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Brazil Successfully Launches Its First Rocket To Space
thatshortkid writes "The Washington Times is reporting on Brazil's first successful space launch. Since it is closer to the equator, the task of getting up to space is easier, meaning much more cargo room over fuel. Hello commercial launch market! With this development, along with China's expanding space program, India making moves to space, and our own homegrown (ok, still growing) private space industry, where does this put NASA? Does it take a load off of them to pursue bigger endeavors, or will NASA slowly decline in relevance?"
...can anyone tell me how being close to the equator makes it easier to get to space?
Anyway, great for Brazil! Hopefully the US won't look down on them like they did the Chinese.
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Talk about a growth market. Poor country, cheap ground for large launch facilities, decent tourist(y) spots along the coast... If they can attract the market, they're in to make some money.
Whose stock do I buy?
...to the list of those on pace to beat the US in sci/tech within 30 or so years.
While it may affect NASA, I doubt it will cripple them. Commercial flights are going to focus on getting people in to space (for large sums of money). NASA will focus on sending large, heavy payloads in to space, like communications satellites. It may actually be beneficial for NASA to partner with, say, Brazil to get the advantages of their location (though transporting all those sensitive things would be a royal PITA), but I don't think the advantage will be so large that they'll do it.
Plus, NASA has a research focus, sending things to Mars or the Moon, which simply isn't commercially interesting right now. Maybe when we discover oil on mars (because, you know, they had dinosaurs) or some benefit that would intrigue the medical research corporations, Mars or the Moon may become interesting, but until then, nobody is going to sponsor all the research NASA does. And since experimentation in a weightless environment wasn't too terribly fascinating for them, I don't think Mars would be either.
So I think NASA will pretty much stay put, but the competition will 1) make them step up their game a bit, and 2) allow them to focus their resources on the things nobody else is currently doing.
The European Space Agency has been taking advantage of an equatorial launch site for 40 years in French Guiana. NASA has managed to remain relevant during those 40 years, so I don't foresee Brazil's recent launch changing that.
NASAs biggest problem is that it took its eye off the ball and lost direction. I think after they got to the moon they didn't really know what to do next so they just went to the moon a few more times rather than expanding their horizon and maybe trying to push on to Mars. They had something that captured the publics imagination with the HST but have now cocked it up to the point where the average person is just confused.
I admit you have to do some science to justify the expense of space missions but Jo Public only understands pictures and the science leaves him bored. Jo Publics attention span is also only just longer than that of the average goldfish so you have to keep the thrills coming. People will wait maybe a year for something amazing but they won't wait 10 years. NASA has got to remember that the public are funding them so they had better put on a good show.
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I'd love to see a technology boom in Brazil. What a perfect place to live. Beautiful country. Beautiful weather. Perfect beaches. I'd never choose a position in Brazi over India. Brazil wins hands down. Let's hope technology continues to boom in Brazil! I'd relocate in a second if the opportunity existed. Beleza Pura!
As I had commented earlier today in another story, what's more impressive is the rapid recovery from last year's explosion. Funny the Brazilians are fond of conspiracy stories about that. (Quite a few think the CIA had something to do with it - leftover distrust from the era of military rule) This launch was not as ambitious as the craft which was destroyed, but at least Brazil didn't stay paralyzed after the tragedy. Hopefully they can keep up the momentum - without attracting too much attention. Certain parties might view the recent nuclear developments (new enrichment technology) in association with the rocket program and start thinking Brasil is developing ICBM's
:P
Off topic aside - I had thought about posting this story but I had submitted one about Operacao Cavalo de Troia II - 53 phish scammers busted for over 30M in bank fraud -19 of them in the interior city where I work, I had some relatively inside information on the bust. But no I'm not bitter
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
Why are millions and millions of dollars being poured into space programs when Brazil, China and India are all considered Third World Countries. (China may be on the fence.) Wouldn't this money be better spent on social programs?
Perhaps because this will also create native technology and bring more jobs (directly and indirectly)?
I do not think that merely producing tons of sugar and coffee each year will be enough to improve the conditions in any country.
I would guess a leo or higher orbit would be hard to calculate frome a moving airplane. On a fixed launch platform, you can set a windows for a launch that will not slam your new super duper seeformiles spy satellite into HBO1 or MTV7. ( made up satellite names). In a plane, you would need some pretty nifty navigational computers, plus acurate time, altitude, longitude, latitude, wind direction, and whatever else would be required to put a bird into orbit. On the ground you just have to worry about the weather. Lon,Lat, ALT will not change. Space ship one can do what they do because they are not going into orbit. just going up, and falling back down. This info could be total bullshit, I dont know, just some thoughts I pulled out of the air.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
The summary is pretty bizarre. Brazil's launch is to a viable commercial launch system what the Wright Flier is to a 747. It was quite an accomplishment (coming after the previous accidents) but hardly anything more than a promising start along a 15-20 year road, with optimism. RTFA.
Additionally, the development of more commercial launch capability is essentially absurd - given that there is a huge overcapacity in commercial launch capability.
Moreover, NASA has had very little or nothing to do with commercial launch for many, many years. Private companies have been doing this essentially on their own for a long time. They use the same launchers and use Cape facilities. But NASA pays just like everybody else, when they use expendable vehicles. So the relevance of even more commercial launch capability would have no effect in any way on NASA - even assuming that this was what the Brazilians were doing - which they are not.
As far a "looking down on the Chinese" - well, given that they have had exactly one manned launch with capabilities similar to a Gemini flight from 40 years ago, (and an incredible string of accidents including dropping fully-fueled boosters into innocent villlages, destroying them almost completely, and then doing theor utmot to cover it up, and crashing a film return capsule into someone's house just last week) I thought that NASA's reaction was quite charitable. Given the problems in trying to run an international program with the highly-experienced Russians, and the apalling technology-transfer implications, it's hard to see how it would be a wise idea to jump on the Chinese bandwagon with the ISS or other international cooperation projects.
Other than that, excellent summary of the original article.
Yes, I find that to be a trend, somewhat reverse of what you'd think should be done. The government can't come up with the funds to provide the social programs, so they make some big money in some business venture to fund the social programs. It'll be interesting in the next 5-10 years to see how some of these countries are doing with this tactic...
-m
http://www.invisik.com
I think we need a very strong Earth orbit governance body with the US and Russia as permanent members (were we were the first up there).
Why not make all countries of the world permanent members, instead of Russia and the USA solely?
Score: i, Imaginary
NASA has a bunch of different responsibilities:
basic scientific research
commercial launches/coordination
military launches
big space projects
The way I see it, the basic scientific research area of NASA will eventually be handled if not by the NSF, by something very much like it. The various NASA research centers are pretty much like the national labs already.
The commercial launches may one day be handled by private enterprise, but there will always be regulation which goes along with them. This area could more easily be handled in the future by something like the FAA.
The military launches really should be handled by the military.
That leaves the big space projects. This really can't be taken away. There has to be someone out there who will coordinate the truly crazy space projects. Who exept NASA (working with other government space agencies: ESA, etc) will build gigantic orbiting particle accellerators? Helping to coordinate multinational projects is really going to be the role of NASA and other governmental space agencies in the future.
Right now, one of the biggest impediments to big science projects (ITER comes to mind) is getting all the parties involved simply to agree on what they are doing.
Orbital rockets are big, heavy, and fragile, and launching one from a stable ground platform is hugely easier than launching from a flying aircraft. The heavier structure required to survive launch from an aircraft probably outweighs any fuel savings, and the heavier structure and first stage aircraft together would almost certainly cost more...fuel is cheap.
For the X Prize, it's a big deal because all they needed is altitude...they could get about halfway to the goal on an ordinary aircraft. Orbit is a lot harder to reach, not only do you need altitude, you need a great deal of speed that no airplane can come close to achieving. Aircraft simply aren't very helpful for getting to orbit.
As you said, NASA's focus should be on research. Sending a load to orbit is a trucking job best left to private companies. Each time NASA launches a commercial or military satellite (that is, not a science mission), they waste money twice:
A NASA focusing on science would allow a private launch industry to take off (literally) and decrease the cost of access to orbit per kilogram. Which in turn would make science missions cheaper. Everyone wins.
So why doesn't NASA just do this? Because they inherited an army of 20.000 engineers from the Appolo program, and like in every bureaucracy, feeding the troops and sustaining the status quo takes precedence over the Good of Mankind. It's only human to want to keep one's job. Meanwhile, the space program is dead.
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Hey, they're a bigger threat than Iraq was before the invasion and it's not as far to drive. Plus the scenery is better. We should've invaded those pesky Canadians first, they could deliver WMD's into the states in their sneaky submarine. Then go after Brazil second. Secure this part of the world before we start dorking around on the other side of the planet.
Why not? We can invent an imminent threat from any country we want, why settle for the dirty, crapass countries half-way around the world? The facts have no bearing on this administration, so let's invade the countries with the best looking women first.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It really pisses me off when people from America which is the most protectionist of all the nations in the world talk of free trade.
Any production has two inputs capital and labour and one output goods. Now Americans want free movement of capital and goods but not of labour. Thats just hypocritical. I would say if you want free trade remove all visa requirements. If you want your companies to be able to go and invest in any country and sell goods from any country than people from any country should be able to come and sell their services in your country. If you cant handle that then shut the fuck up about free trade
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