EPTAs for the private sector, well I'm skeptical they'll step up. If they can send people into low earth orbit for a profit thats great for them and their rich clients but it doesn't really expand humanities frontiers at all. Its rich people paying for the most exlusive brand of tourism. I wish their money was going to the experts at NASA instead. Hell I'm not even sure this space tourism will get off the ground. Its not so long ago that Concorde was grounded indefinitely due to safety concerns and high running costs...Imagine where commercial space travel will be should an accident occur.
[Space] Space Launch System, SLS - Page 4
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KissKiss
United Kingdom136 Posts
As for the private sector, well I'm skeptical they'll step up. If they can send people into low earth orbit for a profit thats great for them and their rich clients but it doesn't really expand humanities frontiers at all. Its rich people paying for the most exlusive brand of tourism. I wish their money was going to the experts at NASA instead. Hell I'm not even sure this space tourism will get off the ground. Its not so long ago that Concorde was grounded indefinitely due to safety concerns and high running costs...Imagine where commercial space travel will be should an accident occur. | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On September 04 2011 12:14 Sanctimonius wrote: Thank you, Whitewing. I'll quote part of my post for your convenience, too. My point is that yes, space travel gives us side benefits. It can result in other things. Can't we get the same side benefits from the private sector, if they took over space R&D? Why does it have to be the government, and therefore the taxpayer, who pays for space travel on the off chance we get more side-benefits? No we can't and we won't. The Private Sector is concerned with short run profits almost always, space programs are a long term investment. Further, there's very little incentive for the private sector to do it. It has to be the government because nobody else has any incentive to do it. It's not a profitable investment in the short term: you won't see returns for decades or longer. Private corporations can make money much faster than that with less effort. It's the same reason as to why we don't have any good, cheap, alternative fuel sources for vehicles yet. Yeah, private corporations could put research into fuel cells or hydrogen fuel, but we don't have the infrastructure in place for it, and it's not profitable for them until the infrastructure is in place. There are some things only a government can do. | ||
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BlueBird.
United States3889 Posts
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On September 04 2011 12:22 Suisen wrote: What's the point in a government launching a new rocket in 2017 that recycles most space shuttle components? How does this innovate. How is this not '60 technology? Why not have NASA stop making this type of rockets? What's the point? And this is supposed to go to Mars or some asteroid? There used to be this concept called Venture Star. What are they proposing now? Why can't politicians just cancel government run human space flight? No we fist had Bush cancel the Space Shuttle. Then they put in place a somewhat ambitious plan with no budget at all called Constellation. Then they slowly start to admit project Constellation is nonsense. Then finally they decide to cancel it and replace it with something more realistic. And now we have this. Are these all just tricks to slowly get rid of all this and avoiding the political backlash of just canceling the Shuttle outright and saying there's no reason to have anything government developed to replace it? If NASA put the money to it they could discover alien life within 20 years, assuming it is there to be discovered. But apparently that has no priority. Pointlessly orbiting earth apparently does. I guess it is something military related. Ooh and all the spin off product arguments are bogus. People at NASA know they are wrong. You don't need to accelerate an 80 meter high cylinder filled with fuel up to 2.1 km/s just to develop some of that spin off technology stuff. Human space flight is anti science and is just as much a waste as military spending. HSF is either military or recreational. So far it has not been scientific. You have no idea what you are talking about, and history proves it. Getting the first man to mars, for example, would be a huge technological leap. We don't have the tech right now to do it, the logistical issues are huge. NASA doesn't put more money into these things because they don't have the money. And no, the spin off product arguments aren't bogus, history again, proves it. You can't seriously want to make the argument that "the facts are wrong, because I say they are wrong" do you? Nobody sits down to make an invention and succeeds without having a very specific goal in mind. To get these goals in mind, we need problems to solve. You create problems to solve by setting goals that aren't yet achievable. This is how technological development occurs. | ||
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Suisen
256 Posts
So instead I'll just hammer down my position a bit more. Going to Mars would be an huge feat of engineering. Actually going to Mars wouldn't require much new technology except for the technology related to keeping humans in space or in isolation comfortably. And yes, people sit down and think about science without any goal and discover very important things that later become huge industries. Also, we didn't have one Apollo launch and one Shuttle launch. We had several for both. What's the point? If you want to develop technology and show you can do it you can do it once and then not waste any more cash. History proves me wrong? How? The only reason spin off technology 'works' is because NASA made it possible to get funds. Human space flight is pure propaganda and politics and because of that it got money. You can go through the whole list of NASA spinoff technology and almost all clearly don't need people into orbit to develop them. Also, things like teflon aren't even NASA spinoff. That's all propaganda. Now look at the ISS. I like to look at it as it passes through the sky. Then look at the cost. Then look what the return on investment actually is. Both Russia and the US want to get rid of it. It took many years to finish and now that it is basically finished they want to retire it asap and move on to something new. Again, it's all hype and public promotion. Look at China and their space program as well. It's national prestige. ISS, been there done that. Now move on to something new that will make for good television. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On September 04 2011 12:50 Suisen wrote: I'd love to respond to your post, but you gave me no arguments to respond to. So instead I'll just hammer down my position a bit more. Going to Mars would be an huge feat of engineering. Actually going to Mars wouldn't require much new technology except for the technology related to keeping humans in space or in isolation comfortably. And yes, people sit down and think about science without any goal and discover very important things that later become huge industries. Also, we didn't have one Apollo launch and one Shuttle launch. We had several for both. What's the point? If you want to develop technology and show you can do it you can do it once and then not waste any more cash. History proves me wrong? How? The only reason spin off technology 'works' is because NASA made it possible to get funds. Human space flight is pure propaganda and politics and because of that it got money. You can go through the whole list of NASA spinoff technology and almost all clearly don't need people into orbit to develop them. Also, things like teflon aren't even NASA spinoff. That's all propaganda. You either didn't read everything I wrote or didn't understand it, so I'll rephrase. The development of TECHNOLOGY (not necessarily scientific discoveries, but new tech) occurs when someone is attempting to solve a problem, and current technology is inadequate. Space exploration provides a lot of interesting and difficult technical issues, that required a lot of new technology to solve. Thus, by creating a need to explore space, we created a need to solve the problems preventing us from exploring space, and thus developing the technology to do it. If we decide not to bother exploring space, we have no incentive to explore additional problems of going the next step, and therefore do not develop the necessary technology. Much technology that is developed in one field can be adapted by engineers to be used in other fields (most machines used in hospitals are invented this way), but it is the process of solving the original issues that allows for this. Nearly 100% of technological developments result from this basic process of problem solving. By creating new and interesting problems to solve, we allow for new development paths of our technology that can often lead to incredible technical leaps (artificial satellites anyone?) Freeze-dried food, for example, is one technical development that directly resulted from manned spaceflight. If we hadn't needed to feed astronauts in space, we wouldn't have Hungry Man at the local supermarket (just as an example). If we close ourselves off by saying "manned space exploration" isn't important, we may very well be passing an opportunity to invent all sorts of new interesting inventions! One example of some tech we might develop would be a significantly advanced battery or other power source (keeping a person alive for such a long trip and the return trip requires a lot more energy than an unmanned trip, and using current batteries is just too inefficient). | ||
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enzym
Germany1034 Posts
On September 04 2011 12:50 Suisen wrote: I'd love to respond to your post, but you gave me no arguments to respond to. So instead I'll just hammer down my position a bit more. Going to Mars would be an huge feat of engineering. Actually going to Mars wouldn't require much new technology except for the technology related to keeping humans in space or in isolation comfortably. And yes, people sit down and think about science without any goal and discover very important things that later become huge industries. Also, we didn't have one Apollo launch and one Shuttle launch. We had several for both. What's the point? If you want to develop technology and show you can do it you can do it once and then not waste any more cash. History proves me wrong? How? The only reason spin off technology 'works' is because NASA made it possible to get funds. Human space flight is pure propaganda and politics and because of that it got money. You can go through the whole list of NASA spinoff technology and almost all clearly don't need people into orbit to develop them. Also, things like teflon aren't even NASA spinoff. That's all propaganda. Now look at the ISS. I like to look at it as it passes through the sky. Then look at the cost. Then look what the return on investment actually is. Both Russia and the US want to get rid of it. It took many years to finish and now that it is basically finished they want to retire it asap and move on to something new. Again, it's all hype and public promotion. Look at China and their space program as well. It's national prestige. ISS, been there done that. Now move on to something new that will make for good television. Theoretically, yes. But in practice that's not the case, because human beings aren't perfect. I bet you that every single shuttle launch taught us something we didn't know before. One of the biggest examples that comes to mind is the investigation into shuttle safety that was undertaken only after the most recent shuttle accident. It took many launches to give certain scenarios a chance to manifest and it took many scenarios for us to take notice, analyze the right things from the right perspective and learn specific things from it. We could have stopped after the first shuttle launch, but we'd never, or much, much slower at least, have found out about all the intricacies, risks, dangers & misconceptions of the used technology. It turns out the space shuttle was incredibly unsafe and that wasn't because the huge amount and specific kind of fuel essentially made it into a bomb, but because it simply didn't occur to us to look at certain things from certain perspectives, with certain goals in mind and with sufficient rigor. | ||
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Disquiet
Australia628 Posts
On July 29 2011 12:21 bITt.mAN wrote: What's with you guys, if anything, going to space is fucking cool, and it's not like the marginal funds they'd divert to NASA from the budget would end up "making the world a better place before moving out to space", they'd probably get lost in the system anyways, read "le filling-ze-pockets". I was a little surprised when on the radio they were going on about how the last "Space Shuttle" had landed for the last time, and I guess this is what they're replacing that technology with. I agree, more money does not necessarily equal improvement in many government sectors. I think its really sad the US is cutting back so hard on NASA, it provides jobs, develops new technology (where all growth of GDP outside of population growth/people working longer actually comes from). Its well spent money if you ask me. Space is the future, we humans are inevitably going to fuck the planet up sometime in the future, resources will start running out and we will have to look outside of earth. I believe neglecting space research is not only sad, but irresponsible to future generations who may end having to rely on space tech to survive. If I was prime minister australia would have its own space program. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On September 04 2011 13:13 Disquiet wrote: I agree, more money does not necessarily equal improvement in many government sectors. I think its really sad the US is cutting back so hard on NASA, it provides jobs, develops new technology (where all growth of GDP outside of population growth/people working longer actually comes from). Its well spent money if you ask me. Space is the future, we humans are inevitably going to fuck the planet up sometime in the future, resources will start running out and we will have to look outside of earth. I believe neglecting space research is not only sad, but irresponsible to future generations who may end having to rely on space tech to survive. If I was prime minister australia would have its own space program. You are completely right. | ||
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Suisen
256 Posts
Then HSF can use the spinoff technology from different fields itself and be a lot cheaper although slower. By definition something that can only be discovered by researching on HSF can only be needed by HSF. And I am not against HSF. If the super rich want to do space tourism and pay millions for that, fine let them. But why does the government have to fund that by taking money away from fundamental science and actual space exploration using space probes? And I still have to be convinced that human space flight will some day be useful for anything besides tourism. Also, replace 'space' with 'Mount Everest' or 'Mariana Trench' and tell me what changed and why? Why aren't we building a big city on either of them? That would require a lot of new technology. And having government HSF the last few decades hasn't actually produced any new technology since they are still using the same stuff. Orion V was basically Apollo but now with less funding. And this new idea is basically recycling shuttle components to save money. How does that create any new technology? Instead, NASA can spend money on researching how commercial airliners can be more fuel efficient. One of the problems they work on is getting a supersonic plane that does not create sonic booms. NASA does more than human space flight, but you should look at their actual budget and see how much ISS and space shuttle took up and how little was spend on astronomy, cosmology and R&D. It's very similar to that defense spending vs space spending graph. Right now NASA has the James Webb space telescope. But that project can't keep within budget and keeps getting delayed. At some point they won't get additional funding and it will be canceled ad all the money wasted. It's like how they spend money digging a hole for the Superconducting Super Collider but then canceled it later and wasted more money filling up the hole again. Why? Because some member of congress asked "Will we find God with this machine? If so, I will vote for it." and the physicist didn't answer that positively. When JWST is canceled, NASA is dead. Now for years I have heard horror stories about NASA's efficiency. Here again I hear the same thing from someone who claims to have first hand experience. I would call it corruption. NASA is very much like the CIA to me. Both should be gotten rid off and new institutions should be started from scratch. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On September 04 2011 13:20 Suisen wrote: Like no one ever realized that better batteries would be useful to have. Look, these 'problem's already exist. They aren't created by spending money on a big HSF project. You never even addressed the point that while these technologies ended up being developed first by NASA, they don't have to be. We have a symmetry here. Just like NASA technology can be used in other fields if NASA develops it first, same is true the other way. We want better medical equipment. Let's fund research into that. We want better batteries or solar cells, let's fund research into that. Then HSF can use the spinoff technology from different fields itself and be a lot cheaper although slower. And having government HSF the last few decades hasn't actually produced any new technology since they are still using the same stuff. Orion V was basically Apollo but now with less funding. And this new idea is basically recycling shuttle components to save money. How does that create any new technology? Instead, NASA can spend money on researching how commercial airliners can be more fuel efficient. One of the problems they work on is getting a supersonic plane that does not create sonic booms. NASA does more than human space flight, but you should look at their actual budget and see how much ISS and space shuttle took up and how little was spend on astronomy, cosmology and R&D. It's very similar to that defense spending vs space spending graph. Right now NASA has the James Webb space telescope. But that project can't keep within budget and keeps getting delayed. At some point they won't get additional funding and it will be canceled ad all the money wasted. It's like how they spend money digging a hole for the Superconducting Super Collider but then canceled it later and wasted more money filling up the hole again. Why? Because some member of congress asked "Will we find God with this machine? If so, I will vote for it." and the physicist didn't answer that positively. When JWST is canceled, NASA is dead. Now for years I have heard horror stories about NASA's efficiency. Here again I hear the same thing from someone who claims to have first hand experience. I would call it corruption. NASA is very much like the CIA to me. Both should be gotten rid off and new institutions should be started from scratch. I'm not sure how I can better explain this, other than to say that often times, it's not possible to solve a problem directly, but indirectly. You can't just say "Let's research better batteries because better batteries would be awesome." It's true, you can make some progress that way, but leaps only occur when different approaches are brought together. The overwhelming majority of tech is developed to solve a problem that is not related to the commercial usage of it. MRI technology was not developed by physicists to see people's brains. It was later realized that the tech COULD be used for that purpose and the MRI machine was invented. The best advancements come from complicated problems. The more complicated the issue, the most likely it is to result in great tech advances. But it's rarely a straight line, progress just doesn't work that way. Mind you, it CAN work that way, it's certainly possible, but it rarely does. If your issue is with the organization itself, then I won't disagree, clearly it could be run better. But we definitely need to invest in space exploration: one day it'll be completely necessary for man to colonize our solar system, the sooner we start, the less likely we will be to run out of resources on Earth before it happens. | ||
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Suisen
256 Posts
But the whole thing with human space flight is exactly that: "We need a smaller, more reliable battery. So we try to develop one because we need it for our new capsule." It's completely direct and can't be compared to doing research in the most basic forces of nature. | ||
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Pufftrees
2449 Posts
Frankly, NASA and the US is just going to fall significantly behind. Expect China to take over any space race, but these leaks are some what interesting. If the Russian resupply craft didn't blow up we would literally just expect them to do our services. Let's hope Space-X can take over where the US Government has obviously failed. RIP NASA | ||
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Disquiet
Australia628 Posts
On September 04 2011 13:20 Suisen wrote: Like no one ever realized that better batteries would be useful to have. Look, these 'problem's already exist. They aren't created by spending money on a big HSF project. You never even addressed the point that while these technologies ended up being developed first by NASA, they don't have to be. We have a symmetry here. Just like NASA technology can be used in other fields if NASA develops it first, same is true the other way. We want better medical equipment. Let's fund research into that. We want better batteries or solar cells, let's fund research into that. Then HSF can use the spinoff technology from different fields itself and be a lot cheaper although slower. By definition something that can only be discovered by researching on HSF can only be needed by HSF. And I am not against HSF. If the super rich want to do space tourism and pay millions for that, fine let them. But why does the government have to fund that by taking money away from fundamental science and actual space exploration using space probes? And I still have to be convinced that human space flight will some day be useful for anything besides tourism. Also, replace 'space' with 'Mount Everest' or 'Mariana Trench' and tell me what changed and why? Why aren't we building a big city on either of them? That would require a lot of new technology. And having government HSF the last few decades hasn't actually produced any new technology since they are still using the same stuff. Orion V was basically Apollo but now with less funding. And this new idea is basically recycling shuttle components to save money. How does that create any new technology? Instead, NASA can spend money on researching how commercial airliners can be more fuel efficient. One of the problems they work on is getting a supersonic plane that does not create sonic booms. NASA does more than human space flight, but you should look at their actual budget and see how much ISS and space shuttle took up and how little was spend on astronomy, cosmology and R&D. It's very similar to that defense spending vs space spending graph. Right now NASA has the James Webb space telescope. But that project can't keep within budget and keeps getting delayed. At some point they won't get additional funding and it will be canceled ad all the money wasted. It's like how they spend money digging a hole for the Superconducting Super Collider but then canceled it later and wasted more money filling up the hole again. Why? Because some member of congress asked "Will we find God with this machine? If so, I will vote for it." and the physicist didn't answer that positively. When JWST is canceled, NASA is dead. Now for years I have heard horror stories about NASA's efficiency. Here again I hear the same thing from someone who claims to have first hand experience. I would call it corruption. NASA is very much like the CIA to me. Both should be gotten rid off and new institutions should be started from scratch. I believe the canceling/wasting of work is partly a symptom of the democratic process. Don't get me wrong I think its the probably the fairest form of government around but democracy does have the downside that every 4/8 years a new ideology enters power. A lot of long term projects tend to be very inefficient or have their funding cut from underneath them because of changing political attitudes. Many politicians will do what will win them votes and please masses in the short term, and long term projects are rarely undertaken. Elections also create uncertainty about funding in the future, (as its unknown what the political landscape in 5 years will think of space science compared to today) and thus many immense projects are simply not undertaken because they may never see completion. I think china will largely outpace the US in space travel in the future especially the way things are going right now. The private sector might help keep the US in the game but I don't think theres enough of a concerted will to keep up with a country like china. Ultimately I think china inspiring a space race like the russians did would actually be a very good thing. | ||
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Yurie
11803 Posts
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
On September 04 2011 15:22 Yurie wrote: I can agree with some posters that the space program itself is a bit pointless in this time and place (I still think it should be continued for when it is needed). Perhaps it would be better to create a full colony below water now instead of focusing on space. There are already people trying to build floating colonies near land. A colony under water would face many of the same problems as one in space, not exactly the same and not all of them though giving more short term benefits. Hypoxic and space environments share enough similarities that working on underwater colonies would lead to benefits for space programs as well. Can't knock on that. But cutting NASA funding would increase the reliance on private companies to ensure the operations of our satellites. On one hand it can be seen as alarmist and cynical not to trust privately operated companies. On the other hand there is a LOT at stake by removing the safe space program in exchange for a more economical private industry. | ||
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koreakool
United States334 Posts
On September 04 2011 15:22 Yurie wrote: I can agree with some posters that the space program itself is a bit pointless in this time and place (I still think it should be continued for when it is needed). Perhaps it would be better to create a full colony below water now instead of focusing on space. There are already people trying to build floating colonies near land. A colony under water would face many of the same problems as one in space, not exactly the same and not all of them though giving more short term benefits. An underwater colony requires the Earth to sustain it. One of the reasons why we want to explore and colonize the cosmos is to ensure that mankind does not solely depend upon the Earth for survival. I agree that building an underwater colony will create benefits for us. But underwater colonies will be created when the opportunity arises for them (like an "underwater colony race"). However, the opportunity for space exploration has already arisen, thanks to the formation of NASA. We should act on this opportunity by supporting NASA's goal towards long range exploration of space. | ||
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Suisen
256 Posts
It is theoretically possible to have a colony on Mars. But why be piss poor on Mars when you can live as a king on earth? And any colony will always depend on earth. And you realize that NASA isn't really spending a lot of money on finding habitable planets, if they exist. Right now the Kepler space telescope is doing a good job. But right not there is no program for building a more advanced planet finding space telescope. There is only the James Webb. James Webb ST started in 1996. Kepler also was delayed because of budget cuts time and time again. Also, when habitable planets are found. Humans will never travel there. Humans may live there one day because of a 'trick', but that's different. I don't know either why you think there is no opportunity for permanent bases on the bottom of the ocean. It's a lot more viable and cheaper than human space flight. Now actual science in both places is done best by robots, but that's a different story. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21638 Posts
On September 05 2011 01:15 Suisen wrote: koreakool, what you say is very strange. Earth can sustain life. Space can't. There is nothing to depend on for survival besides earth. Because colonising other planets is a major step for any species to accomplish. At some point the Earth is going to die. Its a given fact. Yes its a long way in the future from what we can see but that doesnt chance the fact that the only future mankind has is in the stars. Say 20 years from now an actual big asteroid finds itself on a colision course with earth. That isnt even all that unlikely if you realise how often they just miss us. So this big rock is going to hit. and when it does life as we know it ends. Think dinosaur extinction if that helps. By settling for earth because its convenient we just became extinct. Only by pushing ourselfs to leave this planet behind and expand into the solar system can we survive long term. | ||
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Suisen
256 Posts
We have to find some habitable planet and NASA isn't working on new projects in trying to find them because they want to go back to orbit a manned white elephant, want to go back to the moon, go 'beyond LEO' or go to Mars. Say one day we find a planet that has photosynthesis organisms, lots of liquid water and oxygen. It's 30 light years away. We want to spread mankind across the universe to prevent going extinct. I don't see why it matters if we go extinct or not. But let's ignore that. What does what we are doing today with human space flight have anything to do with it? Things like humans in cryogenics or worldships that are habited by entire generations while it speeds across our galaxy is pure science fiction. And it will always be SF. Instead what we will do is send a tiny probe with some nanobots to that planet. The effective payload may be less than 1 gram. The rest of the spaceship may be much much larger and be all about protecting, speeding up and accelerating down this 1 gram of effective payload. When it arrives it can create humans from DNA. It's absurd to transport an actual humans, as we know them now, across space. The laws of physics are just stacked against it. You people have all kinds of romantic ideas about living in space. But in fact there is nothing for us out there. Yes, it is technologically possible to have a base somewhere that is primarily self sufficient. But why bother? Humans in space is never going to be economically viable. Technology will make it cheaper. But technology will make everything more cheaper so it won't be more profitable. Mining helium 3 on the moon, zero G manufacturing, all these things I don't see becoming profitable as long as it requires humans along robots to carry out the work. | ||
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