Slashdot Mirror
Give Space a Chance, Says Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer writes "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true. The budget will call for a new rocket design, and a lot of money will go toward private space companies, who may be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares being ready anyway."
Weee! They'll be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares! Because putting people into orbit is exactly why Ares was being built, since NASA can't do that with their current rockets.
The private industry is decades away from what NASA can do today. It's at least a century away from what NASA could do 40 years ago. They're never going to get us into mars, because there's simply no profit in it. Government funding is the only way space exploration can go forward.
I follow Phil via twitter, he's pretty spot on about space and space exploration. He even goes into the false dichotemy of funding social spending programs first then NASA in one of his posts. NASA research lead to cheaper, more viable foodstuffs for the poor in the past, I don't see why it's breakthroughs couldn't assist us in our search for solutions to problems here on Earth.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
There's a reason you have multiple types of rockets, just as you have multiple flavors of Linux. Some are better for doing certain things than others. Sure the private rockets are great for cheap LEO work. But you're eventually going to come across situations where you're going to need your own heavy lifters. And you won't have any design/engineering talent left in that sector.
What you need is for people to realise the benefits that come with space exploration so that they demand, through their votes, that it be included in the budget. What you don't need to do is give up on NASA in favour of private companies that can only ever be expected to be SELF serving. Capitalism as a tool is a good thing, but as a religion it is as stupid as any other religion.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They're not the Saturn V, but rockets like the Delta IV Heavy seem pretty capable.
---
Space Craft Feed @ Feed Distiller
Chances are though, a -lot- of taxpayer funded research is now going to be either A) unneeded (private space companies are going to use a totally different design) B) unaccessable (classified to the companies) C) unfinished or D) going to be redundant (private companies are now going to use taxpayer money to do the same exact thing)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And why, pray-tell would private companies be interested in space exploration?
Outside of space tourism or communications/military sats there's no profit in space.
And if all we're getting is LEO then why bother with manned space travel at all?
WE (humanity) need to get off this rock. Having the rovers up there is nice and all, but we would be far better served with a permanent base.
I'd like to live to see the day when someone can call themselves "martian born".
Space exploration is really cool but there are good reasons to believe that spending money on more rocket propulsion systems will be money wasted. It’s not just because rockets are an extremely expensive, limited and dangerous form of space transportation but because almost every form of transportation and energy production on planet Earth will be obsolete in the not too distant future. Let's face it. We will not colonize the solar system let alone the star systems beyond with a bunch of primitive rockets.
We are on the verge of a revolution in physics. A new analysis of the causality of motion leads to the conclusion that we are immersed in energy, lots and lots of it. Normal matter moves in an immense lattice of energetic particles without which motion itself would be impossible. Soon we’ll have vehicles that can move at enormous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring damage due to inertial effects. Floating sky cities impervious to earthquakes, tsunamis and bad weather, New York to Beijing in minutes, Earth to Mars in hours; that’s the future of energy and travel. Read Physics: The Problem with Motion if you're interested in a novel and truly revolutionary understanding of motion.
Rebel Science News
Comment removed based on user account deletion
was as a nationalistic machismo chest thumping exercise
like two drunks at a party trying to impress the same chick by grandstanding who can catch steak knives in their mouth
i'm sorry, but for all those who see spacefaring as the noblest of mankind's pursuits, the actual reasons for getting our butts into space was amongst the basest of motivations: tribal rivalry
india wants to thump its chest now, china, brazil, etc., and let them. its an enjoyable quaint nationalistic pasttime at this point, like hosting the olympics or setting off a nuclear bomb
i await the peruvian national space program launching a man into space, i look forward to the jamaican space ageny's first man on the moon, all the way on down to vanuatu
the future will be chest thumping by multinational corporations. what better way for microsoft to win PR for its product line over google's than to have its probe to ganymede run on windows 7 starter? or have it actually serve up search returns for select searches, with a slight latency?
and if a man ever gets into space again, his craft and his suit will look like nascar. gloves by nike, second stage booster with "viagra" on the side. its the american way, privatize everything: space agency, healthcare, prison systems, hired mercenaries. god bless america. i'm sorry, is that trademarked?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What we need is a new design for a launch vehicle, something a 3rd the size of the shuttle, for passengers only, and something larger then the shuttle, a normal rocket, for cargo. The new human lift vehicle needs to be single stage to orbit, and be capable of refueling in orbit for trips to the moon, and should be capable of runway and VTL. I don't know why they have been cheap and spent all this time working on trying to improve 40 year old designs with some modern upgrades. It just isn't going to be capable enough to advance things.
Space programs were motivated not by "chest thumping", but by the arms race. Man-in-space rockets were built by the very same people who designed the ICBMs. Soviets believed the space shuttle was primarily a weapon. Look at this Soviet propaganda poster:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/UeuInMEVvBmQMCIroR7zgg and certainly intended theirs to be one.
It's OK to pick on America, but doing it out of ignorance does not make a good impression.
Why are you dragging your feet on releasing streetview Mars? Or even streetview Luna for that matter?!!! It's a simple matter of robotics engineering.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But you're eventually going to come across situations where you're going to need your own heavy lifters. And you won't have any design/engineering talent left in that sector.
Most things that can be done with a heavy lifter can also be done by splitting what you're delivering into smaller payloads. It's unlikely to be as efficient since at a minimum you'll need extra hardware to connect those payloads together, but if it costs less than the billions spent on building a heavy lifter and maintaining the launch capability, then it's a better choice. Indeed, given that a heavy lifter that flies once or twice a year is likely to be significantly less reliable than a small launcher that flies hundreds of times a year, there are strong arguments for launching your payload in small chunks rather than putting it all one one launcher which has a much greater chance of blowing up.
And right now, the market for heavy lift (say 100 tons plus to LEO) is approximately zero: very few people who would like to put that much payload into orbit in one go can afford the couple of billion dollars a launch would probably cost (Saturn V, for example, was over $2 billion a launch in today's money).
Yes, the way to innovate is to under-invest, it makes perfect sense! Let's try this with all of our other problems...
but maybe a political one. The governments of India and China both have announced intentions of establishing presences on the Moon. I would rather that the US be a participant in that rather than an onlooker - or hitchhiker.
This is not a self-referential sig.
Suppose some private corporation decided to invest in space travel, and presently established a mining colony on the moon or Mars.
Government(s) would at once try to tax the crap out of that corporation rather than allow it to soak up those riches. Not that the governments are providing any real benefit to the corporation for the tax revenue.
Any corporation that has the capability to establish a colony in space has the capability to figure out the conclusion in the previous paragraph. Before they even embark upon such a project, they are going to prepare their response.
That response will almost certainly be to establish themselves as their own sovereign entity, with the military capability to defend their sovereignty.
Uh-oh.
Years of work have gone in Duke Nukem Forever. Yes is was just another Duke Nukem with more modern components, but if its cancelled and Take Two Interactive has to restart then those years and dollars are gone, any Duke Nukem is setback at least 5 years. But as Phil said, these are just rumours, we don't yet know what will happen to 3D Realms.
YEAH!
We really need to get away from all this political BS.
Let's just setup a multi trillion dollar trust fund over the next 20 years and be done with it. Then we won't have to support it with taxes anymore. I think we can afford to spend 20 years frugally developing space engineering. Let's work on getting garbage collectors and street cleaners in space before we start polluting the moon and mars.
We spend how many billions of dollars putting the ISS into space and it's scheduled for a 2020 end of service...? How many billions do we spend on satellites only to have them come crashing back into the atmosphere? It costs way too much money sending all those pounds of metal up there only to waste it.
We need to concentrate on manufacturing and recycling. We need more automation in space.
We need plans to harvest asteroids and comets and put then into orbit around mars and Saturn for future manufacturing; I seriously doubt with all the asteroid doomsday movies that putting asteroids into earth orbit will get that much support. Mars is the scene of the next industrial revolution. The next wild west though it may take us a couple hundred years. And if you didn't realize it farming is destined for space. Power? You don't want a nuclear reactor next door? Guess where we can put it? It's all about real estate baby. Always has been and always will be and fortunately there is a quite a bit of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar That was an excellent example of private industry dropping the ball without a guaranteed flow of money from the government. Yes, I can see private industry handling low earth orbit. But the moon or Mars? There is no way that they will pay so much risk money ahead of time without promise of near-term profits. American corporations have forgotten how to invest in the future and only concern themselves with quarterly reports. Lockheed wouldn't even fund its share of 50%, or even a single year of development.
election campain??
The Moon provides a nice place to construct a base with a relatively cheap gravity well - it can send supplies into an orbiting construction station more cheaply that earth
You're under the impression that NASA is currently capable of creating an HLV using its old contracting methods. NASA has been incapable of creating a new launch vehicle since the shuttle, not at the fault of the dedicated civil servants, but by a paralyzing management and political structure.
People and talent are mobile, and most of vehicle design in the past was done by private contractors anyway. Having NASA write you a paycheck doesn't make you more (or less) capable. What's going on here is simply a shift from cost-plus to fixed-price contracts. These are less subject to political manipulation, and push more management to distinct companies with their own structures -- if one company becomes paralyzed, it isn't a single point of failure for US human spaceflight.
And yes, currently 'commercial space' vehicles concentrate on simple LEO transport, because this is the largest, most guaranteed market. However, if NASA needs to buy an HLV, there's no reason that one can't be provided by similar methods. A less risky (and less efficient) cost-plus development contract may be necessary occasionally, but if everyone is used to fixed-price approaches, and there's an understanding that eventual acquisition of more vehicles will be at a fixed-price then the same improved efficiencies will hopefully dominate.
NASA doesn't need to design its own launch vehicles -- it needs to define requirements. If it needs something it buys it, and if it can't it can fund development, same as it always has, with modified expectations.
Why we can't put the capsule on a D4-Heavy and get people to LEO and the ISS? I know the D4H has only had a couple launches, but the Delta II series has had a pretty solid track record. I understand the need for the Ares V and it's super heavy lift capability. But I never understood the point of the Ares I. Why spend the money when it seems like the Delta IV series could work and it's available now.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"NASA doesn't need to design its own launch vehicles -- it needs to define requirements."
Agreed. That's pretty much the whole problem in a nutshell.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe with a bit of government funding and creative out of the box thinking, they can launch Burj Dubai into outer space!
If Constellation was going to be dropped eventually, why pour some much money into it?
Wouldn't it be better to reuse already available technology? And if NASA does not have the budget to to it then transfer the technology to other companies.
The Russians has been using their human launch capabilities for decades without having to go through different launch technologies. They have being using the same rocket family and space ship without pouring money on dead alleys of chopped off projects. How much money has used Russian to put, and keep putting men in space and how much money has use the US to put no man in space in the end?
Why not reuse what is already in place, use the DIRECT Shuttle derivative? Transfer the technology to private firms, and set up goals to be back to space in shorter time and with lower budgets.
It is crazy to keep burning the wheels to reinvent it again. Even NASA could use such developed system.
The current issue is heavy lift. This is the struggle we have had for a few decades.
Once we can lift LOTS of equipment and personal we need into high earth orbit things start to change. Why? Well we can finally start lifting equipment that can finally start to live off of the environment. Currently the only thing we extract in space is solar radiation. Why? Well we simply can not lift equipment that can harvest the matter that exists in space. Why can't we? Well it's bloody expensive. Case in point the International Space station. This is a science platform. One that has a very hard time sampling it's environment let alone harvesting it.
We need to be able to lift devices that can land on rocks, asteroids, moons, and planets. From there extract resources and deliver those resource to orbital devices that can process them for further use. The use is NOT for return to earth. But rather to supplement the resources for subsequent space missions. Once this feedback loop starts to take hold the cost of subsequent space exploration deeper into the solar system and beyond drops radically. The trick is to only lift the bare minimum into orbit with the majority of supplies being extracted from the local environment.
With luck the feedback loop of resources will eventually start to spill back to earth. At some point the harvesting in space will exceed the space born demands for resources. At this point we start to see a viable return resources to earth policy. The loop starts to close.
It will take time before the returns start to exceed the lift in cost. Only at the point where return exceeds lift cost can we state we are a space born culture. Because at this point we explode into space.
...and ban space flight, it still wouldn't be the "death knell of manned space exploration". There are other space agencies. If anything, seeing the Chinese or Indians land people on the moon might get you started again. I think international competition is more likely to drive space exploration than all of us holding hands and doing it together.
Either way, fact is that the US will not be able to maintain their lead indefinitely, it's just part of its decline in relative power and capabilities. When people someday travel permanently into space, it won't be the Americans doing the driving.
There is a simple reason why NASA is dying and that is we as a nation fail to dream. No, you can't blame social problems and political strife. During the time of the moon missions do you remember what was going on? I do because I grew up in that time. The civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. I remember our cities on fire following the killing of Dr. King. Yet in the middle of all of this we were able to go to the moon because we were able to dream the big dreams.
Today, we no longer dream, and we stop our kids from dreaming. We blame terrorist and take away the tools of the dreamers. Think of the kids who can't do home chemistry because you can't buy chemicals anymore. If you try you will get a visit from the men in dark sunglasses. Or how about the ATF trying to ban model rocket motors as explosives that could be used by terrorist. The National Association of Rocketry and Tripoli have been fighting this for years and appear to have finally won, but 8+ years fighting the government to keep a hobby alive?
Even our teachers put a stop to our kids dreams. Remember just in the past week there was the 'Technology school' who called the cops because a student brought in a science project that the administration thought was a bomb. And when it was discovered that it wasn't a bomb but a motion detector did the school apologize? NO! They made the kid and his parents seek counseling.
We as a nation have become a nanny state,where everything is too dangerous. Dreams involve risk, and risk is dangerous, and in our country today risk simply isn't tolerated.
So NASA will die, and eventually we as a nation will die. We have started down that road. Unless we have a change of soul, we will continue down that road. Other countries will take the lead (can you say China, Russia, India and others) and pass the USA.
It was nice while it lasted. :-(
As much as I would like to see us go back to the moon and to Mars, I think humanity may have missed its window. The future of space exploration seems quite bleak at this point, at least for the next couple hundred years.
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/future-of-space-exploration.html
This is so obviously an Elon "I wrote a check to Barrack" Musk payback that it is beyond funny.
Do you own Space X stock Phil? Or are you at least getting a free Tesla out of the deal?
This is my sig.
I think international competition is more likely to drive space exploration than all of us holding hands and doing it together.
Those of us who are in the right wing and have no problem shoveling money into NASA see this coming from a mile away. Keeping the USA in the forefront in space is more important than the development of the lateen sail was to the arabs or the silk worm was to the Chinese. It's absolutely, strategically, important.
In fact, I would say that you could the cut the US military budget in half, spend the balance on developing heavy lift boosters, exploring asteroids, getting serious about the whole thing, and get way more out of your taxpayer dollar in terms of geopolitical power than 6 aircraft carriers and 1000 fighters.
This is my sig.
As individuals we pretty much all share the same goal of seeing man on another planet. Personally I'd love to walk on Mars.
However when it comes to making money the bigger the rock the less likely it's a target for "exploitation". Gravity wells mean expensive. So most of the planets are no go zones. If not all of them. Moons are a maybe. Floating rocks much more likely.
Unfortunately I don't think any of us will see another human land on any planet including the moon. I wish it weren't true. But in this day and age it's no longer about national pride, it's about dollars. Man only made it to the moon because the US and USSR were in a pissing match. Our only hope now to see another man on the moon is to see the same pissing match between China, India and Japan.
Space for the foreseeable future is the domain of robots. This will persist until the economics change. Either the value of a human drops to the point where we can send them up to work in unbelievable danger or the volume of product being developed in space can justify local human supervision. Personally I'm hoping humans don't drop in value.
Necessity and Incentives Opening the Space Frontier
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space
by James Bowery, Chairman, Coalition for Science and Commerce
July 31, 1991
Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:
I am James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the critical and historic topic of commercial incentives to open the space frontier.
The Coalition for Science and Commerce is a grassroots network of citizen activists supporting greater public funding for diversified scientific research and greater private funding for proprietary technology and services. We believe these are mutually reinforcing policies which have been violated to the detriment of civilization. We believe in the constitutional provision of patents of invention and that the principles of free enterprise pertain to intellectual property. We therefore see technology development as a private sector responsibility. We also recognize that scientific knowledge is our common heritage and is therefore a proper function of government. We oppose government programs that remove procurement authority from scientists, supposedly in service of them. Rather we support the inclusion, on a per-grant basis, of all funding needed to purchase the use of needed goods and services, thereby creating a scientist-driven market for commercial high technology and services. We also oppose government subsidy of technology development. Rather we support legislation and policies that motivate the intelligent investment of private risk capital in the creation of commercially viable intellectual property.
In 1990, after a 3 year effort with Congressman Ron Packard (CA) and a bipartisan team of Congressional leaders, we succeeded in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, a law which requires NASA to procure launch services in a commercially reasonable manner from the private sector. The lobbying effort for this legislation came totally from taxpaying citizens acting in their home districts without a direct financial stake -- the kind of political intended by our country's founders, but now rarely seen in America.
We ask citizens who work with us for the most valuable thing they can contribute: The voluntary and targeted investment of time, energy and resources in specific issues and positions which they support as taxpaying citizens of the United States. There is no collective action, no slush-fund and no bureaucracy within the Coalition: Only citizens encouraging each other to make the necessary sacrifices to participate in the political process, which is their birthright and duty as Americans. We are working to give interested taxpayers a voice that can be heard above the din of lobbyists who seek ever increasing government funding for their clients.
Introduction
Americans need a frontier, not a program.
Incentives open frontiers, not plans.
If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.
Americans Need a Frontier
When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, we won the "space race" against the Soviets and entered two decades of diminished expectations.
The Apollo program elicited something deep within Americans. Something almost primal. Apollo was President Kennedy's "New Frontier." But when Americans found it was terminated as nothing more than a Cold War contest, we felt betrayed in ways we are still unable to articulate -- betrayed right down to our pioneering souls. The result is that Americans will never again truly believe in government space programs and plans.
Without a frontier, for the past two decades, Americans have operated under the inevitable conclusion that land, raw materi
Seastead this.
It can make it available when another nation decides to try and corner it. For example, China believes that they hold the only reserves to a number of rare earth minerals. These are increasingly becoming important in electronics and military applications. So china is now lowering what can be exported and has already cut off several of these. The SMART thing to do is to make certain that we have supplies available elsewhere. Otherwise, the west (possibly the world) MAY feel the need to go get it. That is why you do not take embargoes lightly against NUCLEAR ARMED COUNTRIES.
So, lets start looking in space for these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Only a pompous fuck finds it necessary to keep repeating a full name, as though we might forget his asinine point between references. Constant reiteration adds nothing to the weight of your bullshit arguments.
that is not true. He may not be a pompous fuck. He is most likely just another registered republican who does not get laid except by some skank, or in a men's bathroom like so many of their leaders.
Constellation, as far as Orion goes, will continue forward. That would be a lose. In fact, it will be put back on track. Many cuts were made to it because of the Ares I debacle.
OTH, Ares I and even Ares V are NIGHTMARES. Not only were they not funded by W (only in 2007 and 2008 once the congress went neutral did it go up), BUT, we are looking at another 32 BILLION dollars to build these. Ares I is looking at being ready no earlier than 2015 (likely 2017) at a cost of another 5 billion. It will cost about 100 million to launch less than 25MT. A stage one jupiter could be ready in 3 years. It will cost about 6-7 Billion to have ready. It will launch 70+MT into space. It will cost 130 million to launch. THe price per kg is MUCH less for Jupiter than Ares I.
The Ares V will be another 20-25 billion to develop. The second stage of Jupiter will cost about 2 billion. It would be ready by 2015. Ares V would be a BIT cheaper (per kg) to run than Jupiter, BUT, the difference in development costs is about 18-24 billion. That will buy a LOT of launches on Jupiter.
Losing the Ares is the smartest thing that can be done.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lets face it, Obama's change, coupled with the funding neglect of Congress for the past 6 years, means we have effectively handed the future of space to China and India. If you want a career in space, better learn Chinese. What would have been better is to give the unmanned projects over to private industry. Every time we loose a human, we spend 2 years in pause while the rest of the world catches up. If we loose an unmanned mission, we don't stop the entire program. When private industry shows a better launch record than NASA (and in a decade or so I believe they will), then maybe we should consider giving them manned programs. Note: NOTHING stops private industry from doing it now.
The (official) U.S. seems intent on denying wider / closer access to space. Or air-travel, for that matter.
There are laws forbidding ciizens from going there on their own. Also, contrary to UN International Space Legislation (or Declarations, Accords, or whatever), there is some kind of directive (or law - too lazy to dredge up details) saying something to the effect that their permission is necessary for anything (person / org / country) going there. Stating, in effect, that space is 'their dominion' and anyone out there without their permission is a trespasser. And they'll apply the same one-and-only solution they ever consider for anything. They'll intimidate. Overpower. And kill. And kill. And kill again, just to be sure.
Meanwhile, Russia has cheaper and more robust spacecraft (comfort is damned, but hey..). China has its Taikonaut - with more to come. Israel, Japan, India have launched satellites with their own rockets and coordinated and controlled their own space missions. Many more countries have space agencies, and/or have made their own satelites.
China has said - at the highest levels - that it's going to mars. And Russia seems a bit more than just slightly interested in some 'extra projects'. On their spare time, I suppose.
None of them seem to really want space to be open and easily accessible. Generalized paranoid power at its usual setting : dementedly envious, violently malignant, ignorant, introverted, seeped in nihilistic denial and spite, spreading corruption through fear, scarcity, greed, deceitful inane sophistry - and more.
Always, with great public support from the - usually heavily leashed - 'movers and shakers'. And that minor or greater half which will wave flags and support anything, as long as whatever they fear is shaken in their faces, and then promised to be kept way from them - if they accept everything with vigorous and prompt subservience.
The usual nazi Germany process. Charmingly nicknamed : 'Snakes-Egg'. Well. It's spread around a lot. Changed its name a few times. Got laid in spots previously considered intrinsically, or constitutionally impossible.
My regards to the better half, that still attempts sanity. Meanwhile, unless sanity rallies the wide-eyed fearfull masses, frothing in panic - using small words and small, simple, easy emotional concepts - we'll have keep pushing and watch for fraying edges (around the paddy-wagons).
Since helium 3 seems to be our best hope for a sustainable controlled fusion reaction, and the moon is the best source for this material, this move appears short sited and a political stunt that is ultimately bad for the US. This is yet another reason why the US is in decline ---> POLITICS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Extraterrestrial_supplies
Mod parent up.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
In direct reply to the parent, yes, private industry has been designing and building orbital rockets for years, which is somewhat like noting that an F-35 is the the product of private industry. If the Administration had elected to put Orion on one of the Ares alternatives, great. But, it looks like they're ditching the whole Constellation project.
In response to the Space Frontier Foundation's joy that Ares is dead:
For years, there've been no significant technical or political barriers stopping the private sector from getting beyond just lofting a few satellites.
So, what's the hold up? Capital, with a B. I don't care if we end up using cannons, rail guns, solar powered winged balloons, elevators, or exquisitely value-engineered tubes of fuel to get to promised land of $X/lbs to orbit. By whatever method, it is going to take vast sums of capital to get there, Boeing 7x7 development sized sums at least.
So, what's the hold up? ROI. There has been plenty of capital chasing investments out there, and not just in the US. But, out of that, all we see for space are some boutique investments, except the on-going satellite launch development, a good portion of it paid for by the USAF's mission requirements. If the people who'd bankroll private space activities saw profit in it, they'd likely have gotten off their asses and done it. IMO, much like the opening up of the American West for non-Indian settlers, nothing's going to happen unless/until (somebody's) government exploration does the prospecting that makes the risk of a private venture quantifiable.
God bless Virgin Galactic for pushing the envelope. But, for something more than a joy ride, the cancellation of the Ares means that man-into-space is spelled S-O-Y-U-Z, probably for the rest of the decade, and the goal no further than the ISS.
Luke, help me take this mask off
yes gravity wells that block radiation, that at least in the short term is difficult to block.
Seriously? I just can't see mining a trillion tons of anything to carry it back to earth being a good idea. And mining a moon seems fraught with peril, an generally a bad idea. For Christ sake if exhaling can destroy earth's environment, how could de-orbiting a trillion tons do the planet any good?
The only way to gain the riches of mars is to live there. You can't bring it home.
He-3 fuses *without* flooding the surroundings with high-energy neutrons which embrittle the containment and induce radioactivity. There's oodles of it on Luna, for sure, and likely also on Phobos and Deimos. At four megabucks per kilo, we could stand to bring back as much as we could mine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 Do. The. Math.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
tBA writes: "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true."
You are quite correct. It is simply not true that "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration." Very few people of any stripe, and virtually none who 'know better' are saying that. A large number are reporting the budget cuts. A small number are claiming any sort of implications headed towards eliminating manned space projects, and most of those are reprinting the same article. Most are correctly reporting that the intention behind the budget cuts was to promote 'private sector' orbital projects.
If you need to set up a straw man for you to sucker punch in order to get your point across, then either your confidence in the importance of the material, and/or your confidence in your journalistic skills are lacking. Look up 'fallacy of extension' and 'argument from adverse consequences' at http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html Given that you rarely decry demises and death knells ('prestigous jargon' on that list) in your columns, it seems the problem here is more of skills issue.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
you'll just have to lag behind the russians, the chinese, the indians and maybe soon Iran too hehe. Can still find a little consolation that Europe will probably lag even further behind
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
You are completely, 100 percent full of shit:
NIH budget in 2002: $19,319,125,000
NIH budget in 2008: $23,841,208,000
% increase: 23.4%
source: http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/appropriations/index.htm
Not exactly double, eh?
*****************
Do you also remember how Bush was going to double NSF's budget? We all know how THAT went:
News about bill from 2002: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200210/senate.cfm
According to the bill, NSF's budget was supposed to be $9.8B by 2007.
Actual 2007 budget: $6.43B.
Actual 2009 budget (even later): $6.85B.
So yeah, don't trust Bush or anyone who supports him. Nuff said.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
NIH budget in 2002: $19,319,125,000
NIH budget in 2008: $23,841,208,000
Nice cherry picking of statistics and a strawman. First you made the claim the Bush cut the budget, then, you cherry picked the numbers to show he only increased it by 25%. Bottom line is, Bush significantly increased funding for NIH.
Do you also remember how Bush was going to double NSF's budget? We all know how THAT went:
Yeah, he did:
http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2000/overview.htm
Has NSF at 3 billion dollars.
Actual budget, according to your figures, is what,
Actual 2009 budget (even later): $6.85B.
Like, he DOUBLED it.
Unlike our anti-science Obama, Bush was a real science President for you.
This is my sig.