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Astronaut Careers May Stall Without the Shuttle
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that former shuttle commander Chris Ferguson now moonlights as a drummer for MAX Q, a classic rock band comprised solely of astronauts. 'Perhaps we'll have some more time to practice here once the shuttle program comes to a slow end,' says Ferguson, raising the question — what does the future hold for NASA's elite astronaut corps after the agency mothballs its aging space shuttles in the coming months? NASA currently has about 80 active astronauts, as well as nine new astronaut candidates hired last year. But there will be fewer missions after the shuttle program ends, and those will be long-duration stays at the space station. When the Apollo program ended, astronauts had to wait years before the space shuttles were ready to fly, but the situation was different back then. Space historian Roger Launius says, 'Even before the end of the Apollo program, NASA had an approved, follow-on program — the space shuttle — and a firm schedule for getting it completed.' These days, no one knows what NASA will be doing next. Meanwhile, private companies are moving forward with their efforts, raising the possibility of astronauts for hire. NASA administrator and former astronaut Charlie Bolden talked about that prospect earlier this year, saying it would be a different approach for NASA to rent not just the space vehicle, but also a private crew of astronauts to go with it. 'When we talk about going to distant places like Mars, the moon, [or] an asteroid, we will not be able to take someone off the street, train them for a few weeks and expect them to go off and do the types of missions we will demand of them,' said Bolden."
I thought most/all US astronauts were experienced Air Force/Navy pilots? Don't they already have jobs?
bomb the us up set someone
Space exploration today is not nearly important as securing votes. There once was a time when industrial might, military might, and technological advancement were yardsticks of a successful nation-state. Granted, much of those things arose from international pissing contests, and the government motivation was more geopolitical than anthropic during the early Apollo times, but there just isn't the political incentive to prop up NASA like there used to be. It is most definately a shame. Hopefully private sector takes over and makes great improvements for the longevity of our race, but I have a feeling it will be less for science and more for McLunar Nuggets.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
There has already been a Max Q
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Don't they all become NASA administrators?
Sorry, but do you think throwing in a reference to programming would earn you some points here? The shuttle program has been wildly successful. While many will be quick to point to the program's 2 best-known (and spectacular) failures, the shuttles have been producing regular and predictable results since the early eighties. I'd say that well over a hundred successful missions in under thirty years adds up to a pretty damn good idea.
Yes, actually. God forbid. Because in an economy where astronauts cannot keep their jobs, we have seriously fucked up.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
and hopefully it won't just be government astronauts who get to go. Back when the shuttle was seen as a way to reduce the cost of getting into space, and NASA launched commercial satellites, a few ordinary engineers got to go to space. Of course, Challenger changed all that. And the Launch Services Purchase Act proved that the best way to reduce the cost of launch is to cut NASA out of the picture all together. So hopefully, when the job of taking humans to space has suitably placed NASA in an oversight only role, we'll see ordinary people flying to space again to do economically valuable work. Then the market takes over and everything changes.
That said, NASA will still be flying their own astronauts. If there's any sense left in them, they'll be flying to beyond low earth orbit.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The original Apollo, etc, missions are the heavy client. The shuttle program was the web. The question is if you get rid of the web, what next?
It's like being an ex-fighter pilot. If you've worked in aerospace, you've probably met plenty of former fighter pilots. They're a fun crowd, and they do OK after giving up the cockpit.
Being an astronaut hasn't been glamorous for a long time. Those guys spend far more time doing "Lunch with an Astronaut" than they do flying.
One should judge the success or failure of a program by how well it has achieved the goals it was built to achieve. By that most sensible metric, the Shuttle is a colossal failure. Not only has the Shuttle failed to reduce the cost of launch, it has also failed in its military and flight rate goals. Only someone who is too young to remember the promise of the Shuttle would ever suggest that it has been a "success", let alone wildly so.
Worse yet, Shuttle has set back the goal of a reusable launch vehicle for decades. Whenever anyone suggests that an RLV may be the best way of reducing the costs to space (an obviously true argument, imagine throwing away a 747 after every flight), skeptics need only point to the Space Shuttle.
How we know is more important than what we know.
... a manned flight program.
ya think?
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Just do what many do and become Hollywood advisors for space movies.
tpstigers may not have known to whom he was replying.
over one hundred? In 30 years?
The goal was one launch a week. Getting 8% of the target is a "damn good"???
They'd have done better with standard rocket launches, since the much promised lower per launch cost via amortization was a complete joke.
There certainly is some sort of analogy that can be made. The Shuttle is kind of like a hacked together old code base made out of Cobol and MUMPS that requires special mainframe hardware to stay running. In theory, we could replace the whole think while some Python or Java running on a single Linux box. We could even use the new box to run Apache and do all sorts of new web stuff. So, we have decided to throw away the old mainframe, and delete the old code base because it is so out of date and expensive.
Oh, and the requisition for the Linux box and a Java developer? Well, that's held up by the accounting department. We may or may not ever get it.
And, a car is involved somehow because this is an analogy.
Given that analogy, the Shuttle was the next generation of heavy client.
Virgin Galactic is going to need some space-stewardesses...
Astronauts are generally people in the top end of almost any qualification for a job, even leaving aside them being well, former astronauts, which is itself something in the way of notoriety. Enough to get the occasional free breakfast anyway.
They aren't going to be hurting. These people would probably do just fine if you dropped them naked on a tropical island.
You want people to worry about? I can think of a lot of others who need your help more. Like half the people going to public school.
Without a human-capable spacecraft, astronauts won't get into space.
Now there's a shocker...
May? Astronaut careers may stall without any manned spacecraft for them to fly? How insightful.
In other news, the careers of professional football players may stall due to the NFL's decision to stop buying footballs.
with a man cave simulator.
"In German oder English I know how to count down. Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.
...for adult diapers.
The SGC will take,.kihi. opps I said to much
Wherein the end product is constrained by the size and functionality of the delivery system.
At least with the shuttle, though, there were no legions of mercenaries possessing ownership of each molecule of the air, adding fees for traversing that molecule, snooping to see what the payload is and altering, impeding, or blocking that payload based upon their opinion of that payload...and perhaps even imprisoning - or worse - the creators or receivers of that payload...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
When we talk about going to distant places like Mars, the moon, [or] an asteroid, we will not be able to take someone off the street, train them for a few weeks and expect them to go off and do the types of missions we will demand of them,' said Bolden."
You need people who are reasonably stable, intelligent, and healthy. They should also have some medical training for emergencies. SCUBA diving may also help. What additional, lengthy training is needed, and what's the cost/benefit tradeoff supposed to be?
"I see the same old heavy client programmers who couldn't adapt to web programming."
Where did you get the idea they were different? Different languages, maybe, different platforms, but not a differnet paradigm from what I'm seeing. The current epitome of web programming is some pretty heavyweight shit. Not counting Flash. Of course, I just see what passes for AJAX and massive doses of Java at work. If only it were different.
Now, NASA does need to reconsider the direction it takes. Somehow I think launching more ore less straight up is just too difficult. How about sending things up more like planes?
Oh, wait. that's being tried. Just not by NASA.
I hate this. NASA needs to stay in the game, but it's lost the edge. And the funding.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Oh FFS. It's not like they are going to be flipping burgers, or in a homeless shelter any time soon.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
User Error: Fixed by pressing play again to unpause.
A country like the one where this manned space program and a few others are currently being built ?
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Astronauts play stars in NASA mission 'movie' posters: For every space shuttle mission since STS-96 in 1999, which was the first time a U.S. shuttle docked with the International Space Station, the Kennedy Space Center's graphics department has been creating some pretty cool (and kitschy) mission posters.
I see the same old heavy client programmers who couldn't adapt to web programming.
This is partially true due to the fact that over the past 15 years the functionality available through the web platform has increased greatly and is approaching the level of traditional client applications. It's close, just not quite there. That said, while the web platform is usually excellent there are some mitigating factors hindering it's growth like the slow adoption and vendor lock-in. Considering the enormous improvements to the web platform there still is a substantial need for client applications even though most business applications could be implemented without it.
Security is a huge issue, a lot of shops simply don't want their applications exposed remotely, therein increasing the potential for an outside attack.
Performance is another. Until internet bandwidth reaches a point where it can support concurrency with enormous datasets and practically no latency then client applications will proliferate unabated.
Additionally, there are vast swathes of the population without broadband, or internet at all. Even if the bandwidth capacity increased and performance isn't an issue(server-side), we still need to establish a lot more very expensive infrastructure to plug people in.
Finally, there is the plain old issue of control. Many people don't wish to be beholden to hosting brokers and their ISP's since both are prone to draconian government meddling(namely traffic shaping or the enforcement of archaic IP laws).
While I agree the web platform is growing exponentially and it is very likely that overall adoption will exceed native applications in the near future, native applications aren't going away anytime soon. Additionally, since the fundamental concepts between both platforms tend to be more similar than different, a lot of native environments will and do support the stateless web where possible. IMO, eliminating the need for RAM and native processing is currently insurmountable.
the only difference is that the astronauts' career is costing the taxpayers a god damned lot of money. let them join the ranks of folk who will never get to fly through space.
While I would generally agree with what you are saying here, the Shuttle did "prove" that at least in theory a "reusable" vehicle could be built. As a **very** expensive prototype done with six test beds, the Shuttle at least met the engineering test goals of the program, and they did have over 130 different test flights working out some of the bugs in the system with two notable failures.
For an experimental vehicle, I think the Shuttle met its criteria of success, at least comparable to the X-15.... which BTW also took out some lives of some of the test pilots. When viewed from this perspective, the Shuttle program isn't all that bad.
On the other hand, why there are members of Congress that are trying to extend an experimental research vehicle a couple more flights when it has proven itself as unreliable and dangerous merely to take trash down from orbit is beyond me. This next flight of the Shuttle that is supposed to happen tomorrow (Monday) is precisely such a garbage hauler trip.
"I'm an astronaut" looks very good on the resume. I don't think that the lack of space shuttles would stall their careers.
This is the right decision and it's overdue franky.
It's all been downhill since the amazing achievements of the 1960s.
The entire agency should be dismantled, and at that time the
U.S. government should:
1) Publish a list of X-prizes for space research achievements.
2) VC fund a number of companies designed to go after those X-Prizes.
3) Put a salary cap on startup employees. Weed out the dispassionate.
This has two effects:
It makes the cost of failure a linear and known quantity.
It incentives the people who will make it happen.
First rule of thumb, if NASA can botch something, they will. SST was a disaster from what was promised (what was it, 30 day turn around @ vehicle? Weekly launches and I forget what the cost @ pound they were initially spouting, damn crooks), the years worth of delays and the lack of employment of those who were layed off after Apollo 17 (that would include my late father) mission. Challenger disaster that was needless, the botched search for the crew cabin (which was found within a square mile of where Patrick AFB told them to look in the first place, but NASA went else where first), the disgraceful recovery and transportation of the crew's remains once they did find the crew cabin. Then the Columbia disaster just underscored NASA management's lack of caring or understanding how delicate these old vehicles are even after Challenger's review.
I guess one should have expected this type of dismal failure when the US Government think it can run an space agency like a airline. Basically that would have been the fate of commercial air transportation if the US military would have had a strangle hold on it and not allowed the first airlines to form and fly cargo and passengers. I seldom agree with Obama on anything, but getting NASA out of the man space transportation loop is painful, but it needs to be done to allow people like Rutan to step up to the plate for a try. Next time your at the airport for a flight, try to imagine as a civilian having the choice of train, bus, or car if USAF wouldn't secure you a seat to fly on the only operational air transportation system, theirs. That's if they are going to the nearest military base where you need to go.
About the time that Apollo was canceled I was just beginning to try to figure out what I wanted to do when I "grew up". Until that point, I was thinking that being an astronaut. Yes, the shuttle was being developed, but that wasn't getting any press at the time. So, after graduation I was still on my original choices:
Carter and Ford had basically raped the CIA so secret agent was out. I didn't think there was any money in being a cowboy, but a friend in England suggested I could be a jockey. Fireman was out after my first ride along and I had to look into the brain pan of a kid who wasn't wearing his helmet when he decided to take his motorcycle Christmas present for a spin.
I tried being a cop for awhile.
So, after being a drill instructor, aircraft mechanic, and working in the IC industry for awhile, John Glenn goes back into space and I start thinking, "Hell, the way things are going, my fifth career could be as an astronaut!" But, nooooo, they go and cancel the shuttle and damn near kill the follow on.
So, as of about a month ago, I've bought a ranch in Idaho...
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's not obviously true that reusability is the best way. Reusability increases the launcher complexity and weight, hence design costs and launcher costs. You produce less launchers, so gain less from mass production. You can produce fewer launchers, but you need to pay for recovery and turnaround.
It may still turn out to be the best way, as SpaceX are trying to prove, but it isn't obvious.
Planes fly around 300 m/s. To get to orbit you need 8000 m/s. Launching horizontally means you have to fight air resistance all of the way.
Reusable missiles obviously don't make sense. Reusable launch vehicles obviously do make sense. The problem is that people seem to think missiles make good launch vehicles.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You can't flip a burger in 0-g.
So far, missiles are the best launch vehicles by far. This will remain so until we can build engines which don't require air with a specific impulse greater than 800.
The shuttle's failure comes from sticking a plane on top of a missile, that alone increased launcher size by a factor of 4 at least (for the same payload).
Pop a message up on TV/Radio "We want someone to go to the moon, send resume here...." and they'd be sorted.
What is this about making a career out of being an astronaut that may or may not ever launch?
I know it hasn't come to this yet, but this is sounding like a rocket rider union coming up if people worry about careers.
Sure, we'll launch, but only if we can be sure the health and safety risk is 0, and if the seat won't be quite comfortable enough, or it might vibrate a bit more than you like, the unions will force you to redesign it. Oh, and remember, wheelchair accessable is a must.
Not to mention making it manned, which increased complexity, weight, and cost again. Launch vehicles must be as slim as possible, any excess pound taken to orbit is at least an extra 20 pounds launcher mass.
So far, missiles are the best launch vehicles by far.
It should be obvious that a missile is not the pinnacle of launch vehicle technology. Innovation in this market is rare.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Can you suggest an alternative?
Sure, a gas and go reusable horizontal takeoff and landing vehicle. I'm partial to two stage to orbit designs, a hydrocarbon lower stage with a liquid hydrogen upper stage, others would argue for a single stage to orbit design - but I've yet to see their numbers close for a manned vehicle. The advancement needed here would be just engine reusability. The cost reduction comes from the massive decrease in the size of the standing army required for ground operations.
Airbreathing engines like what you described would be good for the first stage, but not much good on the second stage.. but they won't be available for at least a decade, in my opinion. And there's so many other great technologies in the works that you may want to incorporate into a generation of vehicles a little further out, they just need to be demonstrated. For example, some MHD reentry enhancement would be nice.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Horizontal takeoff designs are no go. Wings are only efficient at very low speeds and altitudes (there's a reason the Concorde is offline); you're increasing efficiency for the first 1000 m/s and 30 km but you have to carry them for the other 7000 m/s and 200 km (less if you have two stages, but still horribly inefficient).
Engine reusability can be had with recoverable missiles (see SpaceX).
The ground operations staff increases with reusability instead of decreasing since you have to inspect and repair your reusable spacecraft; this is what killed the shuttle economically. These engines operate so close to the edge of the envelope you have to trade efficiency for maintenance time, and you just can't afford to lose efficiency.
Suitable air breathing engines have been a decade away for at around 50 years now. No one knows if they're even possible beyond Mach 5.
The ground operations staff increases with reusability instead of decreasing since you have to inspect and repair your reusable spacecraft; this is what killed the shuttle economically. These engines operate so close to the edge of the envelope you have to trade efficiency for maintenance time, and you just can't afford to lose efficiency.
Yeah, and you're proving my point. The Shuttle is not the pinnacle of reusable launch vehicle technology, it's 1970s technology, and NASA has absolutely no motivation to reduce costs.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...and truck driver's career hits skids without a truck
BAG (bad analogy guy) modded flamebait here? Why? That stupid shuttle was a crappy idea from the word go. It was a compromise of many things. A spaceship is not an airplane, and an airplane is not a spaceship. It's about what you would get if you tried to make a Cadillac pickup truck. A butt ugly piece of shit that doesn't do anything as well as some other alternative vehicle. http://www.automedia.com/NewCarBuyersGuide2007/photos/2007/Cadillac/SRX/SUV/2007_Cadillac_SRX_ext_1.jpg Go ahead, look at it. It's every bit as ugly as the shuttle.
Has anyone ever done a poll of the shuttle pilots? Has anyone ever asked them if they would rather have driven a real spaceship, that actually went somewhere? Most pilots, most drivers, don't learn their skill so that they can drive on an established circular track a dozen times in their lives. Most of them learn their skills so that they can GO SOMEWHERE!!
Face it, we've not yet built a real spaceship. China will probably beat us to that. No, the space station doesn't count - that's just a freaking raft, tethered to the shore by a really short logistics chain.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
a classic rock band comprised solely of astronauts
It is either "composed solely of astronauts" or "comprising solely astronauts". "Comprised" means "composed of".
Time to switch into cushy government jobs in the healthcare business
We have at least one company(spacex) coming on-line with a 7 person-to-leo vehicle. That will allow for not just a replacement for the shuttle (in terms of human), BUT, unlike the shuttle, it can remain in space for 2 years. That allows the ISS to be kicked up in size. In addition, it will also allow Bigelow's private space stations to come on-line.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's no question about it. After 3 more shuttle missions, that's it. No more shuttles, no plans in place to go back, thanks to the genius in chief canceling the moon rocket.
Make no mistake, this is going to get steadily worse. We don't have money for most everything we need - health care, infrastructure maintenance, etc. We couldn't afford to build the interstate highway system any more.
This is the result of all our jobs going overseas, and especially the manufacturing jobs. GO to business school, they'll tell you that there are only 3 sources of wealth: agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Manufacturing has largely been shipped out of the country, which has adversely impacted the mining industry too. Their good-paying jobs went elsewhere, too.
Until we get it back, we're going to continue to decline.
The thing that is really killing manufacturing is NOT the good wages it pays, NOT the union that ensures those wages for millions of workers, but instead it is the world's highest statutory income tax rate. The US Gov't's corporate income tax rate of 35% is sucking money out of our industries, and chasing their jobs overseas. State business taxes of about 4.5% puts the USA, overall, second only to Japan, which is a couple tenths of a percent higher than we are.
Kill the income tax, or die as a world leader. Its that simple. The best way to do it that I've seen is the Fair Tax (www.fairtax.org) but whatever we use, we absolutely, positively have to get rid of the income taxes, all of them (corporate, personal, social security, medicare, self employment, alternative minimum, gift, capital gains, etc.) or we're just going to keep sliding down toward 3rd world status. The flat tax, BTW, is just another income tax. Income taxes are toxic to our prosperity.
Indeed Richard Branson is looking a bit canny right now, he might pick up a few pilots that need little to no training having already been trained by the tax payer. Typical private sector story, get the public sector/tax payers to provide your staff training and then pick up tip-top crew when the public sector has to offload in time of recession. Over here in the UK they say the biggest influence against the public sector being reduced is the parallel private sector, e.g. private hospitals rely on the public sector to pre-train their doctors and nurses, private security rely on the army and police to train their people on the ground. These private companies will privately scream at the government if huge cuts are proposed because they just don't invest in training themselves to the same degree as the public sector, they rely on the government/tax payers to train and employ their staff until they are good enough to head hunt.
So I think Virgin might indeed have timed this one very well - they have a sub-space ship ready to fly and will be looking to hire crew in the next twelve months. Not sure about the other companies though, your Blue Origin people for example. I can imagine if I was a NASA expert checking out prospective companies and I saw that one of the key pictures on the B.O. home page was of their bicycle rack, I might be a bit worried about what technology they have....
But the shuttle proved that a reusable launch vehicle was impractical for equipment launches. Getting things down from orbit is very expensive, so reducing costs requires that you allow anything you don't need to burn up. There's nothing so expensive that it's worth preserving through atmospheric re-entry.
The only case where that's not true is people, but we never send up enough people that a re-entry vehicle the size of the shuttle is justified.
You can't flip a burger in 0-g.
Sure you can. Just not in the traditional way. You could have two griddles parallel to one another and maybe 5-6 feet apart. Cook one side of the patty, flip it to the other cooking surface, spin yourself 180 degrees, finish cooking.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's fairly obvious, even before your comment, that we would need new types of planes. Even the independents know this.
Next, you're gonna tell me we should simplify things and just let a capsule slash down into the ocean? Avoids a lot of complicated stuff like 'flying' back and whells and such.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
There are air-breathing engine technologies that can go faster then mach 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet . Unfortunately, with a scramjet the problem is getting the vehicle going fast enough for the jet to work (Almost that mach 5 you mentioned earlier).
Of course, that goal didn't assume we'd stop building shuttles once we had five of the damn things. Which was the biggest failure of the Shuttle era. We should have built one or two every year for the last 30 years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Better analogy.
Rockets were the original text only web.
The shuttle was the original Geocities. Large amounts of flashing images and over hyped.
With long loading times and no added benefit over the original text only web.
What we need is the current web with interactivity and fast loading times.
I suppose it's true, "not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up." Or at least in the US anyway.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
These are all research programs, far away from production. I agree those are the best bet for the future, but you can't start a launcher program based on those.
No one knows how to build those planes. Sure, you can use a B-52 to lift a rocket that will put a 200KG payload in LEO, but those things don't scale.
wrt recovery, wings or landing rockets are pretty, but also very heavy. If a parachute system is the lightest, then it's also the cheapest. Remember, an extra pound of landing gear expands to 20-40 extra pounds of launcher mass.
Complicate much? Just let go the pressure keeping the burger on the grill, it'll float, flip it, press it back down.
Members of Congress are supporting more missions because the money it costs to perform those missions gets spent in their districts. This kind of pork spreading to buy votes/support in Congress has always been a large part of why the Shuttle program is so flawed. There were better designs proposed at the time that wouldn't have put the pork in the right place, and got passed over. Which is why, even as experimental vehicle, it's a major failure.
i heard nasa was going to start testing the electronics in toyota cars for the acceleration bug - why don't they get these idle astronauts to drive them around the launchpad?
Complicate much? Just let go the pressure keeping the burger on the grill, it'll float, flip it, press it back down.
Pressure doesn't keep a burger down. It is a combination of gravity and surface tension. Remove the gravity and the burger would still stick weakly to the grill surface. We need to break that adhesion, preferably with some sort of fully functional fembot - with a spatula.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
mostly air force officers any longer?
A lot of these people have dedicated their entire lives to understanding the vast sciences and engineering to make it into this program. They have both incredible talent and well developed skills necessary for their highly specialized trade. It's obvious we need to create another multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded program for them so their talents don't go to waste.
In unrelated news, my industry sales were down 40% in 2009, continue to drop for the first quarter this year, and my unemployment is about to run out.
"Can't take someone off the streets, train them for a few week and put them in space."
Why not? Everything about the shuttle is automated. When experiments are conducted there is a health dose of back seat (ground control) driving.
A launch vehicle without a license to launch is pretty much like tits on a bull.
Sorry, there are no launch licenses being given out. You need clearance from both FAA and EPA. Without that, there will be an army of government agents making sure nothing gets launched.
Nobody is going anywhere unless the license problem get solved, and there are no solutions on the horizon.
It's 1970's technology that failed. Remember, they had to redesign ALL the tiles on the shuttle because it would otherwise burn up? At that point, they should have let them burn up and redesigned a better platform. Unfortunately, they didn't, and we're left with zero plans for manned space flight. Not that I don't understand that unmanned flight is superior in most ways, it doesn't generate the same enthusiasm and tension that new manned space flight potentially can. Basically, with the exception of the moon landing and spy satellites, we lost the space race with the USSR...and now are losing it to private industry.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
Idaho, enjoy fucking goats you white ReThuglican Jew.
*golf clap* Well played. Always good to see a Lehrer reference here.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Somehow I think launching more ore less straight up is just too difficult. How about sending things up more like planes?
Orbital vehicles don't just launch more or less straight up. They start launching straight up to get ground clearance, then they pitch over and thrust 'forward.' The main challenge in a launch is not to achieve altitude, it's to achieve orbital velocity. This velocity is extraordinarily difficult to achieve with any kind of thrust other than what amounts to, essentially, a big ass bomb with a nozzle on the end. Planes would have a very difficult time lifting something the size of most orbital launch vehicles. It's not that it can't be done, it just tends to be unnecessarily complex. If you already have to produce enough thrust to attain an orbital velocity, why not spend five second of that thrust achieving a reasonable altitude?
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
He didn't forget it. The guy more or less said exactly what you're saying when he said that U.S. manufacturing wasn't being killed off by high wages and unions. Believe it or not, it's possible to recognize what a problem taxes are for a healthy economy without advocating that all the proletariat toil for 23 hours a day in the slave pits of the bourgeoisie.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
You are behind. FAA handed out first licenses to these companies quite long time ago. Also, did you not notice that Bigelow has two prototypes circling the earth right now ?
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Yeah, agreed. And what's worse is that they've been working on a safe, simple, soon replacement for launching humans to LEO since before the Columbia "accident" in 2003. During the Columbia investigation retiring the fleet immediately was seriously considered, because it was recognized that if the shuttle kept flying there would be no motivation to get a replacement going soon. What started out as a kludge to use existing infrastructure to get humans to space evolved through 3 engineering revisions to the Ares I abomination - which is neither safe, nor simple, nor soon. And now we're in the mess we're in because NASA just can't be trusted to do what needs to be done.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Its: "Auf deutsch und auf englisch kann ich den Countdown. Jetzt lern' ich chinesisch!" sagt Wernher von Braun.
There are air-breathing engine technologies that can go faster then mach 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet . Unfortunately, with a scramjet the problem is getting the vehicle going fast enough for the jet to work (Almost that mach 5 you mentioned earlier).
I suppose you could use small detachable pods to provide thrust for take-off and early flight (rockets or jets like these things).
Planes fly around 300 m/s. To get to orbit you need 8000 m/s. Launching horizontally means you have to fight air resistance all of the way.
Or instead of fighting it, you could use the air with a lifting body... Oh and by the way the solution for the X-33 tank construction issues was found about a year after NASA stopped funding it, and LockMart is still developing test vehicles.
Ground operations for 2010 reusable launchers would be more expensive than ground operations for 2010 throwaway launchers. 2010 reusable launchers would be more expensive than 2010 throwaway launchers (though less would be needed). 2010 reusable launcher design and qualification would be more expensive than 2010 throwaway launcher design and qualification. Whether 2010 reusable launchers would be overall cheaper than 2010 throwaway launchers is not at all obvious. Looks like SpaceX have a shot at trying to prove it so, but they aren't there yet.
As to spaceplace like designs, they simply can't be built with 2010 technology; and you can't start such a project today with technology that isn't provably achievable (Apollo was known to be achievable in the early 60s).