Libertarians are supposedly motivated only by potential profit. One of the big problems in this era is that there’s little profit in research and development, so businesses don’t do R&D. In the US, R&D has mostly been funded by the government in the past, not by the private sector.
NASA was able to fund R & D by businesses in the past, but like you say, there’s little of that funding around these days.

If you can find some private entrepreneur with deep pockets (like the owner of Virgin) that’s willing to fund a space project, then you’re good, but there aren’t too many businesses that are willing–too much risk.

I’m inclined to agree. If you ever want to experience the melancholy of What Could Have Been, look up Apollo Applications sometime. One of the ideas that grabs my imagination is a plan to use a pack of consumables in place of a LM and use the Saturn IV-B stage to push it and an Apollo CSM to a Near-Earth Asteroid rendezvous. (Some of those asteroids require less delta-v to visit than the Moon!) Or what might have been possible if we’d used a Centaur as an upper stage. Heck, if you ever just wanted to take something the size of a Volkswagen and hurl it clear of the Solar System, the Saturn V represented that kind of technology.

Which we no longer possess, incidentally. Maybe the Ares V will help us realize some of those missed opportunities.

Indeed, it is the problem. Space exploration by and large has been underfunded — both manned and robotic. The technology for reliable space-flight has existed for more than forty years, but we’ve not truly taken advantage of it in the ways that we could — and should have.

But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? If NASA had had enough money to keep an Apollo support workforce (including the personnel, facilities, and technology necessary to maintain the spacecraft and those who train for it) and design and assemble Apollo spacecraft for various mission contingencies and develop the Shuttle, they could have realized the no-spaceflight-gaps scenario you argue for.

The cost of continuing a given spaceflight program does not end with assembled hardware.

Again, no one but space geeks knows SpaceX exists.

And by the looks of it, governments do, too.

@Mark: radiative cooling is the most effective sensible means of cooling in space. Things can get extremely cold and very fast (if you build them right). Unfortunately it’s not easy to maintain the extremely low temperatures needed by some sensors so there are instruments with cryogens on board, but even in those cases radiative cooling is used to help minimize the loss of cryogen.

Oh, just one comment about “private companies” and rockets: *ALL* US rockets are built by private companies – Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. So the “private companies vs. NASA” thing is a bit weird. The only distinction I see is between predominantly government funded projects and predominantly privately funded projects, and even that is a superficial distinction.

Hmmm, I thought these things only happen in movies.

It seems that in the vacuum (or near vacuum) of space, radiative cooling wouldn’t be very effective

You are thinking or convective cooling. Radiative cooling works entirely by infrared emission. No it wouldn’t be very effective at cooling an object at body temperature but at 800 or 900C it is. I noticed the mention of “ablative cooling” on their website. Did the Saturn V use ablative cooling? I’ve always wondered why on launch the first several feet of fire leaving the nozzles was always shrouded in black.

Let’s hope for the success of Falcon-9 as well, since the next year will see the development and launch of the twice LEO capable 1e AFAIU Space-X plans. This variant seems to bridge the commercial gap left by taking the Falcon-5 out of the series of lifters.

the next generation of them will be taking a risk on building space stations…

Actually Bigelow is testing prototypes as we type, see comment #8. Seems people have taken the concept of staggered projects and applied it on tech development at large.

then Moon bases… then trips to the outer planets.

I’m sure it has been noted before, but I just realized the other day that the 2-3 generation gap between 1911 South Pole exploration and 1956 Antarctic base/science colonization is akin to the 2-3 gen gap between 1969 Moon exploration and ~ 1920 projected base/science colonization. While the gap in between is just about the wait for the required first exploration technology (i.e. rockets).

Perhaps there is a certain pace to targeting exploration and maturing society and colonization technology. Potentially what was the hazardous goal for one generation becomes a mature goal for the next and finally a place to live in for grandchildren. (I do believe there are permanent ‘visitors’ aka settlers @ Antarctic.) While they now have to, and do, set new hazardous goals.

I dunno how to test that, but I do wish we don’t have to wait another 2-3 gen between returning to the Moon and exploring and, if necessary, diverting NEOs. Or Mars, for that matter, albeit I guess from the above if the immediate interest isn’t in place in the general public it could really take that long for a hard target.

Ah well, at least we will have robots.

You do not necessarily need air to cool radiatively cooled objects (though it halps a lot for ‘sure).

In fact, if you cool them with air, they’re convectively cooled, not radiatively. And radiative cooling certainly does work better in vacuum (where it doesn’t heat up material directly next to the surface to cool which then radiates right back), whereas convective cooling obviously works better with air or even water, and doesn’t work at all with vacuum.

In general, though, I’m surprised NASA hasn’t been given at least a little credit for helping SpaceX get to this point. Remember, this is there fifth launch, with three previous ending in failure. After the third failure in a row, a lot of people continued to have confidence in the company because of NASA’s continued investment through COTS. This launch is still a very cool thing and I hope it leads to everything Musk says it will, but we’ll just see how much is reality and how much is hype.

@Charles Boyer
“As for Ares/Constellation, or whatever is chosen to succeed STS, there’s no real technical reason to not use the Shuttle until the next system is ready.”

Maybe, although the Columbia accident review board specifically recommended retiring the shuttle sooner rather than later. I could see the furor if there was an accident and NASA did not follow this advice.

The private sector will not fly manned missions during the interval between the Shuttle’s retirement and the debut of Ares/Constellation/whatever. The private sector has been launching satellites for years and hardly anyone knows it. SpaceX is innovative in that they are using a launch vehicle of their own design and construction. Again, no one but space geeks knows SpaceX exists.

Thanks, Charles – this was the first time I caught a launch live on NASA TV. Looks like it’s going splendidly – not even a minor glitch.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/01/x-33venturestar-what-really-happened/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X