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The Two Modern Space Races (arstechnica.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again. They cannot be farther from the truth, since not just one, but two space races are going on. The Google Lunar X Prize is managing a race for the first private group to land a rover on the lunar surface and perform a number of tasks for glory and prize money. Eric Berger at Ars Technica pointed out that another prize space race, with the goal of performing the first private crewed space mission in low Earth orbit, is ongoing thanks to NASA's commercial crew program.
Get over it. There will never be another Presidential speech with some manned goal to reach. These modern "space races" are nothing more than the ego-trips of bored billionaires.
The only way to get Apollo again is by socialism, just like the first one.
Quote:
Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again.
Emphasis mine. The little race between Musk and Boeing is nice to watch, however in the 1960s we were watching a race between two superpowers with basically no holds barred.
There would have to be a lot more prize money involved before this would be comparable to the 1960s space race, maybe a trillion or so would do it.
If you want a real space race, wait until we figure out robotic asteroid mining and space-based manufacturing.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Of spending money by governments in a competition to see who can do something first, without going bankrupt in the process..
Sad too, because NASA has pretty much always been chump change compared to the rest of the federal budget, and of all the money we print and spend it actually had measurable benefits on the quality of life in the world.
FUND NASA! Give them a goal, any goal, but make it a hard one and push them to succeed.... But alas, not going to happen any time soon.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
can't we all just get along?
the u.s. has saved a lot of money since they stopped pissing it away on the space shuttle. there is a chance the chinese will evolve through the required phase where engineers who actually know how to do something will be willing to work their asses off. I mean before they reach the corrupt as hell indian phase, where no astronaut would be willing to risk his life for some thieving shit that would get him killed on the first bribery attempt.
Anyway, good luck catching up to where the U.S. was over 50 years ago, you contemptable urchins.
Anything to do with space cost money, A LOT OF MONEY, and space race were relegate to the national domain because only governments can go on printing money without fearing a lot of negative consequences
Corporations of todays are as large - if not larger than - governments, and because of that, we have the modern day space races
But they are not the same type of space race we used to have back in the '60s and '70s, because, unlike national programs, space races nowadays are programs looking to make some handsome returns --- ROI has become the defecto engine behind the current space races
Apollo and the Soviet program had major institutional support because it was a safe proxy competition between US and USSR. If you could dock in space and land men on the moon, it makes it very clear that you have the technology to put warheads over Moscow and on every ship and otherwise effectively wage a technological global war.
It demonstrated the capability without needing to have an actual war, and in that sense it was a successful deterrent. The bomb tests could proved that you had a working warhead, but Apollo could prove you had an integrated ground & space communication system & top level aerospace technology.
And, many scientists & engineers are more motivated to do a good job and stretch for a moon landing than up-leveling thermonuclear war machines.
The US had the right idea back in the 1960's. Spend a lot of tax payers cash on land, the private sector, German experts who had found a new life in the USA no questions asked and finally creating some US experts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Lots of tax payers cash fixed all the issues and no more lemons.
Try the Indian approach of never getting ahead of your nations own domestic production lines, education and science over generations. Never be totally dependant on other another nations experts or space related exports. Build to a cost, be smart and keep designing domestically.
The UK tried with its buy in of US tech for its Skynet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... military communications satellites. All it was left with was an offer of a US export grade satellite after spending a lot on trying to catch up on space science. Decades of space science cannot be induced in a few years with extra funding.
The US private sector is now stuck waiting for the lucrative funding from US military missions and trying to catch up with a lot of other smart nations who can offer cheap and reliable systems.
Turn the certified to launch military payloads into a tax payer funded flood of cash for basic US science and engineering again. Rediscover metallurgy, acceleration profiles, the acoustic environment so the payloads are happy with US nosecones.
Time to think about the dual manifested side?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There is a third race starting. It's moving very slowly but there has been investment in it. The race to mine asteroids. It will be a long while before we see any results and I expect a couple of failures. Perhaps spectacular ones. It'll be fun to watch anyway.
India, China, and possibly Japan have a definite competition going on.
In Denmark, Copenhagen Suborbitals is working on sending a manned capsule above the 100km-line that has been defined as the "boundary of Space".
After various disputes, one of the original founders left, and started his own program - www.raketmadsen.dk .
Now Denmark has TWO competing manned space programs (none of them funded by government), and they both give me this crazy tingle "you know, they just might make it". They are taking quite different paths regarding development philosophy, technology and organizational structure, so it's REALLY interesting to watch. A privelige to be around :-)
Observers of the current state of the space program like to maintain that a space race, such as occurred in the 1960s, will never happen again. They cannot be farther from the truth...
If you believe this is anywhere close to the '60s space race, you weren't alive back then. The only ways this even resembles that is that there are two sides and the word space.
Just another day in Paradise
Apollo in the 1960's cost over $25 billion - a lot of money..
The Vietnam war at the same time cost $125 billion and took 50,000 American lives and over 3 million Vietnamese lives..
The US nuclear weapons program at the same time consumed roughly $150 billion to over $300 billion. (extrapolated from available figures..)
So in the 1960's the US spent on defence at a rate of some 10:1 to 20:1 on defence compared to Apollo.
Also every 1 dollar spent on Apollo eventually returned roughly 2 dollars to the US economy..
Conclusion Apollo was cheap. - We need another space race.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..