want is reuseable versus one-use craft. Disposable spacecraft can't perform the Shuttle's mission, because reusability is a mission goal. Since we've used it to bring Westar and Palapa-B down already, it definitely works optimally enough. And the Shuttle's a pretty incredibly crappy design, incidentally; I preferred the designs with air-breathing engines that the USAF rejected... one of them was designed to carry a dozen people in shirtsleeve comfort.
Care to explain the derivation of those numbers? Seems awfully simplistic to me. What kind of trajectories are you limiting yourself to? What use are you making of other local masses for acceleration and deceleration?
Nonetheless, I will cheerfully concede that it takes much longer, and time ~= money. But the resources should be better, lots of nearly everything in the asteroid belt the astronomer boys tell me. And don't forget the trojan asteroids if you don't want to enter the belt proper.
Hands down, RAH's best book. But, anyway, I still disagree. It could be a close call (because it would be easier to construct spaceships in low gravity than floating in space) but I think the light flimsy ships that you could quickly spew out of a trojan factory would get more done for far less investment than building an industrial base on the moon capable of using the local resources.
I think you like gravity too much... why bother with planets at all? Leave Mars and Venus to the BEMs and live in rotating space habitats constructed from moonlets, asteroids and eventually comets.
You, my man, are a bona-fide American patriot! Damn, I didn't think there were any of us left since the religious fanatics and Randites redefined the word "conservative".
The Buran
Built by the Russians, looked like the shuttle externally (although it was different internally).
Ok, so they may not have FLOWN reuseable engines, but they designed & built engines to do it.
FGD 135
It's cheaper to launch nearer the equator (ideally, right on the equator) since the earth at the equator can provide an additional thrust for rockets, in addition to what bhmcintosh mentioned (Florida is a peninsula, etc.).
Boycott Sony
Name one.
In the years since the X-Prize has been offered, no company has even made an attempt at it (although Scaled Composites and others are making preparations, I seriously doubt that winning the prize will offset the expenditures needed to get there).
The reason private companies aren't going to space: there's no money in it.
Sean
But your comments about the relative saftey of Soyuz versus the Shuttle are complete bullshit. The Soyuz has killed all its passengers more times than the shuttle has - look it up. And while the Soyuz has a reasonable (in Soviet terms) record over its entire history, it has had many more accidents, including fatal and near-fatal accidents, and extreme failures to reach targeted landing sites, than any manned American spacecraft.
And where do you get that stuff about "wings being a drag on manuvering done in space"? DRAG is not the word you want. Try again.
Crap, I don't even like the Shuttle, I wanted to build the gigantic space plane that flew most of the way to LEO instead. How'd I end up defending the damn thing?
You look at the situation in Africa where a lot of aid has gone in the past, quite a bit from the US. Has it helped? Not really. If anything, it encouraged the people there to have more children and be more dependent on aid than anything else. The result of this was needier people and more of them. That is when the aid actually reached the people. Mostly, the aid was just enriching some local warlord and reinforcing his power base.
What would it take to effectively distribute aid to people in places like Africa and Asia? It would take a lot of military support to fight off the warlords and convince them that they can't steal. The country's own police and army are incapable of this and often are either bribed or actively taking part in the corruption and theft. Do we need to go into Sudan with a large military force to take over and enforce laws? Who's laws? Wouldn't that just be seen as more "imperialism" on the part of the US?
I think you can forget expanding aid programs. They do not help the people they are intended to, at least not long term. At best the people get more dependent on ourside help. At worst, we are supporting people that will someday attack their neighbors and cause more trouble.
I think you also have to consider that helping starving people that cannot be fed from local resources isn't necessarily the best idea. These people are starving because of a lack of local resources. Until that situation changes, they can never be self-supporting. With that, are you prepared to commit to supporting these people forever? Because that is what it would require. Not only the people that are their today, but the children that come into the world because they aren't starving anymore. Let's assume these people are modern and well-educated so only have three children per family that survive to adulthood. That means a 50% population increase per generation. So, if there are 100,000 starving people there today, there will be 150,000 utterly dependent people there in 30 years. Since these people are hardly well-educated, this is but a small sample of what is going to happen. This isn't a resource problem as such, but it is a local issue. While fat Americans and somewhat less fat Europeans have no problems with starvation, just moving the food over to Africa doesn't solve many problems. It just creates more, and it encourages people to live in areas where food cannot be grown to support the population.
I suppose one "solution" to the problem is to take all of the people in, say Sudan, and move them to another country that doesn't have that kind of a problem. That would take quite an effort, since the whole point would be to move everyone out - not just the people that can't be supported comfortably. Why? Because 100 years ago the land could support the much smaller population that was there and it outgrew the local resources. So, unless you want to do this again n 50 or 100 years you have to take all of the people out.
The fundamental problem is that that there are just places where the population has grown all out of proportion to the ability of the local area to support. This isn't a problem for Inuit or South Seas Islanders - they had (have?) rather brutal ways of dealing with population issues. So, they can survive and do very well in a limited resource environment. Most of the places where people are starving today have not had to deal with these issues and do not have such simplistic, brutal ways of addressing them. So, the population grows and becomes even more dependent on ourside support. Would the US be doing anyone a favor by trying to feed the world? I don't think so. We might reduce some short-term suffering, but the result in the long term would be more suffering on a larger scale.
... and a drag on all manuvering done in space.
There's an air in space museum.
... Maybe we can stop throwing money at it, let the ISS fiasco fall from the sky (after the humans aboard flee, of course ;), and start building newer systems on newer technology that are more sustainable and that will get us to the Moon on a regular basis and Mars within 20 years...
:////
At this point the shuttle is a circle-jerk for kludgers
The X-33 never crashed. It was never put on the pad. The clipper did crash, but X-33 was killed by GWB.
The X-33 should have been finished and the technology released to any american company that could use it create a new craft. As it is, most likely, the tanks, and the insulators will be used in new crafts. Hopefully, some company will examine the engines and decide to do them. Those had to be some of the safest engines that have been designed yet (fewer moving and stressed parts).
The alternative would have been disasterous.
"You complain about hauling wings in and out of orbit and yet you want to descend the moon's gravity well to make a base? That's insane! Why waste fuel hauling your stuff up and down when there are perfectly good trojan points... the moon's resources are lame and not worth the fuel costs."
A lunar base would require less material over it's lifespan.
Take a cue (clue?) from the great SF writers:
1) Land equipment on moon
2) Drill tunnels in vacuum under surface several meters
3) Seal ends of tunnel
4) pressurize tunnel with cheap gas (anything readily decomposed from the lunar soil and solar power
5) spray polymer in tunnel, which will follow all the small fractures due to pressure and then cure, effectively sealing tunnel without huge effort of creating an airtight space station skin.
The ability to make a _large_ base with minimal materials, and the ability to have gravity (better for humans) is a good thing. In my opinion (IANA rocket scientist) the advantages well make up for being in the gravity well (which is much smaller than Earths). Also a colony is better in a gravity environment as full term mammalian gestation in zero G's is unknowns (admitted low G's may also have issues).
Just my 2c about the whole thing.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Yes the Russians had a lot of firsts. The trouble was they stayed with the "easy" game and that is LEO.
Whats worse is that the shuttle has put us into the LEO trap. Yeah it is easy to get there, but it is also to get stuck there. The ISS was just a compounding of that same error.
To truly advance in space including both exploration and research we need to leave orbit. That means the moon first and then out from there.
LEO is no better than kicking the dirt down here.
Who really aspires to LEO other than tourist?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Maybe NASA should pack the shuttle in foam to protect it from the hurricane. What damage can soft and fluffy foam do?
Importing Earth Water to replace Lunar water makes no sense at all. Importing Earth HYDROGEN to add to Lunar Oxygen for fuel/reaction mass is a much better propostion. 1/9th the mass to be moved, and the moon has a lot of Oxygen bound up in the rock.
The factor supporting asteroidal materials is that the potentially could have high concentrations of useful metals. No proof of that, of course. But we do know that they're not common on the moon.
"Useful metals"? I happen to think aluminium is useful. And Iron. And Magnesium. All of which were found on the Moon by Apollo. Hard to extract? Perhaps, but we do have a lot of solar energy, and no atmosphere to obscure it there.
Are there other metals we'll want? Sure, lots. But we won't want too many others in large quantities. And so we can build most of a spacecraft (by mass) with lunar raw materials, once we have the base in place. WAY cheaper and easier than building it on Earth and putting it into orbit, given the original investment in infrastructure.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Rubbish. For one thing, the mist is quite black and charred. For another, it's 7 states, not 3.
Manned space programs take many years to develop. Even if Bush 43 had made it his biggest priority, even 4 years later we wouldn't have a new orbiter ready yet. A replacement orbiter should have been appropriated for and begun development during the Bush 41 or Clinton administrations. If they had done that, we'd have a new class of orbiters by now. They did make a new orbiter, just turned out that they forgot it needed fuel tanks, or something like that, memories a little fuzzy.
Or this Site
"Households with the least incidence of poverty (13 percent) are those with 1-2 children, but those with up to 4 children also have lower incidence of poverty than the national rate. Poverty jumps dramatically to 31 percent for households with 7-8 children, and increases further to 34 percent for those with at least 9 children. "
Genes procreate until the cost of additional procreation threatens the survival of the entire gene.
That is how genes compete.
AIK
Care to explain the derivation of those numbers? Seems awfully simplistic to me. What kind of trajectories are you limiting yourself to? What use are you making of other local masses for acceleration and deceleration?
Sure! Lunar to Earth assumptions : we need to move that stuff at lunar escape velocity pointing somewhere at Earth. Lunar escape velocity is 2370-odd m/s, so that much deltaV, rounded up, should do nicely.
Asteroid to Earth: Assume an asteroid in a circular, coplanar orbit at 500Gm from the sun. Hohmann transfer orbit with sufficient eccentricity to reach Earth. Round up from 5400-odd m/s. Realistically, most asteroids aren't in coplanar orbits, and would take more deltaV.
I did not bother to assume a gravity-whip around Mars. However, to do so, we must have a MINIMUM 3.2km/s deltaV, just to reach Mars.
Jupiter could be useful for a gravity assist as well, and would require a minimum 1.4Km/s deltaV.
We'd prolly want to stop those shipments before they slammed into the ground. When we add in deltaV to bring those rocks to a stop in LEO, we get something on the order of 5.6Km/s for lunar material, 10.8Km/s for asteroids the straight path, 7.7Km/s w/ Jupiter assist, 6.8Km/s w/ Mars assist. Note that the two assists are absolute minimums, assuming that we can insert things into position precisely, and even then are, at best, rough numbers. Note further that either of those assists will be useful (with those deltaV's) no more often than every 11 years (Jupiter), or two years (Mars), and that doesn't take into account how often Earth is in proper position for such an orbit.
Nonetheless, I will cheerfully concede that it takes much longer, and time ~= money. But the resources should be better, lots of nearly everything in the asteroid belt the astronomer boys tell me. And don't forget the trojan asteroids if you don't want to enter the belt proper.
The Trojans are slightly farther away, deltaV-wise, than my original assumption for an asteroid.
I do not argue that the asteroids are not important. We want to use them as quickly as possible. I am arguing that getting to the asteroids will be MUCH harder without a foothold on the moon.
Hands down, RAH's best book. But, anyway, I still disagree. It could be a close call (because it would be easier to construct spaceships in low gravity than floating in space) but I think the light flimsy ships that you could quickly spew out of a trojan factory would get more done for far less investment than building an industrial base on the moon capable of using the local resources.
How much material is available in Earth's L4 & 5 positions? Enough to build the factories, plus the ships? It's really expensive to ship things up from Earth, so we need to boostrap ourselves as much as possible. The more we get from out there, the less we have to bring up from the ground at $1000+/pound.
Gravity isn't really why I want to use the moon. A 2000 mile thick rock is a lot of raw materials. Way more than L4 & L5. And sending a ship to Jupiter's Trojans from Earth would be painful.
I think you like gravity too much... why bother with planets at all? Leave Mars and Venus to the BEMs and live in rotating space habitats constructed from moonlets, asteroids and eventually comets.
I have to admit a slight prejudice for planets. However, I mention them purely as convenient waypoints. Except for Mercury, which will be a treasure trove of heavier metals, once we can get there and back easily. Space habitats are the very long-term future for humanity. And we'll want some of them in operation early on. But it's easier to describe space exploration and colonization in terms of Mars/Jupiter/Venus/Mercury/etc. than in terms of "2004 J-35", or something like that.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The venture financiers left.
All that proves is that the venture financiers didn't believe they could compete with McDonnel Douglas. Whether or not they were funded by by the government, or private customers McDonnel Douglas had a huge advantage of personnel and resources.
Sorry but the real difference is that when the government fails technically, it has frequently -sed options, not available to private sources of capital, that are inconsistent with actual advancement of state of the art.
These include:
- Obstruction of private competitors that may cause political embarrassment to favored government vendors.
- Deep pockets -- very deep pockets. Pockets deep enough that it starts making sense to actively inhibit cost-effective operations because you can buy votes in so many districts if you keep the costs up.
Finally, its not good enough to say that private access to space is better done by private concerns while manned access to space is done by government. The whole reason government gets into manned access to space is for political appeal. This is the same sort of thing that makes adventure funding available for X-Prize competitors -- and the same arguments that work for access to space being more economical if done by private concerns work for manned exploration as well. Just get the damn government out of the way and set up the proper incentives for private concerns.Seastead this.
Since you mention it, IAA (former) rocket scientist. My dad is a (retired) rocket scientist, and my brother-in-law still works for NASA.
But that's almost meaningless really, I've known lots of boneheaded rocket scientists as well as many gifted amateurs. Look at Carmack, who is something of both.
Anyway, we're both guessing on the relative costs. You think the equipment to build a useful, self-supporting moon base could be lifted for less expense than building and maintaining an orbital base. I strongly disagree. Some of the costs are completely indeterminate; your low-grav colonists would have completely different health issues than my spin-grav space-dwellers, for example. Others are estimable; it would cost far more to lift the initial habitat to the moon than to an earth/lunar trojan point, but eventually the lunarians could produce their own building bricks which the trojanites could never do.
We can't actually know until we try it. So let's do both, and I will bet you here and now $1000 my way is more efficient than yours for establishing a functional presence in space.
You hear that, NASA? Get on the damn stick, we got a bet here.
Answer = a properly applied small rock in the right place at the right time. Unless they can come up with some way to take out 100 sunburns at the same time, we most likely would lose carriers pretty quickly in any asian shooting war, or north atlantic for that matter. And don't forget assymetrical warfare, we have foreign freighters and airliners entering our space all the time,using the Q ship principle, a simultaneous series of atomic detonations in every major seaport and airport would put a serious dent in our ability to resupply anyplace. And if it was a first strike in coordination with other strikes, well, who knows.
Have to split, so I can't give you the lengthy reply you deserve. But: a 2000 mile thick rock with even distribution of materials could easily require lifting more mining/refining/etc crap than you'd ever need to build a fleet in space. And if you are going to do it with von neumann machines, it'll take longer than getting resources from the belt given present technologies. AFAIK there are no currently known mineral concentrations on the moon (probably small ones at major asteroid impacts) so it would not be wise to assume they exist.
As for the earth/lunar L4 and L5 points, nothing there but some dust and the odd missing bolt or wrench from the space race. Earth/solar better, but still nothing you could really build with. Probably valuable to sell to hyper-rich geeks, but that's it. I was planning on lifting everything, and figuring it would cost less than lifting mohole machines and silicon factories to the moon.
Um, as far as local masses, I wasn't counting planets as the only useable gravitational mass available in the asteroid belt. For example, a very very tiny push on a nice chunk of nickel-iron could send it on a multi-pass slingshot around Ceres, out to a decel pass by earth or luna (better put some attitude controls on that rock just in case) and thence gracefully into earth/lunar L5. I don't actually remember how to use planets for decel, though, and I gotta go so I can't look it up right now... something about leading the orbit. See what I mean about relative orbital position and speed not really being as important as what's in the neighborhood? Ceres is pretty big as I recall.
Thanks for the engaging conversation. Sorry about the disorganized reply.
Indirectly you are confirming what I have felt for many years now:
NASA simply needs to get out of the space launch business altogether. This is not an area where real hard science is being done, except for alternative launch systems, and the only real alternative to chemical propulsion would be to have nuclear powered rockets, like Orion, and even that is better done in space than near the ground.
NASA needs to be on the frontier, like going to Mars or back to the Moon. They need to be the people pushing the envelope and doing things that havn't been done before. Even building a "reusable spacecraft" is old news, and from many viewpoints a poorly done design at that.
But: a 2000 mile thick rock with even distribution of materials could easily require lifting more mining/refining/etc crap than you'd ever need to build a fleet in space. And if you are going to do it with von neumann machines, it'll take longer than getting resources from the belt given present technologies.
If we're talking Von Neumann machines, we're not talking current technology. I was assuming nothing more than what we have now.
However, "building a fleet in space" doesn't stop, if this is to be done right. It is a more or less permanent process, requiring a stable base of operations with certain characteristics - minimal deltaV requirements to get to-from the place to pretty much anywhere else (which is why Earth sucks as that base of operations), and a ready supply of the more commonly used materials (the moon qualifies, in that the majority of the mass required for a spacecraft are structural metals and oxygen). Sure, many asteroids fit just as well. But first we have to get to the asteroids. And a base on the moon makes that easier.
AFAIK there are no currently known mineral concentrations on the moon (probably small ones at major asteroid impacts) so it would not be wise to assume they exist.
Far as I know, we haven't actually prospected on the moon much. But we can turn feldspar and olvine into aluminium, iron, magnesium, and oxygen with just an application of enough energy. And energy isn't hard to come by in space.
I was planning on lifting everything, and figuring it would cost less than lifting mohole machines and silicon factories to the moon.
We don't do silicon factories on the moon. IC's are tiny, and Fabs for same are large and expnsive. We lift them from Earth. Most of a spacecraft will be sheet aluminium. Which isn't nearly so hard to produce, and factories to make it scale much better than IC Fabs. So we lift the essential components of the factory, and use its output to build a bigger base, spacecraft, whatever. As examples. In general, I prefer to lift small, difficult to make stuff, and make large things onsite.
Um, as far as local masses, I wasn't counting planets as the only useable gravitational mass available in the asteroid belt. For example, a very very tiny push on a nice chunk of nickel-iron could send it on a multi-pass slingshot around Ceres, out to a decel pass by earth or luna (better put some attitude controls on that rock just in case) and thence gracefully into earth/lunar L5.
I don't have my references handy, but I doubt you can slingshot around Ceres to get to Earth. Only about 0.025g surface acceleration, and ~475Km radius. You'd need a turning angle of 70 degrees or thereabouts, and I don't think you can manage that with so low a surface G to pull you around. Not without riding right along Ceres escape speed, which would put you in the position of taking nearly forever to get into position for the slingshot.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Don't you guys remember Andrew? Andrew hit florida and was a cat 5. Granted, Andrew hit farther south but the VAB and orbiter processing facility have both been standing for a long time and will continue to stand. It's been built to withstand cat 3 hurricanes and this looks like the core will pass below Kennedy. The shuttles are safely tucked away if they are anywhere near Kennedy now. they could have been flown out of FL by now.
Gorkman
Importing Earth HYDROGEN to add to Lunar Oxygen for fuel/reaction mass is a much better propostion.
Ok, but irrelevant to your claim that expending Lunar water as reactive mass is "disastorous". If you can import hydrogen to make water, it doesn't matter if you do it before extracting moon water, or after. (And after has the advantage that the technological/infrastructure base will be more advanced by then)
Quick note on wings..
If you want altitude control, wny not use a parafoil? I mean, there *ARE* control surfaces besides static wings, y'know... some of which are much more lightweight.
Does no one remember that they have 747's prepped to transfer the shuttles??!!!?
l =en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab =wi
http://images.google.com/images?q=shuttle%20747&h
These used to fly over my house with the shuttles.
Firefox &
God damn it!
Don't spout that Bush 41/Bush 43 bullshit you see on TV! If I find the mofo who came up with that illiterate, uncultured nomenclature I swear to God I'm gonna kick him square in the nuts.
For as long as people have had this problem (i.e. since Ancient Greece if not before) the proper way to refer to two persons with the same name in a case like this is "Name the Elder" and "Name the Younger". (E.g. Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger.)
This is but one example. There are many, many similar situations throughout history. Why people have come up with so many wrong ways to refer to Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger is just beyond me. Even using "George H. W. Bush" and "George W. Bush" is just stupid. There is an ancient, honorable, and editorially more aesthetic way to accomplish this. I mean, Jesus wept!
</FLAME>
Okay... Thanks. I'm glad I got that out of my system.
How was this modded insightful? Dude, go look up Helium3 and it's applications in energy.. Next, you go find a place on earth where H3 can be found. Can't find any? Hrm? Well the moon has a $hitload of it.
Not only that, but the US manned space program shouldn't necessarily be limited to government efforts. Besides the great suborbital work being done by the X Prize contestants, SpaceX is looking very promising.
In a couple of months, SpaceX will start launching their Falcon I vehicle, which can carry about 500 kg of payload to low earth orbit for $6 million, a fraction of what it currently costs. Next year they're scheduled to launch their Falcon V, which will be considerably larger, carrying about 4000 kg to LEO. This is all being done without government funding.
Notably, the maiden flight of the Falcon V will carry a prototype of the inflatable space station module being produced by Bigelow Aerospace. Additionally, the Falcon V is planned to be man-rated, the first spacecraft to have such a rating since the space shuttle.
You definitely have an inflated sense of self when it comes to your nation. I think the US has made fantastic strides in space exploration and manned space travel, but they weren't alone. The Russians also had plans for a manned Mars mission in the 70's and right now, there is a serious group of Russian space engineers working on a nuclear powered Mars mission, for the simple reason that nuclear power is the most feasible and has the greatest amount of leeway.
Again, at the moment, the Russians are the only ones launching manned space vehicles on a regular basis, and then we get to the Chinese who have also started launching manned missions and will probably eventually start launching on a regular basis.
Not only that but even ESA has started working on a new shuttle of its own, called Phoenix, which should see its first launch around 2015 or so.
We spent millions of dollars and then threw it away because it tipped over? What the hell happened to putting the wheels farther apart and continuing?! Sounds to me like it damn well was Bush's fault!
Except that it was cancelled in 1996, during the Clinton administration.
Seriously, the DC-X was very promising, and was only cancelled because it lacked the sex appeal of having loads of futuristic technologies crammed into it. Armadillo Aerospace is in many ways the intellectual descendant of it's design, and hopefully we'll see lots of great things coming from them soon.
I take it you've not worked for a defense/gov contractor? For better or for worse, if there's the smell of money, there's a bid.
Well, there is a spare shuttle sitting in DC, if they need it, it's a refurb job, and not a new build.
They could also buy some of the Burans and rebuild them, perhaps with the Energiya design as well.
The DC-x lead to a competition, of which the X-33 design won. Clinton's admin did not cancel it. GWB's did.
I also hear tell that there are large amounts of Helium 3 buried on the surface of the moon, deposited there by the solar wind over the eons.
What good is Helium 3?
It's great fuel for fusion! Instead of the radioactive byproducts from Deuterium-Tritium fusion, it's clean, and the byproducts are both charged particles and it is hence very easy to reclaim their energy as electicity.
That's what might make moon mining worthwhile.
> Supposing Challanger had been over , say, Georgia when it disintegrated,
> and dropped all that debris on downtown Atlanta?
Well, I don't really see your point here.
Would that have been a problem? I mean, really?
Thanks for the gmail invite!
Personally, I'm hoping any buildings that contain the shuttle fleet get FLATTENED by the hurricane. The quicker we kill off this stupid white elephant, the better! It's a black hole pouring money into the shuttle. It's old, obsolete, and in its current form, DANGEROUS. When the shuttle was first conceived back in the late 60's it wasn't suppose to have this stupid booster rocket design, but to save money, that's what they went with. Kill off the shuttle, and go back to ESV's. Hell, the Saturn V booster NEVER failed.
While we're at it, why not resurrect the Saturn-V rockets in order to finish the ISS? The shuttle could carry to orbit fractions of what a Saturn-V could, therefore the ISS could be finished quickly, and--just maybe, get a better ISS out of it. Say, one that would keep a full crew of 7 or more, so that some real science could get done.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Like India? I remember reading last year they're planning on sending one of their bigger missiles on a trip around the moon instead of on a trip to Pakistan.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Actually, the wings aren't there for reusability - there're plenty of designs for reusable LVs that don't have wings, e.g. the Delta Clipper, Phoenix, or Kistler K-1. The wings are there because NASA needed USAF support to get the shuttle funded, and the USAF mandated that the launch vehicle have a fairly large cross-range capability (i.e. the ability to deviate significantly from the initial entry trajectory to either side). The wings were necessary in order to meet this cross-range requirement. The capability was mandated in order to allow the USAF to carry out missions to retrieve Soviet satellites from orbit - something the shuttle never ended up being used for.
BTW, it wan't the Delta Clipper that "crashed" (the Clipper was never built) it was the DC-X prototype. It didn't so much crash, as fall over after a minor propellant explosion caused by NASA incompetence (this occurred after NASA forced the program to be transferred from BMDO to NASA) blew away one of the landing legs.
What I see when I look at the visible imagery loop is the eye moving NW or even NNW rather than WNW and it is has become indistinct as of 2:15UTC.
In any case the text report says the maximum sustained winds are 115knots which is just barely category 4. Sure, it could pick up again and change directions back. They say its course is "wobbling" and that it is expected to lose some strength going over some of the Bahamas but pick up some again over the open ocean.
Seastead this.
When you say Trojan points I believe you mean either Earth-Moon Lagrange or Earth-Moon Libration points. The Trojan points are the names of the L-points, specific to the Sun-Jupiter system.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
One minor part of the Shuttle's excessive risk is caused by the winged landing: To land the Shuttle, you need a aircraft pilot, who's otherwise useless. His presence onboard adds mass, and increases the number of lives that would be lost in an accident. Actually, no. The current shuttle is fully capable of landing under complete autopilot. The astronauts do it because they are pilots and can't stand to let the machine handle it.
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
The linked article quotes John Logsdon saying "The original decision to locate the Apollo facility on Merritt Island was a gamble with the weather and so far, if NASA was the house, the house has won. But the nature of gambling is sometimes the house loses." Excuse me? Did I just see a parallel drawn between NASA and 'the house'? Somehow I think the more logical connection would be between Mother Nature and the house, and believe me, the house will always win in the end...
Invisible to moderators.
(However, they aren't intact at the moment, all three have large amounts of their leading edges removed, and those edges are off at the manufacturers getting tested/reworked. You can't fly 'em in their current condition.)
Congress and NASA turned 'em down.
With one qualifier. Given the way humans work, if we start mining Lunar water for reaction mass, will we bother to import hydrogen from Earth? Before the Moon runs out of water?
If you believe so, consider oil.
Personally, I want to get off to the right start out there. Lunar base(s) will have a closed ecosystem, to the greatest extent possible. Getting in the habit of spraying rare components of that ecosystem into vacuum regularly would be bad.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm all for manned space flight, but the Space Shuttle needs scrapping. It's a huge boondoggle, the most expensive PR stunt in the history of space exploration.
It's not going to happen, but if the orbiters were destroyed, maybe we'd move on to something more economical and useful.
That's not going to take the MPLM up and down.
That's not going to allow crew exchanges.
The Atlas (which, as you mention, isn't available yet) might be capable of lifting that much weight, but it's not going to replace the capabilities that the STS was intended to provide.
During this downtime, the STS has been sorely missed, and our reliance on the Russians for access to the station is causing more than just a few problems.
Just using the Atlas as a lifter isn't going to replace the Shuttle.
/sig
You cannot become an astronaut without becoming a pilot first. Astronauts are recruited from among the very best pilots, who are recruited from the cream of the armed services, who are recruited from the populace based on physical and mental testing and willingness to volunteer for hard dangerous duty.
This is a reasonable, empirically sound way of getting the finest personnel available for spaceflight. You can't pretend there is no reason for it.
You're bobbing and weaving all over this subject. Stop making stuff up. "because the Shuttle is pilotable... there needs to be a pilot on it" is nonsense. For the forseeable future, there will be pilots on every spacecraft and there is absolutely no weight penalty involved.
You'd have to haul a billion pounds of scientists and industrial fooferaw to the moon before you can use H3, even if it's as useable and useful as your wildest fantasies. Why don't you just suggest mining the Sun, it's got lots of useful esoteric elements too. Now get back under your bridge!
The wings were necessary in order to meet this cross-range requirement.
They may say so, but they're trying to rationalize a justification for their emotions. The real reason is "No bucks without Buck Rogers". The USAF just loves piloting, and they wanted a chance to do more of it.
Just using the Atlas as a lifter isn't going to replace the Shuttle.
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You have a point. Which is why I was more than a little upset at the cancellation of the X38 project. A few more years (today, had it gone to orbit last year like it was supposed to), and we might have seen the creation of a full-size flight article. Granted, the MPLM capabilities in the airframe might not have been there, but crew exchange surely would have mated to an Atlas V booster. Even as a cargo vessel, the X38 demonstrator might have worked. Sure total cargo load is lower, 400-600kg, maybe. And reusability is a concern. But autonomous retrieval isn't.
Even the Atlas V doesn't eliminate one of the biggest concerns I've always had with the Shuttle, which are those damn solids. At least with a small craft like the X38 (with an appropriate rocket booster), you could decouple the craft from the booster stack in the event of a catastrophe. I have to grant it to Thiokol, though, those are some damn reliable SRBs.
Atlas and the X38 present our best opportunity (IMNSHO), today, of retiring the shuttle in the next decade. We wouldn't even need the shuttle to validate it. Any rocket in the Atlas family could launch the X38 demonstrator. The full scale article is only 12,000kg. Not counting structural integrity of the airframe, that leaves a lot of mass on an Atlas V for cargo.
Spacelab is the remaining STS cargo that would suffer if it was grounded. With a 5m payload fairing, even Hubble could be serviced via Atlas (two flights, however).
small price to pay to protect an investment that at this point runs into the billions.
We have a second launch facility in mothball condition at Vandenberg... not the greatest of options but we need not build from the ground up to continue on to a return to flight. However the Vandenberg facility does not allow easy access to ISS.
Leaving the shuttles at Kennedy is tragic, silly and I hope to god unavoidable due to the state the shuttles are in for re-fit. However it amazes me that there are not constant ready to go plans to evacuate the orbiters in the event of a hurricane that exceeds the facilities design limitations.
THe buildings can be re-built relatively easily. The infrastructure to re-build the orbiters no longer exists.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.