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Japan's 20-Year Plan for Space
rwven writes "Japan has just released information on their new space plan which will take them through the year 2025. Included in their plan are robots and nanotechnology for moon surveys as well as an eventual hydrogen powered mach-5 capable plane, a mach-2 capable passenger airliner and a manned mission to the moon. They will consider missions to mars and other planets after 2025. Space.com is also carrying this story."
Over the next decade, JAXA's plan calls for scientists to develop robots and nanotechnology for surveys of the moon
I thought Nanotech was still in its infancy. What are they going to do, dump a bunch of buckyballs in a crater?
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This is one thing that I love about Japanese culture -- the ability to plan long-term. Their companies will develop 5-year plans while here in the US, we're preoccupied with every 3 months...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Why should Asian space efforts go for "manned" space flights?
I love Star Trek as much as anybody but the human body is a very difficult payload to sustain. If Japan is going to do serious planetary exploration (...and I wish them well at this...) then the first step should be to define goals and discard things with a low payoff
Apart from publicity stunts and tourism (... which should be self-funding ...), what goals are served by putting humans on the moon or in cislunar space?
Robots can explore far more cheaply than humans, so for any particular amount of money, we can do more exploration with robots than with humans.
The idea that humans can make on-site decisions better than robots can is simply an artifact of time-scale. That is, while there is some necessary time-lag between a robot noticing a funny rock on Mars or Titan, reporting back to Mission Control on Earth, and then acting on directions ... so what? The robot is patient, doesn't sleep, and if properly powered doesn't have to worry about food supplies.
Like I said, I love Star Trek but until we get really, really serious advances in technology, lunar and cislunar exploration is more sensibly done with robots.
But I'd be interested in contrary views.
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Flying cars are science fiction (at least economically and resourcefully *viable* flying cars are). What Japan is trying to do is reality. And you have a serious problem of not being able to differentiate between science fiction and reality.
National prestige. That's why. Not all money spent needs to be justified on a quantifiable physical or economic asset. Somethings just can't be graphed on paper. In the end, the feeling people get seeing their citizens on another planet can arguable have more of an impact on that society than spending the same resources on robot missions.
People are allowed to be people, you know. Naturally curious and sometimes doing dangerous and expensive things that have no obvious economic interest.
Burn Hollywood Burn
"I've had flying cars in my 20 year plan for about 50 years. I think TIME Magazine and National Geographic have as well. So, we'll see this Japanese stuff in 2057 is what they're saying, right?"
Uh. Heh. The problem with flying cars isn't so much the technology, it's the pilots. Higher class people can afford their own planes, but they're not exactly selling like hotcakes. Why? Because it takes a lot of hours to get your pilot's license. In order to make flying cars practical for mass-audiences (like they promise in PopSci), cars have to basically fly on their own. That sort of automation isn't all that practical today. GPS is helping, though...
"Derp de derp."
But for exploring the moon, less than 2 light second away, frankly a remote controlled robot is far more than enough, and all decision making are on earth, without having to take tons of water, food, meatbags, air, and protection against radiation or whatnot. And that was I think the point of the poster. He was not in any respect speaking of implementing any decision making into a robot.
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As seen in 1950:
You make the assumption that airline flight is going to be cost driven with discounts and frequent flyer plans.
Cost reductions will only happen if there is significant competition from cost consious buyers. The airline market will have to change a lot before that happens.
Yes but if you develop the design then power is just secondary and can be interchangeable at the point that it has to be. Soon in the future there will be extremely efficient methods of alternative fuels and those can then be used. While they will cost a good deal starting out, it should become much more cost effective as it will be a necessity.
You are correct that today the cost of oil is high and will be so, but it is not the end all to travel by vehicles. This is something that MUST be recognized. An alternative will be produced.
If we're ever going to get off this frigging rock, we need man-rated vehicles, we need efficient launch solutions, we need fast turnaround and we need sustainable habitats.
NASA has one man rated vehicle that is grossly expensive to launch, has a turnaround that is at best seasonal, and is currently used to service a barely sustainable habitat that is essentially a badly under-crewed garbage barge orbiting too low to avoid reentry without constant readjustment.
NASA, assuming they have ANY interest in the future of manned spaceflight, just isn't getting the job done. Competition is good. It took getting our ass handed to us by the Russians with Sputnik, etc. for us to even start giving a shit about space- if China or Japan puts a man on the moon, you can bet we'll be busting ass to beat them to mars.
500 years ago you probably would have been insisting on a land route to china, since it's Safe And Proven and Doesn't Risk Equipment Or Lives, etc, etc.
You don't have to be so closed-minded and nationalistic. I think its fantastic that China, India and now Japan are working on their space programs, as they'll no doubt bring things that Europe, the US and Russia would not. What's more, any 'space race' that leads to "us" being overtaken can only encourage "our" governments to increase spending on space.
Not only that.
Reliability is also a major show-stopper. It you have the present airplane catastrophic failure rate multiplied a thousand times flying over our heads in any major city, you can easily see the point why a flying car is a very bad idea. Add to that the fact that most car owners are very sloppy with proper maintenance and you can see an even worse scenario. Do you really want them flying over your house?
Increased reliability means increased cost. Every tiny little bit of reliability planes get costs a lot of money.
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Noble on paper, but thats not really how things are done. I grew up in a country where about 30% of the households had a landlline phone up until about 1998 (which is when I left)I went back in 2002 and about 80% of the had atleast one cellphone and even less people had landlines.
It isn't always neccessary to follow the line of advancement that others did.
Incidently the reason I know that is because there's only one telecom company in the whole country. I could make a killing if I had a couple million to invest in cellsites...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Trying to solve a problem is one of the fastest ways to come up with solutions to that problem. We are currently enjoying many of the technological advances acheived by (or for) the manned space program. Waiting for technology to advance enough to do something doesn't make as much sense as actively advancing it.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You're right about Hubble being scratched by NASA leadership.
My hasty wording made my serious point about ceding leadership in space sciences into flamebait. [And, upon reading it again, the flamebait tag was well-deserved.]
That said, leadership comes from the top. If leaders in the White House and Congress had thought that continued support of Hubble and Voyager were worthy, that would have set the tone and neither project would today be in trouble.
I stand corrected on your point of money being allocated but the NASA administrator not doing the right thing.