Lunar mission to get the axe...

[August]

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.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by August

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

[razark]

Originally Posted by August

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.

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.

[August]

Originally Posted by goldorak

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.

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by razark

LDon'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..

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

[razark]

Originally Posted by August

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.

[August]

Originally Posted by razark

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? 1/6th gravity would sure be a welcome respite for aged hearts and bodies.

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

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by August

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

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

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by August

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

As it should be.

[Ishmael]

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.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Never underestimate the idocy of policy makers.

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

[August]

Originally Posted by goldorak

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.

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.

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.

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).

As it should be.

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

[Skybird]

David Walker, the US comptroller general, indicated that the huge holdings of American government debt by countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Libya could leave a powerful financial weapon in the hands of countries that may be hostile to US corporate and diplomatic interests.
Mr Walker told The Times that foreign investors have more control over the US economy than Americans, leaving the country in a state that was “financially imprudent”.
He said: “More and more of our debt is held by foreign countries – some of which are our allies and some are not.”
Mr Walker, who heads the Government agency that is responsible for auditing the national accounts and is also the arm of Congress that scrutinis-es spending by the Administration, said that the US has been forced to rely on foreign investors more because Americans are saving so little.
According to US Treasury Department statistics, Japan is the biggest foreign holder of US Treasury bonds, with almost $623 billion (£310 billion) of US government debt as of December last year. Mainland China is the second biggest investor, with about $397 billion, and oil exporters, which include Iran and Saudi Arabia, had $110 billion.
The UK, while the biggest foreign investor in US equities, is the fourth-biggest holder of US Treasuries.
While Mr Walker referred to Britain as “the best ally the US could hope for”, he told The Times that “anybody who looks at that list will see that some of the countries there are not traditional US allies. You will see that China, Korea and a number of Opec nations are there. Not all the countries on the list share the same economic, national and foreign polices as the US.”

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?

"The decline of great powers is caused by simple economic over extension."
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy

[SteamWake]

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