Well, this came as a surprise (srsly): NASA says it doesn’t want to use Russian rockets during the multiyear gap between the Shuttle and Constellation eras. I’ve written about this, how NASA has sought a waiver from the government to allow them use Russian tech, despite a law disallowing it.
However, it’s not that NASA won’t use the Russians, it’s that with the successful launch of a Falcon-1 from Space X, they hope to use U.S. companies instead of foreign agencies. That makes sense and I agree. I’m glad they’re keeping their options open. That gap before we get the Ares rockets launched may stretch out, and NASA may need to have different avenues to space.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
A far more productive approach would be to scale back the manned space program, which is a money sink with little scientific payoff, as proposed by Bob Park and Steven Weinberg, the physicists who don’t know what they are talking about.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Time to start learning Chinese and enjoying egg drop soup.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
So they are giving Falcon-1 a big “Hmm!”
That’s very interesting news, and I’m sure Elon Musk is doing a celebratory dance right about… now.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Kenneth. China is 50 years behind us. We have done so many things in space its ridiculous. They’ve only done a few things. They haven’t proven anything other than that they’ve reached the 60’s.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
SLC, you need to do a little more research on the spinoffs of the manned space program. You would be amazed at the payoffs.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I’m getting tired of this song. I really wish they’d stop playing it.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
The NASA press release from a few days ago only mentioned not wishing to use Proton Cargo capsules in favor of using US-COTS delivery. The US ISS Astronauts will still be ferried using the Soyez until the Orion Crew capsule is ready.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
you need to do a little more research on the spinoffs of the manned space program.
Just to play devil’s advocate here, how many spinoffs are directly attributable to *manned* exploration as opposed to unmanned.
There’s also the question: would any of these spinoffs have come about anyway because they were needed and had a big market driven system to develop them?
I hear about how a particular artificial heart pump was based on a pump from the shuttle, but why couldn’t that heart pump have been developed without the Shuttle?
I’m sure someone will bring up “we need to have an escape route should disaster befall the Earth!”, but that’s a level of manned space effort six or seven orders of magnitude beyond anything we can deal with right now. What’s the minimal colony size for adequate starting genetic diversity? Anyone know?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
As I understood it, they don’t want to use the Progress cargo rockets, but they’ll still be using the Russian Soyuz rockets for human launches, thus they still need the waiver.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
With all of the saber rattling going on with Russia at the moment, I have a feeling that this viewpoint has to do with politics more than the will to support private space industry.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Re tsg
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
October 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Dave Mosher:
It should be mentioned that Falcon-1 isn’t big enough to send anything useful to the ISS. However, the success does lend a bit more credibility to spacex Falcon 9 and dragon efforts.
We also shouldn’t forget there’s another private rocket company who often get forgotten in the SpaxeX hype: Orbital Sciences Corporation. They have a long track record of building spacecraft and launching them, and they are developing a new booster (ironically using engines leftover from the Soviet moon program) and a cargo spacecraft for ISS re-supply.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
And sorry, the ISS is not worth it (and manned flight in general- but please fix Hubble!). What science is being done with it? There are a few spinoffs, I’ll grant that, but it’s sucking up way, way too much money. It’s not worth the investment. Money for the ISS is money that we can’t use for things like the Mars Science Laboratory bot (which now looks like it might be canceled due to funding problems).
I would rather read this headline from the Mars Team- “We found life on another planet!” than another boring press release from NASA saying that on the ISS Yurgi is spending his day fixing the toilet up there and banging on the A/C unit.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Bad cut and paste on my part! Oops. Below is what my first few sentences should have been—-
I think the only thing scarier than riding a Russian rocket into space would be riding one made by a private consortium that has only launched one successfully. I really hope private launches take off (knee slap) but there is a big difference between putting a weather satellite and a human on top of one.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Yeah, that’s it :rolleyes:.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
How long will it take if we don’t start?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I agree as well.
Especially with the economy right now, why put money in Russia’s pockets when we have at least one company on our turf that I am sure would be more than willing to help NASA out.
Besides, who knows how many other private companies will sprout up by then?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
QD, I mentioned this in another thread…a GREAT place to start is Robert Heinlein’s article “Spinoff.” Heinlein was hardly a fan of big government, and that article is a real eye opener, and a good guide for starting one’s own research into the subject.
But, as Heinlein himself said (and this no doubt applies to SLC), people will refuse to believe it, even if you do the numbers right in front of them. And he shows that (at that time) manned space flight had returned over 7 times the amount originally invested in new advances. I don’t know the return at this point, but I am fairly certain it is not lower; it could even be higher.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
>>I’m sure someone will bring up “we need to have an escape route should disaster befall the >>Earth!”, but that’s a level of manned space effort six or seven orders of magnitude beyond >>anything we can deal with right now. What’s the minimal colony size for adequate starting >>genetic diversity? Anyone know?
32 with different parents.
The simple answer is sending say 6 women AND a number of viable zygotes that can be used.
The ONLY way that we are going to establish a base on Mars will be with 1 way missions for at least the first 10 years. My guess is that private industry will most likely convince the first settlers to accept the idea of being surrogate mothers as well as pioneers.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
If one grants that there are no solutions, only trade-offs, the decision by NASA to move to private launch vehicles, away from the Russians, is a good one. It is certainly one not without risk, but there is nothing about manned space flight that is risk free. I don’t believe the ISS is salvageable, however. Perhaps when our current economic problems are behind us, a new space exploration program will emerge that will be far superior to the one we have now. One can only hope. By I suspect the ISS will be long gone, to the same place MIR went, by then.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Just what the US needs, ANOTHER government-sponsored launch vehicle to augment the two new ones that aren’t performing as needed. Read the GAO’s latest report (Sep 26, 2008) about it at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081039.pdf
RE MISCONCEPTIONS IN THE ABOVE REMARKS:
1) China’s launch vehicle/rocket technology is considerably more advanced than what the US had in the 1960’s. In many respects it is 21st-century modern. They’ve benefited from the acquisition of foreign technology from numerous sources for decades — the most notorious [in the public domain] was the now-infamous Hughes/Loral fiasco in which those companies violated their export license by conducting a launch failure analysis to help the Chinese build a better, more reliable rocket. That was modern (late 1990s) know-how provided by US firms that wanted a more reliable rocket so they’d pay a lower launch services insurance premium. Here’s one of scads of articles on that subject (the unclassified portion of the Cox Report is also available on-line, with a little searching, and it describes China’s technology acquisitions in the late 1990s):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/stories/satellite123198.htm
2) Technology spin-offs from the manned space program are essentially nonexistant anymore. Some exist to be sure, but not much. The viewpoint that they continue is a residual “halo-effect” from the numerous spin-offs resulting from the 1960s programs. As one will note from the above-reference & many many other GAO & other public stories & reports, the Atlas V is essentially an upgraded rocket using Russian-origin rocket engines. Delta IV is basically an enlarged Delta II design. The RL-10 Upper Stage variants reflect minor modifications to the legacy versions. There is very little new or innovative technology simply because the funds to push the technology simply have not been and are not there. If on examines NASA’s efforts with Ares & Constellation it is clear that use of existing technology to the maximum extent possible to minimize development, schedule and cost risk uncertainty are the order of the day.
SHUTTLE RETIREMENT & CLEAN UP — there are a number of presentations on-line regarding the retirement of the Shuttle program, including the disposal & environmental clean-up of the Shuttle infrastructure across the country. Estimates for the cost vary, but the figures exceed $4 Billion. The last actual funding figure I read was something on the order of $70 Million–a “drop in the bucket.”
Bear in mind that while NASA is gearing up for another new launch vehicle to augment the other two US Govt-sponsored new launch vehicles (that aren’t meeting cost or performance requirements) Shuttle (NASA & its contractors) has left behind a huge infrastructure tainted with Lead & PCB-based paints, all kinds of other toxins such as ammonium perchlorate contaminated groundwater, etc. requiring environmental remediation & disposal….and the funds to do that (to my knowledge) are yet to be forthcoming for/from NASA.
I would think a lot of you would be very curious regarding the US’ policy regarding the trade-offs being made for pursuing new space developments & exploration versus simply leaving the toxic mess on the ground to fester until some other time.
As a benchmark: It took NASA some 30+ years to dispose of the Apollo Launch Umbilical Tower (LUT). Compared to the Shuttle’s imminent clean-up requirement, that doesn’t even amount to “round off error.”
October 9th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Ken: The reason why manned space program spinoffs are almost non-existent now is because the manned space program is almost non-existent right now. There has been no money for innovation or invention in manned space flight for 30 years. So it isn’t surprising that they aren’t churning out new spinoffs. Innovation first, then spinoffs. Money for innovation first, then innovation. Therefore: Money for innovation first, then spinoffs. Can’t have innovation without money. Back when there were lots of spinoffs coming off of the manned space program, it was sucking up what, 25% of the US budget or something? What it is today, 0.5%? I think I may have located the problem:P.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
SLC, et al:
Please try to understand that manned space flight is not solely about science. Manned space flight is driven by the same imperative that drove humans to explore the planet, and, indeed, drove us to leave Africa in the first place. Doing science is a fine way of generating funds for space exploration, but it’s not it’s primary motivation.
Besides, wouldn’t you rather have some real scientists on Mars than a few limited little machines?
October 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
SLC:
Manned spaceflight shouldn’t be measured by how much science it produces – the goal of manned spaceflight is to get us out there. The planet won’t support us forever. Either through our own mismanagement or cosmic disaster we’ll eventually need more places to live.
As I see it, the goal of unmanned spaceflight is to provide the science to support the manned mission.
We need both.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Quiet_Desperation: “What’s the minimal colony size for adequate starting genetic diversity? Anyone know?”
When genetic diversity and the effects of inbreeding — such as, an innate urge to play the banjo — are ignored, the minimum viable population (MVP) for terrestrial vertebrates is estimated to be at least 500 breeding pairs. However, when inbreeding effects are included, the estimates of MVP for many species are in the 1000’s — some have suggested that 4169 individuals would be required.
According to the Toba catastrophe theory, 70,000 to 75,000 years’ ago a super-volcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world’s human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a population bottleneck in human evolution.
For a serious mathematical representation of effective population size, click here.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
How long will it take if we don’t start?
No idea, but the world is falling into an economic toilet right now, so we’ll get back to you.
@Daffy
I’ll look for the Heinlein article, but how out of date is it? Does it answer the question “would those technologies have arisen anyway?”
The problem today is a vast system with millions of leeches hanging off it, be it earmarks or cost overruns or bailouts (oops, I mean “buy-ins”) or money simply vanishing into oblivion.
Our system is just flat out too broken to get the same sort of returns we used to get. Everyone and his grandmother wants their cut of the local pork pie slice. We used to build interstate highways nearly as part of everyday business. That same level of federal expenditure these days will get you a parking lot with half the workers standing around doing nothing, and substandard materials that open up potholes after the first gentle rain.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
QD,
It was written around 1980 or so.
I don’t know how to answer that question. The fact is, they did come about that way.
I am all for oversight, I really am. But research always yields unexpected, serendipitous results…manned spaceflight has brought us a wealth of knowledge and new technology. Example: the roto rooter procedure for cleaning out the major arteries leading to the brain came about as a direct result of technology developed for manned spaceflight. My aunt had the procedure and it completely eliminated her alzheimer’s-like symptoms.
Would that have happened anyway? I dunno…my crystal ball is cracked. But the way it DID happen was because of manned spaceflight. And that’s just one example.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Besides, wouldn’t you rather have some real scientists on Mars than a few limited little machines?
I’ve always advocate an incremental approach. Fully develop and populate Earth orbit. Industry. Power generation. Living stations. Then to push out to the L4/L5 points. After that the Moon and then Mars and beyond.
You build up a functional establishment at each level that makes the next step far easier than some “hail Mary” effort to get a few scientists on Mars starting all the way from Florida. If we had followed von Braun’s similar vision from the 1950’s we’d have scientists living on Mars *NOW*. Well, we didn’t, so we need to do the basics. Instead too many supposed space advocates are calling for another blow out boondoggle to Mars that will be all gee whiz for a few years and then collapse on itself just like Apollo did.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
“A far more productive approach would be to scale back the manned space program, which is a money sink with little scientific payoff…”
Excuse me, but you, sir, are an idiot. Obviously you have no knowledge whatsoever of all the technology advancements that have been made as part of the space program, not to mention being a source of national pride for decades that no doubt inspired millions into science and engineering. I’m so sick of the right-wing ideologues who somehow think the concept of a “free market” is some miracle fairy dust that will cure all ills and that anything involving the government is “waste and socialism”. The era of corporate R&D for basic science is over. Bell labs or Xerox PARC are not going to create the next generation of technology and engineering. It is taking place in national laboratories and academia, which is funded mostly by the federal government.
Despite some leadership and funding problems, NASA has been a very successful endeavor and has more than made up for the costs. I will not let the cynical pessimists like you take way from that. It should be a source of national pride and in fact needs MORE funding NOT less and a renewed commitment from Washington.
If you don’t care about improving this country with your tax dollars, whether we are talking about NASA and scientific research or building next-gen transportation and renewable energy infrastructure or broadband networks, then you should consider finding a new country to call home. I hear the taxes are low in Costa Rica.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
WHOA….lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here. SpaceX had 1 successful launch to go to orbit. Lets repeat this 5 or 6 more times, modify for a capsule, THEN talk about using them for a manned option. You cannot rush space travel because lives are at stake.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
gopher65:
NASA’s budget has never come close to representing 25 percent of the federal budget. It’s alway been well into the single digits.
And tou don’t do manned spaceflight for the spinoffs.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Good idea, maybe this will stimulate commercial manned spaceflight development. Perhaps I won’t be a groundhog for the rest of my life after all.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
All you people spouting off about the payoffs of the space program are committing the most common economic fallacy, which is to see the immediate, obvious effects and and nothing else. NASA has produced numerous technologies, yes, but don’t act as though they just pulled them out of the luminiferous aether. All the resources used by NASA had to be taken from some other use, which you do not see. You don’t see what the private sector would have done with a few more billions of dollars, or what the scientists and engineers of NASA would have been working on had they instead been devoted to developing things people value enough to pay for with their own money.
Of course, that’s somewhat besides the point anyway since justifying manned space flight with space blankets is like justifying literacy with jobs for book-binders. Most people actually into that sort of thing would argue that the value of the scientific discoveries is the important thing. However, if they actually value that sort of thing so much, one wonders why that are not willing to pay for it themselves.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
If you don’t care about improving this country with your tax dollars, whether we are talking about NASA and scientific research or building next-gen transportation and renewable energy infrastructure or broadband networks, then you should consider finding a new country to call home. I hear the taxes are low in Costa Rica.
Taxes are low in undeveloped nations because they have to be. Only the wealthy can afford the tremendous wastefulness of government spending. If taxes were as high in Costa Rica as here, people wouldn’t be able to eat.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
I’m with Ozy. People are ignoring opportunity costs.
Take how much it will cost to send the Space Shuttle up one more time.
Divide that number by how many science grad students there are in the country.
Which would get us more science, one additional shuttle flight, or thousands and thousands of grad students with access to real funding?
October 9th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Also, it is rather tragic that people will defend an expenditure because some other, presumably less virtuous expenditure is much larger. Instead of taking such things as an excuse to act like envious children, that should just be all the more motivation to get the other government spending down as well.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:21 am
With things the way they are with Russia, we may have no choice but to use domestic rockets; and the day may come when we don’t have access to
[i]Soyuz[/i] capsule to bring our astronauts home.
Sometimes, a little romance is necessary to keep the public’s attention and funding: among other things, manned space flight is romantic. I said, among other things.
I remember that the Chinese very unromantically plan for their own space station and to land on the moon. I would think they have military use in mind, for each facility…that’s why I think we should get hot to have a base on the moon, and keep the ISS. An old military axiom has it, that who holds the high ground has the victory; that applied to aircraft from WWI to present and it applies to SDI. China in space with no significant competition hands them a terrible lever. That’s very scarey.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Ozy,
You convinced me; I am now totally opposed to manned space flight. Thank goodness all those wasted resources will now go back to…uh…who was losing them again?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:59 am
SLC:
As far as “physicists who should know what they’re talking about”, you might want to reference two other physicists, such as Gerard K. O’Neille or Mike Combs, both physicists, both in favor of Power Sats and Orbital colonies. Bob Park is a crusty curmudgeon. I used to enjoy his rantings but eventually even my tolerance for old sour pusses was exceeded.
All this crying about how our limited resources must be put to more pragmatic(read as “whatever I think is worthwhile”) uses is one of the reasons NASA had so much trouble maintaining adequate funding levels. The shuttle was originally a good idea but by the time Congress and the military got thru adding their input it had become a white elephant. I’m really surprised it ever got off the ground.
I love hippies. They’re gentle, brain burned druggies with no sense of how dangerous the universe can be and a compassion that seems limitless. Unfortunately, they usually don’t know squat about physics. In the ’60s and ’70s, their cry was to “take care of the unfortunate” rather than feeding all those dad gum elitist scientists,,,so we walked away from the moon, even though there were pragmatic(meaning cost effective) solutions offered to lunar/orbital settlement and Power Sat development. ( see: ssi_list@yahoogroups.com) or the web page for Mike Combs(which is actually more to the point).
There are cost effective solutions to all these arguments if we turn loose the entrepreneurs and provide some CONSISTENT seed money but the key here is to take the long view, an attribute for which politicians are not noted.
Gary 7
October 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Re IO
1. Apparently Mr. IO has a reading comprehension problem. I am all in favor of unmanned space exploration (see thread above about Cassini) as are Bob Park and Steven Weinberg. It is their contention that unmanned space projects are being shelved because of the expenditures on manned space flight.
2. I’m sure that both Profs. Park and Weinberg, both liberal Democrats, would be be highly amused at being termed “right wing ideologues.”
3. Mr. IO is the one who is an idiot. All of the technological advances from the manned space program could have been accomplished from unmanned flights.
Re Gary Ansorge
Is Steven Weinberg also an old sourpuss?
October 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I remember very vividly how much surprised and amused I was as a child when I first learned that there were people walking on the Moon. Then I was surprised and amused very much the same once again some time later, when I found out that after some six or seven expeditions the Apollo program ended and there are no longer people there.
Today I’m surprised and amused again, because I’ve just learned from Gary Ansorge that it is because of hippies that there are no more people on the Moon. As it turns out, it’s another grave inheritance (besides unsafe sex and LSD fascination) that blights the humanity. Damn Woodstock!