1. *Welfare* programs are a significantly larger portion of the federal budget than military spending.
2. Defense is not nothing. Cut defense spending and you reduce America's presence abroad. Say what you will about American foreign policy, but if American power shrinks the void is going to be filled by god knows who. I'll take an imperfect but tolerable "known" to a potentially frightening/devastating "unknown."
3. Defense spending is a cost that benefits everyone equally. Welfare is a cost whose benefits are spread unequally. Defense is also a specific responsibility of the U.S. Congress while health and welfare is not.
The unknown poses a threat. The unknown of who or what would fill the power vacuum if the U.S. slashed its military forces is not trivial.
I for one trust the power the U.S. holds today far more than I trust the ambitions of lesser powers who would likely see the U.S. reducing its power projection as an opportunity.
The Russian rockets only have similar demonstrated reliability to the shuttle.
No. That's just plain wrong What-ever.... the numbers are what they are. The demonstrated reliability and safety are nearly identical.
The Shuttle, on the other hand, doesn't have any sort of favorable modes of failure during launch or landing, in which the crew even has a faint chance of survival. What are you talking about? Not only does the Shuttle have an abort mode for the entire ascent, it has used them SUCCESSFULLY! And no vehicle that has ever flown has an abort mode once it commits to re-entry. What is the Soyuz abort mode if the parachutes don't deploy? At least Shuttle has the option of bailing-out if they have insufficient glide energy to reach the landing strip.
These two incidents actually demonstrate the inherent safety of Souyz over the Shuttle. In spite of chatestrophic mechanical failures, and lax safety standards, the crew were able to walk away from the incident in both cases. You seem to be forgetting two Soyuz crews that didn't walk away, as they returned very, very DEAD.
And interestingly enough, the cause of the fatal Soyuz flights were mechanical error. Both Shuttle's were lost under conditions where flight managers knew the vehicle was damaged or outside its tolerances, but chose to continue flying anyway.
Soyuz has two mechanical failures
Shuttle has two human failures
Which is "inherently safer" again??
"I find it unlikely Soyuz had the same number of flights as the shuttles."
That's because they don't. The U.S. Space Shuttle has flown more!
At present time, the 98th Soyuz flight is docked to the International Space Station. Atlantis is sitting on the launch pad waiting to fly the 121st Shuttle mission (STS-122). Despite the fact that the first Soyuz flew 13 years before the first Shuttle, NASA has historically been the more active space agency.
"I think it's safe to assume Soyouz-class vehicles are a very mature design and, quite probably, safer that shuttles."
They are statistically the same. Both have lost two crews, and when you consider the number of people flown safely to the number of people lost, they both have around 98% success rate.
The Soyuz TMA (the most recent Soyuz variant) has had some frightening close calls lately. It's interesting to note that when Endeavor had a dinged heat-shield tile, the media was circling NASA like hawks. But when the *second* Soyuz in 4 years lost guidance/navigation on re-entry and subjected the crew to a bone-crushing, high-G, hundreds of miles off-course re-entry, it got just a blurb in trade magazines.
I doubt noise ordnances will provide one bit of protection. We could not be talking about more polar opposites in terms of interest groups:
Big business (noisy advertising) Teenagers and minorities (noisy sound systems)
It's offensive all the same, but our friendly elected officials will do anything to advance commerce. Our quality of life is but a small price to pay, no? Mirrored sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones may be more functional than fashionable in the near future.
What a freaking joke. Energia has been totally mothballed and hasn't flown in nearly twenty years. It would require as much effort to get Energia flying again as we'd spend developing a new vehicle ourselves.
And not to forget Energia is total overkill for a simple crew launch vehicle we are trying to develop with the Ares I.
Why does everyone buy into the nonsense that Russia has all the space hardware the world could ever need, ready to fly if you cut them a check?
1. Last time I checked, SpaceShipOne still had a rocket engine...
2. Space Ship One only achieved about 1/60th the energy required to orbit Earth. So scale-up the vehicle 60 times, and it starts becoming quite difficult to build an adequate carrier aircraft. To build a carrier aircraft to launch the payloads we are talking about for Moon/Mars missions, you need something larger than an A380.
3. And all a carrier aircraft can really do is just get the spacecraft above a fraction of the atmosphere and provide just a fraction of its total velocity. The carrier in itself is another customized, complex system to develop, test, and maintain. 99% of the spacecraft in the world are launched from the ground for a reason.
The only company who launches *orbital* payloads from a carrier aircraft do so *not* for the performance boost, but to fly above the major weather patterns that can cause delay to ground launches.
You would have to let go of said object in such a way as to cause *no* disturbance. Easier said than done. The station is also deaccelerating at the rate of 1/1000g due to atmospheric drag, so leaving any object not fixed to a bulkhead will cause it to drift over time.
1. And I'm still calling B.S. The overall point you are trying to make is that high-speed rail has this magnificent safety advantage while maglev is inherently dangerous or something. And while high-speed rail has enjoyed excellent safety, it is completely disingenuous to focus only on TGV and not other high-speed rail systems as well.
The articulated carriage does lend a measure of safety, but there was also a tremendous amount of Good Luck on the rare incidents where a TGV derailed, and a tremendous amount of Bad Luck one well known example of an ICE derailing.
2. A demonstration of a capability that will never be used in service? What is another word for that? p-u-b-l-i-c-i-t-y
The only way for high-speed rail to get any faster *in-service* is through massive investment in new rail lines. In principle, that is no different than investment in maglev except for the fact that maglev is still more expensive.
3. I'm not talking about TGV or ICE. If you notice the context, I was referring to maglev. Germany is doing much of the early adoption for maglev which is great for the rest of the world once they drive down the cost. Or once they transfer the technology to China who will certainly replicate it for less $.
And pay no attention to the 101 killed when the German ICE derailed at Eschede? You can't use a single incident to broadly declare a technology "rather dangerous." What a load of b.s.
The 360 mph run was pure publicity and in-service train sets won't ever come near that. Maglev will continue to evolve in any number of ways that will reduce cost and increase speed. Like any new technology, it will cost the early adopters a lot which sucks for Germany I guess. But for everyone else, it's great news.
I would suspect that improving the UV spectrum has the most benefit in spaceflight where there is no ozone layer filtering UV rays. The power/mass ratio of solar PV could be one of the driving factors in what sort of propulsion takes us beyond the Earth-Moon system.
Since the early 70s we (NASA, its partners, and American industry) have accomplished such more than a few minor feats:
- The Shuttle program has logged almost 9 times the spaceflight of the Apollo+Skylab program - The Shuttle program has averaged more than twice the flight rate of Apollo+Skylab - The ISS joint-venture will triple the flight time of Shuttle by the time the station is closed in 2016, so that's approx 27-fold over Apollo+Skylab - We since launched robotic missions to every planet (including Pluto) in the Solar System - We have revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos using orbital telescopes (3 out of 4 Great Observatories launched by Shuttle) - Private industry has demonstrated reusable suborbital flight with surprisingly good economics
I really hope you were joking when you asked "where are the interstellar probes." The fact is, we have made significant progress in spaceflight these last 20-30 years but those accomplishments have been overshadowed due to irrational expectations such as your own. It is inconceivable that we could have gone from Apollo to Lunar colonization, Mars missions, space industry, etc without further maturation of spaceflight technology. And as a stepping stone, the Shuttle/ISS have given us tremendous experience and capability that we did not have post-Apollo.
The greatest tragedy of all is that after debugging the Shuttle fleet of so many design issues, we are just going to retire them as soon as possible. If we were to build a new fleet of orbiters from scratch, we could implement a myriad of design improvements that would greatly lower cost and improve safety. Instead we're going to go pander to the "exploration" crowd...
The issues with wind power on Mars have been discussed above. The atmosphere on Mars is very, very thin. Average surface pressure is about 1% of Earth sea level. Even howling winds would struggle to turn a turbine and generate any meaningful electricity.
The architecture studies are assuming maturation of compact nuclear power. I think that is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make since we aren't talking about going to Mars today, tomorrow, or even ten years from now. The point of an architecture study is to say "We need technology 'x' to make the mission possible." Solar power is DOA for manned Mars missions, so we won't be going until we have compact nuclear power.
Over about 5 kw, RTGs are already more mass efficient than solar power on Mars and there are concepts in the works to make them nearly efficient as conventional fission reactors.
Just about all manned architecture studies use nuclear generators for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Martian weather. A manned crew would not be left without power or heating due to a dust storm of any length.
The bigger concern with Martian dust is that it would erode airlock seals, cling to EVA suits, get tracked into the habitat, and generally screw-up mechanical hardware. That's the same exact problem we face with lunar dust (probably more so), and developing techniques and equippment to handle lunar dust would likely be applicable to Mars.
I think there's plenty of good reasons for not going to Mars, but dust is an issue I belive we could engineer around today if we had to. These rovers themselves are proof that we can build working hardware that lasts for months/years in Martian conditions and they're not dead yet.
Martian dust particles have been "smoothed" by millions of years of weathering. Lunar dust is jagged and more like a sea of glass shards, and the Moon lacks wind to provide any erosion.
If we can get a handle on lunar dust, Martian dust really shouldn't be a big problem.
It's going to be many weeks before the go/no-go decision is given for testing to destruction. The components for the structural test aircraft haven't even begun final assembled yet.
FWIW, the moon has poor dust conditions too. Lunar regolith clungh to virtually every tool and spacesuit the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. It also posed a respiration challenge when the astronauts returned to the LM/CM
The "old" foam wasn't any better. In fact, Columbia rode an old tank on her ill-fated STS 107. The fact is, Shuttles have been returning with TPS damage for the entire program. But much like the erosion in the SRB o-rings pre-Challenger, the threat was never perceived to be so great that action was necessary to prevent a loss of vehicle/crew. Now we know better, and now they take every ounce of foam loss very seriously.
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1. *Welfare* programs are a significantly larger portion of the federal budget than military spending. 2. Defense is not nothing. Cut defense spending and you reduce America's presence abroad. Say what you will about American foreign policy, but if American power shrinks the void is going to be filled by god knows who. I'll take an imperfect but tolerable "known" to a potentially frightening/devastating "unknown." 3. Defense spending is a cost that benefits everyone equally. Welfare is a cost whose benefits are spread unequally. Defense is also a specific responsibility of the U.S. Congress while health and welfare is not.
The unknown poses a threat. The unknown of who or what would fill the power vacuum if the U.S. slashed its military forces is not trivial. I for one trust the power the U.S. holds today far more than I trust the ambitions of lesser powers who would likely see the U.S. reducing its power projection as an opportunity.
"I find it unlikely Soyuz had the same number of flights as the shuttles."
That's because they don't. The U.S. Space Shuttle has flown more!
At present time, the 98th Soyuz flight is docked to the International Space Station. Atlantis is sitting on the launch pad waiting to fly the 121st Shuttle mission (STS-122). Despite the fact that the first Soyuz flew 13 years before the first Shuttle, NASA has historically been the more active space agency.
"I think it's safe to assume Soyouz-class vehicles are a very mature design and, quite probably, safer that shuttles."
They are statistically the same. Both have lost two crews, and when you consider the number of people flown safely to the number of people lost, they both have around 98% success rate.
The Soyuz TMA (the most recent Soyuz variant) has had some frightening close calls lately. It's interesting to note that when Endeavor had a dinged heat-shield tile, the media was circling NASA like hawks. But when the *second* Soyuz in 4 years lost guidance/navigation on re-entry and subjected the crew to a bone-crushing, high-G, hundreds of miles off-course re-entry, it got just a blurb in trade magazines.
I doubt noise ordnances will provide one bit of protection. We could not be talking about more polar opposites in terms of interest groups:
Big business (noisy advertising)
Teenagers and minorities (noisy sound systems)
It's offensive all the same, but our friendly elected officials will do anything to advance commerce. Our quality of life is but a small price to pay, no? Mirrored sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones may be more functional than fashionable in the near future.
What a freaking joke. Energia has been totally mothballed and hasn't flown in nearly twenty years. It would require as much effort to get Energia flying again as we'd spend developing a new vehicle ourselves. And not to forget Energia is total overkill for a simple crew launch vehicle we are trying to develop with the Ares I. Why does everyone buy into the nonsense that Russia has all the space hardware the world could ever need, ready to fly if you cut them a check?
1. Last time I checked, SpaceShipOne still had a rocket engine...
2. Space Ship One only achieved about 1/60th the energy required to orbit Earth. So scale-up the vehicle 60 times, and it starts becoming quite difficult to build an adequate carrier aircraft. To build a carrier aircraft to launch the payloads we are talking about for Moon/Mars missions, you need something larger than an A380.
3. And all a carrier aircraft can really do is just get the spacecraft above a fraction of the atmosphere and provide just a fraction of its total velocity. The carrier in itself is another customized, complex system to develop, test, and maintain. 99% of the spacecraft in the world are launched from the ground for a reason.
The only company who launches *orbital* payloads from a carrier aircraft do so *not* for the performance boost, but to fly above the major weather patterns that can cause delay to ground launches.
You would have to let go of said object in such a way as to cause *no* disturbance. Easier said than done. The station is also deaccelerating at the rate of 1/1000g due to atmospheric drag, so leaving any object not fixed to a bulkhead will cause it to drift over time.
1. And I'm still calling B.S. The overall point you are trying to make is that high-speed rail has this magnificent safety advantage while maglev is inherently dangerous or something. And while high-speed rail has enjoyed excellent safety, it is completely disingenuous to focus only on TGV and not other high-speed rail systems as well. The articulated carriage does lend a measure of safety, but there was also a tremendous amount of Good Luck on the rare incidents where a TGV derailed, and a tremendous amount of Bad Luck one well known example of an ICE derailing. 2. A demonstration of a capability that will never be used in service? What is another word for that? p-u-b-l-i-c-i-t-y The only way for high-speed rail to get any faster *in-service* is through massive investment in new rail lines. In principle, that is no different than investment in maglev except for the fact that maglev is still more expensive. 3. I'm not talking about TGV or ICE. If you notice the context, I was referring to maglev. Germany is doing much of the early adoption for maglev which is great for the rest of the world once they drive down the cost. Or once they transfer the technology to China who will certainly replicate it for less $.
And pay no attention to the 101 killed when the German ICE derailed at Eschede? You can't use a single incident to broadly declare a technology "rather dangerous." What a load of b.s.
The 360 mph run was pure publicity and in-service train sets won't ever come near that. Maglev will continue to evolve in any number of ways that will reduce cost and increase speed. Like any new technology, it will cost the early adopters a lot which sucks for Germany I guess. But for everyone else, it's great news.
I bet 99% of those people couldn't quit Facebook even if you paid them.
I would suspect that improving the UV spectrum has the most benefit in spaceflight where there is no ozone layer filtering UV rays. The power/mass ratio of solar PV could be one of the driving factors in what sort of propulsion takes us beyond the Earth-Moon system.
Since the early 70s we (NASA, its partners, and American industry) have accomplished such more than a few minor feats:
- The Shuttle program has logged almost 9 times the spaceflight of the Apollo+Skylab program
- The Shuttle program has averaged more than twice the flight rate of Apollo+Skylab
- The ISS joint-venture will triple the flight time of Shuttle by the time the station is closed in 2016, so that's approx 27-fold over Apollo+Skylab
- We since launched robotic missions to every planet (including Pluto) in the Solar System
- We have revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos using orbital telescopes (3 out of 4 Great Observatories launched by Shuttle)
- Private industry has demonstrated reusable suborbital flight with surprisingly good economics
I really hope you were joking when you asked "where are the interstellar probes." The fact is, we have made significant progress in spaceflight these last 20-30 years but those accomplishments have been overshadowed due to irrational expectations such as your own. It is inconceivable that we could have gone from Apollo to Lunar colonization, Mars missions, space industry, etc without further maturation of spaceflight technology. And as a stepping stone, the Shuttle/ISS have given us tremendous experience and capability that we did not have post-Apollo.
The greatest tragedy of all is that after debugging the Shuttle fleet of so many design issues, we are just going to retire them as soon as possible. If we were to build a new fleet of orbiters from scratch, we could implement a myriad of design improvements that would greatly lower cost and improve safety. Instead we're going to go pander to the "exploration" crowd...
Like potassium? That has been in living organisms for far longer than we have been conducting above-ground nuclear tests.
The issues with wind power on Mars have been discussed above. The atmosphere on Mars is very, very thin. Average surface pressure is about 1% of Earth sea level. Even howling winds would struggle to turn a turbine and generate any meaningful electricity.
The architecture studies are assuming maturation of compact nuclear power. I think that is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make since we aren't talking about going to Mars today, tomorrow, or even ten years from now. The point of an architecture study is to say "We need technology 'x' to make the mission possible." Solar power is DOA for manned Mars missions, so we won't be going until we have compact nuclear power. Over about 5 kw, RTGs are already more mass efficient than solar power on Mars and there are concepts in the works to make them nearly efficient as conventional fission reactors.
Just about all manned architecture studies use nuclear generators for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Martian weather. A manned crew would not be left without power or heating due to a dust storm of any length. The bigger concern with Martian dust is that it would erode airlock seals, cling to EVA suits, get tracked into the habitat, and generally screw-up mechanical hardware. That's the same exact problem we face with lunar dust (probably more so), and developing techniques and equippment to handle lunar dust would likely be applicable to Mars. I think there's plenty of good reasons for not going to Mars, but dust is an issue I belive we could engineer around today if we had to. These rovers themselves are proof that we can build working hardware that lasts for months/years in Martian conditions and they're not dead yet.
Martian dust particles have been "smoothed" by millions of years of weathering. Lunar dust is jagged and more like a sea of glass shards, and the Moon lacks wind to provide any erosion.
If we can get a handle on lunar dust, Martian dust really shouldn't be a big problem.
It's going to be many weeks before the go/no-go decision is given for testing to destruction. The components for the structural test aircraft haven't even begun final assembled yet.
FWIW, the moon has poor dust conditions too. Lunar regolith clungh to virtually every tool and spacesuit the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. It also posed a respiration challenge when the astronauts returned to the LM/CM
The "old" foam wasn't any better. In fact, Columbia rode an old tank on her ill-fated STS 107. The fact is, Shuttles have been returning with TPS damage for the entire program. But much like the erosion in the SRB o-rings pre-Challenger, the threat was never perceived to be so great that action was necessary to prevent a loss of vehicle/crew. Now we know better, and now they take every ounce of foam loss very seriously.