This is a very optimistic view of the president's space exploration legacy. Cancelling George W. Bush's 'Vision for Space Exploration' may have been a wise political move, but doing so delayed the project by 8 years, with relatively little technical gain. We are now looking at spending 25 billion dollars for development, and 2 billion more per additional launch, with the aim of reaching an asteroid in the mid-2020s, and Mars in ~2040.
I will be shocked if the Space Launch System (A.K.A. SLS, Senate Launch System) takes humans to the moon, and I will be dumbstruck if anyone uses it to go to Mars. The system is simply too expensive, and the projected launch rate is too low for it to be useful. In addition, the system is too politically vulnerable, as the program would have to survive more than 20 years for someone to use it to go to Mars. Much like the current president cancelled his predecessor's plan, a future president will cancel this one.
Strongly disagree. Under the previous plan, Ares I was NASA's vehicle for taking astronauts to low Earth orbit. Ares I was over budget by 10's of billions of dollars, leaving no money left over for commercial crew services. (Which was seen under Bush's NASA as a nice to have, not a must have.)
Because Obama cancelled Ares I and re-directed that money to commercial crew contracts, SpaceX has been able to accelerate/do a lot more than they would have done otherwise. And the technical gains by SpaceX alone have been... non-trivial.
The most relevant quote:
The bill officially establishes in law that human exploration of Mars, including potential human habitation on the surface of Mars, is a NASA objective. It lauds the progress made by the SLS and Orion programs and requires NASA to submit a critical decision plan and strategic framework laying out the details of how it will achieve the goal of landing humans on Mars.
I disagree on the first point. Don't we learn more about technology in general the longer we wait? The price/performance of technology goes down while we gain more technical options, and we learn more about the trip.
There may be other reasons that it's an issue (orbit locations?) above and beyond the valid one that you listed - these grand projects exist at the whim of the president's successor.
I would be surprised if the USA, as a nation-state, actually returns humans to low earth orbit on a vehicle it developed "the old fashioned way"; I told friends that when the shuttle retired... an easy claim, but I did... no really.
The private sector may well do something here and perhaps NASA will hitch rides from those private actors rather than the Russians (how much longer will that be a viable option anyway?) At the end of the day, you probably get probes sent out, but U.S. Government sponsored human spaceflight is on its last legs in my opinion... unless a direct military need comes to the fore, and even then robotic seems more likely.
Note that I say all of this without any regard about my personal feelings about should NASA be involved in human spaceflight or not: those thoughts are not relevant to my observations/judgements on the state of affairs of such endeavor.
Our best bet would be what SpaceX envisions. Instead of having a massive rocket, use the same platform to deliver the cargoes multiple times into space (LEO), then have it assemble in space to journey to Mars, and maybe the Moon.
It seems like a failure of imagination to me that the main plan is to start off sending lots of people to Mars. People are heavy, they need heavy life support, they're fragile & they require complex infrastructure to survive. If any of that support infrastructure breaks or there's an interruption in resupply missions the people die. Probably they fight to see who dies first and waste valuable resources.
Yes people are very versatile but almost everything useful is going to be sent from earth for decades. If the plan for building human supporting infrastructure is well thought out we shouldn't need much versatility.
Why not send as few humans as you can possibly get away with and as much semi-autonomous & remote operated machinery as possible. Get some of the 7 billion people on earth to design it, drive it & continually improve how autonomous it is (I imagine lag to mars will be a bitch).
This seems a far faster way to build a self sustaining mars backup civ. Bonus in that at some point this leads to self replicating self directed robots at which point send them to the asteroid belt & everyone can retire.
To that end anyone want to make a remote operated maker space? Buy some cheap land or warehouse. Ship in raw materials and see if we can build a robot factory by remote. Price of admission is sending a remote operated vehicle guess we can wire it up and broadcast it to the web. Hopefully that can fund someone to replace batteries when they inevitably run flat.
All the Mars programs have failed because they have lost momentum, not for technical or financial reasons. Your 'proposal' is not all that different from Lockheed's recent proposal, but neither would help humans get to Mars. Very few people are willing to stick with a costly program for over 20 years in the hopes that something may eventually happen; Apollo took less than 10, and it almost got cancelled.
Well I think a better use of the money is to develop the building robots we need for such an endeavor, test them out, then deploy them to third world locations is desperate need of safe shelter and massive construction efforts.
If we fully automate building residences, small administration buildings, and reclamation plants, on Earth then we can save we have sufficient tech to do it elsewhere all the while making this world a better place for those who are truly in need
> Why not send as few humans as you can possibly get away with and as much semi-autonomous & remote operated machinery as possible.
This sounds like the "proving ground" stage described in the text.
> Get some of the 7 billion people on earth to design it, drive it & continually improve how autonomous it is (I imagine lag to mars will be a bitch).
This sounds like the "NextSTEP" program.
"NASA has already begun laying the groundwork for these deep space missions. In 2014 we issued a “broad agency announcement” or “BAA” asking private partners for concept studies and development projects in advanced propulsion, small satellites, and habitation as part of the newly created Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships or “NextSTEP” program. Six companies received awards to start developing habitation systems in response to that “NextSTEP” BAA. The idea is that these habitats or “habs” would evolve into spacecraft capable of sustaining and transporting astronauts on long duration deep space missions, like a mission to Mars. And their development would be achieved through new public-private partnerships designed to build on and support the progress of the growing commercial space sector in Earth orbit. The work done by those companies was so promising that earlier this year, we extended the NextSTEP hab program into Phase 2 and opened it up to new entrants. In August, six companies were selected to produce ground prototypes for deep space habitat modules."
The answer to all your questions is simple: our goal is colonization, not exploration. Without the people it will take a lot longer to see some non-obvious problems. And if you're sending a few people, you might as well send a lot.
I can't agree more and I'm in for this warehouse idea. Surprising how many people on HN are sorta against it based on the comments in this thread. That's the single most rational thing we can do - simulate the environment, nail it with fast iterations locally, deploy prototypes to the Moon (why Mars? What's the difference?) and only then send further en masse.
Sending robots to establish infrastructure is one way to do it (and I think we should do as much of that as we can), but current robotics technology isn't very good when it comes to operating unattended in a harsh environment. If the price of shipping goods to Mars drops faster than the capabilities of robots to act independently, repair themselves, and construct new parts from raw materials improves, then sending lots of people to manage the machines is going to be the easier solution.
I would love to see more work on problems like "what's the smallest device I can send to another planet that's capable of making some kind of bricks and stacking them into vaults/domes that can be covered in dirt and then sealed from the inside to form a habitat?" or "can we build a robot that can assemble a personal computer from a stack of components in their retail packaging?" or even "what does it take for a general-purpose robot to be able to tie shoelaces?"
As with similar NASA vision statements about space, this is heavy on the what "Send people to Mars" and weak on the why, "What do we gain by being space faring?"
As a result it will be constantly under pressure from earthly issues that need money now. For example if you are a congress critter and asked to choose between funding a $1B for Zika virus research/abatement and using that $1B for 1/5 the cost of developing a new space booster system, people always choose the 'today' problem and delay the 'future' opportunity. No one wants to say "Sorry, you're unborn child was killed by a virus we could have stopped but we spent that money on a rocket."
This is why I am a huge fan of the Commercial Crew and other 'private' industry programs. Let private industry develop the tools and techniques for space and unshackle from them the cold war restrictions.
And yes, that is the elephant in this particular room. While the "west" wrings its hands over the PRK developing an operational missile capability, have you ever thought what a Falcon 9 looks like through that lens? As a military weapon it could be considered the first Intercontinental Ballistic Bomber. Think about that capability, a Falcon 9 with a payload capable of some re-entry steering, launches from a base in the US, lets fly the payload, and then flys back to base for the next payload. Ten of these sitting on pads in the Dakotas could put 100 tons of conventional explosive on to any target in the eastern hemisphere in about 45 minutes.
That is the kind capability that SpaceX could "market" to third parties. And it isn't something nation states like private companies to have.
You may as well argue Columbus out of crossing the Atlantic or the Polynesians out of crossing the Pacific. Humans will fill every island and every frozen coast. Indeed every species does this. Mammals act out of curiosity not just safety and do so for an evolutionary reason.
So the first question is will it be our civilization or another. The second is will you see it or not. The third: why delay the benefits.
But the biggest question is this: is the point of life merely to be a safe, comfortable and predicable at all costs or is it to devote at least some resources to seeking out challenges, knowledge and unknowable benefits.
Also there's a false dichotomy in your words. That hypothetical billion price tag for a Zika cure could be fully funded by a 20% tax on ice cream. Should we give up the space program just to eat a few more scoops of ice cream, smoke a few more cigarettes buy a bit more makeup?
There are two problems with using Falcon 9s as reusable missile.
First: missiles needs to be always ready. They need to fire as soon as needed. A rocket like Falcon 9 uses liquid oxygen which cannot be stored for long period of time. Nowadays most missiles uses solid fuel (as the ones used in the Shuttle boosters)
Second: A booster that lands is not immediately reusable. you need to refill it, replace the pyrotechnic chains, put back the payload on top of it, etc. During that time, your missile is at risk of being destroyed by an enemy counter measure.
Submarines dispatched around the globe are already packed with nuclear missile using solid fuel that can already destroy any place any time.
"Sorry, you're unborn child was killed by a virus we could have stopped but we spent that money on a rocket."
This kind of argument always gets to me. There's no inherent value in money, it's just a means to the end of organizing society. If the financial system prevents us from going to Mars and providing health care simultaneously, you should not give up on either, but fix the broken system.
Sadly, we're apparently too greedy and stupid to do it...
Look at the comments here, or on Reddit every time this subject is raised, and you have your answer. I'm sure that some people think in terms of, "Good attitude, good results", others are in it for the feel-good, and still others think that public interest in a major project is the only way to fund what matters.
Mostly though, it seems to be extremely cynical PR aimed at people who should know better. Never mind the questionable value of trading one gravity well for another, never mind the issues of getting people there alive and healthy, and never mind the "why"...
Funding is arguably even more critical for space exploration, and without substantial action on this front I am skeptical this is going to have meaningful impact.
But the biggest problem longterm is that Mars will be a pretty miserable place to live.
Right now you can move to Antartica if you really wanted to. Do you? I don't. And Antartica is a much more pleasant place to be than Mars for many reasons: you can breath the air, it's got water, it's quite a bit warmer, and you get almost twice as much sunlight.
I've been following space news since I was a kid in the 70s, and now I'm to the point where I find these repetitions of "Mars in ~25 years" to be more pathetically sad than anything else.
Maybe Musk and SpaceX will succeed, maybe not. But either way, he's not playing the same tired tune I've heard my entire life.
> been following space news since I was a kid in the 70s
... me too. Fact is, NASA is currently not even doing human spaceflight. If it wasn't for the Russians and the Chinese, human spaceflight would be a thing of the past.
This is pretty much how I feel. At this point, I expect to see practical implementations of general AI and fusion reactors before I see a man on Mars. It's the same old lip service from the political arm of NASA and the Executive Branch. Bah.
Musk is disrupting the status quo, thank God. I fear he'll end up more like Preston Tucker than Henry Ford, but I'm glad he's charging ahead.
I would prefer it if we made human settlement of the oceans a reality first. Human settlement of space has health problems that are not yet solved such as vision damage from zero gravity environments and brain damage from cosmic radiation.
Making underwater habitats is far more practical in the short term. Experience in making closed environments for human habitation of the ocean would be useful when the problems with space exploration are solved.
More of the same from government promising Mars in X years. This will just be killed off by the next president. If this was serious it would have been announced at the beginning of his 8 years. We could have even put some of the ~550 billion spent on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. We probably would have gotten more bang for our buck.
I also wonder how much of this was brought about just to point out that the US will not be supporting SpaceX's hopes of a Mars mission.
SpaceNews.com said that this announcement "largely reiterated the space policy [Obama] announced in an April 2010 speech at NASA's Kennedy Space Center..."
If this happens, it's going to be because Lockheed Martin gets their fusion plant going. Back in 2014, Lockheed Martin announced that their Skunk Works unit was working on building a fusion reactor.[1] Last May, the head of the Skunk Works announced quietly that they'd achieved initial plasma and were investing more money in the project.[2]
The Skunk Works produced the U-2, the SR-71, and the first stealth fighter. They're really good at building things. They have money. They have very good people. If anybody can make this work, it's them.
> And that brings us to the first thing we’re excited to discuss today. NASA has already begun laying the groundwork for these deep space missions. In 2014 we issued....
And then spends the next paragraph talking about something they did in 2014. The whole page is like that.
Question: it seems there is a lot of overlap between the technology required for space exploration and the technology needed for ICBMs. To what extent was space exploration in the Mercury-Apollo missions a way to make a huge investment in ICBM technology palatable to the public? Does anyone know good documentaries that discuss this?
(Put it another way: how important was R&D done in the name of human space exploration to the development of ICBM capabilities?)
> how important was R&D done in the name of human space exploration to the development of ICBM capabilities?
Not very important. By the time of the Gemini program, ICBMs had reached the capabilities needed. All the human rated launch vehicles after that were developed for manned spaceflight exclusively (unlike Mercury and Gemini programs which used missiles) and didn't have a lot of overlap with ICBM development.
There might be other areas of military interest that overlap manned space flight efforts, though.
I wonder why there aren't any realistic plans for using nuclear propulsion. Chemical rockets simply produce too low thrust. Using nuclear pulse/fission fragment rockets the solar system can be explored in a matter of months, rather than the years/decades that we're currently forced to endure. Project Orion was supposed to be feasible with 60s technology. Why aren't we trying to make similar technologies work?
For one, nuclear pulse rockets violate several international treaties. Fission fragment rockets, while the performance is impressive on paper, have yet to be demonstrated in the lab.
Nuclear thermal propulsion has been demonstrated on Earth[0] and Nuclear electric propulsion has been flight proven[1].
NASA had a serious effort to develop and flight prove a high power(200 KWe) nuclear reactor[2]. This would have been used to power the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter[3] which would have explored Europa, Ganymeade, Callisto, and Io if things were favorable. The reactor enabled high power electric propulsion, high bandwidth communication(10Mbit/s), and even a full scale ice penetrating radar. This much power is hard to come by as far out as Jupiter.
The entire effort lasted about two years before it got canceled because NASA needed to free up money for the (now canceled) Constellation Program. The thing I would like to emphasize here is that this was a serious effort with money on the table and a mission in place. The nuclear propulsion work NASA is currently working on is either a concept study, that is just investigating whether an idea can work at all, or not very well funded.
The issue is getting the funding to develop the hardware and actually following through
The main problems seem to be risk aversion and environmental groups. There will always be some risk to sending fissionable material on a very large chemical explosive (rocket); given our society's current risk aversion, it seems like a 'hard sell'. Environmental groups have been protesting every use of radioactive material in space for the last ~20 years, and seem likely to continue to do so; in the current political climate, nobody has the will to ignore them.
Perhaps people are waiting for a space elevator or settlements in space that could build nuclear rockets.
Project Daedalus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus) in the 1970s was the last time people looked seriously at theoretical proposals for nuclear powered interstellar flight.
If the human settlement of space is to be made a reality, then the plans for it need to be more measured and realistic.
First, it needs to be recognized that we don't know how human biology is going to cope with the radiation and gravity environment encountered in space. More precisely, we know that our biology copes poorly, and we don't know how to fix that from a biological perspective. The only solutions we have in our grasp are one, bring the gravity up to 1G with a rotating habitat, and two, shield humans from the radiation experienced in space with magnets and mass. Any reasonable plan to "settle" space must begin by addressing these.
Second, Mars is just not the place to start, because it's too far away. People are fond of pointing out that Mars's atmosphere makes landing there less costly than landing on the Moon, but this ignores the fact that you have to bring life support and food along for the 4- to 6-month long trip. (The atmosphere is also very little help, for example, for Musk's plan.) It is more accurate to say that it is slightly less costly to land on Mars for a day than it is to land an entire Lunar base and live on the Moon for 6 months. Add to this the return trip time to Earth for emergencies (or the time it takes to send emergency supplies and crew), and the Moon wins, hands down. (Indeed, a better place to work out how to survive on Mars would be if you could find places on the Moon where we couldn't land and had to rely on weeks of overland travel from a landing site to get there.)
Third, the absolute first step should be an experimental, shielded, rotating habitat (probably built from Lunar materials) in orbit either outside of Earth's van Allen belts or around the Moon. This habitat should be of sufficient size to address the effects of, at least, Moon-like (1/6) and Mars-like (1/3) gravity on human subjects for multiple years. It needs to either be able to spin up and down to these values, have separate sections for Mars and Moon gravity, or we need to have a separate base on the Moon. We already know that space kills us in many, many ways. Until we have characterized how we're even going to survive there, there is absolutely no sense in talking about settling there.
Any announcement that doesn't address these directly is just PR.
This work aboard the space station is the heart and soul of the first stage of NASA’s Journey to Mars; a stage we call “Earth Dependent.”
The ISS and shuttle are (or in the case of the shuttle "were") broadly considered a waste. There was a recent article posted here that described how they really only existed for each other ... and to give NASA a public facing "expedition".
from the article : 'the newly created Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships or “NextSTEP” program'
They might have just googled for their abbreviations first, so that they wouldn't collide with an important historical operating system [0]. I get that it's hard to find an unused three-letter acronym, but with 8 characters you really should be able to find something unused.
Wow, so much naysaying here. When I hear about private plans vs government plans I think back to what Neil deGrasse Tyson said:
> Private enterprise will never lead a space frontier. In all the history of human conduct, it’s as clear to me as day follows night that private enterprise won’t do that, because it’s expensive. It’s dangerous. You have uncertainty and risks, because you’re dealing with things that haven’t been done before. That’s what it means to be on a frontier. [...] The government is better suited to these kinds of investments. They have a longer time horizon. They’re not shackled to quarterly reports like you see in a private enterprise.
I tend to agree with him. I'm betting on the government to get humans there first. But I'll be happy to eat humble pie.
What about making human settlement of oceans a reality? Like, not just the surface but the floors too. Seems like a suitably grand technology project with massive potential benefits. I never hear about it though.. not sexy enough? Doesn't capture the imagination?
As nice as this is, it really is little more than an empty recap statement, and leaves so many questions. When, exactly? There are seven or so decent launch windows between now and "the 2030s," so what are we targeting? With what money? It's nice that nextSTEP selected six firms, but aside from Space-X (who is not on the list, mind you) I can't see others willingly donating hardware and personnel without compensation. What steps are being taken to insure this project won't be hacked to death by political whims?
More importantly: How can I (or any other individual) help? There's precious little actionable data in this release.
Before we spend the enormous amount money needed to settle humans on mars, I really think we should be spending that money or effort to help people settle Earth. Homelessness is still a big issue in cities. And last time I checked, the vast majority of the middle class hasn't even paid off their own home, not to mention property taxes. It doesn't make sense to build housing in outer-space when we can't even do it affordably on our own planet. IMHO
Don't get me wrong. I think space is cool and fun, but that's what science fiction movies are for, and the discovery channel/books, if you want non-fiction.
In contrast, I prefer to work on a problem that can be solved by technical achievements in math, science, and engineering within my lifetime.
Don't get me wrong. I think utopian fantasy is cool and fun, but that's what Star Trek television series are for, and the history channel/books, if you want non-fiction.
Sociological problems are at least an order of magnitude more difficult than space problems. When you send a robot to Mars, you don't have to worry about how much power it will embezzle from the communications array, or whether it will refuse to take its meds, or whether the value of the work it is doing is enough to pay its mortgage. You could quite easily spend 100 times the cost of a Mars colony on the people problems here on Earth, and achieve absolutely zero visible results from it.
Besides that, unless you're going to force students into social work education rather than aerospace engineering, there would be a lot of skilled laborers leaving university with no useful jobs to do. You would be spending your money on them sitting at home, uselessly dreaming about space, rather than spending just a bit more for them to be actually working to advance technology.
They're not really mutually exclusive problems though. Especially homelessness where the issue isn't technical so much as will. Other issues like say global warming may dovetail rather well with settling Mars. Our rovers run on solar power and RTGs. Which is fine for something small. But to even think of safely living on Mars. We're going to need to figure out how to run power intensive equipment like bulldozers and excavators. That means we'll need to deal with some of the more thorny issues related to energy and global warming.
[+] [-] nickff|9 years ago|reply
I will be shocked if the Space Launch System (A.K.A. SLS, Senate Launch System) takes humans to the moon, and I will be dumbstruck if anyone uses it to go to Mars. The system is simply too expensive, and the projected launch rate is too low for it to be useful. In addition, the system is too politically vulnerable, as the program would have to survive more than 20 years for someone to use it to go to Mars. Much like the current president cancelled his predecessor's plan, a future president will cancel this one.
[+] [-] gedmark|9 years ago|reply
Because Obama cancelled Ares I and re-directed that money to commercial crew contracts, SpaceX has been able to accelerate/do a lot more than they would have done otherwise. And the technical gains by SpaceX alone have been... non-trivial.
[+] [-] chriskanan|9 years ago|reply
The most relevant quote: The bill officially establishes in law that human exploration of Mars, including potential human habitation on the surface of Mars, is a NASA objective. It lauds the progress made by the SLS and Orion programs and requires NASA to submit a critical decision plan and strategic framework laying out the details of how it will achieve the goal of landing humans on Mars.
Here are a couple related articles:
https://www.inverse.com/article/21129-a-new-senate-bill-coul...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/21/senat...
[+] [-] marze|9 years ago|reply
Or, a tremendous waste of time and money, existing only to keep govt. dollars flowing to the same contractors who profited from Shuttle?
The reason it exists at all is because average voters pay no attention at all.
[+] [-] mathattack|9 years ago|reply
There may be other reasons that it's an issue (orbit locations?) above and beyond the valid one that you listed - these grand projects exist at the whim of the president's successor.
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|9 years ago|reply
The private sector may well do something here and perhaps NASA will hitch rides from those private actors rather than the Russians (how much longer will that be a viable option anyway?) At the end of the day, you probably get probes sent out, but U.S. Government sponsored human spaceflight is on its last legs in my opinion... unless a direct military need comes to the fore, and even then robotic seems more likely.
Note that I say all of this without any regard about my personal feelings about should NASA be involved in human spaceflight or not: those thoughts are not relevant to my observations/judgements on the state of affairs of such endeavor.
[+] [-] abysmallyideal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Super_Jambo|9 years ago|reply
Yes people are very versatile but almost everything useful is going to be sent from earth for decades. If the plan for building human supporting infrastructure is well thought out we shouldn't need much versatility.
Why not send as few humans as you can possibly get away with and as much semi-autonomous & remote operated machinery as possible. Get some of the 7 billion people on earth to design it, drive it & continually improve how autonomous it is (I imagine lag to mars will be a bitch).
This seems a far faster way to build a self sustaining mars backup civ. Bonus in that at some point this leads to self replicating self directed robots at which point send them to the asteroid belt & everyone can retire.
To that end anyone want to make a remote operated maker space? Buy some cheap land or warehouse. Ship in raw materials and see if we can build a robot factory by remote. Price of admission is sending a remote operated vehicle guess we can wire it up and broadcast it to the web. Hopefully that can fund someone to replace batteries when they inevitably run flat.
[+] [-] nickff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|9 years ago|reply
If we fully automate building residences, small administration buildings, and reclamation plants, on Earth then we can save we have sufficient tech to do it elsewhere all the while making this world a better place for those who are truly in need
[+] [-] grondilu|9 years ago|reply
This sounds like the "proving ground" stage described in the text.
> Get some of the 7 billion people on earth to design it, drive it & continually improve how autonomous it is (I imagine lag to mars will be a bitch).
This sounds like the "NextSTEP" program.
"NASA has already begun laying the groundwork for these deep space missions. In 2014 we issued a “broad agency announcement” or “BAA” asking private partners for concept studies and development projects in advanced propulsion, small satellites, and habitation as part of the newly created Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships or “NextSTEP” program. Six companies received awards to start developing habitation systems in response to that “NextSTEP” BAA. The idea is that these habitats or “habs” would evolve into spacecraft capable of sustaining and transporting astronauts on long duration deep space missions, like a mission to Mars. And their development would be achieved through new public-private partnerships designed to build on and support the progress of the growing commercial space sector in Earth orbit. The work done by those companies was so promising that earlier this year, we extended the NextSTEP hab program into Phase 2 and opened it up to new entrants. In August, six companies were selected to produce ground prototypes for deep space habitat modules."
[+] [-] imaginenore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vernon99|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elihu|9 years ago|reply
I would love to see more work on problems like "what's the smallest device I can send to another planet that's capable of making some kind of bricks and stacking them into vaults/domes that can be covered in dirt and then sealed from the inside to form a habitat?" or "can we build a robot that can assemble a personal computer from a stack of components in their retail packaging?" or even "what does it take for a general-purpose robot to be able to tie shoelaces?"
[+] [-] wangchow|9 years ago|reply
But I think the main problem we need to solve is the overconsumption of the planet we currently inhabit.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|9 years ago|reply
As a result it will be constantly under pressure from earthly issues that need money now. For example if you are a congress critter and asked to choose between funding a $1B for Zika virus research/abatement and using that $1B for 1/5 the cost of developing a new space booster system, people always choose the 'today' problem and delay the 'future' opportunity. No one wants to say "Sorry, you're unborn child was killed by a virus we could have stopped but we spent that money on a rocket."
This is why I am a huge fan of the Commercial Crew and other 'private' industry programs. Let private industry develop the tools and techniques for space and unshackle from them the cold war restrictions.
And yes, that is the elephant in this particular room. While the "west" wrings its hands over the PRK developing an operational missile capability, have you ever thought what a Falcon 9 looks like through that lens? As a military weapon it could be considered the first Intercontinental Ballistic Bomber. Think about that capability, a Falcon 9 with a payload capable of some re-entry steering, launches from a base in the US, lets fly the payload, and then flys back to base for the next payload. Ten of these sitting on pads in the Dakotas could put 100 tons of conventional explosive on to any target in the eastern hemisphere in about 45 minutes.
That is the kind capability that SpaceX could "market" to third parties. And it isn't something nation states like private companies to have.
[+] [-] whybroke|9 years ago|reply
So the first question is will it be our civilization or another. The second is will you see it or not. The third: why delay the benefits.
But the biggest question is this: is the point of life merely to be a safe, comfortable and predicable at all costs or is it to devote at least some resources to seeking out challenges, knowledge and unknowable benefits.
Also there's a false dichotomy in your words. That hypothetical billion price tag for a Zika cure could be fully funded by a 20% tax on ice cream. Should we give up the space program just to eat a few more scoops of ice cream, smoke a few more cigarettes buy a bit more makeup?
[+] [-] spapin|9 years ago|reply
First: missiles needs to be always ready. They need to fire as soon as needed. A rocket like Falcon 9 uses liquid oxygen which cannot be stored for long period of time. Nowadays most missiles uses solid fuel (as the ones used in the Shuttle boosters)
Second: A booster that lands is not immediately reusable. you need to refill it, replace the pyrotechnic chains, put back the payload on top of it, etc. During that time, your missile is at risk of being destroyed by an enemy counter measure.
Submarines dispatched around the globe are already packed with nuclear missile using solid fuel that can already destroy any place any time.
[+] [-] cygx|9 years ago|reply
This kind of argument always gets to me. There's no inherent value in money, it's just a means to the end of organizing society. If the financial system prevents us from going to Mars and providing health care simultaneously, you should not give up on either, but fix the broken system.
Sadly, we're apparently too greedy and stupid to do it...
[+] [-] M_Grey|9 years ago|reply
Mostly though, it seems to be extremely cynical PR aimed at people who should know better. Never mind the questionable value of trading one gravity well for another, never mind the issues of getting people there alive and healthy, and never mind the "why"...
[+] [-] 24gttghh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolf550e|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcanus|9 years ago|reply
As a contrast, in my field (computational science) Obama signed an executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/execu...) to enable the rapid development of exascale (next generation) supercomputers.
Funding is arguably even more critical for space exploration, and without substantial action on this front I am skeptical this is going to have meaningful impact.
[+] [-] nostromo|9 years ago|reply
But the biggest problem longterm is that Mars will be a pretty miserable place to live.
Right now you can move to Antartica if you really wanted to. Do you? I don't. And Antartica is a much more pleasant place to be than Mars for many reasons: you can breath the air, it's got water, it's quite a bit warmer, and you get almost twice as much sunlight.
[+] [-] zipwitch|9 years ago|reply
Maybe Musk and SpaceX will succeed, maybe not. But either way, he's not playing the same tired tune I've heard my entire life.
[+] [-] ifdefdebug|9 years ago|reply
... me too. Fact is, NASA is currently not even doing human spaceflight. If it wasn't for the Russians and the Chinese, human spaceflight would be a thing of the past.
[+] [-] MrZongle2|9 years ago|reply
Musk is disrupting the status quo, thank God. I fear he'll end up more like Preston Tucker than Henry Ford, but I'm glad he's charging ahead.
[+] [-] nickff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryao|9 years ago|reply
http://www.space.com/25392-manned-mars-mission-astronaut-vis... https://www.rt.com/document/57fc69bac46188c6758b4599/amp
Making underwater habitats is far more practical in the short term. Experience in making closed environments for human habitation of the ocean would be useful when the problems with space exploration are solved.
[+] [-] dathmar|9 years ago|reply
I also wonder how much of this was brought about just to point out that the US will not be supporting SpaceX's hopes of a Mars mission.
[+] [-] greglindahl|9 years ago|reply
http://spacenews.com/nasa-to-move-ahead-with-plans-to-offer-...
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
The Skunk Works produced the U-2, the SR-71, and the first stealth fighter. They're really good at building things. They have money. They have very good people. If anybody can make this work, it's them.
[1] http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm... [2] http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/innovation/2016/05/...
[+] [-] simonh|9 years ago|reply
And then spends the next paragraph talking about something they did in 2014. The whole page is like that.
[+] [-] danblick|9 years ago|reply
(Put it another way: how important was R&D done in the name of human space exploration to the development of ICBM capabilities?)
[+] [-] exDM69|9 years ago|reply
Not very important. By the time of the Gemini program, ICBMs had reached the capabilities needed. All the human rated launch vehicles after that were developed for manned spaceflight exclusively (unlike Mercury and Gemini programs which used missiles) and didn't have a lot of overlap with ICBM development.
There might be other areas of military interest that overlap manned space flight efforts, though.
[+] [-] maverick_iceman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gene-h|9 years ago|reply
Nuclear thermal propulsion has been demonstrated on Earth[0] and Nuclear electric propulsion has been flight proven[1].
NASA had a serious effort to develop and flight prove a high power(200 KWe) nuclear reactor[2]. This would have been used to power the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter[3] which would have explored Europa, Ganymeade, Callisto, and Io if things were favorable. The reactor enabled high power electric propulsion, high bandwidth communication(10Mbit/s), and even a full scale ice penetrating radar. This much power is hard to come by as far out as Jupiter.
The entire effort lasted about two years before it got canceled because NASA needed to free up money for the (now canceled) Constellation Program. The thing I would like to emphasize here is that this was a serious effort with money on the table and a mission in place. The nuclear propulsion work NASA is currently working on is either a concept study, that is just investigating whether an idea can work at all, or not very well funded.
The issue is getting the funding to develop the hardware and actually following through
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_1867 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter
[+] [-] nickff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sien|9 years ago|reply
Project Daedalus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus) in the 1970s was the last time people looked seriously at theoretical proposals for nuclear powered interstellar flight.
[+] [-] theothermkn|9 years ago|reply
First, it needs to be recognized that we don't know how human biology is going to cope with the radiation and gravity environment encountered in space. More precisely, we know that our biology copes poorly, and we don't know how to fix that from a biological perspective. The only solutions we have in our grasp are one, bring the gravity up to 1G with a rotating habitat, and two, shield humans from the radiation experienced in space with magnets and mass. Any reasonable plan to "settle" space must begin by addressing these.
Second, Mars is just not the place to start, because it's too far away. People are fond of pointing out that Mars's atmosphere makes landing there less costly than landing on the Moon, but this ignores the fact that you have to bring life support and food along for the 4- to 6-month long trip. (The atmosphere is also very little help, for example, for Musk's plan.) It is more accurate to say that it is slightly less costly to land on Mars for a day than it is to land an entire Lunar base and live on the Moon for 6 months. Add to this the return trip time to Earth for emergencies (or the time it takes to send emergency supplies and crew), and the Moon wins, hands down. (Indeed, a better place to work out how to survive on Mars would be if you could find places on the Moon where we couldn't land and had to rely on weeks of overland travel from a landing site to get there.)
Third, the absolute first step should be an experimental, shielded, rotating habitat (probably built from Lunar materials) in orbit either outside of Earth's van Allen belts or around the Moon. This habitat should be of sufficient size to address the effects of, at least, Moon-like (1/6) and Mars-like (1/3) gravity on human subjects for multiple years. It needs to either be able to spin up and down to these values, have separate sections for Mars and Moon gravity, or we need to have a separate base on the Moon. We already know that space kills us in many, many ways. Until we have characterized how we're even going to survive there, there is absolutely no sense in talking about settling there.
Any announcement that doesn't address these directly is just PR.
[+] [-] smoyer|9 years ago|reply
The ISS and shuttle are (or in the case of the shuttle "were") broadly considered a waste. There was a recent article posted here that described how they really only existed for each other ... and to give NASA a public facing "expedition".
[+] [-] frederikvs|9 years ago|reply
They might have just googled for their abbreviations first, so that they wouldn't collide with an important historical operating system [0]. I get that it's hard to find an unused three-letter acronym, but with 8 characters you really should be able to find something unused.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP
[+] [-] eddieh|9 years ago|reply
> Private enterprise will never lead a space frontier. In all the history of human conduct, it’s as clear to me as day follows night that private enterprise won’t do that, because it’s expensive. It’s dangerous. You have uncertainty and risks, because you’re dealing with things that haven’t been done before. That’s what it means to be on a frontier. [...] The government is better suited to these kinds of investments. They have a longer time horizon. They’re not shackled to quarterly reports like you see in a private enterprise.
I tend to agree with him. I'm betting on the government to get humans there first. But I'll be happy to eat humble pie.
[+] [-] abalone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|9 years ago|reply
More importantly: How can I (or any other individual) help? There's precious little actionable data in this release.
[+] [-] tdhz77|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalxus|9 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong. I think space is cool and fun, but that's what science fiction movies are for, and the discovery channel/books, if you want non-fiction.
[+] [-] logfromblammo|9 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong. I think utopian fantasy is cool and fun, but that's what Star Trek television series are for, and the history channel/books, if you want non-fiction.
Sociological problems are at least an order of magnitude more difficult than space problems. When you send a robot to Mars, you don't have to worry about how much power it will embezzle from the communications array, or whether it will refuse to take its meds, or whether the value of the work it is doing is enough to pay its mortgage. You could quite easily spend 100 times the cost of a Mars colony on the people problems here on Earth, and achieve absolutely zero visible results from it.
Besides that, unless you're going to force students into social work education rather than aerospace engineering, there would be a lot of skilled laborers leaving university with no useful jobs to do. You would be spending your money on them sitting at home, uselessly dreaming about space, rather than spending just a bit more for them to be actually working to advance technology.
[+] [-] flogic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savagej|9 years ago|reply
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