I can't believe NASA is getting press over this. It is a solar powered model airplane that has its solar cell power output increased by shining a laser on it. I expect to see this sort of thing at a high school science fair; not flight tested at both Edwards and Marshall (so that the engineers at each location could get some free travel, no doubt). It looks to me as if someone needs their budgets cut. Keep this waste of tax dollars in mind next time NASA complains that unless they get more money then they will have to compromise safety.
"Let's start counting how many countries China has invaded since the present government got control in 1949, and then count how many countries the US has invaded since the same year.... "
OK. PRC: Tibet, India, Vietnam. That's three. Unless you count what is going on in the Spratlies and with the Phillipines, which would be four or five.
U.S.: um... Grenada (did you count China's island grabbing attempts), Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. That's four. (Unless you count Iraq twice or think that the bombing campaign in Serbia constitutes an invasion).
Korea? No. Both the U.S. and the P.R.C. fought in it, but because they were each defending an ally's territory at that ally's request I don't count it . Besides, the U.S. really just contributed forces to the U.N. command, as did many other nations. Vietnam? While China's war with Vietnam was a real invasion I leave that off the United State's list for the same reason as Korea. We were not invading anyone; we were helping an ally (at their request) fight a defensive action. I thought about not counting Grenada, since it was also to defend a friendly country from a military communist invasion; but I left it in because we had not been asked by the locals to help. Even though it was a friendly invasion, it was still an invasion.
Three vs. Four (or 3 to 5 vs. 3 to 6)
Now what did each country do with these invasions:
China:
Tibet: conquered and kept.
India: stalemate
Vietnam: lost
United States:
Grenada: won, gave it back to the locals
Panama: won, gave it back to the locals
Iraq: won, restored Kuwait and imposed sanctions on Iraq after the 1st invasion; currently in the proccess of giving it back to the locals for the 2nd invasion.
Afghanistan: won, gave it back to the locals
Does anyone think China would have given Vietnam back to the locals if it had won? Does anyone think China would have given the Indians in the territory it wanted any sort of self-determination? Do they want the Spratlies or some of the Phillipines so that they can turn around and give them to their native inhabitants?
I think quality of the invasions (in intent and success) means more than quantity, and in that case the U.S. comes out as the definate favorite in this comparison. But even if you go by just quantity, the U.S. doesn't come out as the clear loser in this comparison.
"USA cares about Taiwan as much as they care about Greenland"
Our leaders have presumably studied the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia prior to World War 2, and the results of the West not taking a hard stand on them.
Even if you are right and we don't care about Taiwan, we still care about ourselves and our national security. Not helping Taiwan after we pledged to do so would devestate our national security. None of our allies would trust our commitments anymore. Many of our allies do not have nukes only because we pledged to protect them under the umbrella of ours. Also, all our enemies and "competitors" would suddenly become much bolder because they knew we did not have the balls to keep threats that we had made. If we did not go to Tiawan's aid it would cost us a lot of allies, it would cause massive nuclear proliferation in countries that previously trusted us to help protect them, and it would embolden our enemies. We don't want that.
As for nukes. Don't be so sure we won't push the button if it comes to that. We are the only nation that has actually used them in combat. We also came close to using them several times since then (starting in Iran, I believe). China has speculated that we would not trade LA for Taiwan, but as I already pointed out it is not a simple matter of defending Tiawan for the Tiawanese. A full up world war would be a horrible thing; the last one might have been prevented if we had engaged the Axis powers in a small one sooner. Better to lose a few cities in a small war than to embolden your enemies, alienate your allies, proliferate nukes all over the place, and THEN have a world war (presumably with nukes). I think we would trade LA to stop that. Not that we want to lose LA... that's why we want ballistic missile defense.
"Hell if just bits of California and New York were destroyed then rest of America will just flounder."
You obviously learned most of what you know about America from watching Entertainment Tonight.
"And do you think that living in America would actually be worth while after all that?"
Amazingly most people in the non-industrialized nations still seem to think their life worth living. Despite what you may think from watching movies and TV, an awfully lot of people in the "heartland" of America are motivated by things other than buying the new Prada fashions, seeing the latest Broadway plays, and getting in to the newest nightclubs. Amazingly plenty of us still believe in our founder's little experiment and would work to keep it going and pass it on to the next generation. As difficult as the job might seem and as bad as the conditions, I suspect it would still be easier going than some of our ancestors had it. Considering the productivity of American agriculture, we would almost certainly not starve (especially with the larger cities targeted). And even with a substantially damaged military, we would still be hard to conquer (one of the benefits of a gun culture and physical separation from our enemies).
I don't think the biggest danger to the Republic would be mass exoduses or suicides from people who felt that it was no longer worth trying. I think it would be that members of the post-attack government might be tempted to permanently expand their authority (like an extreme version of the centralized planning in Briton that was continued after World War 2 was over). Fortunately I would like to think that the 2nd amendment would do its job and deter any extreme power grabs by military or civilian leaders, while small disturbances to the balance of power between our levels and branches of gov't (and the citizens themselves) can be, and regularly are, endured or corrected by more conventional political means.
As I recall, France's nuclear deterrence was only sized to "rip a limb off" of an opponent, not destroy an entire country. The ChiComs probably don't have more than two dozen nukes that could reach us.
God forbid anyone ever escalates that far, but it is likely that a nuclear attack on America by anyone other than Russia would not reduce us to an "insignficant pile of radioactive dust". Considering the large area of the country, it might not even reduce us into the bottom quintile of national GNPs. It would, almost certainly, however result in the entirety of the attacking nations (and possibly some other uninvolved countries) sustaining what SAC would have assessed as light to medium damage.
Nine of these are really good arguments for a national space program. Item #2 (Creating a global network for modern communications, entertainment and networking) isn't. Private enterprise, not NASA, does this. I don't think NASA could even begin to compete with private enterprise in entertainment and communication industries; it is just a compeltely different world.
That leaves the "top ten list" with only nine good items. I suggest a good addition to make it an even ten again would be "Because it's there".
"I work with people that make something from nothing on a daily basis. I work on machines that were obsolete years ago because we can't afford new ones"
What do you think the rest of us do all day? Slop pigs*? I don't know many engineers that don't have some obsolete hardware that they are using because replacing it can't be afforded or economically justified. Do you think the private sector is just full of gleaming industrial robots, rapid prototyping machines, and the latest workstations running CATIA 5? A good engineer is one who can do with one dollar what any idiot can do with two.
Maybe you shouldn't be touting Apollo, the biggest masturbathon in space history.
I have read a few obscure opinions that suggest that amazingly Apollo may have had something to do with this thing called "the Cold War", and was not about getting data on astronomical bodies at all. But, that could just be some wild rumour.
We blew our moon wad on a one shot mission that set up no platform to do further missions from, that brought back very negligible data, and nothing that couldn't be done by machines.
It may not be common knowledge over at JPL, but there was actually more than one moon mission! In fact, we sent several. And after that we used a lot of the same equipment to put up something called Skylab. And then there was some other Apollo/Soyuz thing, which may have really been connected with that Cold War incident I mentioned earlier. If we brought back negligible data, then the guys at the Johnson Pork Center must be awfully slow workers, because lunar samples are still being used in research today. Or perhaps you don't think it matters since it is not going on at YOUR center. I don't know what the state of the art in robotics and telepresence was in the early 70s, but I'll wager that Jack Schmitt was a better rock hound than any robot we could have sent.
Certainly there are complaints that can be made about Apollo. (How much cheaper could it have been done using multiple launches of Atlas & Titan based systems?). Certainly there are constructive criticisms that could be made about how it was ended. But your comments seem petulant and poorly thought out. I am certainly not motivated to encourage my representatives to send your lab any more of my hard earned tax dollars.
As for the wager... how much would you care to bet?
*my apologies to anyone who actually slopped pigs all day today.
"And the first things my coworkers and I did when we found this out was laugh our asses off.
Habitation on the moon in 15 years? Mars in 20?
Maybe if we devoted the sum output of the entire GDP to doing so! As of now, there's no hope of that happening."
Did you and the rest of the JPL janitorial staff read the bill? They want to develop a vehicle to go from LEO to L1 & L2 in 8 years, then to the moon in 15 years. Because they are only talking about going to and from LEO, the delta Vee is quite reasonable. Plus there is no need for TPS, since they don't reenter the atmosphere (unless you want to aerobrake). It sounds like this will be easier to develop than the Orbital Space Plane. If you guys at JPL can't hack it, then I'm sure Dr. Borowski at NASA Glenn would be able to come up with something within a decade.
Also if you read closely, the moon "habitation" is actually only "human tended", not permanently occupied, which makes that goal much easier.
As of now, there's no hope of that happening. We need an infrastructure in orbit around Earth before we can start sending things to the moon. Larger space stations, orbital manufacturing...
You mean just like the last time we sent stuff to the moon? I don't remember any orbital manufacturing facility being needed then. Or is it that orbital manufacturing a pet project of yours.
I'll grant you that sending people to Mars in 20 years seems to be a "stretch goal"* given the fact that NASA is a bloated wasteful organization that will siphon off a lot of its budget for manager's pet projects (like orbital manufacturing) that they think is more important than congress's mandate; but technically I don't think that is too ambitious for a focused organization even with the limited funding they are likely to get. Maybe a stretch goal is needed to help make some of the organizational changes NASA needs.
"...perhaps craft designed solely for use in space, to ship people and material to the moon"
No, not "perhaps". That craft you think that we might "perhaps" need to achieve whatever goals you have in your imagination is specifically called out in the bill. In fact the 1st 3/4 of the goals center around developing that vehicle. RTFB.
*Zubrin seems to think it is not much more difficult than going to the moon, though, and he has certainly studied the problem more than I have.
Your country may think if fun to watch a dictatorship invade a fledgeling democracy, but as a U.S. Citizen I can say that we won't just be watching. If the PRC attacks Taiwan then the U.S.A. will help defend Taiwan. Both the President and Congress have agreed to this commitment, so I think it is extremely likely that we would "whimp out" and not come to our ally's aid.
Considering both we and the PRC have nukes, I think a loss of access to cheap labor for us and a profitable export market for them would be the least of everyone's worries. I would be very surprised, therefore, if the PRC would risk a real invasion.
Taken in isolation, one would not want to bet a lot of money on being able to exploit these gamma-rays. However, Collins and co-workers show some rather convincing gamma-ray spectra, and it should be relatively easy to generate a more powerful X-ray beam in future experiments. Collins is careful not to overstate the general significance of the measurement, but his team includes rocket scientists who would like to capitalize on the huge energy density of nuclear isomers. Such isomers may have the potential to provide new ways of propelling spacecraft on interplanetary voyages. Isomers could also form the basis of a gamma-ray laser. The energy inversion that is essential to all laser operation occurs naturally in nuclear isomers, although the route to an actual gamma-ray laser has yet to be mapped out.
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/12/5/3Taken in isolation, one would not want to bet a lot of money on being able to exploit these gamma-rays. However, Collins and co-workers show some rather convincing gamma-ray spectra, and it should be relatively easy to generate a more powerful X-ray beam in future experiments. Collins is careful not to overstate the general significance of the measurement, but his team includes rocket scientists who would like to capitalize on the huge energy density of nuclear isomers. Such isomers may have the potential to provide new ways of propelling spacecraft on interplanetary voyages. Isomers could also form the basis of a gamma-ray laser. The energy inversion that is essential to all laser operation occurs naturally in nuclear isomers, although the route to an actual gamma-ray laser has yet to be mapped out.
"First of all, the assumption that people would continue to retire in their sixties if their lifespan extended is rather silly."
That won't stop the AARP from trying it. Retirement age isn't being increased to keep up with life expectency yet, at what point are we going to start?
"You apparently read the article, but didn't understand what you were reading. Try reading it again. He thinks the OSP is a bad solution because it doesn't eliminate the need to continue flying the aging, dangerous, outrageously expensive Shuttle in order to supply the ISS with needed cargo"
I read it, and no I didn't understand some of it. I suspect this is because what he says is inconsistent or poorly thought out. If you read my comment, I specifically say that we should have an unmanned system to deliver nonhuman cargo to the station.
"I see lots of unfounded assumptions there. "Should be a reliable," "odds of it failing should be much smaller," "slightly increase," "depends upon," etc."
I assure you that those are NOT unfounded assumptions. I'm just not going to take the time to put together an aeronautics course in a slashdot post like I would need if I were going to qualitative figures. And, BTW, the escape system is NOT dead weight. It will mass more than a similar system for a smaller Apollo capsule, but unlike the Apollo capsule the escape system (in the proposal I saw) was used as an upper stage after the boosters had fallen away. It is actually superior to the Apollo system when you consider the delta vee you get for burning the escape system rocket. It does, admittedly, mean that if you have a catastrophic failure during that uppper stage burn you have no escape system BUT we now have reliable, well proven upper stage rockets that we can use there (something we didn't have during Apollo).
"from a safety, performance or cost standpoint. Its functions could all be performed faster, better and cheaper with capsule-based solutions"
Somehow I doubt you have actually done this design stduy. As I pointed out, this can't be done properly by waving you hand and saying "capsules are just better". Do you even know what the cross-range requirements for re-entry are? Without that there is no way to know if you can get the lift you need from a capsule.
"They put a lot of thought into getting NASA to buy the design. "
No, they didn't. I was in the Joint Propulsion Conference technical session last year when Orbital gave their presentation on the OSP. It was the Space Launch Initiative session. NASA wanted a big expensive, fully reusable system. Another shuttle-like boondoggle in the making. The NASA guy gave his talk about NASA's vision of the next launch system (nothing like OSP), and then the contractors, Orbital, Lockheed, and Boeing were supposed to get up and talk about their proposals. The Orbital guy got up 1st and proceeded to show that the economics could not justify a launch system like NASA wanted, and that they could get 80% of the cost savings of the SLI for far less money by only making the crew vehicle reusable and sticking it on an existing expendible system. Great presesntation. Really discredited the whole SLI concept that NASA was pushing. Then the poor guys from Lockheed and Boeing had to get up and give their SLI presentations. I almost felt sorry for them. But OSP was NOT what NASA wanted. I don't think that it would have had a chance in hades, if we hadn't lost another shuttle. Orbital certainly did not make their proposal to please NASA, and I think they showed a lot of courage in going against the SLI fad.
"With a first launch not coming before 2008 (and knowing NASA, not before 2012), you can hardly call the OSP "near term". "
By "near term" I mean there doesn't have to be any technological breakthroughs before the vehicle can be designed. It could be finished sooner (and probably cheaper, too) if NASA would reduce the bureaocratic procurement hoops and "oversight". Without doing that, then ANY system (even a capsule) will not be ready in whay you would consider "near term".
"The existing EELV's have proven very reliable (so far), but even a small 4-seat OSP would, once you tack on the escape hardware and basic life support systems for the vehicle - require an EELV larger than the existing syst
"Apparently when developing you budget for new space vehicles it doesn't matter what technology you put in, just how much it weighs."
Yep, pretty much. There is a saying in aerospace:
"Aircraft are bought by the pound."*
There is a good reason for that. The same trend seems to be true for spacecraft.
But to answer your complaint, in making my "back of the napkin" estimate I considered not only the technology, but also the nature of the organization doing the work. An evolutionary vehicle (one based on a previous vehicle) built by a lean organization (like an X project) has R&D costs of about $20,000/lb. A non-evolutionary vehicle built by a bureaucratic organization (like I think the OSP will be) runs up to $100,000/lb for R&D. My guess may be high because I don't know the real structure mass of the OSP and because I am pessimistic about NASA's management of the project but the guess should be, as we say, good enough for gov't work.
He also complains about the R&D cost estimate as being too low.
The Orbital proposal from the linked website giv an OSP mass of 48,700 lbs; it doesn't say how much is structure and how much is propellant. R&D costs for an aerospace vehicle typically range from $20,000 to $100,000 a pound. Assuming (as is likely given that it is a gov't managed non-evolutionary vehicle) that this program would be $100,000/lb, that would give a total development cost of probably less than $5 billion.
Does anyone know what the NASA estimate he is bitching about is?
First, he claims that the OSP is bad because it only ships people, not cargo. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. Manned spaceflight is more expensive than unmmanned flight. It is a waste of money to send anything on a manned flight that could be sent on a cheaper unmanned one. The Russians have already demonstrated that cargo can be taken to the ISS with an umannned system. Satellites can be launched without using a manned vehicle. The only thing that can't be launched on a cheaper unmanned vehicle is people. Therefore the most economical system would be one where the manned rockets were just for ferrying people. That's what the OSP is; yet he seems to have a problem with that. If we start trying to make the OSP do everything, then it will be an expensive boondoggle like the Shuttle. Unfortunately we probably will have to fly the shuttle a few more times to get the rest of the station modules up, but it doesn't make sense to add billions of bloat to the OSP to give it the capability to add the last few modules to the station. Bring up cargo with unmanned vehicles. Bring up the last few modules with a few Shuttle flights (with minimum crew) if necessary. Keep the OSP small and only use it to do crew rotations. That's my $0.02.
He complains about not understanding the plan for the escape system. That is his inadequacy, not the OSP's. The original plan I saw (which was called the Orbital Space Plane because it was Orbital Science Corp's proposal) had a rocket on the spaceplane that was used as an escape system for the manned section in case of a booster failure, and was fired as an additional stage after the booster dropped away if there was no booster failure. He says this introduces an "extra" failure mode. Well, yes and no. If you are concerned about mission success (getting the OSP in the right trajectory) then I guess it does add additional failure modes. If you are concerned about keeping the crew alive (which the crew would probably appreciate being top priority), then it adds a "new" failure mode but not "more" failure modes. Sure, there is the chance that the escape system/final stage rocket could blow up and destroy the vehicle. But if any of the other stages blows up, then having that escape system turns those from fatal disasters to non-fatal mission failures. Since the escape system/final stage should be a reliable, evolutionary rocket design that gets a lot of attention, the odds of it failing catastrophically should be much smaller than the odds of one of the booster stages failing. Adding this system will, therefore, slightly increase the odds of a mission failure, while greatly reducing the odds of a crew fatality. Whether that is an "extra" failure mode depends on if you are looking at mission failure or crew loss. In my (and certainly the crew's) point of view, having an escape system is essential to the design's commitment to the safety of the astronauts.
He claims that the OSP is not much more technically sophisticated than the Dyna-Soar. That's fine with me. The point of the OSP is to reduce cost and reduce technical risk. At the time, the Dyna-Soar was ambitious, costly, and risky. With today's technology it is a cheap solution with low technical risk. Why would we want to introduce new technical risk if we don't have to?
He also complains about the possibility of the OSP being built with a reduced size that would require more than one launch to perform one crew rotation for the ISS. I agree with him that that would be bad, but I don't yet know how likely that is to be a problem. Something to watch out for, but I don't think it is as likely as he seems to.
He would prefer a capsule to a lifting body for reentry. A capsule is not necessarily bad, and I wouldn't dismiss it just because it is "old tech". The choice, however, is a complex technical trade off and not the sort of thing that can just be decided with a knee jerk reaction, nostalgia for the "good ol' days of Apollo",
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe NASA is getting press over this. It is a solar powered model airplane that has its solar cell power output increased by shining a laser on it. I expect to see this sort of thing at a high school science fair; not flight tested at both Edwards and Marshall (so that the engineers at each location could get some free travel, no doubt). It looks to me as if someone needs their budgets cut. Keep this waste of tax dollars in mind next time NASA complains that unless they get more money then they will have to compromise safety.
www.smallrc.com
"Let's start counting how many countries China has invaded since the present government got control in 1949, and then count how many countries the US has invaded since the same year.... "
OK.
PRC: Tibet, India, Vietnam. That's three. Unless you count what is going on in the Spratlies and with the Phillipines, which would be four or five.
U.S.: um... Grenada (did you count China's island grabbing attempts), Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. That's four. (Unless you count Iraq twice or think that the bombing campaign in Serbia constitutes an invasion).
Korea? No. Both the U.S. and the P.R.C. fought in it, but because they were each defending an ally's territory at that ally's request I don't count it . Besides, the U.S. really just contributed forces to the U.N. command, as did many other nations. Vietnam? While China's war with Vietnam was a real invasion I leave that off the United State's list for the same reason as Korea. We were not invading anyone; we were helping an ally (at their request) fight a defensive action. I thought about not counting Grenada, since it was also to defend a friendly country from a military communist invasion; but I left it in because we had not been asked by the locals to help. Even though it was a friendly invasion, it was still an invasion.
Three vs. Four (or 3 to 5 vs. 3 to 6)
Now what did each country do with these invasions:
China:
Tibet: conquered and kept.
India: stalemate
Vietnam: lost
United States:
Grenada: won, gave it back to the locals
Panama: won, gave it back to the locals
Iraq: won, restored Kuwait and imposed sanctions on Iraq after the 1st invasion; currently in the proccess of giving it back to the locals for the 2nd invasion.
Afghanistan: won, gave it back to the locals
Does anyone think China would have given Vietnam back to the locals if it had won? Does anyone think China would have given the Indians in the territory it wanted any sort of self-determination? Do they want the Spratlies or some of the Phillipines so that they can turn around and give them to their native inhabitants?
I think quality of the invasions (in intent and success) means more than quantity, and in that case the U.S. comes out as the definate favorite in this comparison. But even if you go by just quantity, the U.S. doesn't come out as the clear loser in this comparison.
Why do democracies have to turn into dictatorships to be enemies with each other?
What makes people think democracies (or in our case a republic) can't wage wars with each other?
As for France, I'm still p.o.'ed about that whole X Y Z thing.
"USA cares about Taiwan as much as they care about Greenland"
Our leaders have presumably studied the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia prior to World War 2, and the results of the West not taking a hard stand on them.
Even if you are right and we don't care about Taiwan, we still care about ourselves and our national security. Not helping Taiwan after we pledged to do so would devestate our national security. None of our allies would trust our commitments anymore. Many of our allies do not have nukes only because we pledged to protect them under the umbrella of ours. Also, all our enemies and "competitors" would suddenly become much bolder because they knew we did not have the balls to keep threats that we had made. If we did not go to Tiawan's aid it would cost us a lot of allies, it would cause massive nuclear proliferation in countries that previously trusted us to help protect them, and it would embolden our enemies. We don't want that.
As for nukes. Don't be so sure we won't push the button if it comes to that. We are the only nation that has actually used them in combat. We also came close to using them several times since then (starting in Iran, I believe). China has speculated that we would not trade LA for Taiwan, but as I already pointed out it is not a simple matter of defending Tiawan for the Tiawanese. A full up world war would be a horrible thing; the last one might have been prevented if we had engaged the Axis powers in a small one sooner. Better to lose a few cities in a small war than to embolden your enemies, alienate your allies, proliferate nukes all over the place, and THEN have a world war (presumably with nukes). I think we would trade LA to stop that. Not that we want to lose LA... that's why we want ballistic missile defense.
"Hell if just bits of California and New York were destroyed then rest of America will just flounder."
You obviously learned most of what you know about America from watching Entertainment Tonight.
"And do you think that living in America would actually be worth while after all that?"
Amazingly most people in the non-industrialized nations still seem to think their life worth living. Despite what you may think from watching movies and TV, an awfully lot of people in the "heartland" of America are motivated by things other than buying the new Prada fashions, seeing the latest Broadway plays, and getting in to the newest nightclubs. Amazingly plenty of us still believe in our founder's little experiment and would work to keep it going and pass it on to the next generation. As difficult as the job might seem and as bad as the conditions, I suspect it would still be easier going than some of our ancestors had it. Considering the productivity of American agriculture, we would almost certainly not starve (especially with the larger cities targeted). And even with a substantially damaged military, we would still be hard to conquer (one of the benefits of a gun culture and physical separation from our enemies).
I don't think the biggest danger to the Republic would be mass exoduses or suicides from people who felt that it was no longer worth trying. I think it would be that members of the post-attack government might be tempted to permanently expand their authority (like an extreme version of the centralized planning in Briton that was continued after World War 2 was over). Fortunately I would like to think that the 2nd amendment would do its job and deter any extreme power grabs by military or civilian leaders, while small disturbances to the balance of power between our levels and branches of gov't (and the citizens themselves) can be, and regularly are, endured or corrected by more conventional political means.
As I recall, France's nuclear deterrence was only sized to "rip a limb off" of an opponent, not destroy an entire country. The ChiComs probably don't have more than two dozen nukes that could reach us.
God forbid anyone ever escalates that far, but it is likely that a nuclear attack on America by anyone other than Russia would not reduce us to an "insignficant pile of radioactive dust". Considering the large area of the country, it might not even reduce us into the bottom quintile of national GNPs. It would, almost certainly, however result in the entirety of the attacking nations (and possibly some other uninvolved countries) sustaining what SAC would have assessed as light to medium damage.
"If they declared themselves a sovereign nation separate from China, they would have their seat in a day. "
And an invasion the next.
Nine of these are really good arguments for a national space program. Item #2 (Creating a global network for modern communications, entertainment and networking) isn't. Private enterprise, not NASA, does this. I don't think NASA could even begin to compete with private enterprise in entertainment and communication industries; it is just a compeltely different world.
That leaves the "top ten list" with only nine good items. I suggest a good addition to make it an even ten again would be "Because it's there".
Forget nuclear electric. What we need is bimodal or trimodal nuclear thermal.
e m/ nuclearmars_000521.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsyst
(remove space between "/" and "nuclearmars")
"I work with people that make something from nothing on a daily basis. I work on machines that were obsolete years ago because we can't afford new ones"
.
What do you think the rest of us do all day? Slop pigs*? I don't know many engineers that don't have some obsolete hardware that they are using because replacing it can't be afforded or economically justified. Do you think the private sector is just full of gleaming industrial robots, rapid prototyping machines, and the latest workstations running CATIA 5? A good engineer is one who can do with one dollar what any idiot can do with two.
Maybe you shouldn't be touting Apollo, the biggest masturbathon in space history.
I have read a few obscure opinions that suggest that amazingly Apollo may have had something to do with this thing called "the Cold War", and was not about getting data on astronomical bodies at all. But, that could just be some wild rumour.
We blew our moon wad on a one shot mission that set up no platform to do further missions from, that brought back very negligible data, and nothing that couldn't be done by machines
It may not be common knowledge over at JPL, but there was actually more than one moon mission! In fact, we sent several. And after that we used a lot of the same equipment to put up something called Skylab. And then there was some other Apollo/Soyuz thing, which may have really been connected with that Cold War incident I mentioned earlier. If we brought back negligible data, then the guys at the Johnson Pork Center must be awfully slow workers, because lunar samples are still being used in research today. Or perhaps you don't think it matters since it is not going on at YOUR center. I don't know what the state of the art in robotics and telepresence was in the early 70s, but I'll wager that Jack Schmitt was a better rock hound than any robot we could have sent.
Certainly there are complaints that can be made about Apollo. (How much cheaper could it have been done using multiple launches of Atlas & Titan based systems?). Certainly there are constructive criticisms that could be made about how it was ended. But your comments seem petulant and poorly thought out. I am certainly not motivated to encourage my representatives to send your lab any more of my hard earned tax dollars.
As for the wager... how much would you care to bet?
*my apologies to anyone who actually slopped pigs all day today.
"And the first things my coworkers and I did when we found this out was laugh our asses off.
Habitation on the moon in 15 years? Mars in 20?
Maybe if we devoted the sum output of the entire GDP to doing so! As of now, there's no hope of that happening."
Did you and the rest of the JPL janitorial staff read the bill? They want to develop a vehicle to go from LEO to L1 & L2 in 8 years, then to the moon in 15 years. Because they are only talking about going to and from LEO, the delta Vee is quite reasonable. Plus there is no need for TPS, since they don't reenter the atmosphere (unless you want to aerobrake). It sounds like this will be easier to develop than the Orbital Space Plane. If you guys at JPL can't hack it, then I'm sure Dr. Borowski at NASA Glenn would be able to come up with something within a decade.
Also if you read closely, the moon "habitation" is actually only "human tended", not permanently occupied, which makes that goal much easier.
As of now, there's no hope of that happening. We need an infrastructure in orbit around Earth before we can start sending things to the moon. Larger space stations, orbital manufacturing...
You mean just like the last time we sent stuff to the moon? I don't remember any orbital manufacturing facility being needed then. Or is it that orbital manufacturing a pet project of yours.
I'll grant you that sending people to Mars in 20 years seems to be a "stretch goal"* given the fact that NASA is a bloated wasteful organization that will siphon off a lot of its budget for manager's pet projects (like orbital manufacturing) that they think is more important than congress's mandate; but technically I don't think that is too ambitious for a focused organization even with the limited funding they are likely to get. Maybe a stretch goal is needed to help make some of the organizational changes NASA needs.
"...perhaps craft designed solely for use in space, to ship people and material to the moon"
No, not "perhaps". That craft you think that we might "perhaps" need to achieve whatever goals you have in your imagination is specifically called out in the bill. In fact the 1st 3/4 of the goals center around developing that vehicle. RTFB.
*Zubrin seems to think it is not much more difficult than going to the moon, though, and he has certainly studied the problem more than I have.
Dr. Robert Frisbee is pretty smart.
But I think he is retiring soon.
Your country may think if fun to watch a dictatorship invade a fledgeling democracy, but as a U.S. Citizen I can say that we won't just be watching. If the PRC attacks Taiwan then the U.S.A. will help defend Taiwan. Both the President and Congress have agreed to this commitment, so I think it is extremely likely that we would "whimp out" and not come to our ally's aid.
Considering both we and the PRC have nukes, I think a loss of access to cheap labor for us and a profitable export market for them would be the least of everyone's worries. I would be very surprised, therefore, if the PRC would risk a real invasion.
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/12/5/3
Taken in isolation, one would not want to bet a lot of money on being able to exploit these gamma-rays. However, Collins and co-workers show some rather convincing gamma-ray spectra, and it should be relatively easy to generate a more powerful X-ray beam in future experiments. Collins is careful not to overstate the general significance of the measurement, but his team includes rocket scientists who would like to capitalize on the huge energy density of nuclear isomers. Such isomers may have the potential to provide new ways of propelling spacecraft on interplanetary voyages. Isomers could also form the basis of a gamma-ray laser. The energy inversion that is essential to all laser operation occurs naturally in nuclear isomers, although the route to an actual gamma-ray laser has yet to be mapped out.
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/12/5/3Taken in isolation, one would not want to bet a lot of money on being able to exploit these gamma-rays. However, Collins and co-workers show some rather convincing gamma-ray spectra, and it should be relatively easy to generate a more powerful X-ray beam in future experiments. Collins is careful not to overstate the general significance of the measurement, but his team includes rocket scientists who would like to capitalize on the huge energy density of nuclear isomers. Such isomers may have the potential to provide new ways of propelling spacecraft on interplanetary voyages. Isomers could also form the basis of a gamma-ray laser. The energy inversion that is essential to all laser operation occurs naturally in nuclear isomers, although the route to an actual gamma-ray laser has yet to be mapped out.
With such energy density, I wonder if this could be made into rocket fuel. Has anyone heard any news along those lines?
With a half-life of only 31 years, the archeologists would have to work fast.
"First of all, the assumption that people would continue to retire in their sixties if their lifespan extended is rather silly."
That won't stop the AARP from trying it. Retirement age isn't being increased to keep up with life expectency yet, at what point are we going to start?
I thought it was a song about dead baboons.
"You apparently read the article, but didn't understand what you were reading. Try reading it again. He thinks the OSP is a bad solution because it doesn't eliminate the need to continue flying the aging, dangerous, outrageously expensive Shuttle in order to supply the ISS with needed cargo"
I read it, and no I didn't understand some of it. I suspect this is because what he says is inconsistent or poorly thought out. If you read my comment, I specifically say that we should have an unmanned system to deliver nonhuman cargo to the station.
"I see lots of unfounded assumptions there. "Should be a reliable," "odds of it failing should be much smaller," "slightly increase," "depends upon," etc."
I assure you that those are NOT unfounded assumptions. I'm just not going to take the time to put together an aeronautics course in a slashdot post like I would need if I were going to qualitative figures. And, BTW, the escape system is NOT dead weight. It will mass more than a similar system for a smaller Apollo capsule, but unlike the Apollo capsule the escape system (in the proposal I saw) was used as an upper stage after the boosters had fallen away. It is actually superior to the Apollo system when you consider the delta vee you get for burning the escape system rocket. It does, admittedly, mean that if you have a catastrophic failure during that uppper stage burn you have no escape system BUT we now have reliable, well proven upper stage rockets that we can use there (something we didn't have during Apollo).
"from a safety, performance or cost standpoint. Its functions could all be performed faster, better and cheaper with capsule-based solutions"
Somehow I doubt you have actually done this design stduy. As I pointed out, this can't be done properly by waving you hand and saying "capsules are just better". Do you even know what the cross-range requirements for re-entry are? Without that there is no way to know if you can get the lift you need from a capsule.
"They put a lot of thought into getting NASA to buy the design. "
No, they didn't. I was in the Joint Propulsion Conference technical session last year when Orbital gave their presentation on the OSP. It was the Space Launch Initiative session. NASA wanted a big expensive, fully reusable system. Another shuttle-like boondoggle in the making. The NASA guy gave his talk about NASA's vision of the next launch system (nothing like OSP), and then the contractors, Orbital, Lockheed, and Boeing were supposed to get up and talk about their proposals. The Orbital guy got up 1st and proceeded to show that the economics could not justify a launch system like NASA wanted, and that they could get 80% of the cost savings of the SLI for far less money by only making the crew vehicle reusable and sticking it on an existing expendible system. Great presesntation. Really discredited the whole SLI concept that NASA was pushing. Then the poor guys from Lockheed and Boeing had to get up and give their SLI presentations. I almost felt sorry for them. But OSP was NOT what NASA wanted. I don't think that it would have had a chance in hades, if we hadn't lost another shuttle. Orbital certainly did not make their proposal to please NASA, and I think they showed a lot of courage in going against the SLI fad.
"With a first launch not coming before 2008 (and knowing NASA, not before 2012), you can hardly call the OSP "near term". "
By "near term" I mean there doesn't have to be any technological breakthroughs before the vehicle can be designed. It could be finished sooner (and probably cheaper, too) if NASA would reduce the bureaocratic procurement hoops and "oversight". Without doing that, then ANY system (even a capsule) will not be ready in whay you would consider "near term".
"The existing EELV's have proven very reliable (so far), but even a small 4-seat OSP would, once you tack on the escape hardware and basic life support systems for the vehicle - require an EELV larger than the existing syst
"Apparently when developing you budget for new space vehicles it doesn't matter what technology you put in, just how much it weighs."
Yep, pretty much. There is a saying in aerospace:
"Aircraft are bought by the pound."*
There is a good reason for that. The same trend seems to be true for spacecraft.
But to answer your complaint, in making my "back of the napkin" estimate I considered not only the technology, but also the nature of the organization doing the work. An evolutionary vehicle (one based on a previous vehicle) built by a lean organization (like an X project) has R&D costs of about $20,000/lb. A non-evolutionary vehicle built by a bureaucratic organization (like I think the OSP will be) runs up to $100,000/lb for R&D. My guess may be high because I don't know the real structure mass of the OSP and because I am pessimistic about NASA's management of the project but the guess should be, as we say, good enough for gov't work.
*Dan Raymer modifies it by adding "like bologna".
If I were writing it, then all the "real" people would be programs, too. All the levels of the matrix would be run by humans; probably grad students.
I guess there is a reason why I am not a screenwriter.
He also complains about the R&D cost estimate as being too low.
The Orbital proposal from the linked website giv an OSP mass of 48,700 lbs; it doesn't say how much is structure and how much is propellant. R&D costs for an aerospace vehicle typically range from $20,000 to $100,000 a pound. Assuming (as is likely given that it is a gov't managed non-evolutionary vehicle) that this program would be $100,000/lb, that would give a total development cost of probably less than $5 billion.
Does anyone know what the NASA estimate he is bitching about is?
I think several of his complaints are incorrect.
First, he claims that the OSP is bad because it only ships people, not cargo. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. Manned spaceflight is more expensive than unmmanned flight. It is a waste of money to send anything on a manned flight that could be sent on a cheaper unmanned one. The Russians have already demonstrated that cargo can be taken to the ISS with an umannned system. Satellites can be launched without using a manned vehicle. The only thing that can't be launched on a cheaper unmanned vehicle is people. Therefore the most economical system would be one where the manned rockets were just for ferrying people. That's what the OSP is; yet he seems to have a problem with that. If we start trying to make the OSP do everything, then it will be an expensive boondoggle like the Shuttle. Unfortunately we probably will have to fly the shuttle a few more times to get the rest of the station modules up, but it doesn't make sense to add billions of bloat to the OSP to give it the capability to add the last few modules to the station. Bring up cargo with unmanned vehicles. Bring up the last few modules with a few Shuttle flights (with minimum crew) if necessary. Keep the OSP small and only use it to do crew rotations. That's my $0.02.
He complains about not understanding the plan for the escape system. That is his inadequacy, not the OSP's. The original plan I saw (which was called the Orbital Space Plane because it was Orbital Science Corp's proposal) had a rocket on the spaceplane that was used as an escape system for the manned section in case of a booster failure, and was fired as an additional stage after the booster dropped away if there was no booster failure. He says this introduces an "extra" failure mode. Well, yes and no. If you are concerned about mission success (getting the OSP in the right trajectory) then I guess it does add additional failure modes. If you are concerned about keeping the crew alive (which the crew would probably appreciate being top priority), then it adds a "new" failure mode but not "more" failure modes. Sure, there is the chance that the escape system/final stage rocket could blow up and destroy the vehicle. But if any of the other stages blows up, then having that escape system turns those from fatal disasters to non-fatal mission failures. Since the escape system/final stage should be a reliable, evolutionary rocket design that gets a lot of attention, the odds of it failing catastrophically should be much smaller than the odds of one of the booster stages failing. Adding this system will, therefore, slightly increase the odds of a mission failure, while greatly reducing the odds of a crew fatality. Whether that is an "extra" failure mode depends on if you are looking at mission failure or crew loss. In my (and certainly the crew's) point of view, having an escape system is essential to the design's commitment to the safety of the astronauts.
He claims that the OSP is not much more technically sophisticated than the Dyna-Soar. That's fine with me. The point of the OSP is to reduce cost and reduce technical risk. At the time, the Dyna-Soar was ambitious, costly, and risky. With today's technology it is a cheap solution with low technical risk. Why would we want to introduce new technical risk if we don't have to?
He also complains about the possibility of the OSP being built with a reduced size that would require more than one launch to perform one crew rotation for the ISS. I agree with him that that would be bad, but I don't yet know how likely that is to be a problem. Something to watch out for, but I don't think it is as likely as he seems to.
He would prefer a capsule to a lifting body for reentry. A capsule is not necessarily bad, and I wouldn't dismiss it just because it is "old tech". The choice, however, is a complex technical trade off and not the sort of thing that can just be decided with a knee jerk reaction, nostalgia for the "good ol' days of Apollo",