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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?
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.
Most importantly, private space companies can take risks that governments cannot unless, like Apollo, the race can be construed as military.
How can companies that must make profits "take risks", while the government can not?
I'll just point out that the profit motive does encourage a degree of risk taking due to two factors, the risk premium which comes about as a result of varying risk tolerance among private parties some which are very conservative and some which routinely take lots of chances. As a result, there are less parties willing to engage in risky activities and hence, a premium builds up where the risky activity, even when accounting for the risk has a somewhat greater return on investment than a less risky activity. This premium actually runs counter to the community's tolerance for risk since a very conservative community would eschew risk more than a risk seeking community. Thus, there is an incentive to take risks which increases in private communities that are risk adverse.
Second, risk taking tends to be a competitive advantage in the long run (assuming you avoid gambler's ruin) and relatively conservative organizations in a competitive market have to worry about losing market share and such.
Meanwhile government bureaucracies don't have these mechanisms. For example, in a lot of the US agencies, an employee who keeps their head down and doesn't rock the boat probably will have a job for many decades even if they aren't particularly competent at it even if their department is a negative sum money sink. This tends to create a huge risk adverse culture which seeks to avoid things that get one fired, but not have much else for ambitions.
India, China, and possibly Japan have a definite competition going on.
No, now the US is "pissing it away" on the SLS.
The yellowcake is a lie.
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
"Space nutter"? I have space mental illness, you insensitive clod! This is supposed to be a space safe space! You're space triggering me!
In all seriousness, if you're going to go around yelling "space nutters" five times a day, you'd better at least be British.
Sorry to say, but x-prize already sent ameaturs into space.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Meanwhile government bureaucracies don't have these mechanisms. For example, in a lot of the US agencies, an employee who keeps their head down and doesn't rock the boat probably will have a job for many decades even if they aren't particularly competent at it even if their department is a negative sum money sink. This tends to create a huge risk adverse culture which seeks to avoid things that get one fired, but not have much else for ambitions.
So, which agency did you work for, where you have such extensive first-hand experience knowing how government agencies work?
NASA took huge risks during the sixties. They strapped men into tiny capsules atop repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles and shot them into space, after they subjected men to experiments in g-force, vacuum, microgravity, rapid acceleration, rapid deceleration, and all sorts of other things. Apollo astronauts could not even qualify for life insurance, this stuff was so risky. Three astronauts died on the ground in what was retroactively named Apollo I in their honor.
NASA was engaged in an arms race. It was a form of war preparation. Arms races will always compel nations to take risks. That's why the current X-prizes, while cool and valuable, do not compare. The sixties saw a push to achieve space no matter what the cost as it was perceived that our survival was dependent on it. Now, it's a matter of cost. We're trying to bring down the cost to achieve what we already achieved expensively.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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..
So, which agency did you work for, where you have such extensive first-hand experience knowing how government agencies work?
I don't need it. Basically anything outside of the DOD is that way (the US military has a meritocracy approach that seems to work moderately well though it still has some trouble making fighting generals) and to get back on topic, NASA is that way.
NASA took huge risks during the sixties. They strapped men into tiny capsules atop repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles and shot them into space, after they subjected men to experiments in g-force, vacuum, microgravity, rapid acceleration, rapid deceleration, and all sorts of other things. Apollo astronauts could not even qualify for life insurance, this stuff was so risky. Three astronauts died on the ground in what was retroactively named Apollo I in their honor.
Too bad the 60s didn't stick around. We have since had the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and are halfway through yet another decade.
My point is that you're making an assertion without supporting it. In my experience, people screw-off and are just as inefficient in the private sector as they are in the public sector, or if they're seemingly more productive in the private sector then the hours they work and sacrifices in their personal lives often explain the extra productivity and the sometimes-extra salary.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My point is that you're making an assertion without supporting it.
So what? It's true. We have people who do work in these departments posting on slashdot. We have people, including myself BTW, who have experience with the outcome of government agencies. I'm not going to pick up a deadend job with some bureaucracy just to win an argument on Slashdot.
The thing I've noticed is that there's plenty of stories out there of epic, government waste, fraud, and apathy that simply aren't mirrored in the private world. Where's the corresponding examples in the private world? The private world is several times larger than the public world. There should be plenty of billion dollar or larger scale waste out there. Where is it?