Space Odyssey Technology -- when will we get it?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You recall the movie, 2001, right? Remember the technology involved in the story, no not the making of it, but what was portrayed.

When the movie came out, in 1968, I figured that by 2001 we would have the technology to build the Discovery and be on our way to Mars, have research stations on the moon and space stations in orbit much bigger than what we have now.

Well, to my disappointment, 2001 is here and we have nothing at all even close to what was imagined, though, in my opinion, I figure we should have.

I now estimate that we will have something similar to the Discovery on its way to Mars by 2056, though I somewhat doubt it. It seems our attentions have turned somewhat inward, concentrating on orbital rather than interplanetary and more commercial than exploratory.

I find it a bit discouraging that within the space of around 15 years we went from standing around and looking at the moon to landing there and having regular missions, but in the following, what, 20 years all we’ve done is create a shuttle, play around with a small space station that we had to scuttle, dump scores of satellites in orbit, play around in Mir, and shoot off several unmanned probes. Now we’re slowly building an international space station, which, due to the usual political squabbling among nations, has delays and setbacks which means it might not get finished until around 2011, in my opinion.

So, how long do you think before we actually reach the level of space travel, including the Discovery (minus HAL), that was portrayed in 2001?

50, 60, 100 more years? Sooner? Later?

I had such hopes for the space program, until politics stepped in and screwed it all up.

2

First one needs money–lots and lots of money.

I’m horribly, horribly torn on this issue. I’m a Libertarian and very opposed to the crushing taxes we already bear. I would like nothing better than for space exploration to be at least partially privately financed.

On the other hand, I am a HUGE fan of space exploration and I understand that the costs of space exploration are, to make a pun, astronomical. So, I’ll be a hypocrite at least this once and say the government should be funding space exploration at a much faster pace then what we’ve seen. Maybe I’m not such a hypocrite though–government should do only what people cannot do for themselves, and it seems space exploration would fall into that category.

One problem is a lack of will. Kennedy talked about wanting to land a man on the moon, and it happened as part of his legacy. What visionary will stand up now and say “We NEED a manned mission to Mars” or “We NEED to think of a way to explore the Jovian moons?” I think a lot of pork could be trimmed from various budgets to support these worthy causes, but it takes a leader with vision to convince the people that this is what we should be doing. I’m not a huge techie, but it doesn’t seem like having a domed (or underground) colony on the moon would be a terribly difficult thing to achieve. Again, it just takes someone with the vision to really push it. For all his scientific interests, I never got the feeling Gore would have pushed this. I also don’t think Bush will. How long will we have to wait for a leader who is visionary on this topic?

There’s also a huge fear factor, I feel. It was a horrible tragedy when the Challenger exploded. It was a horrible tragedy when Grissom and crew burned to death on the launch pad. Appollo 13 narrowly averted catastrophe. However, those are the risks explorers take. They should be minimized, by all means, but I think the national outpouring of grief after Challenger set back space exploration by DECADES. People are going to die in space during early space exploration. It’s horrible, but it shouldn’t be allowed to hamper that exploration.

Finally, I think something that is holding back exploration is a desire for tangible results. Unfortunately, pure science for science’s sake or, more romantically, “to boldly go where no one has gone before” doesn’t cut it budget-wise. Now, you and I know that there is much practical learning to be gained from space exploration, but it’s hard to sell it to the budget people when you can’t give them facts and figures.

To answer your OP, I think with vision we could be heading to Mars within 20 years. Without it, we could be Earth-bound for many decades to come.

3

I think politics is a major player, but not the same way mentioned earlier. In the 60s and 70s, we were in a Cold War with Russia. We didn’t want them to get the upper hand on us. It wa a matter of national pride and self-preservation. We feared the Communists and what they could do to us if they gained the edge in the Space Race. We needed to get out there and extablish ourselves as a power in space first, proving capatlism to be better than communism.

Who do we have to push us now? There is no need to defend our national pride against a rival superpower. Moon landings were amazing then cuz it was new. Now the novelty has worn off and people lost interest.

Plus interest has wned because many people would like money to be spent fixing what’s going on here as opposed to mucking around in outer space.

4

A whole lot of people died testing aircraft and when the first of the 747s fell out of the sky, wiping out like 300+ passengers, we did not have the massive mourning like with Challenger. The passenger aircraft industry wasn’t even slowed down.

During the attempts to get into space, we lost more pilots and lots of expensive experimental aircraft, but that barely slowed us down. I think media hype did a whole lot of damage to the space program with Challenger. I’ve even heard discussions on TV mentioning that if we have a fatal disaster in space, out interplanetary program might be stopped entirely, which mystifies me.

I like to prowl the Citizens Against Government Waste site and examine the pig book and big porkers in the government. I don’t agree with many of their cites, but I have to say that there are billions being wasted by politicians greedily lining their pockets and playing favorites all over the place.

Aside from the usual stripping of funds from any public social services, the politicians like to cut back on the services which keep us safe, like hospital staff, police and fire. The military is always under fire for cuts and the space program is right up there high on the list.

Corporate welfare for multibillion dollar companies is not even listed as a cuttable item.

I wanted to be able to buy a ticket to go to the moon in a few years, or to vacation for a few days on a space station, but it looks like by the time that ever becomes viable, I’ll be too damn old to be able to ride in a rocket.

Since the end of the lunar missions, our personal technology has progressed in leaps and bounds in hundreds of ways, due to the space industry. From no such thing as a PC, we now wear them in watches, from hard wired, dial phones to cellular, from simple insulation to super compact, tremendously effective stuff and scores of plastics, alloys, ceramics and microtechnology.

But, no human has set foot on the moon in ages. We got there. We looked around. We brought back samples. We left expensive things laying about. Then, we stopped going. Now, we look at Mars.

The scientists have shown body changes due to long periods in space at zero G (now called microgravity) and it takes ages to get to Mars and we’re not sure if we have survival technology to live there when we land. The Moon, in my opinion, is an excellent research ground for such things. It’s closer, has low gravity, and if survival technology works there, then it will work on Mars. Building a series of survival structures there would be excellent research, plus could eventually develop into a testing grounds, plus exploration site and eventually, for the profit minded, a low gravity, vacuum manufacturing plant.

But, we’re poking around with only a station, while a couple of other nations are launching their own initial space craft into orbit, out into the solar system and probably working towards manned exploration.

Trim some of that political pork and we’d have enough cash to do both the station and the moon!

5

Politics, tangible results, money, desire. Nothing more to add to the OP.

Just a few thoughts, though. The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the X-planes, starting with the X-1 in 1947. Ad Inexplorata is the motto of Edwards Air Force Base, and they are still flying toward unexplored territories. But decades ago there was a particular aircraft: The X-15. It still holds a lot of records. This aircraft reached the edges of the atmosphere, and its pilots wore astronaut wings. The X-15 program a step in a long series of steps begun by Icarus and Daedalus in the long march to space. Having demonstrated the ability to go higher and faster, the next logical step would have been to build a craft that could put itself in orbit.

But the Russians beat us to space.

We needed to put a man in space right now. The “easiest” way to do that was with a missile. The passenger would take off, be in space, then plummet like a cannonball. I think the program was called “Man in Space Soonest”, or something like that. As it happened, the Russians beat us again. So we needed something to show how great we were, and Kennedy chose the moon. The X-15 was good, but it couldn’t go that high. We needed the Saturn V.

Now, manned flight has been incremental. Improvements follow improvements. Had the U.S. stuck with the X-15 program and its follow-ons, we would have had a practical orbital presence. But we skipped it in favour of Apollo. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trashing Apollo. I’m a big fan of the moon missions. But to get to the moon we bypassed the technology that we didn’t begin to look at again until the '70s. 2001, IIRC used shuttles that were launched with a Saturn V rocket. The Space Shuttle is an improvement on that idea, but it’s still much more expensive to launch than the craft we would have had we continued with X-15.

Now we’re talking about a hypersonic transport – the National Space Plane, as it was called. I think that’s been stalled for a while.

Okay, I’m at work and we’re going out to lunch. I can’t finish this post as I’d like. So I’ll do my best in the few seconds remaining…

I think it’s time we returned to the step-by-step approach that has worked so well in the past. We need a craft that can launch itself, go to orbit with a payload, and land itself. Then the moon. Then the stars.

I’m being paged! Bye!

6

Funny thing—Mr. Rilch and I watched The Right Stuff yesterday. We wanted to get 2001, but of course, it wasn’t to be found. Anyway, those who’ve seen it remember a montage during which one rocket after another was launched, and all of them ended up as fireballs. (Made me think of that Peter Arno cartoon—“Well, back to the old drawing board!”) I was floored. I didn’t know, or had forgotten, how many (thankfully unmanned) missions had failed.

I was 16, and Mr. Rilch was 17, when Challenger happened. All I really got out of that was propaganda; the press, and the adults I was in contact with, didn’t hark back to Grissom, White and Chaffee, or even Apollo 13. We were given the impression that nothing bad had ever happened in the space program, and that fate, not mechanical or computer error, had caused the explosion. It wasn’t “How can we make the next mission safe and productive?”, it was “God hates us”. I heartily agree with Palandine that Challenger handcapped the space program, and public support of it.

7

As crass as it might sound, we expected deaths and accidents on our way into outer space and during space exploration. The Challenger explosion generated an unexpected response by hinting that if it happened again, we might not continue, then the news played the death of the teacher and ignored the astronauts who where with her. I still have not been able to locate any photographs of the salvaged shuttle, especially the intact crew compartment and there really is not much information written about what happened.

You can find out more about the last aircrash than what happened to Challenger. Basically, all I’ve read was that a booster seal, chilled by the cold and ill-fitted, leaked hot gasses, which blasted open the main fuel tank, which exploded and tore apart the shuttle. Nothing on recovery efforts, recovery photos, recovery sites. I wanted to see how intact the crew section was.

I recall failure after failure in the original orbital attempts, so many that right up until Apollo actually landed on the moon that I expected the mission to be aborted. I could hardly wait for them to get to the moon! Once they did, I hardly could wait for the photographs. I recall the X-15 and had plastic models and toys of it that I wish I still had today.

I read all about lifting bodies. That ‘new’ delta shuttle to be used for emergency evacuation of the station is not new at all. They were toying with that design in the 60s, and it worked 'way back then.

When 2001 came out, I doubted that we’d have anything like HAL, but the Discovery itself seemed very likely and so did the space station. Years later a very detailed science fiction book mentioned the difficulties in creating a wheel-type which could turn to generate gravity, like ballast having to be constantly shifted to keep it from wobbling. I still expected us to have something in orbit, at least a major research base on the moon and some sort of regular travel back and forth between the two.

In later years, with all of the messes being discovered on Earth from Global warming, to the hole in the ozone layer, to oil screwings, major areas of starvation, sporadic territorial wars, discoveries of wide spread pollution and shortages of fresh water, I figured we’d be pushing like hell to discover new territories and habitable resources out in space.

I did not count on polotics turning almost blindly inward and starting to grab at NASA budgets.

It’s kind of like having lifeboats on a ship, fully equipped for survival, then starting to strip them for other uses without regard to the fact that they might one day be needed.

NASA was our lifeboat against the future and our leaders have stripped it almost bare.