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NASA Wants To Fund Space Taxis
NASA plans on using $50 million in stimulus funds to seed development of a commercial passenger transportation service to space. Potential space taxi inventors have 45 days to submit their proposals. The proposals will be competitively evaluated and the winners will be announced by the end of September. It is unclear what other Commodore 64 games NASA plans on making a reality, but I hope Arkanoid makes the short list.
If you invest your 401k heavily in companies building nightclubs in space, this space taxi service will be a major boon for you.
Wrong! You saw that stimulus money when the government took it out of your wallet!
Say thanks to Uncle Sam.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
I fondly remember killing thousands of passengers on my 64.
It's worth nothing that, while few people are directly involved w/the space program, the space program has historically had indirect benefits which have benefited society. To list a few (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off):
Health and Medicine
Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) (2005)
Infrared Ear Thermometers (1991)
DeBakey's Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) (2002)
Artificial Limbs (2005)
Transportation
Aircraft Anti-Icing Systems (2007)
Highway Safety Grooving (1985)
Improved Radial Tires (1976)
Chemical Detection (2007)
Public Safety
Video Enhancing and Analysis Systems (2001)
Land Mine Removal (2000)
Fire-Resistant Reinforcement (2006)
Firefighting Equipment (1976 onwards)
Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Temper Foam (1976-2005)
Enriched Baby Food (1996, 2008)
Portable Cordless Vacuums (1981)
Freeze Drying Technology (1976, 1994)
Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Water Purification (1995, 2006)
Solar Energy (2005)
Pollution Remediation (1994, 2006)
Computer Technology
Better Virtual Software (2005)
Structural Analysis (1976-1998)
Internet-Connected Ovens (2005)
Industrial Productivity
Powdered Lubricants (2005)
Improved Mine Safety (1978-2008)
Food Safety Systems (1991)
-Z
I'm sure Republicans and Libertarians are all in favor of private space taxis, whether NASA helps create the technology or others do. Having the government with a monopoly on space taxis is different from private taxis services.
This will come in really handy all those times I have too much to drink and need to get back to my Secret Moon Base.
And maybe once they figure this out they can build a working escalator at the Reagan Metro stop. Or maybe the Space Taxi's can just moonlight moving luggage up to the platform.
NASA plans on using $50 million in stimulus funds to seed development of a commercial passenger transportation service to space. ... More stimulus funds that 99% of the middle class will never see. How is this gonna help my 401k?
Ah, the old "spending money on the space program means ferrying dollar bills into orbit and dumping them there" argument. One day people will get it into their heads that money spent on the space program is spent pretty much exclusively on Earth where jobs are created, new technologies are developed, and countless other economic and social spin-offs are generated. In the meantime, I'll have to keep on posting this reminder.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Nevermind the NeoCons.
Space tourism seems to be a thing best left to the robber barons. They seem to be doing a better job of it.
50M is a pittance and NASA needs all it can get for it's own R&D type projects.
How about a lets-triple-NASAs-budget stimulus package?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Believe it or not, but the stimulus isn't supposed to pad your 401k, it's supposed to create jobs.
First, engineers and scientists get jobs, and practice their craft. And do you think the scientists and engineers assembled the rockets with Erector sets in their own private labs? No, they had manufacturers build the parts and the craft. You have small manufacturers building the parts, and large ones assembling the pieces, with distributors in the middle moving the material and making sure it's all on time and available when needed.
And then those people go home and spend their money on stuff...
The best kind of stimulus is the kind of stimulus that puts people in jobs. And if you think space taxis are nothing but an idea for the very rich to go into space, just realize that the next thing we need to figure out in space is how to get people into space both safely and cheaply. Hey, get people safely and cheaply into space? That means more satellites, more repairs, more tourism for the common man, more economic opportunities.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You'll see that money when the engineers who win the contest lay down an Abe Lincoln in front of you at McDonalds.
Your employer will never see the money they spent on you while you were on slashdot either.
This is a minimal amount of money for human rated launchers. Between SpaceX and Scaled Composites, this IS coming (Though to be honest, I would really like to see SpaceDev finish their work on their h-20).
What really IS needed IS a space taxi AND a tug. Russia has the idea correct. Augustine should be pushing Obama/NASA to buy several Bigelows to attach to the ISS. First buy the sundancer and attach it to the ISS to hold cargo (keep hatch closed except when needing to access). Then buy a BA-330 for human space. That is all that is needed to get them going in orbit. These are perfect for playing space taxis, if we attach a tug to these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Space Taxis? Do we really want to trust Arabs with our latest NASA technology?
Remember, the reason the broken window fallacy is a fallacy is that it assumes that breaking a window and having to fix it is the only thing that gets the money moving and thus you're making things better by breaking the window. The observation that this money could have been spent on new development with equal or greater effect on the economy is what nullifies it.
Investing in space tourism is investing in cheap access to space. That's not anything like digging ditches just so you can fill them in, or breaking a window so you have to fix it, or going to war so you have to spend tons of money blowing things and people up. It's more like (though not exactly like) the U.S. highway system. A public works project that had a huge economic benefit.
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course, 99% of the middle class won't see it. $50 million is a drop in the bucket considering, both, the size of the US budget and the population of the country. Even if it were divided evenly, a dollar each, there wouldn't be enough to go around. However, there is a good chance that, assuming you aren't too old, this might boost your 401k in time for your retirement.
The US, simply, can't compete against much of the rest of the world at most of the traditional industries. Our quality of life is too high and would have to nose-dive to make us competitive. The places that we've always dominated, since WWII when we really first developed a middle class with above average quality of life, have been high-tech such as computers, pharmaceuticals, materials science, etc. As we move forward, it's inevitable that other countries will start to catch up in some of those places and out population will continue to grow.
In order to stay competitive we need to continue to advance our most competitive industries and seek out new ones that revolutionize life enough such that they become the next "semiconductor industry". One example is the development of new/economical energy generation/transport methods such as Nuclear/solar/wind/"clean coal"/bio-fuel/wave/geothermal/fuel cells/batteries/etc. Another example, more applicable to this discussion, is commercialized space travel.
We've reached a point where the price of space travel is withing "spitting distance" of being cheap enough for commercial ventures to develop their own vehicle/stations. There are already a number of start-ups that are flirting with it such as Virgin Galactic developing a sub-orbital vehicle and Bigilow Aaerospace designing fractional size prototype space stations but implementing vehicles capable of re-entry and full size/fully functional stations will be much, much more expensive. Government grants are a way to accelerate the development of this technology and, potentially, open up the field to a broader market faster in the same way the plumitting cost of semiconductors in the 80's made it possible for everyone in the country to have a computer on their desk within a decade or so instead of just big companies/colleges having expensive supercomputers.
Right now, the only, practical, uses for space travel are communications satellites, military, GPS, and pure research. Sure, there have been a few tourist that have been lucky enough to go to the ISS, but even at the high prices they've paid, they don't represent a realistic "industry". If we could get the cost of entry to drop by an order of magnitude (which is realistic to expect when you take it out of the hands of a military-like organization like NASA, implement the most modern tech, and increase the number of flights to take advantage of economies of scale) then it should open up all sorts of other growth markets for things like tourism, power generation/transmission, commercial materials science development/production, and the mining of things like the moon and asteroids for rare materials.
So, sinking a mere $50 million (mere in government terms as well as relation to what it takes to get anything of significance done in today's world, of course) is a small price to pay if it can help someone like Burt Rutan produce a low cost vehicle that opens up a revolutionary new industry to help re-grow the economy.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Agreed.
Then I guess we could argue matters of degree: do we get bigger benefit from space-related research or, say, stem-cell research, investing in social programs or basic education.
And I'd have to say 'I don't know, so let's find a way to invest in all of them, and hopefully reduce the need for investment in the digging ditches/filling them in, etc.'
*Still* negative function...
Seems like SpaceX's Dragon capsule is a good start in that direction already. It's intended to carry seven to/from the ISS.
And it has the advantage of being under development already, and under construction already.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The escape velocity for Earth is only 7 miles per second. With advanced railgun technology, it might be possible to launch a human into the sun at a surprisingly affordable price, once the up-front R&D investment is made. A military grade railgun today can fire a 2kg projectile at 3km/s with 9MJ of energy. To fire a 75kg human at 11.2km/s would require 1.26 GJ of energy, so clearly more research is needed. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if a railgun would work on biological material. It may be necessary to coax the person into a metallic capsule that would be more responsive to the railgun's electrical field.
As an added bonus, this all-electrical solution is also environmentally friendly. No potentially hazardous rocket propellants to deal with, and the energy to fire the railgun could be generated during off-peak hours to further reduce costs. I think this solution would be far more economical than using conventional chemical-based rocket propulsion to launch old people into the sun.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
The problems with the British rail system started with Dr Beeching's scrapping of most of it. By concentrating on the more profitable lines, and scrapping the rest, he hoped to make British Rail less dependent on government subsidy. Unfortunately, he failed to take into account that a lot of the passengers on unprofitable rural lines were getting trains to larger stations and then getting on the more profitable trains. When the branch lines were scrapped, they had to get cars instead and so didn't use any trains. Privatising it might have worked, except that they privatised the profitable bits separately and then kept pumping government money into the unprofitable bit, so it combined all of the disadvantages of public and private ownership for the taxpayers, and all of the advantages for the shareholders.
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