But it is a PlayStation One system (well sort of). The main CPU used in this probe has the same CPU that the original Sony PlayStation uses... admittedly radiation hardened and with a custom operating system intended for spacecraft operations. It is amazing what these planetary scientists can do with such minimalistic computer systems.
That beats the Voyager 2 probe though, which may very well be one of the last operating (as intended) computer systems in the Solar System with core memory.
I really have problems with the "dominating its environment" rule in the IAU definition of a planet. Much more objective (and non-heliocentric criteria) should be used for defining a planet. Thank goodness the Kepler team has chosen explicitly to ignore the IAU rules when defining what is and is not a planet with their discoveries.
For myself, using a definition of a planet as something which forms a sphere due to gravitational influence and hydrostatic pressure is more than sufficient to define a planet. For that matter, I would even go so far as to suggest a "terrestrial" planet (aka something "Earth-like") as having an atmosphere above 1 millibar on its surface but less than 10% of its mass as the atmosphere would be plenty sufficient. And yes, that would include Titan as a terrestrial planet. I don't even mind that the Earth's Moon should be classified as a dwarf planet either.
And fortunately, it is more like about a thousand names of planets if you include the planets of other star systems that have been legitimately identified with specific orbital parameters and size characteristics. We are indeed living in exciting times and an era of massive discovery, where the definition of a planet should reflect that scope of potential candidates for what is a planet.
So you base your argument on a set of criteria confined to low earth orbit, as if humans in low earth orbit are exploring.
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
That means people can be in the rest of the universe too. The edge of the atmosphere is also known as the Kármán line, which is (usually) the legal definition of space, and I am implying that people don't need to be confined to just living on the Earth. Since you got this so wrong, I need not reply any further.
What you are demonstrating is a clear belief without objective facts to back up what you are saying. "In the real world" you have robots that work side by side with human technicians performing amazing feats leveraging each other's strengths and abilities. There is a point to doing both crewed and robotic missions, which seems to be the point you are missing.
I am not at all saying robotic missions need to be cancelled, and I am certainly not a luddite. I'm also not delusional to think that mankind is going to be replaced by robots any time soon.
My point is that there is a role for crewed missions into space. There may be some better planning that goes on too with those missions and money might be better spent in some cases on robotic missions too, but it is just flying in the face of logic to say that robots alone can get the job done as well. They are an extension and an amplification of the human mind... in all cases. That means they need to have the people in the loop at some point, as they are creations of mankind.
Robots working in a coal mine do occasionally need human technicians to pull things apart and rework the equipment. Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space. They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
None of this even touches the need for humanity to spread beyond the Earth as a species and become multi-planetary in terms of its long-term survival. Perhaps you are one of those who thinks that humanity is something which should go extinct and hopes a mass genocidal attack or either natural or man-made origin happens to wipe us all out. But in this case I'm not even arguing that line of reasoning but merely pointing out that as the influence of humanity expands through the use of robots, there is going to be a need to send people in some capacity to work with those robots at a much closer range than something measured in astronomical units. So far other than massive insults to me personally you have failed to offer any conclusive reasons for why I am wrong.
Interstate Highways are much older than even the European Union although they were designed after concepts introduced in Germany with the Autobahn. I should point out that the E-roads that you are talking about were originally conceived as emulating the Interstate Highway system (at least that is what the wiki claims) and was something instituted in the 1970's.... about when construction of the Interstate Highway system was wrapping up.
It should also be pointed out that the E-90 road that you are talking about also happens to cross over a major part of the Mediterranean Sea (I presume that is by ferry) on its route.
If you want at least one source of information on the difference between the Autobahn vs. Interstate Highways, at least read this article:
I would hope that Europe didn't follow everything that happened on the Interstate Highway System, as there were definitely some corners that were cut on the 40,000 mile system as it was being built. U.S. highways definitely don't follow Autobahn standards, even though at this point I feel that any repaving/rebuilding of interstate highways likely should be following those standards when practical.
Or a cow. In spite of fences and other attempts to keep wildlife off of major roads, it still is a major problem. Avoiding wildlife while traveling at 55 mph is much easier to do than at 80 mph.
The Autobahns are also built to higher standards in terms of thicker roadbeds, better maintenance, and more gradual curves that are designed to be used at higher speeds. Admittedly you can restrict speed limits for just parts of a highway where curves are more common and raise limits on straight stretches of the road, but the smaller roadbed is a major concern and something that needs to be considered.
The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country. Distances are huge in America and the higher standards used for the Autobahn would have been prohibitive in terms of how much it cost to build those highways... especially in rural America.
Interstate Highways are not the Autobahn, even though there are some superficial common features. If Interstate Highways had their construction standards raised and roadbeds rebuilt to those higher standards to accommodate these higher speeds, I would be more inclined to support some higher speeds.
What were those arguments in detail? Do the arguments generalise beyond Mars (noting that Mars is the most boring place in the solar system)? I'm disinclined to bow because the pope of outer space made a pronouncement.
The argument is pretty simple: When you have researchers on the Earth running a robotic probe, you have at least a half hour or longer reaction time trying to respond to anything that happens on Mars. It gets worse the further out in the Solar System you travel... simply due to the speed of light. Keep in mind that these robotic probes are moving very slow. There are some systems designed to permit the rovers in particular to respond to things sort of like what Google is using for the driverless cars, but there still needs to be some substantial decisions made about what it will be doing.
I'm merely invoking the MSL researchers because if anybody has a reason to be "robots first!", it would be them. They are obviously folks who are getting paychecks from the robotic missions being run by NASA and have the most to gain by dissing the crewed missions of NASA (like Carl Sagan did). If they instead are pointing out the need for crewed missions, it would seem like a contrary opinion that needs some extra attention.
If you think we don't need to send people to Mars or Europa, my argument is that we don't even need to bother with space exploration in general either. Stop sending the robots too because it is a waste of time.... for the very same logic that it means we shouldn't send people either. The whole enterprise is either necessary to send both or it is important to send neither. There is no reason to make a preference for one or the other and judge that only robotic exploration is necessary.
Why bother talking about private sector flights? In 1961 Alan Shepard performed the first sub-orbital crewed flight in America.... something really no more exotic than a Virgin Galactic flight. Less than a decade later he was walking on the Moon.
In that same period of time NASA is going to boldly leap from a test flight of this capsule to sending a crew to an asteroid.... and still won't have the capability of sending somebody to the Moon even if they had to do so. That is the point I'm making, and how NASA has totally screwed up in a big way. Something is seriously screwed up and is hardly inspiring anybody any more.
If some billionaires can get to the Moon before NASA can return, my hat is off to them. It should be embarrassing that the last person to walk on the Moon is still Gene Cernan. He didn't even expect to be the last one in the 20th Century.
It was Carl Sagan who introduced the meme of robotic exploration being so much superior to crewed exploration. The unfortunate problem is that it is important to actually send researchers eventually to these locations or at least somewhat close to them for more timely and relevant scientific investigations. Some people are suggesting that artificial intelligence may be the key, but like nuclear fusion, warp drive, teleportation, and several science fiction concepts, artificial intelligence is always 30+ years away from actually being developed. It is much harder than it appears where computer scientists who predict silly notions of human like intelligence any time in my or your lifetime is just not facing reality.
No less than the lead investigator for the Mars Science Lab (aka the Curiosity rover) has openly stated he would gladly pay even a premium over the costs spent on that rover simply to have a few scientists there on Mars to perform the scientific studies there. I'll also point out the involvement of Harrison Schmitt who arguably performed more actual scientific studies and investigations outside of the Earth than all of the robotic missions combined. There is a very real need for human researchers in these places for actual space exploration to happen.
There is of course some very low hanging fruit, to use an analogy, that is easy to perform at the moment with robotic missions. In some ways you can legitimately point out that to send out these robotic missions in the short term is more valuable than sending crews, but that is a temporary situation that will eventually change. When doing budgets, it is reasonable to be perhaps even placing for right now emphasis on robotic missions. It should be with a purpose that eventually leads to crewed missions though... something that is definitely missing from those who advocate robotic missions alone.
Crews are going to be needed for actual exploration of space, not to mention that sending people to these places also captures the imagination of those pursuing scientific and engineering disciplines. It has been said "No bucks, no Buck Rodgers". I argue the opposite though, as a soulless spacecraft running around on Mars is not nearly as inspiring as somebody like Buzz Aldrin who can stare you straight in the face and tell you honestly that he has walked on another world. People like him were able to accomplish things that robotic missions could never do, not to mention it also pushed so many technologies to accomplish that huge goal of going into space and traveling to another world that it revolutionized society with consequences that still have yet to completely happen.
That is why we need to send people to Mars, to Europa, and to other places in the Solar System. They both inspire and create opportunities to make things happen. Huge goals like that will ultimately bless the lives of ordinary people here on the Earth in ways so profound that you can't possibly comprehend the end results from such activity. New ways of thinking, even new political systems as of yet undreamed will result from stuff like this happening. It is that basic to human existence, and why people must be included.... and it is downright silly to divorce crewed exploration of the solar system from robotic exploration. Both need to happen and they must co-exists for either kind of space exploration to be successful.
More like 30 years ago this should have been happening. Certainly a test flight like this should have happened some time within a couple of years after the loss of the Challenger. The singular failure of NASA to develop a system that will put people back into space has been an embarrassment for decades with dozens of systems that have been developed and even had "bent metal" like the Orion is right now. Yet except for the Shuttle, nothing has actually made the trip into space since Apollo. Even the Shuttle program had numerous set backs and budget cuts that nearly kept that from going into space.
Keep in mind, the Orion still hasn't gone into space, and the current configuration on a Delta Heavy isn't practical for anything other than possibly a mission to Low-Earth Orbit. I'm not even sure it can make the trip to the ISS with a crew with this configuration. When it is on the SLS, the ISS will never be a destination as there are no missions planned on that platform going there and certainly nothing funded by Congress.
Now, the question is, is there really any practical reason for manned deep-space flights at this point?
For that, you need to ask if space exploration in general is something worth doing? Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
A far more important question to ask about Orion though is if this particular is a practical method of travel into space in the first place? At a price of $1-$2 billion per flight, it seems there ought to be a much cheaper way to get people into space.
Robert Heinlein pointed this out quite some time ago with his book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Space is the ultimate high ground where the Earth is at the bottom of a comparatively deep well.
There are things called lathes and other machine tools that can reproduce themselves. Without that capability, the Industrial Revolution would have never happened. The real question is how many of these kind of tools together with a good smelter do you need before you can be self-sufficient and keep making your own sets of tools out of raw materials?
This is a big deal because it would be nice to get a set of these kind of tools into the hands of people in 3rd world countries, or for that matter have a few of them cached in a bunch of random places on the off chance that our current technological civilization will collapse completely. It is also something important to know about if you are planning on building a colony on Mars or the Moon, as such a set of tools that make tools can help such colonies grow much easier.
Since everybody who has sent astronauts into space and routinely sends spaceships into space has nukes (except for Japan.... and nobody doubts they have the capability of building nukes), the treaties involving the legal status of objects in space has some real enforcement teeth. The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be willing to start a global thermonuclear war over a sovereign claim made by another country?
A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
In other words, sovereign claims can still happen for stuff that is mined. You may not claim the whole Moon, but you can claim stuff you pull off of the Moon.
Another very important part of this treaty is this:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
In other words, it is a paper tiger that is ultimately meaningless against any real sovereign claims. I think this provision will ultimately be invoked by some country when they try to make a substantial move to make a sovereign claim by actually going to the Moon or Mars... whatever country that might be.
A million dollars as ransom? Why such a paltry and pitiful amount of money? That isn't even worth having an FBI agent bother trying to find you in the first place, where you might as well simply demand a dollar if that is your threat.
Slowing down a vehicle constructed in space down to Low Earth Orbit velocities (actually reducing potential energy but it does increase in actual speed) from a higher orbit is much easier than sending it up from the Earth. You also have options of using extremely high ISP engines like ion thrust that may not have very high thurst but can be used for months or even years continuously.
Manufacturing spacecraft from a factory in space would be much easier to accomplish.... assuming that the factory is built in the first place. An O'Neil habitat would be a good way to make that work if you needed a crew, although that is quite a bit of infrastructure you would need to put into place in order to get that factory built in the first place. Once such a factory is built though, it would blow away any Earth-based satellite factories in terms of marginal cost to build more satellites.
Beyond helping the military test ICBM designs, what did NASA do that could help destroy the world? Any NASA mission or for that matter any USAF mission to redirect an asteroid would be detected months before it could cause any damage.
Or are you talking the Office of Planetary Protection? They are far more concerned about containing life here on the Earth than trying to do something that deliberately causes damage.
It is likely ITAR restrictions that keep SpaceX from seriously considering any activity in Australia. That is a really stupid law, but somehow trying to keep people in Congo, El Salvador, and Somalia from figuring out rocket technology seems to be a high priority right now. China just gets the stuff gift wrapped and sent to them in official communiques, and American companies are still trying to reverse engineer Russian equipment because it works better (in many cases)... so I really don't know who they are trying to prevent finding out all of this cool technology, but it would be illegal for SpaceX to do any tests outside of the USA.
One company that Australia ought to be seriously trying to court in terms of using a range like that is Firefly Space though. I don't know if Aussies think Kiwi millionaires are somebody to take seriously or not, but at least it is a bit closer to home.
The point about private spaceflight isn't who is building the spacecraft but rather who is footing the bills and owns the equipment afterward.
And no, spacecraft are not always operated by the government. In the past, it was companies like Boeing and Grumman who would build the vehicles, but it would be NASA employees who would fly them, fuel them, and take care of everything else once it left the factory. That started to change a little bit in the 1980's when the Reagan administration started to encourage more private contractors to run things at KSC and do other activities formerly done by NASA employees, and that trend has continued to even more depth.
One particular flight that had almost no government money involved, certainly no money from the U.S. government other than paying for the USAF personnel running the weather radars and opening clearance at the spaceport trying to keep others from getting hurt, was the launch last September by SpaceX to launch the AsiaSat satellite. That is commercial spaceflight, something you have apparently never heard of?
Commercial industry is doing stuff in space, and it is a multi-billion dollar per year industry. In fact, the launch part of the business is just a small fraction of that industry too. It is also a rapidly expanding market as well.
If battery replacement was so easy, why hasn't Tesla set up a network of battery replacement stations in Silicon Valley (much less anywhere else)? And to note that the Model S was even designed with the idea in mind that it could be replaced at such a station, but the company has pushed away from the concept in favor of high voltage recharging stations instead. I'm suggesting that such replacement stations are not economical even when you have a relatively high density of such vehicles in the area.
Why do you think Hydrogen is not safe? In terms of a similar quantity of energy stored as gasoline, Hydrogen is even safer than petroleum distillates in terms of a fuel, not to mention that tanks full of Hydrogen are usually better engineered as well.
Don't let the scare tactics of people who cite the Hindenberg zepplin disaster as justification for why Hydrogen is bad. You need to treat it with care, but you need to do that with all high density energy storage technologies of any kind and Hydrogen is pretty reasonable on the whole for that purpose.
But even back then I felt the show started to fizzle out after the Pegasus episodes.
On this I completely agree. The "Terra" episodes really started to push credibility, as did Count Iblis. I liked the series finale as it sort of suggested perhaps they might be going back to their roots again and hinted at some much better episodes in the future... that never came.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is a PlayStation One system (well sort of). The main CPU used in this probe has the same CPU that the original Sony PlayStation uses... admittedly radiation hardened and with a custom operating system intended for spacecraft operations. It is amazing what these planetary scientists can do with such minimalistic computer systems.
That beats the Voyager 2 probe though, which may very well be one of the last operating (as intended) computer systems in the Solar System with core memory.
I really have problems with the "dominating its environment" rule in the IAU definition of a planet. Much more objective (and non-heliocentric criteria) should be used for defining a planet. Thank goodness the Kepler team has chosen explicitly to ignore the IAU rules when defining what is and is not a planet with their discoveries.
For myself, using a definition of a planet as something which forms a sphere due to gravitational influence and hydrostatic pressure is more than sufficient to define a planet. For that matter, I would even go so far as to suggest a "terrestrial" planet (aka something "Earth-like") as having an atmosphere above 1 millibar on its surface but less than 10% of its mass as the atmosphere would be plenty sufficient. And yes, that would include Titan as a terrestrial planet. I don't even mind that the Earth's Moon should be classified as a dwarf planet either.
And fortunately, it is more like about a thousand names of planets if you include the planets of other star systems that have been legitimately identified with specific orbital parameters and size characteristics. We are indeed living in exciting times and an era of massive discovery, where the definition of a planet should reflect that scope of potential candidates for what is a planet.
So you base your argument on a set of criteria confined to low earth orbit, as if humans in low earth orbit are exploring.
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
That means people can be in the rest of the universe too. The edge of the atmosphere is also known as the Kármán line, which is (usually) the legal definition of space, and I am implying that people don't need to be confined to just living on the Earth. Since you got this so wrong, I need not reply any further.
What you are demonstrating is a clear belief without objective facts to back up what you are saying. "In the real world" you have robots that work side by side with human technicians performing amazing feats leveraging each other's strengths and abilities. There is a point to doing both crewed and robotic missions, which seems to be the point you are missing.
I am not at all saying robotic missions need to be cancelled, and I am certainly not a luddite. I'm also not delusional to think that mankind is going to be replaced by robots any time soon.
My point is that there is a role for crewed missions into space. There may be some better planning that goes on too with those missions and money might be better spent in some cases on robotic missions too, but it is just flying in the face of logic to say that robots alone can get the job done as well. They are an extension and an amplification of the human mind... in all cases. That means they need to have the people in the loop at some point, as they are creations of mankind.
Robots working in a coal mine do occasionally need human technicians to pull things apart and rework the equipment. Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space. They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
None of this even touches the need for humanity to spread beyond the Earth as a species and become multi-planetary in terms of its long-term survival. Perhaps you are one of those who thinks that humanity is something which should go extinct and hopes a mass genocidal attack or either natural or man-made origin happens to wipe us all out. But in this case I'm not even arguing that line of reasoning but merely pointing out that as the influence of humanity expands through the use of robots, there is going to be a need to send people in some capacity to work with those robots at a much closer range than something measured in astronomical units. So far other than massive insults to me personally you have failed to offer any conclusive reasons for why I am wrong.
I'm not trying to perform a doctoral defense here. If you can't stand my opinion, so be it.
Interstate Highways are much older than even the European Union although they were designed after concepts introduced in Germany with the Autobahn. I should point out that the E-roads that you are talking about were originally conceived as emulating the Interstate Highway system (at least that is what the wiki claims) and was something instituted in the 1970's.... about when construction of the Interstate Highway system was wrapping up.
It should also be pointed out that the E-90 road that you are talking about also happens to cross over a major part of the Mediterranean Sea (I presume that is by ferry) on its route.
If you want at least one source of information on the difference between the Autobahn vs. Interstate Highways, at least read this article:
http://gizmodo.com/5857416/why-american-roads-are-so-bad
I would hope that Europe didn't follow everything that happened on the Interstate Highway System, as there were definitely some corners that were cut on the 40,000 mile system as it was being built. U.S. highways definitely don't follow Autobahn standards, even though at this point I feel that any repaving/rebuilding of interstate highways likely should be following those standards when practical.
What are they going to hit, an elk?
Or a cow. In spite of fences and other attempts to keep wildlife off of major roads, it still is a major problem. Avoiding wildlife while traveling at 55 mph is much easier to do than at 80 mph.
The Autobahns are also built to higher standards in terms of thicker roadbeds, better maintenance, and more gradual curves that are designed to be used at higher speeds. Admittedly you can restrict speed limits for just parts of a highway where curves are more common and raise limits on straight stretches of the road, but the smaller roadbed is a major concern and something that needs to be considered.
The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country. Distances are huge in America and the higher standards used for the Autobahn would have been prohibitive in terms of how much it cost to build those highways... especially in rural America.
Interstate Highways are not the Autobahn, even though there are some superficial common features. If Interstate Highways had their construction standards raised and roadbeds rebuilt to those higher standards to accommodate these higher speeds, I would be more inclined to support some higher speeds.
What were those arguments in detail? Do the arguments generalise beyond Mars (noting that Mars is the most boring place in the solar system)? I'm disinclined to bow because the pope of outer space made a pronouncement.
The argument is pretty simple: When you have researchers on the Earth running a robotic probe, you have at least a half hour or longer reaction time trying to respond to anything that happens on Mars. It gets worse the further out in the Solar System you travel... simply due to the speed of light. Keep in mind that these robotic probes are moving very slow. There are some systems designed to permit the rovers in particular to respond to things sort of like what Google is using for the driverless cars, but there still needs to be some substantial decisions made about what it will be doing.
I'm merely invoking the MSL researchers because if anybody has a reason to be "robots first!", it would be them. They are obviously folks who are getting paychecks from the robotic missions being run by NASA and have the most to gain by dissing the crewed missions of NASA (like Carl Sagan did). If they instead are pointing out the need for crewed missions, it would seem like a contrary opinion that needs some extra attention.
If you think we don't need to send people to Mars or Europa, my argument is that we don't even need to bother with space exploration in general either. Stop sending the robots too because it is a waste of time.... for the very same logic that it means we shouldn't send people either. The whole enterprise is either necessary to send both or it is important to send neither. There is no reason to make a preference for one or the other and judge that only robotic exploration is necessary.
Why bother talking about private sector flights? In 1961 Alan Shepard performed the first sub-orbital crewed flight in America.... something really no more exotic than a Virgin Galactic flight. Less than a decade later he was walking on the Moon.
In that same period of time NASA is going to boldly leap from a test flight of this capsule to sending a crew to an asteroid.... and still won't have the capability of sending somebody to the Moon even if they had to do so. That is the point I'm making, and how NASA has totally screwed up in a big way. Something is seriously screwed up and is hardly inspiring anybody any more.
If some billionaires can get to the Moon before NASA can return, my hat is off to them. It should be embarrassing that the last person to walk on the Moon is still Gene Cernan. He didn't even expect to be the last one in the 20th Century.
It was Carl Sagan who introduced the meme of robotic exploration being so much superior to crewed exploration. The unfortunate problem is that it is important to actually send researchers eventually to these locations or at least somewhat close to them for more timely and relevant scientific investigations. Some people are suggesting that artificial intelligence may be the key, but like nuclear fusion, warp drive, teleportation, and several science fiction concepts, artificial intelligence is always 30+ years away from actually being developed. It is much harder than it appears where computer scientists who predict silly notions of human like intelligence any time in my or your lifetime is just not facing reality.
No less than the lead investigator for the Mars Science Lab (aka the Curiosity rover) has openly stated he would gladly pay even a premium over the costs spent on that rover simply to have a few scientists there on Mars to perform the scientific studies there. I'll also point out the involvement of Harrison Schmitt who arguably performed more actual scientific studies and investigations outside of the Earth than all of the robotic missions combined. There is a very real need for human researchers in these places for actual space exploration to happen.
There is of course some very low hanging fruit, to use an analogy, that is easy to perform at the moment with robotic missions. In some ways you can legitimately point out that to send out these robotic missions in the short term is more valuable than sending crews, but that is a temporary situation that will eventually change. When doing budgets, it is reasonable to be perhaps even placing for right now emphasis on robotic missions. It should be with a purpose that eventually leads to crewed missions though... something that is definitely missing from those who advocate robotic missions alone.
Crews are going to be needed for actual exploration of space, not to mention that sending people to these places also captures the imagination of those pursuing scientific and engineering disciplines. It has been said "No bucks, no Buck Rodgers". I argue the opposite though, as a soulless spacecraft running around on Mars is not nearly as inspiring as somebody like Buzz Aldrin who can stare you straight in the face and tell you honestly that he has walked on another world. People like him were able to accomplish things that robotic missions could never do, not to mention it also pushed so many technologies to accomplish that huge goal of going into space and traveling to another world that it revolutionized society with consequences that still have yet to completely happen.
That is why we need to send people to Mars, to Europa, and to other places in the Solar System. They both inspire and create opportunities to make things happen. Huge goals like that will ultimately bless the lives of ordinary people here on the Earth in ways so profound that you can't possibly comprehend the end results from such activity. New ways of thinking, even new political systems as of yet undreamed will result from stuff like this happening. It is that basic to human existence, and why people must be included.... and it is downright silly to divorce crewed exploration of the solar system from robotic exploration. Both need to happen and they must co-exists for either kind of space exploration to be successful.
NASA isn't even planning on the first crewed flight until the year 2024. Yeah, I have faith in the U.S. government getting things right.
More like 30 years ago this should have been happening. Certainly a test flight like this should have happened some time within a couple of years after the loss of the Challenger. The singular failure of NASA to develop a system that will put people back into space has been an embarrassment for decades with dozens of systems that have been developed and even had "bent metal" like the Orion is right now. Yet except for the Shuttle, nothing has actually made the trip into space since Apollo. Even the Shuttle program had numerous set backs and budget cuts that nearly kept that from going into space.
Keep in mind, the Orion still hasn't gone into space, and the current configuration on a Delta Heavy isn't practical for anything other than possibly a mission to Low-Earth Orbit. I'm not even sure it can make the trip to the ISS with a crew with this configuration. When it is on the SLS, the ISS will never be a destination as there are no missions planned on that platform going there and certainly nothing funded by Congress.
Now, the question is, is there really any practical reason for manned deep-space flights at this point?
For that, you need to ask if space exploration in general is something worth doing? Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
A far more important question to ask about Orion though is if this particular is a practical method of travel into space in the first place? At a price of $1-$2 billion per flight, it seems there ought to be a much cheaper way to get people into space.
Robert Heinlein pointed this out quite some time ago with his book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Space is the ultimate high ground where the Earth is at the bottom of a comparatively deep well.
There are things called lathes and other machine tools that can reproduce themselves. Without that capability, the Industrial Revolution would have never happened. The real question is how many of these kind of tools together with a good smelter do you need before you can be self-sufficient and keep making your own sets of tools out of raw materials?
This is a big deal because it would be nice to get a set of these kind of tools into the hands of people in 3rd world countries, or for that matter have a few of them cached in a bunch of random places on the off chance that our current technological civilization will collapse completely. It is also something important to know about if you are planning on building a colony on Mars or the Moon, as such a set of tools that make tools can help such colonies grow much easier.
Since everybody who has sent astronauts into space and routinely sends spaceships into space has nukes (except for Japan.... and nobody doubts they have the capability of building nukes), the treaties involving the legal status of objects in space has some real enforcement teeth. The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be willing to start a global thermonuclear war over a sovereign claim made by another country?
You forgot a few parts of that treaty:
Article VIII
A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
In other words, sovereign claims can still happen for stuff that is mined. You may not claim the whole Moon, but you can claim stuff you pull off of the Moon.
Another very important part of this treaty is this:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
In other words, it is a paper tiger that is ultimately meaningless against any real sovereign claims. I think this provision will ultimately be invoked by some country when they try to make a substantial move to make a sovereign claim by actually going to the Moon or Mars... whatever country that might be.
A million dollars as ransom? Why such a paltry and pitiful amount of money? That isn't even worth having an FBI agent bother trying to find you in the first place, where you might as well simply demand a dollar if that is your threat.
Slowing down a vehicle constructed in space down to Low Earth Orbit velocities (actually reducing potential energy but it does increase in actual speed) from a higher orbit is much easier than sending it up from the Earth. You also have options of using extremely high ISP engines like ion thrust that may not have very high thurst but can be used for months or even years continuously.
Manufacturing spacecraft from a factory in space would be much easier to accomplish.... assuming that the factory is built in the first place. An O'Neil habitat would be a good way to make that work if you needed a crew, although that is quite a bit of infrastructure you would need to put into place in order to get that factory built in the first place. Once such a factory is built though, it would blow away any Earth-based satellite factories in terms of marginal cost to build more satellites.
Beyond helping the military test ICBM designs, what did NASA do that could help destroy the world? Any NASA mission or for that matter any USAF mission to redirect an asteroid would be detected months before it could cause any damage.
Or are you talking the Office of Planetary Protection? They are far more concerned about containing life here on the Earth than trying to do something that deliberately causes damage.
It is likely ITAR restrictions that keep SpaceX from seriously considering any activity in Australia. That is a really stupid law, but somehow trying to keep people in Congo, El Salvador, and Somalia from figuring out rocket technology seems to be a high priority right now. China just gets the stuff gift wrapped and sent to them in official communiques, and American companies are still trying to reverse engineer Russian equipment because it works better (in many cases)... so I really don't know who they are trying to prevent finding out all of this cool technology, but it would be illegal for SpaceX to do any tests outside of the USA.
One company that Australia ought to be seriously trying to court in terms of using a range like that is Firefly Space though. I don't know if Aussies think Kiwi millionaires are somebody to take seriously or not, but at least it is a bit closer to home.
The point about private spaceflight isn't who is building the spacecraft but rather who is footing the bills and owns the equipment afterward.
And no, spacecraft are not always operated by the government. In the past, it was companies like Boeing and Grumman who would build the vehicles, but it would be NASA employees who would fly them, fuel them, and take care of everything else once it left the factory. That started to change a little bit in the 1980's when the Reagan administration started to encourage more private contractors to run things at KSC and do other activities formerly done by NASA employees, and that trend has continued to even more depth.
One particular flight that had almost no government money involved, certainly no money from the U.S. government other than paying for the USAF personnel running the weather radars and opening clearance at the spaceport trying to keep others from getting hurt, was the launch last September by SpaceX to launch the AsiaSat satellite. That is commercial spaceflight, something you have apparently never heard of?
Commercial industry is doing stuff in space, and it is a multi-billion dollar per year industry. In fact, the launch part of the business is just a small fraction of that industry too. It is also a rapidly expanding market as well.
If battery replacement was so easy, why hasn't Tesla set up a network of battery replacement stations in Silicon Valley (much less anywhere else)? And to note that the Model S was even designed with the idea in mind that it could be replaced at such a station, but the company has pushed away from the concept in favor of high voltage recharging stations instead. I'm suggesting that such replacement stations are not economical even when you have a relatively high density of such vehicles in the area.
Why do you think Hydrogen is not safe? In terms of a similar quantity of energy stored as gasoline, Hydrogen is even safer than petroleum distillates in terms of a fuel, not to mention that tanks full of Hydrogen are usually better engineered as well.
Don't let the scare tactics of people who cite the Hindenberg zepplin disaster as justification for why Hydrogen is bad. You need to treat it with care, but you need to do that with all high density energy storage technologies of any kind and Hydrogen is pretty reasonable on the whole for that purpose.
But even back then I felt the show started to fizzle out after the Pegasus episodes.
On this I completely agree. The "Terra" episodes really started to push credibility, as did Count Iblis. I liked the series finale as it sort of suggested perhaps they might be going back to their roots again and hinted at some much better episodes in the future... that never came.