Rail guns have already been built which have been able to achieve lunar escape velocity. Getting such a system to the Moon is just a matter of engineering and making it work in a lunar environment. While not one of the first things to be built on the Moon, if there was a business reason for getting a mass driver going it would be merely a matter of time and how much capital was available to get it built in the first place.
The real question is if it is easier to simply grab a near-Earth asteroid instead?
Yes, and when technology supports shipping quintillions of tons, we'll worry about that.
Quintillions of tons?!? We can do better than that. We'll just de-orbit it. Then it will all be on Earth and easy to get.
With what reaction mass are you going to use to perform such a de-orbiting procedure? Where is the energy source for such a hair-brained scheme? Don't you think such energy should be put to something more practical, like sending all of humanity to another hundred star systems?
You suffer from the same order of magnitude problem that the idiot above made with regards to thinking humanity could even make a dent in the Moon through mining activity. Actually, it was worse as at least mining stuff on the Moon is theoretically possible in large quantities.
Yeah, lemme guess - Sputnik wasn't that big an accomplishment either, was it?
By the way, what's the space program in your country up to nowadays? Just askin'.
Besides a spacecraft currently in operation around Saturn, one that just left the Solar System entirely, another one on its way to Pluto, still another spacecraft traveling to yet another planet (admittedly dwarf planet) called Ceres, and has discovered nearly a thousand new planets and planetary systems elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy? Oh, and of course the two rovers currently operating on Mars and a recent survey of Mercury?
And all of that is what is happening right now, not just in the distant past. If everything goes well, more people will be going into space over the next couple of years than the whole of human history to date. If you want to know what America is doing, it is better to look now at private companies rather than the historical national space agency, especially for manned exploration, but even so NASA is still quite busy and doing some very impressive things.
I'd call that doing a whole lot, and certainly makes anything China is doing pale in comparison.
And no, Sputnik really wasn't that big of a deal when it happened other than getting several congressmen's panties in a bunch. In terms of raw technology in the 1950's and 1960's, America was by far ahead of anything Russia could do and in some ways wanted Russia to be first for several political reasons. I do respect the Russian space program, and they certainly are very competent at what they are doing, but you shouldn't blow it out of proportion either. There is a reason why the Eisenhower administration wasn't all that concerned when Sputnik flew.
Yes.... a privately funded company would be something like SpaceX, Planetary Resources, or Bigelow Aerospace. Amateur hobbyists are groups like a bunch of students and interested amateurs (perhaps even professionals working in their spare time) such as Team Pulli or Team FredNet. You can argue that they are likely not going to get to the Moon, but the point is that purely amateur hobbyists are participating in the GLXP and some have serious plans for actually getting to the Moon.
That some privately funded companies are also participating with GLXP is sort of besides the point, but it is worth mentioning that some folks think they can make the trip to the Moon through pure philanthropic donations or simply holding out a tin can begging people to help with their trip.
One of the reasons why most unmanned missions have a view of the Earth as a part of their photo schedule is precisely because of this famous photograph. Even today, it is one of the most widely requested photographs from NASA (both from server activity as well as from its PR office) and has been credited with popularizing the environmental movement to possibly even ending the Vietnam War.
As you say, this was a public relation opportunity, but at the time it wasn't even considered. On the other hand, the spacecraft commander was given some degree of discretion on what he could do (Bill Anders in the case of Apollo 8). They didn't necessarily need permission from mission control in order to photograph the Earth, although it wasn't on the official list of tasks they were supposed to be doing.
They felt inspired due to seeing something that literally no other human ever in the entire existence of mankind had ever seen before. If you can't grasp just how profound it was for a group of people going further away from any other group of people in all of history (several times further from any other group), you really fail to grasp just what was going on that particular December of 1968.
Yes, they could have read something out of Shakespear, Tolkein, Douglas Adams, or Einstein. Instead, they choose something that was written even earlier simply to show the sheer historic significance of what it was that they were doing.
Besides, why do you give a crap about what somebody else believes? A basic principle of liberty is that people are free to believe or not believe whatever it is that they want. The first amendment applies just as much to astronauts as it does to anybody else, and that even includes the freedom from censorship about religious ideas too. The next time you decide to take a trip around from the back side of the Moon and want to make a profound public statement about your experience, you can chose something else you think is much more appropriate like Dr. Seuss.
Wake me up when the Chinese get anybody above 400 miles. I seriously doubt that any Chinese astronauts are going to do much of anything.
Besides, launching people into space only once every three years or so isn't going to give them the ability to do much of anything. I am significantly underwhelmed by the progress of the Chinese space agency and their ability to recreate the Ranger missions.... and boldly go where dozens of amateur rocket hobbyists plan to tread in the very near future.
There certainly is no plan by the Chinese Space Agency to develop the hard infrastructure needed for major missions like you are implying. They don't even have a good equivalent of the Deep Space Network.
Back to topic, just consider what GM did to the EV1 (reportedly one of the big reasons Musk got into Tesla in first place). Do you think they destroyed those cars out of any logic other than powerful lobbies decided on killing the electric car on the spot ?
I'm still not sure what GM was doing with the EV-1 model. It was originally built with the intention to comply with a California state mandate to build electric vehicles.... something that never does well in a free market economy. At the time, I don't think GM could find a strong economic model for building electric vehicles that would give them a profit, and the goal at the time was simply to keep GM in business long enough to get the electric car mandate changed so the EV-1 could be phased out. It certainly was a business strategy to only have the EV-1 around long enough to comply with what the GM board of directors thought was a silly government mandate.
It is also very clear that the Chevy Volt was designed as a direct response to the Tesla Roadster, as the moment of its conception can be traced back to a visit that Martin Eberhart (before Elon Musk fired the guy) made at the GM headquarters where Eberhart parked a Tesla engineering prototype in the GM corporate HQ parking lot. I think that took some serious balls to make such a business move, and that was definitely not the reason why Eberhart was fired (which was mostly tied to the disaster that happened with the Roadster transmission due to it basically bankrupting the company and nearly killed Elon Musk in a real physical sense from stress and lack of sleep). GM needed to be shown that it was possible to profit from sales of electric vehicles. You can claim that the EV-1 could have been profitable, but I think the bean counters in the corporate HQ didn't see that as a long term solution.
I certainly don't subscribe to any major conspiracy theory other than a conspiracy of the GM board of directors simply lacking any confidence in a product they never wanted to make in the first place.
Just the fact that to date, LENR has never been raised as news on CNN and the bbc has a single article (from 2009) mentioning it. Just tried to search LENR on CNN search, and it changed to Learn, since there's zero articles with LENR !
In fairness to these news sources you are talking about, there hasn't really been anything ground breaking or newsworthy (from the perspective of a general news outlet) with LENR related research in the past decade. There have been some interesting ideas put forward and some scholarly papers presented, but those are hardly what would be called newsworthy except for a dedicated blog covering LENR research or general physics research. It really is an obscure topic and difficult to really grasp for journalism majors who only took science classes in college merely to plow through their general education requirements.
If one is willing to look without being either a Scully or a Fox Mulder, one should still find plenty of proof there's serious forces trying to slow down technical advances on energy (except when it's way too expensive) as much as possible. Any quantum leaps are a big no no for those guys.
I don't think there is anybody trying to slow down scientific progress in a systematic fashion, but I do think that there are government policies in place right now which discourage amateur scientific investigations. You can't find chemistry sets like I had when I was a teenager (a couple of decades ago) since such kids are seen as potential terrorist threats if they even try to mix random chemicals together in the basement of their home. Amateur nuclear researchers (of any kind) are definitely seen as freaks of nature and rooted out as potential terrorist targets (just see the link above with the Polywell researcher who got a nice visit from the NYPD because one of his neighbors freaked out). It is a cultural attitude that the only people who can do real scientific
That test being published even go into Forbes online. Are you telling me Andrea Rossi managed to fool even Forbes Magazine ?
Forbes reported on a media event and some speculation about the device. That Rossi held a media event advertising his supposed device (whatever it was that he was showing off) is no doubt true and there is some general interest in the idea of a low-cost small scale nuclear device is also true. As to the ability of that device to actually work as advertised (aka actually convert Nickle into Copper with Hydrogen in a fusion process) is way beyond the scope of any reporter from Forbes. Yes, I am saying that Rossi could fool a reporter from that company, but that isn't even what they reported. All they reported is that some sort of media event happened with a shipping container sized device that produced a whole bunch of steam and made a bunch of noise. How that steam was produced is what I'm critical about, not that the event was held.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
I'm quite familiar with the Pons & Fleishman experiment, which has much more to do with Muon-catalyzed fusion experiments than with anything Andrea Rossi is doing. Far be it "in direct conflict with current accepted laws of physics", there is definitely some physical science phenomena going on with that particular experiment. What is in doubt is if Pons & Fleishman were capable of measuring the nuclear activity of their fusion cells with calorimeters instead of neutron detectors. The criticism of their work centered primarily on the claims of massive amounts of energy being produced that could have been turned into a commercial product, which is also my criticism of their work too.
It has been well within the known laws of physics that atoms can fuse together, which is in fact how the Sun operates. The speculation about LENR is that somehow you can use atomic binding forces from other elements such as the lattice structure of Palladium to put two or more atoms of Hydrogen together in close proximity to induce an occasional fusion reaction. The ability of Hydrogen to work its way into Palladium has been a widely researched phenomena, where the element is used routinely for hydrogen storage devices (such as hydrogen powered automobiles). What is thought is that the crystal structure of Palladium allows, through Brownian motion at room temperature, to have multiple Hydrogen atoms pile up into small pockets where they are confined in a space where nuclear forces can react between multiple nuclei of hydrogen atoms. Applying an electric current to the Palladium can alter the structure of the crystal partially to induce additional reactions compared to when that current isn't applied.
What isn't known is if this phenomena, which has been studied and measured with neutron detectors, can be induced to happen on a scale that produces significant quantities of heat and more specifically if the heat and energy produced from the fusion reactions will ever be more than the energy of the current being applied. As a scientific curiosity, it is definitely something interesting to look at. Even the idea that you could connect an ordinary light switch to a fusion device that would produce neutrons at will and would not be hazardous when it is disconnected from a power source has some really interesting scientific applications. Just don't get excited over throwing out electric generators made from other power sources though.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
You give him a year longer than I did. I used to be cautiously skeptical of the guy until recently, and I ended up talking to a few people that could have put some serious funding into the E-Ca
The e-Cat is a total joke, along with Andrea Rossi. Every time somebody gets close to actually nailing him down to show off what he has done, it proves to be "just around the corner" and something goes horribly wrong (usually because he lost the power switch or something similar).
While I think there is some interesting physical phenomena that is happening with LENR, it is nowhere near anything resembling a practical device. It certainly merits some further research, but it isn't even useful for something like a neutron source.... which is much better done with an IEC reactor (like the Farnsworth-Hirsch reactor... called Internal Electrostatic Confinement reactors). At best it is a scientific curiosity. High school students have been able to build IEC reactors successfully (and they do produce neutrons and other evidence of actual fusion reactions going on), but even those are just toys that can never be a practical power source.
The most telling thing about just how far along Rossi has been able to get with his technology is an investigation in Florida over a nuclear technology license inspection of a supposed warehouse that Rossi was building these devices (located in Miami). As soon as Florida state regulators insisted that he demonstrate the safety of his devices, Rossi changed his tune instantly suggesting they weren't nuclear devices at all but instead merely electric water heaters (aka like a coffee percolator), and then disclaimed he was even using the site for manufacturing at all after that wasn't even satisfactory because of tax liability reasons.
I've made enough phone calls and e-mails to various people involved where they are either clueless fans running a website or people that simply don't want to call back with bona fide inquiries. In other words, a pure and simple scam. Even major fan websites are now shutting down simply because Rossi is out of tricks on trying to extend this long con. Rossi had his chance if it was a legitimate technology, but now it is only the ultimate fanatical people who keep perpetuating the concept. He is giving a bad name even to LENR researchers that are shunned in the scientific community.
You also need to remember that all of this happened with technology developed in the 1960's. Some of this fakery that can happen now simply was not available (especially live computer graphic simulations). The live feeds of Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt running around on their rovers, for not just a few minutes but almost continuously for several days straight, is something that I think would have been impossible to fake.
Besides, you can't reason with those who think it is all a huge conspiracy. Some of them are convinced that NASA has subsequently sent stuff up to the Moon to fake the landing sites... as if faking stuff on the Moon is any easier than simply doing the real mission and doing exactly as has been claimed.
If you really think we can get beyond territorial claims, you must come up with some sort of government system that fundamentally changes human behavior and actions. Even something so simple as a basic mine to extract raw materials like iron ore (a very common element among the asteroids and even on Mars and the Moon) is going to require somebody to stake out a claim of some nature where those operating the mine will not be happy if somebody else decides to share in the easy pickings after they have spent million or even billions of dollars building up the infrastructure necessary to get that mine operational.
In other words, for resource extraction to take place, you need to assure some sort of property claim, which implies some sort of government besides the end of somebody's shotgun (laser riffle, or whatever else you can think up for space-based personal combat). It can be orderly, but land title claims would need to be enforced by a government entity of some sort.
As big as space is, as many asteroids that exist and I admit that Mars is as large for surface area as the entire land area of the Earth, there still are going to be some spots that will be more desirable than others and will be a source of competition and "friction" between groups of people. There are also lazy people who will gladly take the work of others and use it for themselves that need to be shown the frontier and told to move on.
I guess I'm a realist on this matter, and I think it is a shame to continue supporting a treaty that was explicitly drafted by a bunch of communists (primarily the idea of the people in the Soviet Union at the time it was negotiated) who thinks personal property rights are a thing of the past. Without personal property rights in space, mankind will never go into space.
No, "we" are not really managing Antarctica very well. The fighting that could be happening there is simmering just below the surface where occasionally a country like Chile has tried to assert their sovereignty there. The primary thing that keeps war from breaking out in Antarctica is a threat of global thermonuclear war between the nations involved, and that Antarctica by itself isn't worth that kind of national destruction.
For myself, keeping Antarctica as an international heritage park and essentially just a scientific playground is more than sufficient for what is a limited resource... and has value simply for the scientific exploration that still is happening there. There are natural resources to be found in Antarctica like coal, oil, uranium, and other deposits of natural resources, so there is something to fight over from a global war standpoint. Antarctica could also economically support through mining activity alone a permanent habitable city, but the current stalemate between the major countries is likely a good thing too.
This is a terrible template to impose upon other places in the universe though, as it essentially dooms mankind to just the Earth and nowhere else. There are other reasons why I think the Outer Space Treaty was a bad idea, but ultimately the benefits for the countries who reach out to the rest of the Solar System are going to be so apparent economically that the treaty is going to be discarded completely at some point in the future. I think it is an unstable relationship that is sooner or later going to burst and better to resolve peacefully in a manner that acknowledges sovereign claims of extra-terrestrial real estate than presuming the current situation is going to continue forever until a war breaks out to force a change.
Frankly, the ability to withdraw from the treaty is irrelevant. The stern words and looks would just come when they withdrew from the treaty, instead of when they claimed their bit of the moon (actually, they'd probably receive some of the words and looks then, too).
Stern looks and mean words are irrelevant as well. Only backing it up with a threat to destroy, occupy, and control the country making such a move would have any sort of teeth to the treaty.
More than likely what would happen is a division of the Moon between the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with perhaps a bone thrown to most of the G20 nations as well to each get their piece of the action. It might just be a blueprint for other places around the Solar System as well.
Eventually there is going to be a need for some country to do more than simply send out scientific expeditions, and the Universe is a big enough place to not let everything above the Kármán line simply remain an international heritage park.
Then again that treaty has language which states all any signatory country needs to do (including China) is to give a one year's notification that they are withdrawing from the treaty. They China (or America or Russia) can do whatever they want to do with no need to worry about a pesky treaty that might get in the way.
Besides, there is really no enforcement provision that stops any country from claiming sovereign territory other than it might be causus belli (a rationale for war) for other countries to step in and try to stop them. That likely would happen with or without the treaty anyway so it is mainly window dressing and nothing more on that point.
If there was some extra-terrestrial real estate that some country really wanted to claim, I think that one year notification rule would be plenty of time before anybody else could get to that same hunk of rock in the sky.
And if it weren't for the Nazi scientists, the US and Soviet space programs wouldn't have existed. The only mostly isolated nation is North Korea, and we know how that's working out for them (great, if you go by the Great Leader's and his buddies opinion).
Obviously Robert Goddard was a Nazi scientist. And Dr. Buzz Aldrin never wrote any papers about spaceflight that by itself would ensure his role in the history of mankind (ignoring his weekend camping trip he took in the summer of 1969 that was broadcast as a reality TV show). And of course Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Sergei Korolyov were just a bunch of stupid lab assistants who knew nothing about rocket science either.
This kind of stuff is pure BS. Yes, there were some German scientists who did some impressive things with rockets and their assistance was useful for perhaps pushing ahead the American and Russian space programs by about a decade or so in the 1950's. But to suggest that the programs wouldn't have existed at all is a bit of a stretch when it is patently clear there were plenty of both Russians and Americans who were active in trying to get spaceflight including manned spaceflight happening in their lifetimes. Werner Von Braun openly acknowledged both Goddard and Tsiolkovsky (together with Oberth.... who was never a Nazi either) by name in his autobiography as inspiration for his work.
If you believe this news report, in either 2015 or 2016, as a part of the Google Lunar X-Prize competition.
The launch was earlier listed on the SpaceX manifest, although it currently isn't on that page. Plenty of other interesting flights are on the books though.
The GLXP site also has a blog with some conferences and even some video of at least some of the teams. I would presume that if they are on the SpaceX manifest, they have put some real money down to reserve a launch slot too.
The point of 39A as a SpaceX facility, at least the speculation I've seen (SpaceX hasn't said anything official about it), is the facilities which are in place for crewed launches. As far as I've heard and seen in other articles about the topic, they are not purchasing a berth in the VAB (vehicle Assembly Building), thus there will be no need for the crawler/tractor that you are talking about.
It should also be pointed out that the launch pad was going to be abandoned anyway, and before SpaceX put in a bid for the pad the previous plan for the site was simply to let it "rust in place" and sit without any maintenance at all. Neither Blue Origin nor ULA had any interest in the site until SpaceX spoke up asking about it. Do you think a rusting piece of metal on the tour circuit of KSC is a good use of this site instead of seeing people fly into space on new rockets?
The funny thing about Blue Origin is that the company is technically two years older than SpaceX in terms of when their corporate charters were established. I think that speaks volumes about which company is more prepared for actually going into space. Jeff Bezos also has more money than Elon Musk, so it wasn't a cash flow problem either.
This article is not the only report or for that matter even news agency that has reported on this topic. Blue Origin has indeed zero customers at the moment who want to use their services, and the contract is only for five years anyway before it is up for renegotiation.... at which time Blue Origin can try to put forward something of their own that actually can fly.
Elon Musk was so cocky about the whole thing that he offered at his own expense (or the expense of SpaceX and not NASA) to accommodate Blue Origin or for that matter any other American company that might want to use this launch pad for their own projects (referring also to United Launch Alliance). Furthermore, Mr. Musk speculated that the likelihood of Blue Origin actually qualifying according to FAA-AST standards necessary for human spaceflight (which is the only point of using this launch pad as opposed to other locations that certainly are available including at the Kennedy Space Complex at Florida) in the next five years is about as likely as seeing dancing unicorns in that same flame duct.
I have to agree with Mr. Musk on this point too. It isn't just a matter of Blue Origin spending megabucks to build their own launch facility, of which SpaceX has gone through and built three launch pads besides this one and is shopping around for a fourth launch pad in addition to this launch pad (that one is likely to be in Brownsville, Texas), but that Blue Origin is also not really capable of using this particular facility at all.
The whole point of this legal action is to try and delay any potential launches that SpaceX might do at this particular launch pad. SpaceX needs it for both the Falcon Heavy rocket as well and manned launches in particular. It also can act as a back-up site if SLC-40 (the other Florida pad that SpaceX currently operates) needs to go through a period of renovation.
There are another 38 other potential launch sites in the area that are suitable to various degrees or other for spaceflight activity. Some of them certainly are not really suitable and others are in such utter state of disrepair as to be essentially carving out a new spot in the swampland of Cape Canaveral, but there are other locations if the desire was made. There is also pad 39B, but that is currently being used by NASA for the SLS/Orion program as long as that program continues to get funding.
We've saved a lot of money not REALLY bothering with space -- not really being serious about it anymore. Instead we've got this REALLY IMPORTANT deficit, but it doesn't exist when bailing out banks and being in really expensive wars hiring contractor mercenaries for ten times the regular soldier.
I will agree that the USA is no longer being serious about going into space (with the exception of a bunch of starry eyed entrepreneurs who are being taxed into oblivion once it becomes profitable). As for saving money, I would dare say that expenditures for spaceflight have never been higher. Most of the spending on space at the moment comes not from high profile things like landing on the Moon, but instead on a bunch of three lettered acronymed agencies who have a budget that far outspends anything NASA has ever dreamed of having. NASA is not only but one of several space agencies in the U.S. federal government, they aren't even the largest any more. There is reason to think they may not even be #2.
One of the little told aspects of Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unibomber) is that he was able to live and thrive on very little money. He had a small cabin in Montana and was almost completely self sufficient.... living in a first world economy no less. Admittedly that also helped keep him "off the grid", and was one of the reasons why he was so hard for the FBI to trace, but living on just a few hundred dollars per year is still possible to do even in America at the current value of a dollar. Not easy, and like Kaczynski you would need to grow your own food, hunt, and slaughter your own animals needed for food, but it is possible.
The problem is the overgeneralization that anybody living this lifestyle is similarly deranged and needs to be imprisoned before they go and kill a dozen people.
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Rail guns have already been built which have been able to achieve lunar escape velocity. Getting such a system to the Moon is just a matter of engineering and making it work in a lunar environment. While not one of the first things to be built on the Moon, if there was a business reason for getting a mass driver going it would be merely a matter of time and how much capital was available to get it built in the first place.
The real question is if it is easier to simply grab a near-Earth asteroid instead?
Yes, and when technology supports shipping quintillions of tons, we'll worry about that.
Quintillions of tons?!? We can do better than that. We'll just de-orbit it. Then it will all be on Earth and easy to get.
With what reaction mass are you going to use to perform such a de-orbiting procedure? Where is the energy source for such a hair-brained scheme? Don't you think such energy should be put to something more practical, like sending all of humanity to another hundred star systems?
You suffer from the same order of magnitude problem that the idiot above made with regards to thinking humanity could even make a dent in the Moon through mining activity. Actually, it was worse as at least mining stuff on the Moon is theoretically possible in large quantities.
Borman was Commander. Anders was LMP, even though there was no LEM.
My mistake. You are correct.
Yeah, lemme guess - Sputnik wasn't that big an accomplishment either, was it?
By the way, what's the space program in your country up to nowadays? Just askin'.
Besides a spacecraft currently in operation around Saturn, one that just left the Solar System entirely, another one on its way to Pluto, still another spacecraft traveling to yet another planet (admittedly dwarf planet) called Ceres, and has discovered nearly a thousand new planets and planetary systems elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy? Oh, and of course the two rovers currently operating on Mars and a recent survey of Mercury?
And all of that is what is happening right now, not just in the distant past. If everything goes well, more people will be going into space over the next couple of years than the whole of human history to date. If you want to know what America is doing, it is better to look now at private companies rather than the historical national space agency, especially for manned exploration, but even so NASA is still quite busy and doing some very impressive things.
I'd call that doing a whole lot, and certainly makes anything China is doing pale in comparison.
And no, Sputnik really wasn't that big of a deal when it happened other than getting several congressmen's panties in a bunch. In terms of raw technology in the 1950's and 1960's, America was by far ahead of anything Russia could do and in some ways wanted Russia to be first for several political reasons. I do respect the Russian space program, and they certainly are very competent at what they are doing, but you shouldn't blow it out of proportion either. There is a reason why the Eisenhower administration wasn't all that concerned when Sputnik flew.
Yes.... a privately funded company would be something like SpaceX, Planetary Resources, or Bigelow Aerospace. Amateur hobbyists are groups like a bunch of students and interested amateurs (perhaps even professionals working in their spare time) such as Team Pulli or Team FredNet. You can argue that they are likely not going to get to the Moon, but the point is that purely amateur hobbyists are participating in the GLXP and some have serious plans for actually getting to the Moon.
That some privately funded companies are also participating with GLXP is sort of besides the point, but it is worth mentioning that some folks think they can make the trip to the Moon through pure philanthropic donations or simply holding out a tin can begging people to help with their trip.
One of the reasons why most unmanned missions have a view of the Earth as a part of their photo schedule is precisely because of this famous photograph. Even today, it is one of the most widely requested photographs from NASA (both from server activity as well as from its PR office) and has been credited with popularizing the environmental movement to possibly even ending the Vietnam War.
As you say, this was a public relation opportunity, but at the time it wasn't even considered. On the other hand, the spacecraft commander was given some degree of discretion on what he could do (Bill Anders in the case of Apollo 8). They didn't necessarily need permission from mission control in order to photograph the Earth, although it wasn't on the official list of tasks they were supposed to be doing.
They felt inspired due to seeing something that literally no other human ever in the entire existence of mankind had ever seen before. If you can't grasp just how profound it was for a group of people going further away from any other group of people in all of history (several times further from any other group), you really fail to grasp just what was going on that particular December of 1968.
Yes, they could have read something out of Shakespear, Tolkein, Douglas Adams, or Einstein. Instead, they choose something that was written even earlier simply to show the sheer historic significance of what it was that they were doing.
Besides, why do you give a crap about what somebody else believes? A basic principle of liberty is that people are free to believe or not believe whatever it is that they want. The first amendment applies just as much to astronauts as it does to anybody else, and that even includes the freedom from censorship about religious ideas too. The next time you decide to take a trip around from the back side of the Moon and want to make a profound public statement about your experience, you can chose something else you think is much more appropriate like Dr. Seuss.
Wake me up when the Chinese get anybody above 400 miles. I seriously doubt that any Chinese astronauts are going to do much of anything.
Besides, launching people into space only once every three years or so isn't going to give them the ability to do much of anything. I am significantly underwhelmed by the progress of the Chinese space agency and their ability to recreate the Ranger missions.... and boldly go where dozens of amateur rocket hobbyists plan to tread in the very near future.
There certainly is no plan by the Chinese Space Agency to develop the hard infrastructure needed for major missions like you are implying. They don't even have a good equivalent of the Deep Space Network.
Back to topic, just consider what GM did to the EV1 (reportedly one of the big reasons Musk got into Tesla in first place). Do you think they destroyed those cars out of any logic other than powerful lobbies decided on killing the electric car on the spot ?
I'm still not sure what GM was doing with the EV-1 model. It was originally built with the intention to comply with a California state mandate to build electric vehicles.... something that never does well in a free market economy. At the time, I don't think GM could find a strong economic model for building electric vehicles that would give them a profit, and the goal at the time was simply to keep GM in business long enough to get the electric car mandate changed so the EV-1 could be phased out. It certainly was a business strategy to only have the EV-1 around long enough to comply with what the GM board of directors thought was a silly government mandate.
It is also very clear that the Chevy Volt was designed as a direct response to the Tesla Roadster, as the moment of its conception can be traced back to a visit that Martin Eberhart (before Elon Musk fired the guy) made at the GM headquarters where Eberhart parked a Tesla engineering prototype in the GM corporate HQ parking lot. I think that took some serious balls to make such a business move, and that was definitely not the reason why Eberhart was fired (which was mostly tied to the disaster that happened with the Roadster transmission due to it basically bankrupting the company and nearly killed Elon Musk in a real physical sense from stress and lack of sleep). GM needed to be shown that it was possible to profit from sales of electric vehicles. You can claim that the EV-1 could have been profitable, but I think the bean counters in the corporate HQ didn't see that as a long term solution.
I certainly don't subscribe to any major conspiracy theory other than a conspiracy of the GM board of directors simply lacking any confidence in a product they never wanted to make in the first place.
Just the fact that to date, LENR has never been raised as news on CNN and the bbc has a single article (from 2009) mentioning it. Just tried to search LENR on CNN search, and it changed to Learn, since there's zero articles with LENR !
In fairness to these news sources you are talking about, there hasn't really been anything ground breaking or newsworthy (from the perspective of a general news outlet) with LENR related research in the past decade. There have been some interesting ideas put forward and some scholarly papers presented, but those are hardly what would be called newsworthy except for a dedicated blog covering LENR research or general physics research. It really is an obscure topic and difficult to really grasp for journalism majors who only took science classes in college merely to plow through their general education requirements.
If one is willing to look without being either a Scully or a Fox Mulder, one should still find plenty of proof there's serious forces trying to slow down technical advances on energy (except when it's way too expensive) as much as possible. Any quantum leaps are a big no no for those guys.
I don't think there is anybody trying to slow down scientific progress in a systematic fashion, but I do think that there are government policies in place right now which discourage amateur scientific investigations. You can't find chemistry sets like I had when I was a teenager (a couple of decades ago) since such kids are seen as potential terrorist threats if they even try to mix random chemicals together in the basement of their home. Amateur nuclear researchers (of any kind) are definitely seen as freaks of nature and rooted out as potential terrorist targets (just see the link above with the Polywell researcher who got a nice visit from the NYPD because one of his neighbors freaked out). It is a cultural attitude that the only people who can do real scientific
That test being published even go into Forbes online. Are you telling me Andrea Rossi managed to fool even Forbes Magazine ?
Forbes reported on a media event and some speculation about the device. That Rossi held a media event advertising his supposed device (whatever it was that he was showing off) is no doubt true and there is some general interest in the idea of a low-cost small scale nuclear device is also true. As to the ability of that device to actually work as advertised (aka actually convert Nickle into Copper with Hydrogen in a fusion process) is way beyond the scope of any reporter from Forbes. Yes, I am saying that Rossi could fool a reporter from that company, but that isn't even what they reported. All they reported is that some sort of media event happened with a shipping container sized device that produced a whole bunch of steam and made a bunch of noise. How that steam was produced is what I'm critical about, not that the event was held.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
I'm quite familiar with the Pons & Fleishman experiment, which has much more to do with Muon-catalyzed fusion experiments than with anything Andrea Rossi is doing. Far be it "in direct conflict with current accepted laws of physics", there is definitely some physical science phenomena going on with that particular experiment. What is in doubt is if Pons & Fleishman were capable of measuring the nuclear activity of their fusion cells with calorimeters instead of neutron detectors. The criticism of their work centered primarily on the claims of massive amounts of energy being produced that could have been turned into a commercial product, which is also my criticism of their work too.
It has been well within the known laws of physics that atoms can fuse together, which is in fact how the Sun operates. The speculation about LENR is that somehow you can use atomic binding forces from other elements such as the lattice structure of Palladium to put two or more atoms of Hydrogen together in close proximity to induce an occasional fusion reaction. The ability of Hydrogen to work its way into Palladium has been a widely researched phenomena, where the element is used routinely for hydrogen storage devices (such as hydrogen powered automobiles). What is thought is that the crystal structure of Palladium allows, through Brownian motion at room temperature, to have multiple Hydrogen atoms pile up into small pockets where they are confined in a space where nuclear forces can react between multiple nuclei of hydrogen atoms. Applying an electric current to the Palladium can alter the structure of the crystal partially to induce additional reactions compared to when that current isn't applied.
What isn't known is if this phenomena, which has been studied and measured with neutron detectors, can be induced to happen on a scale that produces significant quantities of heat and more specifically if the heat and energy produced from the fusion reactions will ever be more than the energy of the current being applied. As a scientific curiosity, it is definitely something interesting to look at. Even the idea that you could connect an ordinary light switch to a fusion device that would produce neutrons at will and would not be hazardous when it is disconnected from a power source has some really interesting scientific applications. Just don't get excited over throwing out electric generators made from other power sources though.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
You give him a year longer than I did. I used to be cautiously skeptical of the guy until recently, and I ended up talking to a few people that could have put some serious funding into the E-Ca
The e-Cat is a total joke, along with Andrea Rossi. Every time somebody gets close to actually nailing him down to show off what he has done, it proves to be "just around the corner" and something goes horribly wrong (usually because he lost the power switch or something similar).
While I think there is some interesting physical phenomena that is happening with LENR, it is nowhere near anything resembling a practical device. It certainly merits some further research, but it isn't even useful for something like a neutron source.... which is much better done with an IEC reactor (like the Farnsworth-Hirsch reactor... called Internal Electrostatic Confinement reactors). At best it is a scientific curiosity. High school students have been able to build IEC reactors successfully (and they do produce neutrons and other evidence of actual fusion reactions going on), but even those are just toys that can never be a practical power source.
The most telling thing about just how far along Rossi has been able to get with his technology is an investigation in Florida over a nuclear technology license inspection of a supposed warehouse that Rossi was building these devices (located in Miami). As soon as Florida state regulators insisted that he demonstrate the safety of his devices, Rossi changed his tune instantly suggesting they weren't nuclear devices at all but instead merely electric water heaters (aka like a coffee percolator), and then disclaimed he was even using the site for manufacturing at all after that wasn't even satisfactory because of tax liability reasons.
I've made enough phone calls and e-mails to various people involved where they are either clueless fans running a website or people that simply don't want to call back with bona fide inquiries. In other words, a pure and simple scam. Even major fan websites are now shutting down simply because Rossi is out of tricks on trying to extend this long con. Rossi had his chance if it was a legitimate technology, but now it is only the ultimate fanatical people who keep perpetuating the concept. He is giving a bad name even to LENR researchers that are shunned in the scientific community.
You also need to remember that all of this happened with technology developed in the 1960's. Some of this fakery that can happen now simply was not available (especially live computer graphic simulations). The live feeds of Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt running around on their rovers, for not just a few minutes but almost continuously for several days straight, is something that I think would have been impossible to fake.
Besides, you can't reason with those who think it is all a huge conspiracy. Some of them are convinced that NASA has subsequently sent stuff up to the Moon to fake the landing sites... as if faking stuff on the Moon is any easier than simply doing the real mission and doing exactly as has been claimed.
If you really think we can get beyond territorial claims, you must come up with some sort of government system that fundamentally changes human behavior and actions. Even something so simple as a basic mine to extract raw materials like iron ore (a very common element among the asteroids and even on Mars and the Moon) is going to require somebody to stake out a claim of some nature where those operating the mine will not be happy if somebody else decides to share in the easy pickings after they have spent million or even billions of dollars building up the infrastructure necessary to get that mine operational.
In other words, for resource extraction to take place, you need to assure some sort of property claim, which implies some sort of government besides the end of somebody's shotgun (laser riffle, or whatever else you can think up for space-based personal combat). It can be orderly, but land title claims would need to be enforced by a government entity of some sort.
As big as space is, as many asteroids that exist and I admit that Mars is as large for surface area as the entire land area of the Earth, there still are going to be some spots that will be more desirable than others and will be a source of competition and "friction" between groups of people. There are also lazy people who will gladly take the work of others and use it for themselves that need to be shown the frontier and told to move on.
I guess I'm a realist on this matter, and I think it is a shame to continue supporting a treaty that was explicitly drafted by a bunch of communists (primarily the idea of the people in the Soviet Union at the time it was negotiated) who thinks personal property rights are a thing of the past. Without personal property rights in space, mankind will never go into space.
No, "we" are not really managing Antarctica very well. The fighting that could be happening there is simmering just below the surface where occasionally a country like Chile has tried to assert their sovereignty there. The primary thing that keeps war from breaking out in Antarctica is a threat of global thermonuclear war between the nations involved, and that Antarctica by itself isn't worth that kind of national destruction.
For myself, keeping Antarctica as an international heritage park and essentially just a scientific playground is more than sufficient for what is a limited resource... and has value simply for the scientific exploration that still is happening there. There are natural resources to be found in Antarctica like coal, oil, uranium, and other deposits of natural resources, so there is something to fight over from a global war standpoint. Antarctica could also economically support through mining activity alone a permanent habitable city, but the current stalemate between the major countries is likely a good thing too.
This is a terrible template to impose upon other places in the universe though, as it essentially dooms mankind to just the Earth and nowhere else. There are other reasons why I think the Outer Space Treaty was a bad idea, but ultimately the benefits for the countries who reach out to the rest of the Solar System are going to be so apparent economically that the treaty is going to be discarded completely at some point in the future. I think it is an unstable relationship that is sooner or later going to burst and better to resolve peacefully in a manner that acknowledges sovereign claims of extra-terrestrial real estate than presuming the current situation is going to continue forever until a war breaks out to force a change.
Frankly, the ability to withdraw from the treaty is irrelevant. The stern words and looks would just come when they withdrew from the treaty, instead of when they claimed their bit of the moon (actually, they'd probably receive some of the words and looks then, too).
Stern looks and mean words are irrelevant as well. Only backing it up with a threat to destroy, occupy, and control the country making such a move would have any sort of teeth to the treaty.
More than likely what would happen is a division of the Moon between the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with perhaps a bone thrown to most of the G20 nations as well to each get their piece of the action. It might just be a blueprint for other places around the Solar System as well.
Eventually there is going to be a need for some country to do more than simply send out scientific expeditions, and the Universe is a big enough place to not let everything above the Kármán line simply remain an international heritage park.
The idea that Goddard had something to do with it is pure fiction. Do some research man.
You, sir, have no clue about rocket science either to entertain such an idea. Do you even know who Robert Goddard is?
BTW, I would also include Willy Ley and Walt Disney as major reasons why the Apollo Moon landing happened.
Then again that treaty has language which states all any signatory country needs to do (including China) is to give a one year's notification that they are withdrawing from the treaty. They China (or America or Russia) can do whatever they want to do with no need to worry about a pesky treaty that might get in the way.
Besides, there is really no enforcement provision that stops any country from claiming sovereign territory other than it might be causus belli (a rationale for war) for other countries to step in and try to stop them. That likely would happen with or without the treaty anyway so it is mainly window dressing and nothing more on that point.
If there was some extra-terrestrial real estate that some country really wanted to claim, I think that one year notification rule would be plenty of time before anybody else could get to that same hunk of rock in the sky.
And if it weren't for the Nazi scientists, the US and Soviet space programs wouldn't have existed. The only mostly isolated nation is North Korea, and we know how that's working out for them (great, if you go by the Great Leader's and his buddies opinion).
Obviously Robert Goddard was a Nazi scientist. And Dr. Buzz Aldrin never wrote any papers about spaceflight that by itself would ensure his role in the history of mankind (ignoring his weekend camping trip he took in the summer of 1969 that was broadcast as a reality TV show). And of course Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Sergei Korolyov were just a bunch of stupid lab assistants who knew nothing about rocket science either.
This kind of stuff is pure BS. Yes, there were some German scientists who did some impressive things with rockets and their assistance was useful for perhaps pushing ahead the American and Russian space programs by about a decade or so in the 1950's. But to suggest that the programs wouldn't have existed at all is a bit of a stretch when it is patently clear there were plenty of both Russians and Americans who were active in trying to get spaceflight including manned spaceflight happening in their lifetimes. Werner Von Braun openly acknowledged both Goddard and Tsiolkovsky (together with Oberth.... who was never a Nazi either) by name in his autobiography as inspiration for his work.
When will Space-X do that ?
I mean, let's start up some REAL COMPETITION !
If you believe this news report, in either 2015 or 2016, as a part of the Google Lunar X-Prize competition.
The launch was earlier listed on the SpaceX manifest, although it currently isn't on that page. Plenty of other interesting flights are on the books though.
You might want to check out the team page on the Google Lunar X-Prize site for more details:
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/teams/astrobotic
The GLXP site also has a blog with some conferences and even some video of at least some of the teams. I would presume that if they are on the SpaceX manifest, they have put some real money down to reserve a launch slot too.
The point of 39A as a SpaceX facility, at least the speculation I've seen (SpaceX hasn't said anything official about it), is the facilities which are in place for crewed launches. As far as I've heard and seen in other articles about the topic, they are not purchasing a berth in the VAB (vehicle Assembly Building), thus there will be no need for the crawler/tractor that you are talking about.
It should also be pointed out that the launch pad was going to be abandoned anyway, and before SpaceX put in a bid for the pad the previous plan for the site was simply to let it "rust in place" and sit without any maintenance at all. Neither Blue Origin nor ULA had any interest in the site until SpaceX spoke up asking about it. Do you think a rusting piece of metal on the tour circuit of KSC is a good use of this site instead of seeing people fly into space on new rockets?
The funny thing about Blue Origin is that the company is technically two years older than SpaceX in terms of when their corporate charters were established. I think that speaks volumes about which company is more prepared for actually going into space. Jeff Bezos also has more money than Elon Musk, so it wasn't a cash flow problem either.
This article is not the only report or for that matter even news agency that has reported on this topic. Blue Origin has indeed zero customers at the moment who want to use their services, and the contract is only for five years anyway before it is up for renegotiation.... at which time Blue Origin can try to put forward something of their own that actually can fly.
Elon Musk was so cocky about the whole thing that he offered at his own expense (or the expense of SpaceX and not NASA) to accommodate Blue Origin or for that matter any other American company that might want to use this launch pad for their own projects (referring also to United Launch Alliance). Furthermore, Mr. Musk speculated that the likelihood of Blue Origin actually qualifying according to FAA-AST standards necessary for human spaceflight (which is the only point of using this launch pad as opposed to other locations that certainly are available including at the Kennedy Space Complex at Florida) in the next five years is about as likely as seeing dancing unicorns in that same flame duct.
I have to agree with Mr. Musk on this point too. It isn't just a matter of Blue Origin spending megabucks to build their own launch facility, of which SpaceX has gone through and built three launch pads besides this one and is shopping around for a fourth launch pad in addition to this launch pad (that one is likely to be in Brownsville, Texas), but that Blue Origin is also not really capable of using this particular facility at all.
The whole point of this legal action is to try and delay any potential launches that SpaceX might do at this particular launch pad. SpaceX needs it for both the Falcon Heavy rocket as well and manned launches in particular. It also can act as a back-up site if SLC-40 (the other Florida pad that SpaceX currently operates) needs to go through a period of renovation.
There are another 38 other potential launch sites in the area that are suitable to various degrees or other for spaceflight activity. Some of them certainly are not really suitable and others are in such utter state of disrepair as to be essentially carving out a new spot in the swampland of Cape Canaveral, but there are other locations if the desire was made. There is also pad 39B, but that is currently being used by NASA for the SLS/Orion program as long as that program continues to get funding.
We've saved a lot of money not REALLY bothering with space -- not really being serious about it anymore. Instead we've got this REALLY IMPORTANT deficit, but it doesn't exist when bailing out banks and being in really expensive wars hiring contractor mercenaries for ten times the regular soldier.
I will agree that the USA is no longer being serious about going into space (with the exception of a bunch of starry eyed entrepreneurs who are being taxed into oblivion once it becomes profitable). As for saving money, I would dare say that expenditures for spaceflight have never been higher. Most of the spending on space at the moment comes not from high profile things like landing on the Moon, but instead on a bunch of three lettered acronymed agencies who have a budget that far outspends anything NASA has ever dreamed of having. NASA is not only but one of several space agencies in the U.S. federal government, they aren't even the largest any more. There is reason to think they may not even be #2.
One of the little told aspects of Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unibomber) is that he was able to live and thrive on very little money. He had a small cabin in Montana and was almost completely self sufficient.... living in a first world economy no less. Admittedly that also helped keep him "off the grid", and was one of the reasons why he was so hard for the FBI to trace, but living on just a few hundred dollars per year is still possible to do even in America at the current value of a dollar. Not easy, and like Kaczynski you would need to grow your own food, hunt, and slaughter your own animals needed for food, but it is possible.
The problem is the overgeneralization that anybody living this lifestyle is similarly deranged and needs to be imprisoned before they go and kill a dozen people.