Discussion The next 100 years..

[T.Neo]

Why.

I can imagine a perfect world for you that has no manned spaceflight whatsoever. Because it would not need it.

Of course, a perfect world cannot exist, and politics will never be removed from the equation. That only makes things worse. But the fact remains that there is no need to go to space.

It's a question that can be posed over and over. Antarctica is far easier to get to than even LEO, if there would be such an intensive drive to colonise the planets and asteroids, why aren't there millions of people living in Antarctica full time? Indeed, there are places that are easier to live in even than Antarctica- why aren't there hundreds of millions living in Canada, for example?

The reason the space exploration idea has been as popular as it is, is because it originated in an era when things looked far brighter for space travel. In the days when there was still a possibility for Venus to be habitable, and for Mars to even have a thin atmosphere and support simple life. An era when permafrost on the Moon would have been a perfectly respectable concept.

Furthermore the true difficulty of space exploration was not yet understood; Von Braun's space stations and moon missions were supposed to cost a respectably small amount of money, instead of the hundreds of billions of a true station (ISS) or Moon (Apollo) program.

It was also assumed that technology would advance far faster than it actually did (it didn't, though we have seen extraordinary advances in other fields, that people didn't forsee at all). Or it was supposed that impractical technologies or concepts would become used and even widespread.

In the 1970s, the difficulty of spaceflight was realised at least in part. By 1986, it had been realised much more clearly. By 2003, hope for a "glorious future in space" was dead, if not in the minds of those enthusiastic about it, certainly in the consensus of reality.

Now imagine this; 10% of the US military budget is cut and shunted to the space program. NASA's budget now goes from roughly 19 billion to over 87 billion overnight. America can still stand pretty as the world's leading military power, still having a military budget over 5 times bigger than that of China.

Assuming that the money was not entirely squandered by politics within NASA, you could pretty much churn out an ISS ever 3-4 years, and an entire Apollo program roughly every 2 (going by the cost of 300 and 170 billion, respectively). Of course, you wouldn't be dumping billions into trying to replicate past space programs, you'd be developing all sorts of stuff. The results would be different, but likely incredibly powerful.

But the question is: why. With 87 billion dollars per year, education in the US could be entirely revamped, leading to at least hundreds of thousands children becoming highly educated and useful citizens. The healthcare system could be improved on. Various parts of the government or municipal services could be improved.

Economic enrichment efforts with that money could lift millions of people in underdeveloped countries out of poverty. That money could be used for research into medicine or sustainable energy projects that could solve the greatest crises of our time.

All of those efforts have an effect in the here and the now, they have an effect on millions of people, they improve millions of lives.

So what is it going to be? Sending up a couple of rockets for ideas only a tiny bunch of academics and enthusiasts actually care about? Or helping millions?

In reality of course, politics would hurt both. But still, do you want politics and rockets going off to unlivable hyperdeserts, or politics and helping millions?

Don't get me wrong. I love space exploration, and space colonisation. I want to see cities on the Moon, regular passenger flights to Mars... but there is no known legitimate reason for any of those things.

 

[APDAF]

There is what would happen if a astroid has on a collision coruse with Earth?

 

[fsci123]

Right now we have a huge dilema... Some people that believe that we will stay on this planet because he/she thinks that the government is stupid and that spaceflight is a waste of time... Some people apparantley thought that the arpatheid will never end... Some people said we wil never go to the moon... Some of us think that we will colonize other planets ly away... We got to start somewhere we cant run before we walk... If we dont get out this system we are screwed as a species and i dont think that sending robots to colonize other planets will increase our chances of survival...

As for T.neo i have to say that we cannot predict future conomies some materials needed are mined at a pace of 50tons per year and it will be fare easier to get those materials from a NEA than just mining 50t/y

 

[T.Neo]

Assuming you have the technology, you can send an unmanned spacecraft to it and deflect it with an intelligently-used nuclear device or [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor"]gravity tractor[/ame]. No need to involve humans in-situ (despite the Armageddon depiction of a team of misfit morons, uh, perfectly competent astronauts), this only adds extra mass and problems to the spacecraft.

Such events are quite rare, mind you, and while a bolide impact is still a threat, it's a relatively small one.

EDIT:

Even if you did have manned asteroid deflectors for whatever reason, it still wouldn't be a reason for a massive "manifest destiny IN SPACE" scenario.

---------- Post added at 04:20 ---------- Previous post was at 01:25 ----------

Just to explain why asteroid mining is silly, here's some dubious maths from an armchair expert;

Let's say we have a ton of precious metals on an asteroid that we can reach with a dV of 6 km/s.

Let's say we have a solar-electric spacecraft massing 5.6 tons (0.1 tons for the engine, 2.5 tons for the power system, 3 tons for the other stuff. The total launch mass, with propellant, is 10.3 tons.

As for the cost of the spacecraft, an Airbus A380 has a unit cost of about $375 million. Divided up by the empty weight of the aircraft, this gives us a cost/kg of $1417.77/kg. Since we are talking about a spacecraft here, let's say the cost of this spacecraft is $10 000/kg.

Let's say that whatever we are launching this spacecraft on has a generously low LEO cost of $2000/kg.

This gives us a $56 million spacecraft, costing $20.6 million to launch.

Let's suppose the mission takes 24 months. You are employing 20 spacecraft operators (back on the ground, obviously) at a rate of $2000/month. This costs $960 000 over the entire mission. I am totally unsure of the cost of other aspects of operating the spacecraft (DSN use, coffee machines, etc), but let's say that it comes out to a total of $2 million for the entire mission.

This is not including R&D costs, etc.

Now that block of precious metals, let's say it is made up of:

18.88% Platinum - $56/g

15.82% Gold - $50/g

5.1% Ruthenium - $14/g

32.14% Palladium - $58/g

13.27% Rhenium - $16/g

2.04% Iridium - $42/g

3.57% Rhodium - $130/g

9.18% Osmium - $77/g

(figures taken from a discombobulatingly confusing attempt at trying to calculate what metals would be most valuable to mine from an asteroid).

This ends up with a value for 1 gram of this mix of around $52.50. A tone is a million grams, so this ton of material will be worth $52.5 million.

Oops!

Our spacecraft is worth $56 million, our launch costs are $20.6, and our operations costs are $2 million. This gives a total mission cost of $78.6 million, which means that by recovering the $52.5 metal block, we only make up roughly 67% of our mission cost, and we just lost $26.2 million!

That's not how you do business, folks. At least, that's not how you do business successfully.

And this is with optimistic numbers, and not regarding R&D costs. If compared to the total cost of such a program in reality, things would be even worse.

If the block was recovered with a manned mission, only a tiny fraction of the program cost would be made up.

And... of course... blocks of refined metal do not spontaneously appear on asteroids. Assuming that these precious metals are four times more abundant in an asteroid than they are in the crust of the Earth, you would still have to process something over ten million tons of asteroidal material to get at a ton of precious metals. All of which requires massive machinery, which is massive, and thus costly to move to the asteroid.

The only reason you'd ever want to mine an asteroid, is if you lived on an asteroid. But why live on an asteroid, where you can live in the Namib desert and get free air, free temperature regulation, and (roughly) free water?

 

[orbekler]

Why....Don't get me wrong. I love space exploration, and space colonisation. I want to see cities on the Moon, regular passenger flights to Mars... but there is no known legitimate reason for any of those things.

That's the grim reality

 

[Victor_D]

Why?

I say why not. It is there, plain for us to see, taunting us - a vast expanse of empty space filled with wonders. We'll go there because that's who we are.


Now when I used the age-old cliché, let me justify it.

Let's face it - humans do things that make no sense economically and/or politically. We organize expeditions to the poles, we climb on top of mountains, we train our bodies only so that we can run faster than the other guys in a silly greek-revival quadrennial competition, we spend our fortunes to build ridiculous machines that'll help us set a new record, and so on and so forth. We do these things because they inspire us.

Does space inspire us? Yes, it does. Probably more than anything else. If it didn't, science-fiction would be a fringe genre and not a multi-billion industry that's part of the mainstream. So why doesn't it translate into overwhelming public support for human space exploration? Well, part of the explanation is that there is what I'd call an expectation gap. Human spaceflight in the last four decades has been limited to going up to LEO, doing some obscure experiments there, and going down. That doesn't compare well with 2001: Space Odyssey, Star Trek or (heck) Avatar. People are naturally sceptical about pouring public funding into what seems to be a pointless exercise. In other words, public support is weak not because we're going to space, but because we're not going anywhere in space.

Antarctica is far easier to get to than even LEO, if there would be such an intensive drive to colonise the planets and asteroids, why aren't there millions of people living in Antarctica full time?

This argument is popping up again and again in every discussion about our space future that I've ever been part of. I don't think it's a good one. Antarctica doesn't inspire people, because it doesn't promise the same future as space exploration and colonization. It's a blind alley, just like the bottom of the oceans or other places on Earth that could conceivably be settled and utilized in some way. Still, we went to Antarctica to study it and reveal its secrets.

Granted, space is much, much, much, much, much (okay, you see my point) harder to colonize than Antarctica. Mars is probably the most habitable place in our Solar System after Earth, yet it is a wasteland even in comparison to the most hostile places on Earth. It lacks air we could breathe (or even stand in unprotected), it is so cold CO2 freezes into dry ice, it has no running water on it, no life we know of, radiation on the surface is many times worse than the UV stuff that's pouring through the hole in the ozone layer we blessed Antarctica with, the gravity is weak, there's no magnetic field, and so on and so forth. It still has one thing Antarctica doesn't - a promise of a better future. A possibility to start anew, to create something different, a new offshoot of human civilization. Our minds - programmed by evolution to seek new places and do new things - like that.

Earth is not enough for us, not now, when we've explored it and mapped it all. Antarctica doesn't offer us any glorious future - we can't "terraform" it, because that would raise the sea levels by about 60 metres and ruin much more land than it would free from under the ice. But even if we could somehow make a good living there, we'd still be confined, limited. Space offers us freedom we can't experience on Earth any more. That's the reason why we shall go there, eventually.

***​

Now, in my time speaking to people and following discussions about this on the internet, I've realized that an overwhelming majority of them are either too optimistic, or the exact opposite.

The hyper-optimists will say things like "SSTOs by 2020, metastable metallic hydrogen fuel by 2030, fusion-powered spaceships by 2040, anti-matter farms by 2050 and warp drive soon afterwards." That's obviously not going to happen.

The pessimists seem to want to balance this blind optimism with crushing despair: "no manned mission to Mars by 2100, purely robotic exploration, people don't care, space is empty and dead, no reason to go there, blah blah blah" (I mean no offence, but you can see how I feel about this).

This is why I say I am a guarded optimist. I am convinced we will go to space, we will establish human presence there, we will build a solarized (=solar system-wide) economy and eventually we will go beyond the Oort cloud. It may take centuries, but if we don't destroy our own planet before we establish strong enough presence beyond it, it will happen because of the reasons I mentioned in the first few paragraphs.

That is not to say that governments will do it. Most likely what we're witnessing now is the end of government-sponsored human spaceflight exclusiveness. In the future, private initiative will become a major driving force in manned* space exploration. (*I apologize if there are any women here, but as a non-native speaker I feel exempt from your rules regarding politically correct speech ) To all the sceptics out there I point to the rich history of privately funded expeditions here on Earth. It seems that when governments fail us, we find a way to do what we want without them.

Another argument I often hear is "why human spaceflight? Robots are cheaper." They may be. They are even better suited to certain types of missions (I wouldn't want to explore the surface of Venus or the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere in person, thank you very much). In the end; however, it's not enough for us. We're biologically programmed to desire personal experience. We are amazed by the pictures sent by our rovers on Mars, but I doubt there is a single guy behind those screens who wouldn't give it all up in exchange for a week on Mars in person.

As I hinted earlier, we don't send automated cameras to the top of Mt. Everest, we climb there, because we can. We're sending robots to space now because we're not yet able to do what we really want, which is to go to Mars (or the Moon, or Titan), get down the ladder, grab the first rock we see with our gloved paw and throw it as far as we can yelling like monkeys because we just bloody feel like it. We can't be reduced to numbers in some stupid economic equation.

So, what I say is this: have faith in humanity, even if it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel right now. Things will get worse before they get better. I don't know about you, but I am 26 and I plan to live for at least another 74 years so it damn better be worth it :lol:

***​

The only reason you'd ever want to mine an asteroid, is if you lived on an asteroid. But why live on an asteroid, where you can live in the Namib desert and get free air, free temperature regulation, and (roughly) free water?

All the elements are present in the Earth's crust, yes. That doesn't mean we want to mine them here. One day, we might just as well decide that clear-cutting an area the size of England so that we can scrape out the topsoil in order to extract the metals we need, in the process of which we release millions of tons of pollutants and toxic chemicals into the environment, is an inherently bad idea. Who knows, maybe we'll decide that since the Moon and the asteroids are as dead as dead can be, it is more ethical to get the resources we need there, where we can't harm anything, the least of all us.

Also, when we go to space and start living there, we'll realize that extracting minerals from the asteroids, loading them on solar-powered ships and transporting them to the places where they're needed, like, say, the orbital manufacturing facilities, outer solar system colonies, Mars and Luna, is inherently cheaper than lifting them from the bottom of Earth's gravity well. And when we're at it, maybe we'll find a way to get some of them to Earth for a price that won't be prohibitive.

I am sorry, I simply can't accept definitive statements like "asteroid mining will never make sense"; I find them terribly shot-sighted.

That's the grim reality

No, that's unjustified pessimism born of disappointment :tiphat: I refuse to submit to it.

 

[selden]

People do many things which have "no legitimate reason" -- just because they want to. For entertainment. Whether it's skydiving, scuba diving, snow boarding dropped from a helicopter, climbing a mountain, or just bungee jumping.

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Himself. In 10 years. As I wrote previously, I'm guessing it'll take more like 15, just because I'm pessimistic.

If nothing else, the tourist trade will follow. Just because you or I or the starving millions in central Africa can't go, doesn't mean that nobody will.

 

[T.Neo]

I say why not.

Because it costs billions of dollars and it doesn't benefit humanity or any establishment that does useful work for most of the population?

We organize expeditions to the poles, we climb on top of mountains, we train our bodies only so that we can run faster than the other guys in a silly greek-revival quadrennial competition, we spend our fortunes to build ridiculous machines that'll help us set a new record, and so on and so forth.

And none of those things cost billions of dollars.

The silly greek-revival quadrennial competition is actually a pretty interesting analogy, since it interests people and millions will watch it. It is a huge advertising oppurtunity and it stimulates the local economy.

Spaceflight makes a poor spectator sport. Will a flight to Mars be watched by millions? No. It'll be watched by billions. But, will the tenth flight to Mars be watched by billions? By millions?

This stuff gets boring pretty quickly, especially when it is about a bunch of supposedly oh-so-much-better-than-you people sealed up in a tin can an unimaginable distance away.

Mind you, spaceflight makes a particularly bad participant sport, too. Whether you are able to play depends on the size of your wallet (because spaceflight is so hugely expensive), and the entire game is waiting in a tin can for months on end, hoping that some short circuit doesn't occur that leaves you flying past Mars like a helpless antarctic expeditioner floating past a continent on an iceberg.

Does space inspire us? Yes, it does. Probably more than anything else.

Who does space inspire? It inspires us, yes. But does it inspire most people? I have talked to a great many people who believe that spaceflight is a waste of money and/or nonsense, or that the concept of the universe at large is entirely irrelevant.

I would be willing to say, that a good proportion of the human population does not even know about the rest of the universe. And it is certain that an even larger percentage does not care about spaceflight, and/or thinks it is a waste of money, and/or thinks it is absurd science-fiction.

It still has one thing Antarctica doesn't - a promise of a better future. A possibility to start anew, to create something different, a new offshoot of human civilization.

Why.

Why can't we start our new offshoot of human civilisation in Antarctica? Or on the ocean surface? Both places would be far better platforms for a better future, the latter especially.

I doubt there is a single guy behind those screens who wouldn't give it all up in exchange for a week on Mars in person.

Well, yes. But the Mars Rover program (initial cost and mission extensions) has cost about 950 million dollars.

That is for two rovers for many years bringing back a wealth of science.

Getting that one person to Mars for a week, would likely cost many billions of dollars.

Humans are far more capable than robots in many respects, and I know it is difficult to quantify scientific gains in terms of money (both from a mathamatical and ideological perspective), but a robot puts out far more science than a human for the same amount of funding.

We can't be reduced to numbers in some stupid economic equation.

Yes, we can. Unfortunately stupid economic equations run our entire civilisation. If I had 300 billion dollars with which I could magically launch myself to Mars, or pay for an attempt to economically uplift societies in third-world Africa, what would I do?

A nifty experience for myself, or a better life for millions of people?

That doesn't mean we want to mine them here.

Yes, it does. The one big advantage of mining on Earth is that you don't have to expend over 10 km/s of dV to get to the mine.

One day, we might just as well decide that clear-cutting an area the size of England so that we can scrape out the topsoil in order to extract the metals we need

The mass of (6178) 1986 DA is given as 2e13 kilograms.

With a rock density of 3000 kg/m^3 and a depth of 200 meters, a square patch of land 5.8 kilometers on a side will have the same mass as (6178) 1986 DA.

Alternatively with a depth of 60 meters (that of a quarry in my general area), a patch of land 10.54 kilometers on a side would have the same mass as (6178) 1986 DA.

If strip-mining a 10.5 kilometer square of land is too ecologically unsound for you, you can always mine that patch of land in sections, damaging less of the ecosystem and allowing mined land to be recolonised and recovered.

in the process of which we release millions of tons of pollutants and toxic chemicals into the environment

So... wait... we're somehow able to make asteroid mining a viable operation, but we can't make mining on Earth environmentally friendly?

What is next? Mechs and Musketeers?

is inherently cheaper than lifting them from the bottom of Earth's gravity well.

Well of course, if you're actually in space.

But why would you have a sizable economy in space anyway?

And when we're at it, maybe we'll find a way to get some of them to Earth for a price that won't be prohibitive.

How? Magic broomsticks?

"no manned mission to Mars by 2100, purely robotic exploration, people don't care, space is empty and dead, no reason to go there, blah blah blah" (I mean no offence, but you can see how I feel about this).

No offence taken, that's exactly how I feel about it, too. :dry:

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Himself. In 10 years. As I wrote previously, I'm guessing it'll take more like 15, just because I'm pessimistic.

So Musk is going to get together hundreds of billions of dollars and build a spacecraft first-time-round and just hope that it works?

Maybe Musk can do it for less... maybe several tens of billions of dollars... but that is still a huge amount of money, and a huge risk.

A risk that the entire US seemingly hasn't been able to put up with.

Who says Musk won't just take billions of dollars and go to live in Monaco? Or that he'll somehow be shut out of a Mars mission to protect the interests of SpaceX in actual lucrative markets (GEO satellite launching)?

If nothing else, the tourist trade will follow. Just because you or I or the starving millions in central Africa can't go, doesn't mean that nobody will.

Space tourism is one thing I can see happening in the next 100 years. But it won't lead to "manifest destiny IN SPACE". At best, it might lead to a few tens of people in space at any one time, mostly in LEO.

 

[Victor_D]

Am I going to engage in a quote war? No. I am not going to convince hardline pessimists and frankly I don't care enough to try. If you wish to be gloomy, then be that way :shrug:

Others can take my post as an expression of my belief that whenever a large enough group of people share a dream, they'll find a way to fulfil it eventually.

 

[T.Neo]

I am no hardline pessimist.

I am a heavily discouraged hardline optimist.

There is no good enough reason for "manifest destiny IN SPACE" that I can think of at this time (the reasons of colonisation and resource extraction have problems).

I have explained why. "We're never going to do anything in space" is pessimism.

"Utilisation of asteroidal resources for an Earth-based civilisation makes no sense" is realism.

"When enough people share a dream" is a nice idea, but wishful thinking IMO. There are not enough people and it would cost too much money.

And even then, it would be a money-and-effort sink only, because it is producing no returns other than a warm fuzzy feeling.

 

[RGClark]

...

Too bad I won't be there to see the truly exciting things...

You might have reason to be optimistic about that too if Ray Kurzweil is right:

Immortality only 20 years away says scientist.
By Amy Willis 11:23AM BST 22 Sep 2009
Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time through nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works.
...
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...tality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html


Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 04:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:57 PM ----------

...
Just to explain why asteroid mining is silly, here's some dubious maths from an armchair expert;
Let's say we have a ton of precious metals on an asteroid that we can reach with a dV of 6 km/s.
Let's say we have a solar-electric spacecraft massing 5.6 tons (0.1 tons for the engine, 2.5 tons for the power system, 3 tons for the other stuff. The total launch mass, with propellant, is 10.3 tons.
As for the cost of the spacecraft, an Airbus A380 has a unit cost of about $375 million. Divided up by the empty weight of the aircraft, this gives us a cost/kg of $1417.77/kg. Since we are talking about a spacecraft here, let's say the cost of this spacecraft is $10 000/kg.
Let's say that whatever we are launching this spacecraft on has a generously low LEO cost of $2000/kg.
This gives us a $56 million spacecraft, costing $20.6 million to launch.

That's the main problem with the argument at the end: my estimate is the cost to orbit can be brought down to the $100/kg range. That estimate is not arbitrary. It is based on the fact that reusable SSTO's are technically possible now and that you can get high payload to orbit by using such SSTO's in bimese or trimese fashion.
Also, about the cost of the spaceship compared to the value of the returned minerals, keep in mind the spaceship will be reusable many times, certainly more than a hundred.


Bob Clark

 

[T.Neo]

Oh no, not Ray Kurzweil and his Law of Accelerating Returns.

"Stone age software"? Wait what? You mean an organism made up of trillions of microscale units, built upon what is in effect naturally occuring nanotechnology?

Very stone-age indeed. :facepalm:

It is based on the fact that reusable SSTO's are technically possible now and that you can get high payload to orbit by using such SSTO's in bimese or trimese fashion.

Reusable SSTO does not automatically give you $100/kg.

Is most of the cost of STS soaked up by the launch infrastructure? I seriously doubt it, though I am sure it accounts for a sizable fraction. Still, if the ET, boosters, and setup for launch were to be a full 50% of the cost of an STS flight, and you removed that from the overall cost, you'd still have over $5000/kg (based on the lowest shuttle $/kg figures I've seen). That is low-ish, I guess, but nowhere near $100/kg.

Why do you need a triamese arrangement to "launch large payloads"? Why not just break the payloaad in three and launch it on three seperate flights?

Also, about the cost of the spaceship compared to the value of the returned minerals, keep in mind the spaceship will be reusable many times, certainly more than a hundred.

Reuse has a non-zero cost.

If reuse was so hugely advantageous, all spacecraft would be reusable by now. Reuse has advantages, but is also problematic.

The STS vehicles might have 'paid off' their construction costs long ago, but their operating costs are also very high.

And I did not consider R&D costs, which can also be pretty high.

Of course, you can try to make things better than STS, but you can't work magic. And we don't know about reusing interplanetary vehicles yet. While they may be optimised in some respects, refurbishment of them would be extremely difficult, since it would have to be done in space.

And I did not consider the fact that you'd actually have to refine the asteroidal material to get suitable concentrations of precious metals to return to Earth. You'd need something over 10, 12 million tons for every ton of refined metal. That processing facility would be absolutely huge and would have absolutely huge requirements.

 

[Felipi1205]

The next ten years of the space exploration promise a lot!!!
First: Companies like the SpaceX are growing, so the space will be familiar to us soon...
Second: The prizes! Contests like the Google Lunar X Prize encourage these companies to explore the unimaginable for them, like the Moon...
Third: The ISS help the humans to understand the space and the Earth. And If we know more, we can explore more!!
After these years, the space agencies like the NASA or ESA can send manned missions to the Moon or Asteroids, but just this!
The next 50 years will send humans to Mars or Venusian Orbit. With the Moon exploration growing, the Lunar mining will become inevitable!! With more materials to build rockets, the space exploration will be easy and cheap, so more missions will happen.
The 21st Century will bring the space to us, but just on the Solar System. The stars aren't on the reach, we will spend centuries to reach the stars with manned missions...
But we can't forget of the past... We reach Neptune with the Voyager 2 in just some years of space exploration! So, we can never be sure!!
Thanks! :thumbup:

 

[Ghostrider]

But the question is: why. With 87 billion dollars per year, education in the US could be entirely revamped, leading to at least hundreds of thousands children becoming highly educated and useful citizens. The healthcare system could be improved on. Various parts of the government or municipal services could be improved.

Sorry, but it doesn't work this way: they'll find a way to squander that money and society at large won't see a microcent of it. It will be used to build highways that go nowhere, to bail out some big business or to buy stuff you won't use. The nearest thing to education those funds will see is going to be some interesting study about how dwarf cows' depression is related to the sales of chamomile-flavoured enemas to arctic bisexual seals.

And then, what exactly are you going to educate them to be? Aerospace engineers/scientists? Oops, no. No space, ever. Nuclear engineers/scientist? Oops, no: about to become dead knowledge for a couple of generations or more. You're going to be churning out the smartest and most educated minimum-wake workers ever, who will be ever thankful for the not-existing opportunities awaiting them.

The problem is that as a culture, we're embracing stagnation and mediocrity. My parents' generation had every reason to believe that their kids and grandkids would have it better than them. Every generation expected the next one to be richer and better off than the previous ones.
Now, it's the other way round. The new generations know they're going to be poorer, and those after them will be even poorer. We're accepting limitations to our growth, capabilities and individual freedoms that would have never sailed in our parents' times. We don't accept or require excellency anymore, and we do not reward it (as a society, not as individuals whose mileage may vary); instead, we prize mediocrity and mundanity. Those who think greatly are derided, while profiteers are lionized.

Nothing good can come out of this mindset and nothing will. Best luck to the culture who will push the Western/European one away, they've got one steep slope ahead of them.

 

[RGClark]

Oh no, not Ray Kurzweil and his Law of Accelerating Returns.

"Stone age software"? Wait what? You mean an organism made up of trillions of microscale units, built upon what is in effect naturally occuring nanotechnology?

Very stone-age indeed. :facepalm:

By "Stone age software" he is referring to the fact that we have evolved some characteristics based on our stone-age origins. One example is the propensity to store fat. Now in the industrialized nations this has led to a propensity to obesity because of the over abundance of food. Of course in some developing countries this genetic characteristic is still quite important.
But he is saying this is something that can be genetically modified to eliminate obesity.


Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 06:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 PM ----------

Reusable SSTO does not automatically give you $100/kg.

Is most of the cost of STS soaked up by the launch infrastructure? I seriously doubt it, though I am sure it accounts for a sizable fraction. Still, if the ET, boosters, and setup for launch were to be a full 50% of the cost of an STS flight, and you removed that from the overall cost, you'd still have over $5000/kg (based on the lowest shuttle $/kg figures I've seen). That is low-ish, I guess, but nowhere near $100/kg.
Why do you need a triamese arrangement to "launch large payloads"? Why not just break the payloaad in three and launch it on three seperate flights?

One of the key objectives of both the DC-X and X-33/VentureStar programs was to make a great cut on the personnel required for a launch. With the space shuttle it is literally in the tens' of thousands. This huge, virtual standing army is probably the largest reason why the shuttle system costs so much. The VentureStar was to cut that by two orders of magnitude.
I'll show in a follow up how using bimese and trimese staging you can increase your payload multiple times, even more than how many copies of the stage you are using.



Bob Clark

 

[T.Neo]

By "Stone age software" he is referring to the fact that we have evolved some characteristics based on our stone-age origins. One example is the propensity to store fat. Now in the industrialized nations this has led to a propensity to obesity because of the over abundance of food. Of course in some developing countries this genetic characteristic is still quite important.
But he is saying this is something that can be genetically modified to eliminate obesity.

Yes, because apparently we can't learn to watch our diets. :facepalm:

Obesity is not because of an overabundance of food... it is because of bad diets created by habit and the availability and abundance of unhealthy food.

That alone speaks of the general silliness of Kurzweil, etc.

One of the key objectives of both the DC-X and X-33/VentureStar programs was to make a great cut on the personnel required for a launch. With the space shuttle it is literally in the tens' of thousands. This huge, virtual standing army is probably the largest reason why the shuttle system costs so much. The VentureStar was to cut that by two order of magnitude.

And how much can things really be improved by?

STS was to cut things by "orders of magnitude", too. It made the problem worse.

The lesson there, is that you should always take promises of reusability and cost with a pinch of salt. That, and/or the experience of STS has left a bitter taste for reusable systems.

I'll show in a follow up how using bimese and trimese staging you can increase your payload multiple times, even more than how many copies of the stage you are using.

Why? Why not just launch parts of a payload seperately, rendezvous, and then assemble them in LEO?

At least one advantage of a shuttle is that it can be used as a platform for this sort of assembly (see ISS, etc).

Sorry, but it doesn't work this way: they'll find a way to squander that money and society at large won't see a microcent of it. It will be used to build highways that go nowhere, to bail out some big business or to buy stuff you won't use. The nearest thing to education those funds will see is going to be some interesting study about how dwarf cows' depression is related to the sales of chamomile-flavoured enemas to arctic bisexual seals.

So if funding is directed at world-based pursuits, it'll get totally squandered, but if it's directed at aerospace exploration, it won't?

It doesn't work that way... spaceflight has, in recent years at least, been squandered and mired by politics just as much, if not moreso, than other fields.

You're going to be churning out the smartest and most educated minimum-wake workers ever, who will be ever thankful for the not-existing opportunities awaiting them.

Because all the oppurtunities for well paid qualified workers lie in space exploration? :facepalm:

Those who think greatly are derided

Maybe because we've been exposed to hollow promises too many times? :dry:

 

[Ghostrider]

So if funding is directed at world-based pursuits, it'll get totally squandered, but if it's directed at aerospace exploration, it won't?

It doesn't work that way... spaceflight has, in recent years at least, been squandered and mired by politics just as much, if not moreso, than other fields.

Oh, you can squander money in each and every possible way, but I'd rather squander it on space exploration and research than squander it on feel-good projects that go nowhere.

Because all the oppurtunities for well paid qualified workers lie in space exploration? :facepalm:

No, of course: there's law and economics. Those alone will ensure our progress for the next thousand years.
Space exploration is some demanding stuff, it requires a lot of varied skills. Building the next iThing does not. Right now, how are you going to motivate anyone to major in aerospace engineering, if there is no demand? And if there is no demand, there will be no supply. Of course, the demand for lawyers and bankers is never going to go down.

Maybe because we've been exposed to hollow promises too many times? :dry:

Yeah, and the smart answer is to aim lower and lower. That way no feelings will be hurt, ever, and we'll all feel so-very-special. Thumbs up for the do-nothing generation.

 

[Urwumpe]

STS was to cut things by "orders of magnitude", too. It made the problem worse.

wrong. It was way cheaper than the Saturn V actually, while still weighting 66% of its mass. The Shuttle did cut the cost about by 1/8th compared to the Saturn V.

But it wasn't as much as promised, that was its political downfall - NASA managers literally promised the $1000 per payload, that was only later achieved by taxes.

 

[T.Neo]

Oh, you can squander money in each and every possible way, but I'd rather squander it on space exploration and research than squander it on feel-good projects that go nowhere.

I'd rather see money go to helping people rather than... exploration that very few care about.

There is no law that says that money spent on space exploration will be used more effectively. It is not about "feel good projects", it is about supplying services to millions of people, who do not have those services.

If 80% of the money is squandered during the course of those projects, vs. 80% of the money for a Mars mission being squandered, then it is still worth it. If not in your mind, if not in my mind, certainly in the minds of the people who are actually helped by those programs.

Space exploration is some demanding stuff, it requires a lot of varied skills. Building the next iThing does not.

Since when is the iThing the pinnacle of human achievement?

There is energy, agricultural science, building ever more advanced municipal services, advancing medecine and transport... there are many things that require highly qualified people, that have nothing to do with space exploration.

Or economics, or law... :shifty:

Right now, how are you going to motivate anyone to major in aerospace engineering, if there is no demand?

Discounting manned spaceflight there is still the lucrative satellite industry, which is an example of spaceflight that is an economically viable enterprise.

But unfortunately one that requires no manned presence in space, and doesn't help space colonisation or actual industry in space in any way.

Yeah, and the smart answer is to aim lower and lower. That way no feelings will be hurt, ever, and we'll all feel so-very-special. Thumbs up for the do-nothing generation.

Indeed, but hey... maybe that will make us feel special-er than the people who got duped into believing that diesel can flow from rocks when hit with a stick. :facepalm:

 

[Ghostrider]

I'd rather see money go to helping people rather than... exploration that very few care about.

Then you better do it yourself, because that's not going to happen. You don't solve problems by throwing money at it. If you really want to make your wish come true, come here to Switzerland: we have no manned space program and very low military expenditures and - so far - no wars: you'll still have to pay through your nose for healthcare and if you fall on hard times, you're in for a rough ride. And this in a nation with a surplus.

There is no law that says that money spent on space exploration will be used more effectively. It is not about "feel good projects", it is about supplying services to millions of people, who do not have those services.

You misunderstand: those millions won't have them. They didn't have them before we knew how to tell a rocket's engine nozzle from its vernier thrusters and they won't have them if we give up the manned space program. You could have the whole world at peace and gazing at its collective navel, it's not going to happen. If you want to lift up your population, you've got to provide them with jobs, and those are created by demand and not by throwing money around.

If 80% of the money is squandered during the course of those projects, vs. 80% of the money for a Mars mission being squandered, then it is still worth it. If not in your mind, if not in my mind, certainly in the minds of the people who are actually helped by those programs.

I'm so glad you're not managing my finances, I wouldn't have you fired, I would have you assassinated. Squandering 80% of your budget while doing something that should be doable but is not being done (and won't be done) instead of wasting 80% of it while doing something never attempted isn't just incompetence, it's criminal.

Since when is the iThing the pinnacle of human achievement?

What's the pinnacle of human achievement? Haven't seen it yet.

There is energy, agricultural science, building ever more advanced municipal services, advancing medecine and transport... there are many things that require highly qualified people, that have nothing to do with space exploration.

Your advanced municipal services will have to be paid by communities who won't exactly see why they should spend their money on it. Believe me, I've seen quite a lot of those projects and they managed to waste money in a most spectacular way. Advanced transport? That's not borderline science at all. Agricultural? Even less so unless you're a Monsanto fan and those guys should be barbecued.

Discounting manned spaceflight there is still the lucrative satellite industry, which is an example of spaceflight that is an economically viable enterprise.

How many sats are you going to orbit every year? And how advanced do they need to be? Oh, yes, wonderful solution: let's have the market dictate the whole of human research. So many universities to close.

Indeed, but hey... maybe that will make us feel special-er than the people who got duped into believing that diesel can flow from rocks when hit with a special stick. :facepalm:

We should so totally research that stick.