The same points have been raised since the manned space program was first announced. I'm sure there were similar views in Europe in the 15th century as well regarding sailing west across the Atlantic and the search for the Northwest Passage once the Americas were reached.

It has to be the next horizon. It's human nature to push.

Well, it's officially dead but the ISS has been extended to beyond 2016 so that's one glimmer of hope in this bleak news.
This is going to haunt Obama in the southern states, particularly the launcher states, Florida and the like, they're not exactly keen on him at the moment.
However, on the other hand it's not as if the west has money to throw around at the moment. Moving a lot of the work over into the private sectors and giving them greater backing could well pay off in more designs like Spaceship One and an increase in space traffic, although sadly the costs of said endeavors measured against the current financial problems means that not many companies would be willing to take the risk unless a financial reward was guaranteed.
I can see where this is coming from, but I don't like it, no more than I like the idea of the Shuttle fleet going out of service before a replacement has been created. This is something that should have been sorted a decade ago, but I guess budget cuts and the like have always put NASA on the back burner.
I personally think that we need the ability to travel within the solar system, because I can't see things getting any better on this planet and so for the continued survival of the human race in some shape or form, we need a group of people not to be here when it eventually all goes wrong. Of course, you have the problem that if that same group of people make the same mistakes all over again then what's the blooming point, but at the very least they should have the option to make those mistakes, at the very least we should have them there. If they make the same mistakes and kill themselves off, well then, nothing ventured nothing gained. The clock is ticking but people don't seem to be listening to it! :damn:

What is a bigger issue than just killing the lunar revisit - is that the budget axes the next space vehicle that is supposed to take over for the shuttle. In other words, we use the shuttle for another decade plus (when its at its end of life already) or we dont make manned space flights anymore - unless guys like Virgin Galactic actually make something that works.

This is in some ways a BRILLIANT move though on Obama's part - because it creates private sector opportunity for one of the civilian "space companies" to now have the ability to do things that have been the realm of government funded space agencies - though the timing is premature.

Private industry is still looking at doing only sub-orbital flights. It wil be another decade or 2 before commercial space flight above sub orbital is sustainable.

Skys points are offcourse valid.

But he also probably knows that when technology is ready to start mining operations for exsample, the shuttles will go like trains.

I personally think man will be do great in space, we have the natural desire to go as far as we can.
I think it will only do good for us in helping to realise the value of our home planet.

Yes its human nature to push the boundaries, but in the end you have to capitalize on that drive. After Columbus discovered the new world, he and his men didn't just go home and leave it at that.
The american space program was always politically driven, first to beat the soviets and then to keep happy the aerospace industry with a broken hardware design, the Space Shuttle.

Colonizing space has never been a target for Nasa notwithstanding what the PR say, only few people really had the vision that was necessary to achieve such a lofty goal and they understood that it was an endevour what would have taken decades.
Von Braun was one of them. He always advocated that the US space program procede by baby steps. First putting orbital space stations around earth. Then creating a moonbase. And then putting in place the infrastructure to go back and forth betwwen the earth and the moon. And in the future on to Mars and beyond. Those ideas were scrapped by POLITICIANS whose only drive was to beat the soviets. And what was gained in the long run ?

The decomissioning of the Apollo program and its hardware (at least some of it was used for the Skylab missions). The investment in a broken design of the Space Shuttle that should have been able to do the real SHUTTLE missions between earth and leo instead of 2 flights per year at astronomical costs at the best ? The impossibility of having a permanent human prescence in space. And so on.
Human colonization of space is a process, its not a goal. When you design a program around a goalpost, then once it is achieved, almost always the program will be scraped. It did what it was supposed to do and thats it. No more funding. Thats a pretty short vision to have, and it has plagued the american space program since its inception.

Everything (the manned space program) was sacrified on the altar of "beating the soviets". Great you did it, unfortunately 50 years after we are still at the same point. With hindsight this whole process was a FAILURE. Historians will see it as that. A FAILURE that cost at the time hundred billion dollars to put 12 men on the moon. And for what exactly ?

I disagree that the moon landings will someday be considered a failure. Our species went from the dawn of flight to the moon in just 67 years. That is success by any reasonable yardstick.

However I do think it's time to turn space over to private and commercial interests. We need reasons to go into space beyond just for the advancement of scientific knowledge or backing up human populations.

I agree that from a technical perspective the moon landings were an incredibile acomplishment. One of the milestones of the twentieth century.
But look at the big picture, the manned space program. It was a failure to capitalize on that success. We are back to square one. As you note 40 years ago people were walking on the moon (albeight at great cost and for less than a week between missions). Nowadays the most we can do is go 300 km up in the soon to be decomissioned Shuttle. How's that for full filling the promise of human colonization in space ?

No, its time to make human colonization of space a long term program.
You need visionary people for this and of course long term political support.
Spending lets say 500* billion dollars to make a space station over 15 years and once complete let it rot is not the way to make headway into human space exploration. Private industry or no private industry.

You need continual economical support, and a clear long term vision of what infrastructure will be needed. Right now we are walking in the dark. The Space Shuttle was not needed. It was a failure from day one.
Spending big bucks here and there without a clear idea of what one wants to accomplish leads to NASA. This has been the manned space program, a walk in the dark, day by day. It has printed FAILURE all over.

Now real scientific exploration with space probes etc.... is another can of worms.
And one were all things considered NASA is doing pretty well.
But thats not the argument is it ?

* I don't know what the real cost of the ISS is.

The problem is that you'll have a hard time finding a private sector company that can turn a profit in the manned space flight business yet, or even unmanned exploration. If there was a decent chance at making money, some company would have branched out into it already.

NASA doesn't need to show a profit. Even so, we have seen a return on our investment in space programs. Various materials have been developed and marketed, various inventions designed for the space programs have been turned into useful devices here on earth. This is research that would not have been carried out without the space race. No private company would have had the funding or the motivation for such research.

The Apollo landings were nothing more than a pissing contest between the US and the Soviets. That doesn't mean that there was no benefit to it.


Don't get me wrong. I fully support private industry taking over more of the aerospace industry and research. There are some things that are just not going to be profitable for a company yet. Let NASA do the research and non-profitable work. Let the private industry have access to the research and turn it into something they can make money on.

Actually this illustrates my point quite nicely. The goal of the Apollo program was never about space colonization, it was to get to the moon. An effort akin to being first to climb a mountain, we did it because it was there. Once that goal was achieved support for this politically driven effort faded.

How do you expect to come up with long term taxpayer support if you have no clear vision, and how can you have a clear vision if you can't even define the reason for being up there? It's like packing for a trip without knowing your destination.

I agree. I understand there are also rather severe regulatory restrictions on private space ventures, especially manned ones.

In the US, yes. In other countries, not so much. A private company would be able to conduct operations in any country, and deal with whatever regulation is in place there. It helps keep costs down when you don't have to worry so much about the crew's safety.

As for colonization, we o always use the "Australian model" for colonization of Mars. I'm not sure how much public support we could get for turning Mars into a penal colony, though.

There's that, though the Australians were never able to send a planet killing asteroid flying towards England, but what about the moon as a retirement community? :hmmm: 1/6th gravity would sure be a welcome respite for aged hearts and bodies.

Be tough to get the kids to visit though...

Do you realise that by making this argument you're basically agreeing with me when I say that the legacy of Apollo is nonexistant.
And we are back to square 1 ? We have squandered 40 years doing nothing but handing over cash for failed projects that didn't have any long term goals.

Oh please, nobody is advocating giving NASA a free ride or even 10% of the GDP over the next 50 years. :-?
You can have a clear long term vision. Von Braun had one, and it made sense.
It was sidestepped for a "p i s s i n g" contest with the soviets.
And in the end besides the nice american flag on the moon everything else was wasted. Never underestimate the idocy of policy makers.


As it should be.

Back around the close of the Apollo program and the rise of OPEC, there was this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill

He asked the fundamental question:

"Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

His vision was to mine raw materials on the Moon and use it's lower escape velocity and weaker gravity to manufacture space colonies for the production of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

He even designed one of these to use for catapulting raw materials from the Moon to the Lagrange Libration points where the space colonies/manufacturing centers would be built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

Here's what he wrote in 1974:

It is important to realize the enormous power of the space-colonization technique. If we begin to use it soon enough, and if we employ it wisely, at least five of the most serious problems now facing the world can be solved without recourse to repression: bringing every human being up to a living standard now enjoyed only by the most fortunate; protecting the biosphere from damage caused by transportation and industrial pollution; finding high quality living space for a world population that is doubling every 35 years; finding clean, practical energy sources; preventing overload of Earth's heat balance.
—Gerard K. O'Neill , "The Colonization of Space"[25]

I often wonder, especially as we now seem to be transitioning from the economics of abundance to the economics of scarcity, what could have been done had merely 10% of the US Defense Budget over the last 36 years been devoted to this endeavor.

NASA and its contractors had become a jobs/pork funding program for a bunch of legislators. Actual accomplishments in space are extremely expensive and were never something they intended to fund.

PD

That could be a selling point, depending on the kids. :D

The legacy of Apollo is as the cap of mans venture into powered flight. You see an aborted journey, I see it as the realization of a dream.

As for failed. Nothing could be further from the case. We learned a lot on our journey to the moon. You can't just discount that as failure.



But ultimately unsupportable over the long term. You can't concentrate on the "hows" without first determining the "whys" or the venture will be abandoned the first time someone asks why we aren't fixing problems here at home first (and yes I know that ignores the fact such earth-side problems have never been solved and never will be).

But they shouldn't be so restrictive as to eliminate private ventures entirely. which is what I understand they do.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle2120735.ece

Usually you only hear of this:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

But consider this.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat.htm

I've read calculations by serious finance and economy analysts giving even higher debt numbers, reaching to 70 trillion euros (97.5 trillion dollars), and beyond.

It's not so much America paying for it's spacetravelling hobbies. It is the rest of the world.

But when you want adventures in space: make sure you can financially afford it.

Achtung Fangfrage: how many money do the Chinese owe the Americans?

Haha... "Make sure you can afford it"..... thats hilarious when has that been a consideration of the goverment?

And if the President had stated that he wanted additional monies put toward the space program, you would have complained about that also.

You are predictable if nothing else. :nope:

So what two nations ever have shared the same exact "economic, national and foreign polices"?