NASA and the Private Sector - Page 103

On September 15 2016 08:52 Belisarius wrote:
I come here to read news on private space exploration, not people trying to explain why "a continuum of varied gravitational conditions that change daily as one is hurdling through space" is a sentence that should immediately condemn the writer to repeating middle school. Literally half this thread is some variation of that process.

Can we just agree not to respond to anything JJR spouts from here on in?

On September 14 2016 10:17 JimmyJRaynor wrote:


lol, when a moon, space station, human floating on a space station etc.. orbits a planet there is 1 predominant force. the force of gravity pulling that planet towards the thing they are orbiting.

the only thing stopping the satellite from crashing into earth is its VELOCITY perpendicular to the force of gravity it is experiencing.

the force comes from 2 objects attracting each other according to
(Gm1m2)/(r^2)

there is no "centrifugal force on the space station".

the centripedal force is the only force acting upon a human in a space station... and its calculated according to the equation above.

its also the only force acting upon the space station itself.

as soon as the object lowers its velocity it will stop missing the earth and come crashing down because there is only 1 force.

so as soon as the space station falls below 7.66 km/s in velocity it'll come crashing through the atmosphere in a manner similar to the Skylab.

On July 27 2014 09:29 JimmyJRaynor wrote:


NASA's credibility regarding the moon landings declines with each passing year.
no pictures of the 5 landing sites... that giant LRO debacle with those horrible gray scale pictures.

we have satellites that can look 13 billion light years into deep space and no pictures of any of the 5 landing sites.... ok guys.

i don't think NASA will put a man on the moon with rocket powered tech... they also need something to simulate gravity as they travel to the moon. the various human circulatory systems need gravity to work.

Elon Musk will deliver this year’s most anticipated aerospace speech on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico. The talk, “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species,” marks a singular moment for the man who has upended the global launch industry during the last five years and will now finally peel away some of the layers of his grand vision to colonize Mars—and possibly other places in the Solar System.

It was mooted in some aerospace circles that Musk might change the focus of his much-advertised speech at the IAC meeting after the loss of a Falcon 9 rocket earlier this month (the second), the cause of which remains unknown to the public. However, its central theme will remain how to address the challenges of creating a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Indeed, SpaceX recently added a livestream of the talk to its site, complete with a photo of Mars. Clearly, Musk and his company are pressing ahead with their Mars ambitions even as the very difficult, real-world work of assessing an Earth-bound rocket failure continues.

After the speech it seems likely that details about Musk’s much-hyped architecture for Mars exploration—the big spacecraft known variously as the Mars Colonial Transporter or Interplanetary Transport System and rocket, the BFR—will capture the most attention. Everyone wants to see these vehicles, which undoubtedly will ooze magnificence. But at Ars we’ll be watching for something much more prosaic, namely, who pays for all this?

With regard to this question there is one telling line in the description of Musk’s talk: “The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for sustaining humans on the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.” The notion of industry and government "collaboration" seems a key admission that SpaceX will need substantial financial help to establish a Mars colony.

Anyone who followed the political struggles in Washington DC over commercial cargo and crew funding during the last decade will recall the hell Congress put private spaceflight companies like SpaceX through. US representatives and senators did not want to give away dollars that had traditionally gone to NASA and its primary contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to firms outside this clique. The battle played out for years, and the commercial crew program only received full funding after it became abundantly clear that delayed spending meant the United States would remain reliant on Russia to launch its astronauts into space. In this hard-fought battle SpaceX had two key allies in Washington: NASA and the President of the United States.

Now, with ambitions that extend far beyond low-Earth orbit, it is not clear which coalitions in Washington DC will stand with SpaceX. Congress certainly won’t. After the static fire incident earlier this month, I spoke and texted with a handful of members of Congress and aides. Their concern wasn’t for the prospects of SpaceX, but rather whether NASA was on the hook for any of the company’s losses. This reinforced the fact that while some members of Congress certainly support SpaceX, many could not care less about the company’s fortunes.
The traditional aerospace industry, too, will likely do what it can to undermine Musk. These companies, accustomed to large, cost-plus contracts prior to the "new space" era of SpaceX and other upstart firms, resent SpaceX for changing the rules of the game, and also for the public adulation the company receives. The traditional powers view themselves as work horses, and denigrate SpaceX as a show pony.

It also seems likely that NASA won’t offer substantial support, either. The space agency is building its own heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, and has its own #JourneyToMars. NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, has wholeheartedly supported SpaceX and commercial space activities in low-Earth orbit, but has been far less effusive about private businesses venturing into deep space on their own. Earlier this month Bolden flatly stated he was not a “big fan” of private companies building heavy-lift rockets. With its Falcon Heavy and BFR, that is exactly what SpaceX is doing.