The point of view of someone who has never watched NASA TV. The capabilities of robots, the best robots we have and will have in the next 20 years, are below the capabilities of reptiles. You might as well suggest sending iguanas instead of humans.
I think you don't "get" it because you don't know what you're on about. The Soyuz is a great little vehicle, but its complete lack of capability is the reason why the ISS is in the terrible orbit it is in - Space Station Freedom was supposed to be in a sensible orbit that would allow building spacecraft to go beyond LEO, that plan was down-rated when the Russians were invited to participate because they were incapable of reaching such a useful orbit. The Soyuz rocket can put about 8t into LEO.. that's less than the smallest EELV currently in service in the US. The Proton rocket is a little better but doesn't have this glorious service record you mentioned.
In comparison, the Ares I (if it ever flies) will carry over 20t to LEO and the Ares V (presuming they don't downrate it again) will carry 188t to LEO. *And* they will do them with much lower marginal costs. I think your objection here is to the political bullshit that gets in the way of making these vehicles.. well that's just as bad in Russia.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two commercial companies making rockets in the 13t to LEO range might be more your cup of tea.. less political bullshit, but less of a published schedule too, so you might get what they promised, when they're damn well ready.
A lunar space elevator is only feasible in the sense of "we don't need magic materials to do it". The technological challenge is still massive.. a lot more massive than a lunar lander.
That's the great thing about vaporware.. some people read it and decide "I'm going to buy one of these as soon as it comes out", some people read it and say "it'll suck, I'll never buy one" and the rest of us read it and say "that's nice".
Personally, I don't get anything from vaporware announcements except the feeling that one day I might hear about someone who actually has one of these things and they might say it doesn't suck, maybe.
Umm.. that's a nice strawman you've setup there and knocked down for yourself, well done.
Making oxygen, potable water and methane fuel from lunar ice (using solar or nuclear power) is currently on the plan for lunar exploration.. it'll be done with a fully automated processing plant that is basically as complex as a truck engine. Digging a hole in the ground and planting a habitat module in it that can be covered with dirt to provide radiation protection is something than be done with manual labor, but more likely will be done with a 1 ton backhoe type vehicle, which btw will run on methane.
But hey, you wanna talk about processing metal on the Moon? Fine. The metal you will find there is a result of meteor impacts and is very pure. On Earth, meteor impact metals are the most pure ores we mine. A solar furnace is all you need to melt this kind of ore and forming it into useful products is easy at small scales. What kind of small scales? The kind necessary to make fuel tanks. The kind necessary to make rocket motors.
That kind of "cottage" industry on the Moon is all you need to bootstrap an outbase into a colony.
delta-v is irrelevant, you're comparing the millions of tons of raw material on the Moon with the minuscule amounts of raw material that you can get from an NEO with current rocket technology.
Or, let me put it another way, once you land on the Moon you have access to millions of tons of raw material for 0 delta-v.
Once you setup shop at a LP you have to spend delta-v every time you want some raw materials. That's why it is more sensible to talk about moving the NEO to the LP.. and that's the part that is way beyond our technological capabilities right now. Flying out to an NEO, planting a flag, leaving some footprints, sure.. you could do that with Apollo era technology, I guess, but what's the point?
Carrying any significant amount of raw materials from NEOs to an LP requires a lot more than "trivial" amounts of fuel.
The only way to practically move an NEO is by utilizing the mass of the NEO as fuel. The typical suggestion is to do this with mass drivers (you can't use ion engines because you need high thrust). If you're moving icy NEOs you can "just" make rocket fuel and propel it with traditional thrusters.
All of this is way beyond our technology level, and requires mass in orbit that we're unable to get from Earth.. so you need to mine the Moon for it in any case.
All the options presented to the White House will include shuttle extension in one form or another, however only Option 4B extends the shuttle beyond 2011 (you may remember the shuttle program was supposed to end in 2010). The arguments for extending the ISS beyond the currently deorbit date of 2016 are very attractive. It seems likely that US support for the station will continue until 2020, at least. With ISS extension comes commercial crew to orbit, but the committee seems convinced that this capability will not be available before 2015.
The administration needs to make 3 decisions:
* Get out of LEO or not. This is a non-decision, they have to or there's no program. * Extend the shuttle to 2015 or not. This is an unlikely decision, the production lines are closed, restarting them is incredibly expensive. * Return to the Moon or not. The whole "flexible path" thing is gaining traction, but its basically just a nice way of saying don't go anywhere, or stay there.. and the political capital of going back ot the Moon remains strong. In my mind this is a non-decision, we're going back to the Moon and on to Mars.
And so, with that I feel confident in saying that the White House will choose option 4A, in form if not in name, probably with some bonus thing tacked on the side.
Do you look at the keyboard? No? Then you're touch typing.
"Homerow" is bad, don't learn it, don't do it. Your thumbs should be on the space bar and your fingers should *reach* for the keys.. until you need a key you shouldn't be placing your fingers, they should hover freely where-ever they are most comfortable.
Ya, and homerow bullshit is the cause of much of the hand crippling RSI that people experience. It's sad that something so obvious as "that's not natural" has to be argued for.
We are trying to correctly amalgamate information about all the books in the world. (Which numbered precisely 168,178,719 when we counted them last Friday.)
- Jon Orwant (Google)
The point is to get other countries to <3 the USA by showing "global leadership" in space. It's all about "soft power" and, like most political things, it really doesn't matter if it is actually pointless.
haha.. If you'd watched even a single second of the committee meetings you'd know that Norm Augustine has no personal opinion on the matter anymore... except maybe the same one all of us have, confusion at what the hell NASA has been doing for that last 40 years.
I was going to dis slashdot for confusing "a planet in the habitable zone of a star which happens to contain a moon" and a "habitable moon" but the actual scientific paper is at fault here. WTF? Is scientific honesty dead?
1. A built in clock that actually keeps time. 2. Built in GPS. 3. Some sensible connectors to upload videos in real time using appropriate external devices, or, 4. Built in Wifi/3G. 5. And all the good camera stuff.
In one device. Oh, and if you can actually make a scanning range finder at a sensible price and embed that too, that'd be great.
Sigh. It's Stephen Baxter, he doesn't write anything without doing the equivalent of a NIST level 1 study on it first. Specifically, he was using the lasers to dump the heat from mass refrigeration. You actually put power into it to freeze CO2 out of the atmosphere making giant domes of dry ice that you have to continually keep cold.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of view of someone who has never watched NASA TV. The capabilities of robots, the best robots we have and will have in the next 20 years, are below the capabilities of reptiles. You might as well suggest sending iguanas instead of humans.
I think you don't "get" it because you don't know what you're on about. The Soyuz is a great little vehicle, but its complete lack of capability is the reason why the ISS is in the terrible orbit it is in - Space Station Freedom was supposed to be in a sensible orbit that would allow building spacecraft to go beyond LEO, that plan was down-rated when the Russians were invited to participate because they were incapable of reaching such a useful orbit. The Soyuz rocket can put about 8t into LEO.. that's less than the smallest EELV currently in service in the US. The Proton rocket is a little better but doesn't have this glorious service record you mentioned.
In comparison, the Ares I (if it ever flies) will carry over 20t to LEO and the Ares V (presuming they don't downrate it again) will carry 188t to LEO. *And* they will do them with much lower marginal costs. I think your objection here is to the political bullshit that gets in the way of making these vehicles.. well that's just as bad in Russia.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two commercial companies making rockets in the 13t to LEO range might be more your cup of tea.. less political bullshit, but less of a published schedule too, so you might get what they promised, when they're damn well ready.
A lunar space elevator is only feasible in the sense of "we don't need magic materials to do it". The technological challenge is still massive.. a lot more massive than a lunar lander.
That's the great thing about vaporware.. some people read it and decide "I'm going to buy one of these as soon as it comes out", some people read it and say "it'll suck, I'll never buy one" and the rest of us read it and say "that's nice".
Personally, I don't get anything from vaporware announcements except the feeling that one day I might hear about someone who actually has one of these things and they might say it doesn't suck, maybe.
Umm.. that's a nice strawman you've setup there and knocked down for yourself, well done.
Making oxygen, potable water and methane fuel from lunar ice (using solar or nuclear power) is currently on the plan for lunar exploration.. it'll be done with a fully automated processing plant that is basically as complex as a truck engine. Digging a hole in the ground and planting a habitat module in it that can be covered with dirt to provide radiation protection is something than be done with manual labor, but more likely will be done with a 1 ton backhoe type vehicle, which btw will run on methane.
But hey, you wanna talk about processing metal on the Moon? Fine. The metal you will find there is a result of meteor impacts and is very pure. On Earth, meteor impact metals are the most pure ores we mine. A solar furnace is all you need to melt this kind of ore and forming it into useful products is easy at small scales. What kind of small scales? The kind necessary to make fuel tanks. The kind necessary to make rocket motors.
That kind of "cottage" industry on the Moon is all you need to bootstrap an outbase into a colony.
delta-v is irrelevant, you're comparing the millions of tons of raw material on the Moon with the minuscule amounts of raw material that you can get from an NEO with current rocket technology.
Or, let me put it another way, once you land on the Moon you have access to millions of tons of raw material for 0 delta-v.
Once you setup shop at a LP you have to spend delta-v every time you want some raw materials. That's why it is more sensible to talk about moving the NEO to the LP.. and that's the part that is way beyond our technological capabilities right now. Flying out to an NEO, planting a flag, leaving some footprints, sure.. you could do that with Apollo era technology, I guess, but what's the point?
Carrying any significant amount of raw materials from NEOs to an LP requires a lot more than "trivial" amounts of fuel.
The only way to practically move an NEO is by utilizing the mass of the NEO as fuel. The typical suggestion is to do this with mass drivers (you can't use ion engines because you need high thrust). If you're moving icy NEOs you can "just" make rocket fuel and propel it with traditional thrusters.
All of this is way beyond our technology level, and requires mass in orbit that we're unable to get from Earth.. so you need to mine the Moon for it in any case.
All the options presented to the White House will include shuttle extension in one form or another, however only Option 4B extends the shuttle beyond 2011 (you may remember the shuttle program was supposed to end in 2010). The arguments for extending the ISS beyond the currently deorbit date of 2016 are very attractive. It seems likely that US support for the station will continue until 2020, at least. With ISS extension comes commercial crew to orbit, but the committee seems convinced that this capability will not be available before 2015.
The administration needs to make 3 decisions:
* Get out of LEO or not. This is a non-decision, they have to or there's no program.
* Extend the shuttle to 2015 or not. This is an unlikely decision, the production lines are closed, restarting them is incredibly expensive.
* Return to the Moon or not. The whole "flexible path" thing is gaining traction, but its basically just a nice way of saying don't go anywhere, or stay there.. and the political capital of going back ot the Moon remains strong. In my mind this is a non-decision, we're going back to the Moon and on to Mars.
And so, with that I feel confident in saying that the White House will choose option 4A, in form if not in name, probably with some bonus thing tacked on the side.
Do you look at the keyboard? No? Then you're touch typing.
"Homerow" is bad, don't learn it, don't do it. Your thumbs should be on the space bar and your fingers should *reach* for the keys.. until you need a key you shouldn't be placing your fingers, they should hover freely where-ever they are most comfortable.
Ya, and homerow bullshit is the cause of much of the hand crippling RSI that people experience. It's sad that something so obvious as "that's not natural" has to be argued for.
So you haven't read any of the stories that have appeared on Slashdot in regards to Google's plans for their Books service eh?
We are trying to correctly amalgamate information about all the books in the world. (Which numbered precisely 168,178,719 when we counted them last Friday.)
- Jon Orwant (Google)
why does that number seem incredibly low to me?
well said.
had a sorta Zen quality to it, didn't it?
Yeah, it's all a big conspiracy!!!!
Idiot.
You fail to mention that the two are part of an architecture that you can't justify one without the other. Kill Ares-I and Ares-V will follow.
The point is to get other countries to <3 the USA by showing "global leadership" in space. It's all about "soft power" and, like most political things, it really doesn't matter if it is actually pointless.
The point is to get other countries to pointless.
haha.. If you'd watched even a single second of the committee meetings you'd know that Norm Augustine has no personal opinion on the matter anymore... except maybe the same one all of us have, confusion at what the hell NASA has been doing for that last 40 years.
exactly. referring to the Earth's moon as habitable is dishonest.
I was going to dis slashdot for confusing "a planet in the habitable zone of a star which happens to contain a moon" and a "habitable moon" but the actual scientific paper is at fault here. WTF? Is scientific honesty dead?
for having shareholders. Raising capital is a necessary evil, but hell, grow organically if you can.
Please make a camera with:
1. A built in clock that actually keeps time.
2. Built in GPS.
3. Some sensible connectors to upload videos in real time using appropriate external devices, or,
4. Built in Wifi/3G.
5. And all the good camera stuff.
In one device. Oh, and if you can actually make a scanning range finder at a sensible price and embed that too, that'd be great.
Sigh. It's Stephen Baxter, he doesn't write anything without doing the equivalent of a NIST level 1 study on it first. Specifically, he was using the lasers to dump the heat from mass refrigeration. You actually put power into it to freeze CO2 out of the atmosphere making giant domes of dry ice that you have to continually keep cold.
Instead of a quick example, how about you make a real argument.
There's only two possibilities:
1. we're fucked and only geo-engineering will save us
2. the problem is being vastly overblown and mere conservation will serfice.
For some reason everyone is saying that it is the first and yet also saying that geo-engineer is bad, m'kay.
Choose.