Discussion The next 100 years..
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fsci123
Future Dubstar and Rocketkid
You have to remember there is the possibility that we may accomplish 571 years of research in only 100 years. I am not a very conservative person nor am I a person who prepares for a technological singularity... But you do have to admit that more advances in technology and society have taken place within 1800-2011 than from 10000BC-1799... Pluss it will be more beneficial to colonize planets before we pave over the world... If were to colonize every inch of our planet including the oceans we may disrupt the weather paterns and destroy countless species that we depend on...
The whole point of the Evil Population Growth plan is to pave of the entire Earth and kill every living thing other than humans and algae (as food organisms), because we just shouldn't care.
How fun.
It's very difficult to actually define "technological progress". You can't define it in a period of years, but as a collection of achievements and knowledge. There are many 570 year periods between 30 000 and 20 000 years ago that saw very little technological advancement.
In the last 200 years we've had the industrial revolution and the information revolution, it makes sense that there'd be a large amount of related development. But there are still things that we haven't achieved, still things we don't know how to do. Fusion is one of those things. Cheap spaceflight is another.
We've gotten to an age where we know enough to create a multitude of ideas, but not enough to actually enact a lot of them.
How fun.
It's very difficult to actually define "technological progress". You can't define it in a period of years, but as a collection of achievements and knowledge. There are many 570 year periods between 30 000 and 20 000 years ago that saw very little technological advancement.
In the last 200 years we've had the industrial revolution and the information revolution, it makes sense that there'd be a large amount of related development. But there are still things that we haven't achieved, still things we don't know how to do. Fusion is one of those things. Cheap spaceflight is another.
We've gotten to an age where we know enough to create a multitude of ideas, but not enough to actually enact a lot of them.
fsci123
Future Dubstar and Rocketkid
The whole point of the Evil Population Growth plan is to pave of the entire Earth and kill every living thing other than humans and algae (as food organisms), because we just shouldn't care.
How fun.
It's very difficult to actually define "technological progress". You can't define it in a period of years, but as a collection of achievements and knowledge. There are many 570 year periods between 30 000 and 20 000 years ago that saw very little technological advancement.
In the last 200 years we've had the industrial revolution and the information revolution, it makes sense that there'd be a large amount of related development. But there are still things that we haven't achieved, still things we don't know how to do. Fusion is one of those things. Cheap spaceflight is another.
We've gotten to an age where we know enough to create a multitude of ideas, but not enough to actually enact a lot of them.
Well the problem is that we didn't have spacetravel...
And as for the population growth it was just a metaphore...
First things we need to do.
1- Develop unmanned tech. With an eye to mass production. For now. As robotic aids will be indispensable tools.
2- Develop better materials and propulsion systems. Efficient delta-v.
3- Lose the politicians. They meddle too much on short-term basis.
4- Abolish financial concerns and the barter system. Training wheels we don't need.
When these 4 things happen, manned spaceflight for everyone will become a reality. All attempts prior to those happening will most likely fail. As they have been.
You are welcome to diss my views however you like. But I assure you - even just ONE of those things will allow the, aahhhemm, "space program" to make incredible strides.
---------- Post added at 01:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 AM ----------
In talking to young people today.. Me, being an old fart, I get the strangest looks when I talk about the moon landings, spaceflight, and the Moody Blues. Nobody knows anything about those three things. I dare not mention I play stupid computer games like Orbiter or do other dumb things related to space sciences.
This should be number 5 on the list - lose the dumbed-down thinking created by modern media. The tabloids are more interesting than Orbiter I tell you. And I did an experiment to prove it! I printed the cover sheet to the Orbiter manual and about 20 pages thereafter and some NASA material on advanced RF communications, ablative material, and 3-D transistors. You know, like 2 page tech-briefs. I also purchased some copies of the National Enquirer tabloid paper and set them down on a table in a public place and observed.
The Science-Stack was picked up second and put right back down, the NE tabloid was read cover to cover. And often stolen. I tried this in fast food joints, starbucks, a few cafe's in an upscale business district and, differently, a mall full of teenagers. A hotel resort near a technical park. A gym. A tech comm company's cafeteria where I did contract work recently. 4 different areas in the city library, computer, bulletin-board, 2 different common table areas.
In nearly all cases NE got read over and over and stolen and select articles ripped out. Articles with hot-looking women were slipped out and folded neatly and tucked into shirt pockets. The SS was picked up and put on another table, often not looked through. I bought snacks for the folks that flipped through the SS and made an effort to read through it.
So again, number 5 is probably the most important thing!! Attitudes!!
1- Develop unmanned tech. With an eye to mass production. For now. As robotic aids will be indispensable tools.
2- Develop better materials and propulsion systems. Efficient delta-v.
3- Lose the politicians. They meddle too much on short-term basis.
4- Abolish financial concerns and the barter system. Training wheels we don't need.
When these 4 things happen, manned spaceflight for everyone will become a reality. All attempts prior to those happening will most likely fail. As they have been.
You are welcome to diss my views however you like. But I assure you - even just ONE of those things will allow the, aahhhemm, "space program" to make incredible strides.
---------- Post added at 01:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 AM ----------
In talking to young people today.. Me, being an old fart, I get the strangest looks when I talk about the moon landings, spaceflight, and the Moody Blues. Nobody knows anything about those three things. I dare not mention I play stupid computer games like Orbiter or do other dumb things related to space sciences.
This should be number 5 on the list - lose the dumbed-down thinking created by modern media. The tabloids are more interesting than Orbiter I tell you. And I did an experiment to prove it! I printed the cover sheet to the Orbiter manual and about 20 pages thereafter and some NASA material on advanced RF communications, ablative material, and 3-D transistors. You know, like 2 page tech-briefs. I also purchased some copies of the National Enquirer tabloid paper and set them down on a table in a public place and observed.
The Science-Stack was picked up second and put right back down, the NE tabloid was read cover to cover. And often stolen. I tried this in fast food joints, starbucks, a few cafe's in an upscale business district and, differently, a mall full of teenagers. A hotel resort near a technical park. A gym. A tech comm company's cafeteria where I did contract work recently. 4 different areas in the city library, computer, bulletin-board, 2 different common table areas.
In nearly all cases NE got read over and over and stolen and select articles ripped out. Articles with hot-looking women were slipped out and folded neatly and tucked into shirt pockets. The SS was picked up and put on another table, often not looked through. I bought snacks for the folks that flipped through the SS and made an effort to read through it.
So again, number 5 is probably the most important thing!! Attitudes!!
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orbekler
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Then you need a ruler from another world... :crystalball2:
orbekler
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Space elevators, terraforming, etc...
Very interesting speculation about dangers of space, real space exploration is not like playing Orbiter.
Off-Topic: you'll find other interesting documentaries on science and space in this channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BraveManNewWorld2#g/f
Very interesting speculation about dangers of space, real space exploration is not like playing Orbiter.
Off-Topic: you'll find other interesting documentaries on science and space in this channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BraveManNewWorld2#g/f
We're hitting two walls that don't depend much on commitment of our politicians to "crazy space dreams": cosmic radiation and weightlessness. The only currently known solutions require huge mass delivered to LEO, which means building pyramids instead of helping out the hungry, the ill and the illiterate. Breakthroughs are more than welcome here
In fact, I have a strong suspicion that if all the resources currently being embezzled in Russia were diverted to space explorations, we'd have been selling ice cream on the Moon by now.
Well you said it yourself! Major breakthroughs in materials sciences and energy density/storage will enable magnetic shielding OR allow enough mass to be moved cheaply.
Correct and sufficient funding of the schools and universities will enable that to happen. "Space-friendly" government policy could easily encourage the development of cool materials that would enable us to build large craft, and equip them with centrifuges.
Politics is the decision maker for anything long term, and space stuff is long term!
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What advances in materials science/energy density?
A materials science advance would not help much, particularly since advanced materials (at least at first) can be quite expensive.
In terms of energy density, it doesn't really make sense- the only propulsion technology that I can think of that compares favourably to chemical is NTR, and while NTR might revolutionise the physics constraints spacecraft have, it will act pretty badly on the economic constraints. That's no longer a rocket engine, it's now a nuclear reactor and a rocket engine!
Let me put this straight; I hate all the NIMBYers who scream "EARTH-HATE" when the first syllable of the world "nuclear" is spoken. I'm a vehement supporter of nuclear propulsion in the face of NIMBYism, but the problem with nuclear propulsion is that all the stuff that you need to make its vehement support justifiable will tend to make it uneconomic.
We can go on about "cool materials", but it kinda gets like the whole Evil Population Growth thing (not nearly as bad, but still bad). The point is, we can't rely on something that doesn't exist, that we don't know would exist or how it would exist. It becomes magic too easily. We can say, "if X, Y, and Z were developed", then they could maybe revolutionise stuff in manners A, B, and C.
The major problems I see with spaceflight, and these are really the two omnipresent problems:
1. The severe cost-intensity of spaceflight as a whole.
2. The inadequacy of surface-LEO lift.
Now the latter is a problem, because you've got to have a dV of ~9 km/s to get to LEO. The funny thing is, if you're using, I dunno, some sort of ion drive, maybe even a nuclear engine, a nuclear-electric engine... you could probably do 9 km/s quite easily out in space. The problem is, when you're launching from Earth, you've got to fight gravity, you've got to fight air resistance, you've got to accelerate relatively fast, or else you end up fighting gravity for too long or whatever and your whole launch strategy becomes horribly inefficient.
In short: your options are to either use chemical propulsion, or nuclear propulsion. Chemical propulsion isn't that effective rocket-equation wise, relatively speaking. Nuclear propulsion is better physics wise, but comes with a phylum of problems. Chemical is cheaper and far less offensive, but still very expensive to work with.
If you want to reuse your launch infrastructure, you have to return it to Earth, and that's difficult. If you use chemical propulsion, you either have to make a very lightweight, fragile structure, or break up the launch vehicle into several parts which have to be recovered seperately. If you want to use nuclear propulsion you have to contend with the radioactive rocket engines whether you throw them away or not. With both you face the complexity issues that can actually make it less economically sensible to recover and refurbish infrastructure than it is to build it and then throw it away.
You face the economic challenge of infrastructure built to pour money into a corporate operation, to help senators keep their job. No space-flight here, no. The real business is politics.
Spaceflight is incredibly intensive, and incredibly dangerous. Just look at the infrastructure it takes to launch a bullet out of a rifle at less than 1000 m/s. Spacecraft have to be travelling at 7.5 km/s to reach Earth orbit. That's a lot of kinetic energy going into that ship. That's a lot of ship. There's a reason the shuttle stack is so gigantic; that orbiter has to be sped up to roughly ten times the velocity that the rifle bullet does. And it's not just a little bullet weighing a few grams; it's a spacecraft weighing over 100 tons.
Those engines put out gigawatts of power; many times the output of a municipal power station, out of a vehicle a fraction of the size and a fraction of the weight (it may only be for a few minutes, but those are a damn scary few minutes).
On reentry the surface of the craft can get up to 1000 C or more in places. If things change on the order of seconds, the crew can die instantly. On-orbit the vehicle is contending with, for example, temperature changes- the orbital environment is not nearly as strenuous as that of launch or reentry, but is still hostile. With a mind-boggling amount of components needed for the vehicle to keep the crew alive and keep the vehicle operational.
Space travel is so intensive, that the failure rates that we have start to look amazingly good. And we have them because a huge amount of effort and patience and intelligent- and money- are put into making sure the vehicles are safe, making sure the components are within fine tolerances, making sure that things are tested and re-tested to ensure that they do not fail.
Now, you can reduce the costs, if you slash all that effort. But the problem is that vehicles will start to fail at a prodigious rate; LOC/V events will occur everywhere you look. And that is naturally unacceptable, especially if we are trying to popularise spaceflight to any degree.
The only way out of that huge cost intensity is to slowly practice and build up confidence and build up ability. And that will be difficult. It would be, often literally, an uphill battle.
So we've got a universe outside our little microcosm that we couldn't be bothered about since it's so useless, and on top of that spaceflight is exceedingly difficult. So naturally you can see why we're not making any progress.
Manned spaceflight is for all practical purposes useless, yes. But if the environment for it was just a little bit better, likely far more people would be interested. If one part of the Antarctica analogy is in favour of spaceflight, it is that there is far more interest in space, than there is in Antarctica. You don't see many people saying they want to colonise Antarctica or study it or whatever, even though it's far easier to get to.
That spaceflight "meme", the spaceflight idea, that's still alive, even if it is largely ignored, largely forgotten, and often ridiculed. There's still interest somewhere. We are proof. Other people on the internet are proof. Space programs- the mostly useless space programs of the world- they're proof too, kinda.
If it was just a little easier, then you'd see people going into space, paying for a ride (and not at ridiculous prices ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars). If it were just a little easier, it'd be far easier to justify politics-wise, and indeed would need less justification due to its lower 'drain' on things.
If it was just a little easier. But it isn't.
And partially at least, you can blame it on the transistor; the transistor enabled capable communications satellites to be launched on relatively small boosters. They'd be relatively small satellites, too. And all the control they would need would be from the ground.
Now imagine that spaceflight 'took off' a bit earlier, or that the development of the transistor was delayed or its impact somehow came later or whatever, or even a combination of all of those things. And imagine that there was a telecommunications demand.
Now you have a demand for fairly large satellites, because they have to contain heavy, primitive stuff like vacuum tubes. And not only do these satellites require larger launchers, they require a crew of some sort as well- since they are so primitive and large and complex that they need people to watch over them and supervise their operation. So you get an incentive to develop cheaper manned spaceflight, because there's actually a need for manned spaceflight. When the transistor comes around, it's a boon, not a hindrance, as while it may crash the communication-station market, it finalises the delivery of the "easy(ier) spaceflight" that we ask for in our era. Now all the other stuff, like exploratory missions, are far easier to justify. There's an interest in space, far more people have travelled in space per amount of time, and things are generally better off for spaceflight.
Of course, one could argue that the transistor and spaceflight were pretty much destined to be realised in roughly the same time period, or that the latter was not possible with the former, or whatever. But that's not the point. The point is that if there was, and potentially if there is a need for manned spaceflight, it becomes far more justifiable, and it becomes easier, which in turn makes it more justifiable still.
But the problem is, we can't come up for a reason for manned spaceflight to be a necessity. Short of uninventing the transistor. :facepalm:
A materials science advance would not help much, particularly since advanced materials (at least at first) can be quite expensive.
In terms of energy density, it doesn't really make sense- the only propulsion technology that I can think of that compares favourably to chemical is NTR, and while NTR might revolutionise the physics constraints spacecraft have, it will act pretty badly on the economic constraints. That's no longer a rocket engine, it's now a nuclear reactor and a rocket engine!
Let me put this straight; I hate all the NIMBYers who scream "EARTH-HATE" when the first syllable of the world "nuclear" is spoken. I'm a vehement supporter of nuclear propulsion in the face of NIMBYism, but the problem with nuclear propulsion is that all the stuff that you need to make its vehement support justifiable will tend to make it uneconomic.
We can go on about "cool materials", but it kinda gets like the whole Evil Population Growth thing (not nearly as bad, but still bad). The point is, we can't rely on something that doesn't exist, that we don't know would exist or how it would exist. It becomes magic too easily. We can say, "if X, Y, and Z were developed", then they could maybe revolutionise stuff in manners A, B, and C.
The major problems I see with spaceflight, and these are really the two omnipresent problems:
1. The severe cost-intensity of spaceflight as a whole.
2. The inadequacy of surface-LEO lift.
Now the latter is a problem, because you've got to have a dV of ~9 km/s to get to LEO. The funny thing is, if you're using, I dunno, some sort of ion drive, maybe even a nuclear engine, a nuclear-electric engine... you could probably do 9 km/s quite easily out in space. The problem is, when you're launching from Earth, you've got to fight gravity, you've got to fight air resistance, you've got to accelerate relatively fast, or else you end up fighting gravity for too long or whatever and your whole launch strategy becomes horribly inefficient.
In short: your options are to either use chemical propulsion, or nuclear propulsion. Chemical propulsion isn't that effective rocket-equation wise, relatively speaking. Nuclear propulsion is better physics wise, but comes with a phylum of problems. Chemical is cheaper and far less offensive, but still very expensive to work with.
If you want to reuse your launch infrastructure, you have to return it to Earth, and that's difficult. If you use chemical propulsion, you either have to make a very lightweight, fragile structure, or break up the launch vehicle into several parts which have to be recovered seperately. If you want to use nuclear propulsion you have to contend with the radioactive rocket engines whether you throw them away or not. With both you face the complexity issues that can actually make it less economically sensible to recover and refurbish infrastructure than it is to build it and then throw it away.
You face the economic challenge of infrastructure built to pour money into a corporate operation, to help senators keep their job. No space-flight here, no. The real business is politics.
Spaceflight is incredibly intensive, and incredibly dangerous. Just look at the infrastructure it takes to launch a bullet out of a rifle at less than 1000 m/s. Spacecraft have to be travelling at 7.5 km/s to reach Earth orbit. That's a lot of kinetic energy going into that ship. That's a lot of ship. There's a reason the shuttle stack is so gigantic; that orbiter has to be sped up to roughly ten times the velocity that the rifle bullet does. And it's not just a little bullet weighing a few grams; it's a spacecraft weighing over 100 tons.
Those engines put out gigawatts of power; many times the output of a municipal power station, out of a vehicle a fraction of the size and a fraction of the weight (it may only be for a few minutes, but those are a damn scary few minutes).
On reentry the surface of the craft can get up to 1000 C or more in places. If things change on the order of seconds, the crew can die instantly. On-orbit the vehicle is contending with, for example, temperature changes- the orbital environment is not nearly as strenuous as that of launch or reentry, but is still hostile. With a mind-boggling amount of components needed for the vehicle to keep the crew alive and keep the vehicle operational.
Space travel is so intensive, that the failure rates that we have start to look amazingly good. And we have them because a huge amount of effort and patience and intelligent- and money- are put into making sure the vehicles are safe, making sure the components are within fine tolerances, making sure that things are tested and re-tested to ensure that they do not fail.
Now, you can reduce the costs, if you slash all that effort. But the problem is that vehicles will start to fail at a prodigious rate; LOC/V events will occur everywhere you look. And that is naturally unacceptable, especially if we are trying to popularise spaceflight to any degree.
The only way out of that huge cost intensity is to slowly practice and build up confidence and build up ability. And that will be difficult. It would be, often literally, an uphill battle.
So we've got a universe outside our little microcosm that we couldn't be bothered about since it's so useless, and on top of that spaceflight is exceedingly difficult. So naturally you can see why we're not making any progress.
Manned spaceflight is for all practical purposes useless, yes. But if the environment for it was just a little bit better, likely far more people would be interested. If one part of the Antarctica analogy is in favour of spaceflight, it is that there is far more interest in space, than there is in Antarctica. You don't see many people saying they want to colonise Antarctica or study it or whatever, even though it's far easier to get to.
That spaceflight "meme", the spaceflight idea, that's still alive, even if it is largely ignored, largely forgotten, and often ridiculed. There's still interest somewhere. We are proof. Other people on the internet are proof. Space programs- the mostly useless space programs of the world- they're proof too, kinda.
If it was just a little easier, then you'd see people going into space, paying for a ride (and not at ridiculous prices ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars). If it were just a little easier, it'd be far easier to justify politics-wise, and indeed would need less justification due to its lower 'drain' on things.
If it was just a little easier. But it isn't.
And partially at least, you can blame it on the transistor; the transistor enabled capable communications satellites to be launched on relatively small boosters. They'd be relatively small satellites, too. And all the control they would need would be from the ground.
Now imagine that spaceflight 'took off' a bit earlier, or that the development of the transistor was delayed or its impact somehow came later or whatever, or even a combination of all of those things. And imagine that there was a telecommunications demand.
Now you have a demand for fairly large satellites, because they have to contain heavy, primitive stuff like vacuum tubes. And not only do these satellites require larger launchers, they require a crew of some sort as well- since they are so primitive and large and complex that they need people to watch over them and supervise their operation. So you get an incentive to develop cheaper manned spaceflight, because there's actually a need for manned spaceflight. When the transistor comes around, it's a boon, not a hindrance, as while it may crash the communication-station market, it finalises the delivery of the "easy(ier) spaceflight" that we ask for in our era. Now all the other stuff, like exploratory missions, are far easier to justify. There's an interest in space, far more people have travelled in space per amount of time, and things are generally better off for spaceflight.
Of course, one could argue that the transistor and spaceflight were pretty much destined to be realised in roughly the same time period, or that the latter was not possible with the former, or whatever. But that's not the point. The point is that if there was, and potentially if there is a need for manned spaceflight, it becomes far more justifiable, and it becomes easier, which in turn makes it more justifiable still.
But the problem is, we can't come up for a reason for manned spaceflight to be a necessity. Short of uninventing the transistor. :facepalm:
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fsci123
Future Dubstar and Rocketkid
May I remind everyone thy there is not a solid reason why manned spaceflight shouldn't exsist...
Of course there is a solid reason why manned spaceflight shouldn't exist: It's damn expensive.
On the other hand, of course, it can be used to fund Big Aerospace as well. And it can be used to give people in your state jobs, and potentially get you re-elected. Ergo, there are reasons why manned spaceflight can be perpetuated, but only to perpetuate those things, and not itself, so it doesn't really transform into something new and we don't get much, if any, exploration.
On the other hand, of course, it can be used to fund Big Aerospace as well. And it can be used to give people in your state jobs, and potentially get you re-elected. Ergo, there are reasons why manned spaceflight can be perpetuated, but only to perpetuate those things, and not itself, so it doesn't really transform into something new and we don't get much, if any, exploration.
fsci123
Future Dubstar and Rocketkid
-Kenneth Olsen, President and founder of digital equipment corporation, in 1977...
People have had doubts fro a long time your excuse is another one...
It is no excuse, it is a valid observation.
I am so confident in saying that, that I will positively say that it is objective reality as well.
The computer analogy is pretty bad, because that statement is actually pretty valid, if you look at it from the perspective of times in history when computers were very bulky, very expensive, slow, difficult to operate, and genuinely did not have applications of interest to most people.
Because nobody had a decent computer at the time, nobody really thought of the ramifications of capable and cheap electronic information storage/transfer and a global network of easily controllable computers.
Here, we're trying to look at the ramifications of spaceflight. Or the ramifications for spaceflight. Or both.
And currently there isn't really any legitimate purpose for manned spaceflight in the modern era.
I am so confident in saying that, that I will positively say that it is objective reality as well.
The computer analogy is pretty bad, because that statement is actually pretty valid, if you look at it from the perspective of times in history when computers were very bulky, very expensive, slow, difficult to operate, and genuinely did not have applications of interest to most people.
Because nobody had a decent computer at the time, nobody really thought of the ramifications of capable and cheap electronic information storage/transfer and a global network of easily controllable computers.
Here, we're trying to look at the ramifications of spaceflight. Or the ramifications for spaceflight. Or both.
And currently there isn't really any legitimate purpose for manned spaceflight in the modern era.
fsci123
Future Dubstar and Rocketkid
Well being bulky, difficult to operate, expensive, and have no applications genuinely interesting to people sound exactly like manned spaceflight...
RGClark
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The computer comparison might actually be apt. It was not because of their size that it was thought they would have no use in the home. It was literally that the EXPERTS in the field couldn't imagine what they would be used for in the home.
Now, if you make the hypothesis that space travel will become low cost, say by two orders of magnitude cheaper to LEO, then one possible area of profitability would be resource mining from the Moon and/or asteroids.
The estimates of the metals that might be available in just a medium sized asteroid are staggering.
Bob Clark
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And at the time they were absolutely right. Nobody needed that kind of computing power or data storage (which was limited) at home. We owe the Home Computer Revolution to some lucky breaks: unexpensive ICs, devoted hobbysts and some Killer Apps (back when they weren't called Killer Apps) like VisiCalc which allowed even the smallest mom-and-pop store to do profit and loss projections without the need for an expensive outside specialist. Add to that the fact that the machines were as open as they could be and this enabled lots of people to try their hands at programming (nowadays it's, unfortunately, unthinkable and even illegal-under-penalty-of-death) and this brought further apps (and games) that helped secure the computer a place in the home.
It was an amazing set of coincidences but then those were crazy times...
There's no reason to ship lunar/asteroidal resources to Earth, because Earth already has those resources, and they're far cheaper to get at, even when you factor in reduced launch costs. Add to that the fact that they're often concentrated in convenient ores, whereas they would generally tend to be found in low concentrations elsewhere in the solar system.
I also think people underestimate the difficulties of launch costs. One to two orders of magnitude cheaper is a big improvement, and certainly not an easy one.
If we take Proton's cost/kg to be 4300 dollars, one or two orders of magnitude down would be 430-43 dollars, the latter of which is a huge reduction which only the most speculative or optimistic (or unrealistic) concepts suggest. Even the former is a huge reduction.
The minimum cost/kg with current energy costs (factoring in to both propellant and structure) might be on the order of several tens of dollars- 30-50 dollars. However, various things drive that price up dramatically, including but not limited to the fact that the vehicle actually has to be constructed and operated. Which isn't easy.
Generally stuff that isn't easy isn't cheap either...
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CigDriver
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2020-ish - China has built its small space station, everyone congratulates them and moves on. China continues with manned launches to the station over the next few years.
A few years later, China launches a rocket with a large "orbit maintenance booster" as its payload and docks with their small station in LEO. Two days later the entire station performs a TLI and heads to the moon.
The major powers are in an uproar, the press calls it "the Space Pearl harbor" and the US congress demands answers from everyone from NASA to the CIA.
A week later the second nation flag is planted on the moon, a Chinese one. A week after that a small habitat is deorbited from the Chinese station in lunar orbit.
At this point Space funding goes through the roof in all major countries, minor countries offer what ever they can to support their favorite major power. Technology leaps ahead at an astounding pace, new propolusion technologies, new materials, more computing power. By 2050 every nation in the world has at least one commercial space port offering trips to the moon or LEO hotels. By 2100 trips to Mars are just like going to the beach for a long weekend.
Who really knows what will happen, but as my Dad likes to say "no one will care about the moon until China puts a big old honking space laser up there!"
A few years later, China launches a rocket with a large "orbit maintenance booster" as its payload and docks with their small station in LEO. Two days later the entire station performs a TLI and heads to the moon.
The major powers are in an uproar, the press calls it "the Space Pearl harbor" and the US congress demands answers from everyone from NASA to the CIA.
A week later the second nation flag is planted on the moon, a Chinese one. A week after that a small habitat is deorbited from the Chinese station in lunar orbit.
At this point Space funding goes through the roof in all major countries, minor countries offer what ever they can to support their favorite major power. Technology leaps ahead at an astounding pace, new propolusion technologies, new materials, more computing power. By 2050 every nation in the world has at least one commercial space port offering trips to the moon or LEO hotels. By 2100 trips to Mars are just like going to the beach for a long weekend.
Who really knows what will happen, but as my Dad likes to say "no one will care about the moon until China puts a big old honking space laser up there!"
I know it isn't likely, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for a technological singularity. That'd solve a lot of problems. Or end up producing something worse than Skynet, GLaDOS, and that computer from Paranoia combined.
Either way, I'm being way too optimistic.
Either way, I'm being way too optimistic.
