As an anarcho-capitalist, I’m happy to see the task of space exploration being taken up by private, for-profit corporations. I think that will be for the best in the long run.
My daughter seems less than impressed with how people put a man on the moon.
She is more impressed with the fact that people have a robot on Mars.
Are you saying that you believe that it can’t be possible, or are you just saying what you believe some young people think?
Shuttle missions from the late 'Nineties onward were costing somewhere in excess of US$1B per launch because of the low launch rate and increasing amount of maintenance and processing effort. Passing responsibility for maintenance and pre-launch operations to the United Space Alliance (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin) was supposed to reduce costs but really did nothing, nor were there really any opportunities for cost reduction with the existing system as designed.
Every time one of these threads comes up someone references the China National Space Administration crewed space program as if it is the Great Celestial Hope for our future in space, despite the fact that it has done exactly nothing that hasn’t been done before at a very slow rate of progress and modest funding. China is not going to the Moon with their existing system which is adapted and expanded from the Soviet-era Soyuz space system, and even if they do it is unlikely they will do much more than land a single mission for purposes of national prestige, as there is no commercial or military value in a continued moon landing program, and the Chinese seem to be only moderately interested in the scientific merit of space missions.
What, pray, would we be doing with a “functioning base on the moon” that we do not or cannot do in orbit today? (Please, no rationales involving sieving the surface for [SUP]3[/SUP]He or mining for metals and volatiles, both of which lack any fiscal justification or need.)
SpaceX will almost send astronauts into orbit. I am reserved that they will make an economic go of doing so outside of government funded missions but I’m willing to be persuaded. I would put hard money against SpaceX delivering humans to the surface of Mars in the next couple of decades, and I’m dubious to the point of near certainty that ‘colonizing’ Mars to any practical degree will remain in the far future. The things that seem easy in science fiction and cartoon proposals turn out to be enormously difficult and vastly beyond the state of the art once you delve into the details.
And she should be. The Mars Science Laboratory (‘Curiosity’) Rover is a marvel of scientific and engineering accomplishment; it contains a multitude of investigative tools in a package massing less than 1000 kg and has functioned remarkably well despite the unexpected erosion of wheels. It is, in its own way, as much of an achievement as the Apollo program and has already returned far more data than we got from six landings on the Moon. More importantly, we don’t have to invest enormous budget and effort into returning it at end of mission to little scientific value. (A sample return would be nice, but the onboard capabilities are so extensive it would really be mostly confirming what Curiosity has already measured.) A similar scale mission to Europa, Enceladus, or Titan would be even more fantastic. And if it is a demonstration of prowess in service of national pride, it should be pointed out that the US/NASA space program is the only program to date to land multiple rovers on Mars or perform extensive exploration of any of the outer planets.
Now, there are other reasons besides planetary exploration to put people in space, and it is reasonable to pursue long term sustainable space habitation as a goal, but not to the detriment or exclusion of doing good science on missions that humans will likely never be able to perform (e.g. near solar missions, those in the Galilean moons of Jupiter, exploration of the vast reaches of the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt). And if we want people in space for long durations, we need to establish a suitable infrastructure and technologies to mitigate the innate hazards of space, such as ionizing radiation, freefall conditions, potential for high speed debris impact, thermal management of high power habitation systems, et cetera. A destination oriented program such as “Go to Mars, Soonest” does not achieve any of that to a useful degree, and certainly not in a cost effective manner. Mars isn’t going anywhere; we have plenty of time to explore it robotically while maturing our propulsion and habitation technologies before we send people to futz around.
Stranger
Hey, I was just going to say everything Stranger just said.
Except not nearly so well.
To be clear, are you saying that near-Earth asteroids are a more suitable source of materials for space station construction than O’Neil’s High Frontier proposal, where the moon is used? Is it a close call or slam dunk? Are NE asteroids likely to contain sufficient water?
For years I have wished to read an article-length expansion of this sentence.
Regarding the OP, Breakthrough Starshot and robotic exploration of Europa excite me more than Martian flag planting. I support efforts towards space colonization, but I don’t see a substantial colony as something that necessarily should happen in any of our lifetimes.
Doesn’t bother me at all. Money is better spent down here. Sadly, we don’t have anybody smart enough to do that properly at the time. Or for the foreseeable future, for that matter.
Very much. Sometimes as a society we have to do great things just because they are great.
As Stranger so eloquently put it:
People require many orders more complexity just to keep them alive.
A hundred machines putting about for years, or a human to plant a flag and basically piss in the corners and say “Ours”.
What a decision…
Elon wants to establish a human colony on Mars. Other than that, he is basically an intelligent person.
Dragging a pressurized, radiation-shielded, thermally-regulated box through space is a huge waste of money - which is, as always, very, very limited.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin (Paypal vs Amazon) are working on next-gen methane engines.
SpaceX is working on the Falcon Heavy (3 Falcon-9 cores bolted together*) which will produce a lift capacity exceeded only by the thing used to send a car (“Lunar Rover”) to the moon**.
That should expand the flight envelope a bit.
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- yes, I know they are not bolts, thank you
** - forget the Fonz “Jumping the Shark” - NASA “Sending a Car to the Moon” is a much better image of complete lack of direction and purpose.
- yes, I know they are not bolts, thank you
Gatepescado wrote: “Money is better spent down here.” Last time I checked it all was being spent down here. Yes, China is moving slowly, when viewed one way. But viewed another they are moving pretty quickly. They docked with a (small) space station on only their fourth launch, after all. What we are witnessing is the natural lull between the end of one program and the beginning of another. There was a gap between the last Apollo and first shuttle missions too.
That’s being rather harsh; you make it sound like they sent a Chevy to the moon just to show they could. The rover was to expand the exploration range of the astronauts, and fit in with plans (ultimately axed by Nixon) to expand the Apollo program into an extended-capability series of missions that would have been the foundation for a permanent manned presence on the moon. You may dispute that that would have been worthwhile, but it wasn’t as ridiculous as you seem to think.
Getting astronauts to and from the moon was pretty fucking awesome. I know it’s trendy now to call it a “flag planting mission” but it was still pretty fucking awesome.
Landing a car on Mars was awesome too, but inching around with a robotic rover that regularly reconfirms that yes, Mars has dirt, isn’t all that inspiring, unless you’re a roboticist.
Well, a “permanent manned presence” is easier on the moon than on Mars, but does make exactly the same sense: little to no.
Whatever more the astronauts did with the rover than they could have without it, the rover could have done without the super-fragile hunks of meat to coddle.
The big gripe I’ve seen for “we could do this so much better with a human present” is the time lag between rover and controller. I can see that as an issue with Mars. With the Moon? no further than it is, the lag can’t be all that treacherous.If it is, adding a new module to the ISS with a human dedicated to controlling a lunar probe would be MUCH cheaper than a “permanent presence”, and you don’t need to recharge the batteries.
Sorry, humans simply are not needed for the foreseeable future - if/when we figure out how to sustain human life in space cheaply and easily, we can re-visit the issue.
I didn’t read all the specs for the rover, but I didn’t see any credible PV cells - it went a total of 35 km on 3 missions. How long would it take a Mars-type mobile lab to cover 35 km?
I think I can split my sentiments on the topic into 2:
I can wistfully admit that the era of manned space exploration may have reached its useful end, at least until we invent the hyper-space drive. Now that we’ve gone to the moon there isn’t a lot of tangible benefit from putting men into orbit, or back to the moon; and everything beyond that is just too far away.
But we can replicate that sense of national purpose, to another goal. We could put billions of dollars and focus our best minds on curing cancer or building power cell cars in 10 years.
Here’s the wiki article on NASA spinoff technology.
I just learned the other day that Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is in 90% of baby formulas, and the NASA scientists who discovered it had had their program shut down but they continued the research on their own. I wonder how many other discoveries related to manned space exploration and out there, waiting to be discovered but not funded because manned space exploration is a waste of time.
Not me. There are plenty of problems that need to addressed on the planet we got, and it’s pretty unconvincing to hear people planning to just run away from it all and start over on a new planet, that’s probably not even as good as the one they’ve messed up.
I think if Tang was really important,.we’d have found it without a space program.
It did exist before the space program. It was first marketed in powdered form in 1959. It first became associated with the space program when John Glenn asked TPTB to supply some for him to sip on during his Friendship 7 flight.
Okay, here’s my understanding of a manned Mars mission and what I see as potential problems. I’m sure I’m wrong; please be gentle when you correct me.
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For the Earth and Mars to match orbits close enough for the most efficient transit, it’s going to take 6 months for the crossing.
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After a landing on Mars, for the 2 planets to again get close enough for the briefest transit, the manned mission will have to stay on Mars for 12 months.
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And it’ll take another 6 month flight for the return trip.
So… they’re going to have to bring along 2 years worth of food, water, O[sub]2[/sub], and other expendables. I guess the technology for solar panels has advanced such that they won’t need fuel cells like they had trouble with on Apollo 13. So, what exactly will the spacecraft making the great crossing look like? The Apollo CSM/LM configuration with long supply cylinder between? Or with a Martian Surface Rendezvous where minor things to be used on Mars by the crew, like food and water, would be sent ahead and soft landed in place? And will the crew after a 6 month transit in Zero G be able to walk about and explore even in a 1/3 G environment?
About the only things of interest to come from the Apollo program could have been found by robot probes.
How to keep a human in space was found in the early 60’s. The only improvements are making the insane tech smaller and lighter (yes, I know there is going to be some bizarre bit of trivia which cae about only because of the “keep meat alive” requirement.
Manned exploration is not a waste of just time - it is a huge waste of lift capability, space aboard machine launched, and, most importantly: MONEY.
If there is a jockey, ballerina, or other adult weighing less than 120 pounds and who can hold her/his breath the entire flight and doesn’t mind a lethal dose of radiation, maybe we can put her/him in a barrel and take him/her up.
And: you want a person on Mars? It’s doable if you don’t mind it being very, very dead long before landing. We can even glue a flag to its hand and cover the outside of the barrel (remember Niagara Falls?) with pads shaped as soles of shoes, so, no matter how it lands, there will be some “human foot prints”. Big Deal.
(I really hope that some Mars crawler finds a fast food stand run by squid-shaped life forms)