Einstein was a “non-scientist”, FWIW ( straw man just to illustrate that Gov’t being the arbiter of what science is studied and which scientists can go is a huge limiting factor). The thing is that the Government isn’t doing the things that would enable the private sector.
Things such as heavy construction, say on the Moon. Mining for rare minerals, etc.The infrastructure portion outside of LEO is lacking, and has been for decades (and if we were dependent upon SLS to go beyond LEO, would be for decades more).
Columbus et al don’t get to America if they have to stick to Coastlines (LEO in this scenario).
Houngan
4576
And I didn’t argue that he was, he was just a complete weirdo in the brain department when it came to physics, and physics that could be accessible from the ground. I’m all for new ideas, but I come up short when I try to remember Musk, Branson, or Bezos with a burning experiment that they need to do in space that was also denied them by NASA. They’re making a better car, and bless at least Musk for that, because he did.
But again, LEO is in favor of NASA, the only people who have extended beyond (manned), the triumvirate have no plans to go outside of it rationally (excepting the obvious Musk idea of a suicide mission to Mars for no gain.) Gimme an example where NASA said, “No, that idea isn’t in our wheelhouse in space, you’ll have to do it yourself.” and I’ll concede.
Let’s just take a look at two NASA projects which can’t get funding:
We can add updating the original Saturn V rockets (never happened, why we can’t even get to the Moon currently) and the updated Space Shuttle (so it wasn’t reliant on 70’s computers and other tech).
Houngan
4578
So your argument is that private space flight will fill that gap?
SpaceX is definitely further along than SLS in getting to Saturn 5 levels, so yes.
Think The East India Company or the 2 Virginia Companies.
Houngan
4580
But you get my point, yes? Science is being driven by NASA, regardless of the trucking company.
And yet, it was Blue Origin who set the records for oldest and youngest to go to space - its first time out.
Seems like things to study that NASA hasn’t gotten to.
Houngan
4582
Well, to that point, it’s a hollow victory. The USSR set the record for the oldest and youngest chimp simultaneously.
But the idea of the East India Company, fraught as that might be and I won’t go there, as an example raises the simple question: if space were the Earth, and we had a reasonable expectation of exploitable resources on the other end of the voyage, then yeah, I get it. We don’t. Space is empty and worthless in pretty much every angle other than scientific testing of “what does this do in space/zero G?” The moon is the most lacking desert in our knowledge, other than Mars, which is just the same desert with a soupcon of too hard to get to, too radioactive from the atmosopheric lack of protection, etc. The only benefit from the Moon or Mars is scientific, and those benefits are largely trivial rather than transformational. There’s no new energy source or climate change answer or whatever there, it’s just “we’re curious about this rock, and maybe there was some life back in the day, might be interesting to find it.”
And I’m all about that, venture forth us less-hairy apes and see what’s what, but there ain’t much out there that does something interesting that doesn’t also do it in LEO.
What exactly is being argued right now?
In any case, a brief look at why NASA is awesome, and its a shame the US government doesn’t fund technology like it used to.
This strikes me as a bizarre thing to focus on. Blue Origin didn’t study anything at all about ages on that flight. They just saw a demographic gap and filled it doing something that was only just barely a space flight anyway, hoping that people would hype that.
Matt_W
4585
NASA has had relatively constant funding in real dollars since the end of the 1970’s. We’ve done a truly huge amount of space exploration over the last 4 decades. It’s just most of it was with robotic missions… as it should be.
I think people underestimate the scale of a project like this. It’s a cable the size of a skyscraper, but 30,000 miles tall, anchored by an asteroid at one end and constructed with materials that do not, at present, exist, carrying cars powered by some unknown or tested technology.
I’m as much a sci-fi fan as all of you. And I really like cool sci-fi concepts. But some of this stuff is so far in the future as to be essentially unattainable. We can certainly put boots on the moon again (though why we would I’m not sure.) And we can even probably put people on the surface of Mars (though I think we’ll kill a bunch of astronauts trying before we succeed.) But we’re never going to have permanent self-sustaining settlements on another world. We’re never going to terraform Mars. We won’t have space elevators or orbital cities. We’re not going to travel to other stars.
But we absolutely can explore the oceans of Enceladus and put landers on the Galilean moons. We can send long-term exploratory missions to the Kuiper Belt and scattered disc. We can put a powerful telescope at EML2 to peer at the earliest moments of the universe. We can map the solar system’s magnetosphere, study the sun, sample the clouds of Venus, fly a drone through Titan’s atmosphere. Maybe we can figure out what dark matter is or plumb the secrets of black holes.
It’s definitely important for human space travel. And that article points toward potential breakthroughs in fluids, materials, and combustion from study in the zero-g environment. But I’ll note that to-date those breakthroughs remain potential ones. The ISS’s research agenda always sounds very much like the tail wagging the dog. It’s all pretty weak sauce.
Oh yes, I was criticizing Bezo’s idea to move polluting industry into space via chemical rockets. If he had instead said “we need a 50 year program to build a space elevator so that we can then move industry into space” I would have slightly less criticism of what he said. The idea still has a truly vast number of problems, but it at least would not be so obviously impossible.
Also, if someone has a Bezo’s connection, could someone let him know about my space elevator design? I think he would like it.
You’ll note the article starts in the 1950s and 1960s. Cherry picking at the start of the decline to make it look okay is not a good look.
In addition, my comment was on the general decline in government funding of research, not just NASA. But maybe that has changed recently.
Anyway, finding the original reporting has been tricky, so we will just use this. Sadly, none of the reports show it in terms of current dollars, or even a benchmark set of dollars.
Here is one.
It’s tough to tell some of the lower lines, but at let’s it’s benchmarked to 2014 dollars.
It’s not as bad as I thought, except the lack of funding for social sciences. It’s probably why Trump rose to power in the first place, is our lack of proper understanding of human nature.
Synth
4588
And he really suggested that did he? He made an aspiration statement that we should move heavy industry to space but that it would take decades and decades but you have to start. And big things start with small steps. It was a single sentence in a larger statement about how fragile the atmosphere looked.
This was never a discussion about the merits of industry in space, it was about bashing Jeff Bezos.
a) Fuck Jeff Bezos.
b) I think we all agree that unicorns are awesome and we should absolutely harness the limitless power of their rainbow farts to power society.
Just to reverse course, I’ll naysay this too! Seriously though, if we can ever crack fusion really really well, then I could see us building a moonbase, but it would never be self-sustaining economically. And as mentioned you would probably need a space elevator to keep it supplied in any sort of reasonable fashion. No way this century, but maybe the next (again if we crack fusion in such a way that we can avoid the worst of the climate apocalypse.)
There wasn’t much to gained in terms of space exploration by putting Mercury capsules on top of Redstone rockets for suborbital launches. Except as a step along a development path that didn’t end there.
I don’t think that’s true. The point was testing the spacecraft integrity and durability during the launch, flight and the re-entry as a prep to an orbital flight. Testing things like flight controls and spacecraft maneuvering engines. Testing things like heat shields and parachute deployment. These things had effectively not been done before.
Bezos stunt has none of these proving effects. The capsule he’s using isn’t a spacecraft at all, it’s just a deadweight, with no engines, controls, etc. So it has no future as a design for a real space program.
If he’s testing the launch vehicle itself, there isn’t any need for the passengers; and the launch vehicle can’t achieve orbit anyway.
If there was a need for passenger — say, testing the effect of the trip, testing the life support systems — the passenger doesn’t need to be Bezos and his brother. And the idea is absurd, anyway; it was a trip of several minutes, just barely into space, and very little life support system to test.
Any sensible program would be skipping the stunts and moving quickly to testing an effective launch vehicle.
I’ll grant that he’s also doing that, or at least trying to do (it seems to have been delayed several years), but this particular exercise was nothing more than a stunt. And I still think spending ~$1b per year isn’t any kind of a serious effort at colonizing space.
And it is very clear from Bezos’ own comments at the time that his conception of Blue Origin was to create space tourism and take advantage of that ‘unserved market’. He even at one time ruled out providing launch services for satellites and other payloads, saying that he had nothing to contribute in that area.
ShivaX
4593
Depends if we need the Helium-3 for said fusion or not.
Timex
4594
Microgravity also has potential in creating new materials, or producing them in much larger quantities than we can currently produce. Carbon nanotubes would be one such possibility, as microgravity eliminates some of the convective forces that prevent creation of long nanotubes currently. Such materials would almost certainly have tremendous economic value on earth, while also potentially reducing the cost of launching things into space.
But it’s all speculation, as is the suggestion that “it will never be economically feasible”. Lots of things aren’t economically feasible, until they are.
