Between Clipper and this, we’ve arrived at an inflection for SLS - it’s a dead program walking. The Senator from Alabama, Sen. Shelby is set to retire. And so it has become politically viable to sunset SLS.
I predict that the program will end after Artemis flies and they have a plan in place for the jobs it creates
It would really help if Boeing and ULA could score some wins. They're having trouble competing on price, schedule, and quality. We need more than one healthy launch provider to maintain competition.
I predict that Bezos is prepping to buy ULA if the Vulcan proves to be a success. It's the natural growth option for Blue Origin to buy their way into an orbital vehicle.
Blue Origin is making slow but steady progress on New Glenn, which is about as capable as Falcon Heavy and has a reusable first stage. First flight could be next year.
If they bought ULA it would be for the established cont(r)acts , but it would feel like an odd lateral move after investing so much money and effort into to their own vehicle, and a non reusable one at that.
ULA s next rocket also uses the engine developed by BO for New Glenn, but is also not reusable apart from an optional future possibility of catching the engines with a helicopter.
There's a lot more to ULA than just assembling old-space rockets. There are people there with the experience in designing, testing and launching rockets and all the equipment required to support them. There's also the real estate already zoned for rocket manufacturing.
I don't know much about New Glen or what Blue Origin is doing. Do they have a working rocket (New Glen) or is it still under design? I know Blue Origin was launching a rocket called New Shepard at one point, did they ever get anywhere with that? I was under the impression Blue Origin was more like a Virgin Galactic type of company.
Blue Origin built a massive rocket factory, and a massive rocket engine factory. It's hard to overstate just how much bigger the company is than Virgin Galactic, they have spent billions on infrastructure alone. Blue's payroll for a quarter is probably much more than the total investment into Virgin Galactic to date.
However, because Blue doesn't release a lot to the press about things they have that are not flying yet, and because they've had a lot of delays with their engines, pushing the whole project back, there is very little in visible results. It's sort of a running joke among rocket watchers that tomorrow Blue is going to open the doors, roll out a massive rocket and launch it into orbit. It's just that it's always tomorrow, not today.
Given how Bezos is willing to keep investing into Blue, someday that tomorrow will come.
>Given how Bezos is willing to keep investing into Blue, someday that tomorrow will come.
I hope Blue Origin succeeds, but Jeff’s investment and attention by no means guarantees success. The Fire Phone was a similarly enormous, exorbitantly-expensive, and secretive project that ultimately failed utterly. In that case, from my perspective as someone who was there, it was Bezos’s fixation on a particular solution (3D display, hand tracking) and refusal to consider or solicit contrary feedback that doomed the product. I worry about a similar outcome for Blue Origin. I hope I’m wrong.
I am not very well informed on these things, but is it comparable?
The Fire Phone seems to have lived a pretty short life from launch to death (it was announced in 2014 and canceled in 2015). Even accounting for a few years of development, it seems a different scale from BO, which has been running for 20 years.
I suppose at some point if they continue there will be a rocket. Just wonder how relevant it will be when SpaceX has already landed a Starship on Mars. I really wish them some success but I'm of the opinion at this point that Blue Origin is just a play around company and am surprised NASA even considers or takes them seriously.
They're having more results shipping engines at the moment than whole vehicles -- their BE-4 engines are projected for use on both New Glenn and ULA's somewhat smaller Vulcan, and they've shipped a couple of non-flight-rated engines to ULA which have been fitted to a pathfinder Vulcan stage which is being used to test launch-pad setup and equipment.
New Shepard's first passenger flight may be this year -- but they've been saying that for a while. As for New Glenn, they've built an enormous factory to manufacture it, but aside from the first-stage engines, they're keeping further progress to themselves, for the moment.
No sorry it wont. The Vulcan only requires 2 engines and will have very low launch rate. That is nowhere near enough money to finance what Blue is spending.
Blue Origin business model now and for years to come is selling Amazon stock.
I'm really hoping Blue Origin succeeds, but they're going to have some difficulty if they roll out a Falcon Heavy competitor at about the same time SpaceX gets Starship into production.
Of course, disposable launch providers will be even worse off.
It was my understanding that ULA was a joint alliance rather than an individual company? Isn't it comprised of Boeing and Lockheed Martin among others? Wouldn't Bezos have to buy it from them?
ULA is a 50-50 joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, yes.
So if Blue Origin wants to buy ULA, it has to negotiate with both Boeing and Lockheed Martin to be able to do it.
I have no idea if Boeing and Lockheed Martin would be interested in selling. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin have their own space businesses separate from ULA, and likely view part-owning ULA as having some synergies with their own space businesses, and selling ULA to Bezos could threaten those synergies. OTOH, as they say, everyone has their price, and Bezos has enough money to pay just about anybody's.
Eventually ULA could be so far behind in technology that its worth would be scrap value minus workforce disposal (whoever buys them would have to either stomach continued wages or the political impact of mass layoffs). And Boeing/Lockheed Martin can't be entirely unaware of it, negotiations shouldn't be that hard.
Infusing the existing org with a state of the art rocket/rocket development process has many failure modes (the new becoming "infected" with the stagnant mindset), but it could also work quite well, pairing the "cowboys" who know how to land a rocket stage with skilled "regulation jockeys".
But BO has a much better chance of succeeding without ULA than ULA has without BO and in this situation entering in an alliance of equals would just be silly. The icing on the cake is that the failure mode (stagnancy infection) would also be far more likely in arm alliance of equals.
> Infusing the existing org with a state of the art rocket/rocket development process has many failure modes (the new becoming "infected" with the stagnant mindset)
It is funny saying that ULA might infect BO with a "stagnant mindset", given how little BO has actually delivered so far. BO had a two year head start over SpaceX, but in the same time that SpX has had over 100 successful orbital missions, BO hasn't made it to orbit once. In fact, thus far BO's only paying customer appears to be ULA – BO is supplying rocket engines to ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. Vulcan Centaur is supposed to have its maiden launch by the end of this year; I wouldn't be surprised if it slips to next – but still, for all we know, Vulcan Centaur might make it to orbit before New Glenn does.
BO feels like a Bezos project thats just doing it because Elon is. I don’t think Bezos is really invested in it, more like “yeah I have a rocket company.” credits, at least that is the vibe of it.
So Boeing and LM should be wise to maybe invest or partner up with BO in this scenario. Could be interesting. But ULA still got some good contracts from the military afaik. On the short term they aren’t going anywhere.
That's incredibly unlikely. Blue Origin has spend a huge amount of money already to develop their own orbital rocket. The build a huge rocket factory and a huge engine factory.
They have their own control rooms and the own launch pads.
The literally just spend the last 3 year rebuilding everything ULA already has from the ground up.
All of that would be incredibly stupid if they would want to buy ULA.
So he doesn't have quite enough to buy both outright. On the other hand, both are diversified aerospace companies. If he just wanted their space parts, who knows...
I would suggest that many people commenting in this thread are not allowing for the dynamic if/when Taikonauts walk on the surface of the Moon. That would likely change everything.
For All Mankind is an interesting fictional take on a parallel situation. The series itself is good, but the first fifteen minutes of the first episode are stunning (to me as an American).
Unlikely. It's not going to be that much of qualitative difference, some 50+ years after Apollo, so the question would be "who's Moon base is more impressive". Just some new boots on the Moon wouldn't be enough.
Of course if China will manage to put a kind of a permanent base on the Moon, even some years after USA, that will be quite noteworthy.
I agree, right now the US has been talking about going back to the moon for years and put out a whole series of timelines that have slipped by. If the Chinese made concrete progress towards doing it, I think that would really focus minds in the US. The Boomer generation beat the Soviets, can the current generation beat the Chinese?
Boomer generation started in 1946, they didn't leave college until 1968. It was the previous generation that built NASA and landed on the moon.
Boomers were the ones who stopped the space program and turned it into a jobs program.
Gen X graduated at the end of the 80s and brought new energy into the 90s to build the first dot com and the internet economy, and people like Musk and Beck are the ones shaking up the space industry.
Boomers were involved in Viking and Voyager, but their main contribution to space was the Shuttle and the ISS.
As my Chinese coworkers would say, it's an even bigger waste of money. Given the delta-v costs of landing on the moon, putting a base there, landing personnel and resupply would be enormously expensive. If China wants to spend percentages of their GDP building a moon base, sure, why not?
Even with a heavy payload re-useable rocket like Starship, it'll still be really difficult. Alternatively, the US will build out serious orbital infrastructure and a mars base within the decade.
I believe we have to maintain this by law. Which, of course, means throwing money at whoever stands in the #2 spot, even if their product costs ten times more than #1. This means they have to keep throwing money at the likes of Boeing (which is likely one of the things that's helping keep them alive).
Until they can violate this mandate and stop burning cash like it is rocket fuel these inefficient programs and companies are going to keep doing what they do. No incentive to improve when the fitness function always outputs 100% regardless of what you do.
SpaceX could voluntarily split into two arms-length competing companies, neither of which are as competitive as SpaceX today (because each only has half the resources), but both are more competitive than ULA.
Doing so would reveal that Boeing is supported not only because it's worth having at least 2 launch providers, but because politicians friends have investments there...
That would be interesting and maybe not even unprecedented after the Texas vs Florida build off with starship. It might be hard to replicate the leadership team though.
That SLS program was terrible was clear before it started. It actually lost NASA own internal evaluation by a large margin but because of how the requirements from congress were designed, NASA couldn't not do it.
But while people love to talk about the Shelby thing, its overrated. Congress in general love SLS, its not about Shelby. House Democrats actually pushed for even more SLS budget then the Republican Senate.
Its just a terrible design for a rocket, terrible executed at an absurd price. Everybody involved should be fired and the contractors shouldn't get a new large contract until they prove successful at smaller contracts.
It consumes a perverse amount of NASA budget every year that could be invested in amazing programs that NASA has.
I think it's the sunk cost fallacy. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, even if it couldn't have been predicted when they made the initial decision. It goes double for politicians who not only lose face, but lose political capital as well.
SLS stopped making sense years ago. They need to cut their losses now.
SLS is such a strange beast. So many weird things about it. Its design looks like someone tried to literally combine a Saturn V and the Space Shuttle: in an alternate universe, it might be the design we got in the 70s instead of the Shuttle. They're using rockets that were used on previous shuttle launches for the first few planned missions -- and instead of reusing then, they're dumping them.
It just doesn't feel like....an advancement. It's not something that can get the general public excited about space.
Not just SLS. The whole notion of a "Lunar Gateway" makes even less sense. Like, absolutely none at all.
Its original purpose seems to have been a place SLS would be able to get to, and then SLS would have the purpose of getting to it, in the same weird way that the ISS was a place the Shuttle could get to, and the Shuttle was needed to resupply ISS. Until it wasn't; and now the ISS has no purpose or value. Don't need SLS to get to ISS, so make a "Gateway" that does.
Make no mistake, a "Lunar Gateway" is much worse than completely useless. If you want to go to the moon, go to the moon. If you want to go to Mars or an asteroid, go there. Stopping at lunar orbit, effectively halfway, just costs a huge amount of extra fuel to stop and then start again.
"Stopping at lunar orbit, effectively halfway, just costs a huge amount of extra fuel to stop and then start again. "
Wait, what? The standard "go straight to the moon" mission plan (e.g. Apollo 11) has a required point where you are at a lunar orbit. There's no extra fuel cost to "stop" there; as you're spending fuel to slow down between lunar insertion and lunar landing, at some speed you inevitably are in a lunar orbit and can spend some time there at no fuel cost.
The "Lunar Gateway" is not planned to be in an orbit that would be optimal for any particular, expected lunar landing site, nor as rendesvous for a launch from the lunar surface. IOW, a different staging orbit would be better for any given descent and rendesvous. Stopping at a "gateway" first, too, costs more.
The only useful place for a "gateway" would be in low Earth orbit, with minimal cost to deliver fuel to, and useful for any destination except highly-inclined Earth orbit. Its value there is a result of the radically different character of Earth-launch vs. deep-space transport vehicles, being the natural point to transition between the two. Getting between Earth orbit and lunar orbit is, relatively, trivial, even for a crewed mission in an all-fired hurry.
Finally, the moon is a very specialized destination. There is no value in going or being there, beyond curiosity. Everything of practical interest or value is elsewhere, and a "Lunar Gateway" is useless for those.
I think this is in general how NASA often operates. Dr. Robert Zubrin has made the same criticism multiple times. Missions are invented in order to provide rationale for previous decisions, instead of it being the other way around.
If they want to target an emerging market they should figure out how to get a lot of fuel to orbit cheaply. Starship is going to need a lot of tanker launches and they’d probably pay for extra capacity if it was there.
It seems to me that like any system, the go to Mars plan will benefit from modularity. That’s what the Gateway might offer - multiple paths to Mars are possible.
A "lunar gateway" is much worse than useless for getting to Mars.
A side trip from low Earth orbit to the gateway takes nearly the same delta-V as to Mars. But unless you are willing to take weeks getting to the gateway, you use up most of a Mars transfer delta-V to stop there, and as much delta-V again to get to your transfer orbit to Mars. In other words, LEO-to-gateway-to-Mars takes almost 3x the delta-V of going directly from LEO to Mars.
I play a lot of Kerbal Space Program. It saves a LOT of fuel and mechanical complexity to break up space missions into specialized components. Engines that are able to perform well in atmosphere do not perform well in space, or vice-versa.
So Having a launch vehicle that does a rendevous with a LEO space station, then transfer the astronauts to a vehicle that is optimized just for the function of shuttling back and forth between an Earth space station and a Lunar space station, then have them board another craft that is optimized for landing on the Moon and taking off again, using minimal fuel because it doesn't need to carry the weight of the other components..
It makes designing a mission a lot more complex but at the savings of a lot of components and fuel, makes a lot more reusable components as well. Then when you add the ability to refuel in orbit by capturing asteroids, it really pays off.
Apollo used specialised vehicles too, you don’t need gateway stations for that. Conversely using a gateway station means you cannot choose optimal orbits and timings for your mission, you have to use the pre-established orbits and timings whether it suits you or not.
Suppose I want to send a mission to land on the moon at a site not on the orbital plane of the gateway station. For an all in one mission this is no problem, I can match my Earth launch plane and transfer plane to line up with the destination. With a gateway station the lander has to do two plane change burns, on on landing and again on ascent back to the gateway. If you play KSP you know just how expensive plane change manoeuvres can be.
ISU is a great opportunity for sure, but we don’t have it yet. That would be a great reason for building a way station and a great reason for going to it on other missions. But without that reason what’s the point?
Isn't this more or less the "container ship" metaphor? Forcing everything into containers means the ship carries overhead weight and some unused space, but that overhead is offset by the standardization of everything else in the logistics process.
A plane change can be expensive, but if there's a space station that can supply all the required fuel, who cares?
Any argument of standardization efficiency applies overwhelmingly moreso for a low Earth orbit transfer station. The only reason even to talk about a lunar station is politics: a lunar station seems more exotic, and lunar orbit is easier to get to than the surface.
Once the Gateway is up and running, the PPE element will provide power (in the 60-kilowatt), high-speed communications, attitude control, and Solar-Electric Propulsion (SEP) capabilities. This will allow it to alter its lunar orbit as needed, giving crews greater access to the lunar surface than was ever possible with conventional missions.
So instead of launching the vehicle into whatever plane you need for a specific mission, they’re going to do a plane change manoeuvre for the entire station for each mission?
If it takes no fuel (from being solar-electric powered), and can be accomplished in parallel while the spacecraft on Earth is prepared, why not? Sounds reasonable to me.
Plane changes always require fuel. Solar-electric propulsion, in particular, requires fuel. Its high specific impulse means that it needs less fuel, but also would take many months for a small change of orbital plane.
It uses energy from the sun to turn xenon gas into plasma and shoot it into space. This makes it use 10 times less propellant than conventional systems.
The xenon gas is the propellant. This still comes from the earth so it's far from free. It's just more efficient.
It's not something that can get the general public excited about space
Space is like a sports team: the public gets excited when there are wins. The public is excited about SpaceX because of the company's many wins. All ULA needs to do is post some wins to generate excitement.
While you are not wrong, that doesn't feel entirely true. Every single time I watch some version of the 2 Falcons landing back on earth [1], I get chills and have a tear or two in my eyes. It feels right, it feels like progress and it is awe inspiring. Not that I don't have an immense amount of admiration and respect for everything that has come before and was achieved in the past. But it feels like time to move forward with newer designs, ideas and technology. Especially when SpaceX, BO and others are achieving success with these new ideas and showing that we can take that next step forward.
But saving jobs by itself doesn't bring much benefits. Maybe if you're going to use that experience in a soon to come follow-up project... which with NASA could be very much not guaranteed.
Graft and corruption make sense to politicians. They don't make sense to the country as a whole. Public Choice Theory offers explanations, not justifications.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but was taking a less cynical perspective. I was talking about the “self licking ice cream cone” in that politicians will protect their constituents interest whether it makes sense for the country or not.
It's a shame that the lunar gateway is useless and itself a jobs program like SLS. Since NASA decided not to fund the version of the asteroid retrieval mission (ARM) that included de-spin there are no near earth asteroids that can be brought back to the proposed space station. All it can do is uselessly orbit the Moon, getting full cosmic radiation dose instead of less than half in Earth orbit in the magnetosphere.
In terms of resources the moon itself only has water. But it's down in a difficult to access gravity well. There's no nitrogen. Far, far, better would be fully funding ARM and starting to despin and drag asteroids to the lunar gateway for study, resources, and eventually living space in space protected from radiation and, if you build sub-surface tracks, enough acceleration to live normally.
Lunar gateway is a first space station that will not be orbiting Earth. While current approach is inefficient, I assure you the challenge of building, launching, and operating such a craft will definitely push overall space capabilities further.
That's very true, but you'd have hoped they could have optimized along both dimensions at once - push forward capabilities, and achieve some useful external outcomes.
Maybe. But what does that get us? We'll never be a spacefaring species, the universe is way too big (we can't even explore our solar system in any meaningful way) and energy requirements for faster travel are simply too high. Not to think of all the issues with spacetime at fast speeds.
There are tons of serious problems to solve here on earth, no need for another huge waste of money.
> We'll never be a spacefaring species, the universe is way too big (we can't even explore our solar system in any meaningful way) and energy requirements for faster travel are simply too high.
I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
— Lord Kelvin, 1895
I know - you would think that with sixty-five whole years since the first satellite launch we'd be able to meaningfully explore our solar system already. It only took a few thousand years to fully map and explore the Earth's surface and you'd think exploring multiple planets and billions of miles of space would be 100x faster than that.
That money could be much better spent, like on tanks we will never use.
We have explored our solar system, we’ve sent multiple probes to most planets, done a flyby of Pluto, landed on Mars, Venus and several asteroids, driven multiple rovers on Mars. Put rovers and boots on the ground on the Moon. We’ve extensively mapped almost all the solar system.
Not everyone agrees with you, which is why humans are capable of a wide range of behaviors and investments.
If we didn't have interest in space, there would be no SpaceX, Starlink, Mars rover, planetary missions, etc.
I personally think we're about to reach the terminal generation in 100-200 years with advancements in ML, and we won't be worried about sending human bodies anywhere. Just engines, sensors, and computers.
It sounds like your issue isn't with space exploration but with the human race.
As such you could make these kinds of dismissive posts about every single human endeavour, why just complain about space research?
If you have these kinds of serious issues about humanity as a whole what are you doing to solve these problems that you perceive? It sounds to me like you're caught in a negativity loop and it isn't a good place to be in. If that's the case try and find something that you enjoy or take interest in and speculate about how you could make it better.
> If you have these kinds of serious issues about humanity as a whole what are you doing to solve these problems that you perceive?
I have an on-going list with idea's I'd like to attempt. But I don't have the funding to carry them out. So I have to work, invest my own money with a limited target in attempt to help out.
I've started taking night classes in environmental studies, I daily go out and pick up trash. I don't eat meat, I recycle. I do all I can do. Every day I try to discover new methods on how I can do my part. If I didn't have to work, I could be focusing on research and working to a better environment but that's not possible. I'm doing all I can with the resources I have available with me but those itself are limited.
> If that's the case try and find something that you enjoy or take interest in and speculate about how you could make it better.
As much as I would like to, I can't. It's not like I can self-invest my time when I have to work eight hours a day to just allow myself to live. As much as I would love to start inventing to come up with new strategies, it's not possible. The interests I do have are underfunded, inaccessible without some sort of scientific degree and a life style where you have time for education.
Why we spend a lot of money on stupider shit imo. How many billions of dollars are invested in sports every year? What about video games? Porn? Travel for leisure? The list goes on.
How is space exploration different than these arguably frivolous activities? Should humans not use any resources for things that don't address these pressing issues you are talking about? I believe there are enough resources and wealth on earth to do all of these things, however, I, like you, disagree with how exactly the resources are being distributed. However, I don't think we need to single out space exploration, which I believe has potential for progress and expands human knowledge, as something we shouldn't be doing because of this unequal distribution.
I do agree with your sentiment about space increasingly being for the rich, with private companies and space tourism on the rise. However, I don't think all space exploration is and has to be this way
I disagree that it wasn't so much as an argue but more wanting a debate. I want to know more, this is how I currently see things. Show me a new light, show me the light of how I am wrong that we are not heading in to an environmental crisis.
Retrospectively I do agree that the whole edited, down-votes comments may of been childish. But when people can just walk on by, down-vote without any justified meaning to why the down-votes are, I call them out; I do the same in real life.
<What has it done for the actual planet we live on?
Just about every technical advancement has benefited from space race everything from reducing size of electronics to the rumble strips on the side of the highway.
Well, from a practical perspective, with advanced space travel and space mining and manufacturing abilities we can produce solar shades to counter global warming.
I think there are a few reasons you're getting downvotes, but they're involved enough that few are going to spare the effort to explain.
For example, all three of your last sentences are going to be strongly disagreed with and some people are going to read both a lack of thought on your part and a flawed way of thinking (ie. In terms of narrative, memes, drama) into those sentences and will decide it's not worth trying to engage and instead will just try and get rid of your message/you.
And I'm sure with advance study and research we could collect oil out of the polluted seas, digest litter. We didn't need solar shades 50 years ago. Why are we needing them now?
And just because we need them now doesn't make fair reason to space ventures.
Excluding the childish editorial remarks I made, the questions in which I pointed out are serious and are all pressing issues we currently face.
If they can be involved on clicking on a down arrow, they should be able to invest in to why they are clicking the down arrow. There was no attempt to fuel drama.
I personally find the world a pleasant place to be.
Between our technologies, standard of living, relative peace, pushing exploration etc etc we're most definitely in a golden age relative to any other historical period. The problems we face are such that they relate to a continued and long term existential survival as a race and higher order concerns instead of mostly individual day to day survival for a majority of the worlds population and the fact we've even gotten far enough as a species to face such problems is in and of itself to be celebrated.
Hard times bring the most opportunity :)
And yes I personally focus on multiple different interests to a degree I make tangible impacts in all of them.
Energy is the baseline fundamental for everything. Wars have been fought for this precious resource.
Currently we get it from fossil fuels, which is running out, heavily pollutes, and destroys the natural ecosystem. Nuclear was discovered, but it’s super complicated to handle and radioactive. Renewables are hit and miss, and must require a massive energy storage system in battery or water storage potential energy. Solar doesn’t always shine. Wind doesn’t always blow.
But in space, energy is infinite. For as far as we can see.
The problem is getting up there, and bringing it back down to earth.
But, what if we can harness it? In the form of solar collectors, and beam it back down to earth as microwaves or lasers. We can have vast fields of microwave collectors that can convert this energy back into electricity. Or laser receptors that can convert the laser back into electricity. No more pollution. No more environmental degradation. What you get is pure, clean, energy. All year round, day or night, rain or snow.
The challenges are great. The impossibilities are high. But the consequences of not achieving this is far worse.
Space solar is pointless given there are plenty of deserts with lots of sunshine all around the world that can be tiled with solar panels. Just need a little bit of energy storage.
A more useful one is the extensive of the satellite network which powers our ability to share and collaborate like we are doing now, along with the GPS network allowing us to travel more easily.
I hear you about the enviormental concerns and it's terrible how we are not aware or thoughtful about how all the externalities/problems which are created by new technologies. But to say we should not invest in space tech is a real step in the wrong direction if you care deeply about the environment. Some of the best energy capture technologies will come from our ability to master space travel, as well as the need to understand Terra forming other plants which will help us tackle climate problems here on earth.
Replying to you because their post got flagged (sorry)
I didn’t downvote but felt like this was worthy of a response.
Your whole perspective is a mechanical pragmatic one but the goal of a space program goes beyond that. It’s intended to be aspirational because we are species that wants to be inspired. It’s why NASA dedicates part of its mission to outreach. It’s also why a lot of countries have a space program when they have even larger problems to solve; it’s serves as both inspiration and national pride. If we only care about pragmatism, we might as well get rid of literature, music, art... you know the things that help make life worth living. Personally, I think doing hard, pioneering things to help inspire a populace is worth 0.45% of the national budget*
And from the extreme negativity in your post, a little inspiration might be of use to you, too.
* I also say this as someone who left the space industry to focus on an industry geared towards more immediate problems
The little inspiration it brings is always overthrown by the negatives of the now outside of the whole space venture. There is no national pride to have when say one government decides to screw the country one lives causing restrictions in freedom.
Space will be a great thing, but when those in control of it, also control the damage of the current planet kind of makes moot of the whole two elements.
You could say the whole space venture is for the future, our kids, kids but how is there to be a future if we destroy the now?
I hate being stuck in the rut I am in, 31 and highly cynical. But from what I've experienced and seeing the decaying future gives less hope every day. I try hard to keep an optimistic type of view but it's bare threaded. Knowing that I've picked up four bin-bags daily of trash gives me hope that someday we can all be doing the same and that I've saved the planet a tiny bit.
I too also hope I can create awareness that turn a few heads with a few ideas but then with that you still run the extreme risk of being taken down for trying to promote a good deed.
Again, I’ll ask more directly: do you think 0.45% of the budget will solve those environmental problems enough to offset what is lost in aspirational benefit? I think where we disagree is that you seem to think both are mutually exclusive
I don't think both are mutually exclusive, I see one more important then the other. You see space, and I see environment.
> I’ll ask more directly: do you think 0.45% of the budget will solve those environmental problems enough to offset what is lost in aspirational benefit?
Yes, I do. If that 0.45% pushed towards environmental which helped develop new form of technology that returns well-being to the planet, then the aspiration wouldn't of been loss. Aspiration would return and would wager higher return including hope for humanity. It works both ways.
As like the current example on the front page at the moment about plant based recycling. That's inspirational but has much thought, time and money as of going in to space been invested in to that? Where would we be if did the same.
I think where we diverge is that you seem to assume everyone does/should have the same aspirations as you. As another commenter alluded to, we live in a pluralistic society. That in itself is valuable enough to me to warrant that relatively negligible budget, let alone the fact that more people probably are inspired by space than by environmental science. I don’t think there’s any reason there can’t be room for both, but you seem to think there can only be a focus on one
I'm not sure where your getting that assumption from. Like others have said thinking I want to defund all space programs. No, I am not saying that. I don't see money in such a linear view, all or nothing. There could be multiple projects on hand however as it currently stands there is only focus on one with the vision of "Get people on Mars"
I'm just weighing down to what is more important now:
A lunar gateway, a space elevator. Or trying to harness the sun, clearing plastics from within the ocean? Fixing the planet we are on now, or living in space? It does currently show that people are more inspired by space than environmental science. Anything environmental is declared boring, it is boring. It doesn't yield the same practical results. As I mean you don't see the same result in the same sense as a new rocket, footage of a new planet. But regardless or not it is, which is more important?
Sorry if it was a bad assumption. I just can’t square the two points you’re making. You say we can still have a space program but funding should be less? As in less than one half of one percent is too much? You may not realize it but the there are multiple directorates within NASA and only one is primarily focused on gateway (the human exploration directorate). So it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent that goes to that. The rest of the money goes to other directorates that have priorities that may align more with your priorities. For example, the aeronautics research directorate performs fundamental research in areas that can decrease greenhouse gas emissions from air travel. The Earth science directorate is heavily focused on climate change. If you look at what is actually left over for exploration, to an extent it’s in agreement with your stance that it’s not really a priority compared with the percentage of GDP spent during the space race when it was a national priority. By only giving a pittance of GDP to exploration when it used to be orders of magnitude higher, we’re saying exploration is no longer a priority.
I think the people who claim otherwise might benefit from looking at the actual relative funding.
Space is important, and NASA is important. Human space exploration (which the Lunar Gateway is part of), however, doesn't seem to have much use and eats up a large part of NASA's budget. It's likely that we'd get much more bang for our buck having NASA focus those resources on other projects.
It's strange that many people will happily discuss wasteful NASA programs like the Space Shuttle or the SLS years after the decision is made, but there's so much resistance to even considering that the currently proposed programs might end in a similar fashion.
Thank you for the reply and pointing me the knowledge of such. I'm not American, so if a space agency ever makes the news its is only ever thrown around as "NASA X" "SpaceX Y".
Space really doesn't interest me, maybe it should. So it would be fair to say I am dumb on the subject and I would agree. Maybe it shows in my post. But my interests are on that we tackle those climate issues in the present now rather then waiting for an spinoff for a cure all. I don't disagree that the spin-offs are not great achievements. I want Lasek someday.
Geothermal, Renewable tech and the so is where my interests aim and I just don't see what the current space missions are achieving. Why do we need a lunar gateway? It feels like there is a whole private class wanting space to be their thing.
It would be fair to say there could be a rock on Mars or other distance planet that I dunno, could resolve environmental issue X. But when I see immature posts from entrepreneurs such as Elon, other rich classes such as Jeff, Richard Branson toying with new rocket can achieve turbo flames using precious resources turns me the other way. Especially when they're the ones contributing to the environmental problems we currently live with. That's what leaves me unconvinced. And yes you could say Elon's venture of Tesla is start of the electric car revolution but that should of happened many years ago. But is better then nothing.
It's hard to take a positive stance that space exploration is for the good when we have governments of evil, greed wanting to watch, control and who currently rule the planet that way and sure would love to rule the universe in the same nasty way. Same with technology used as a snooping device, data mining and monitoring for other big companies. How can you convince me that Starlink isn't being used to spy on others? The internet is a waste-land as it is.
I am not saying stop all space exploration nor that we shouldn't fund such programs but there is so much time & investment in to space lately that could be funneled in to beneficial fixes to the environmental problems of the now allowing produce of real technology rather waiting for the next spin-off. Anytime I come across something space, it looks and feels gritty for selfish greed rather then to help cause X of this planet. If there was a vibe of "Mars travel and we are going to work on solving environmental problems too" then I would view it differently.
Lets face it, there has never been true money pushed forward to resolving on-land problems and we let those who destroy off the hook.
If you are interested in climate issues and renewable tech, then some aspects of the "Great Filter" concept [0] are probably in mind, especially those having to do with "Global Catastrophic Risk," [1] of which climate change is one. Others include events sourced outside the Earth such as a large asteroid strike or a large solar flare. These are events of unknown likelihood and vast impact. A space program is insurance against that in that humans might have warning or be able to do something about it one day. No space program means we are on borrowed time.
And I don't double that space programs do not create insurance against such. But from the articles I see, the target is Mars, not stopping an asteroid hitting the planet.
How do you get enough fuel to the asteroid to bring it back if even sending a 'measly' rover to Mars is a multi-year endeavor. Asteroids weight a lot more than a rocket and you need to change their velocity by the same amount
ARM was going to bring back a moderate sized asteroid the size of a small car or so. The reason this works is that there are no deep gravity wells involved. The delta-v needed to move things over long periods of time is feasible if difficult.
To be explicit, the ARM mission propulsion bus, canceled in 2017, is now to be the main component of the lunar gateway program. But it's like putting the cart before the horse with no intention of getting a horse ever. All this talk about lunar gravity well exploration is just sour grapes.
That mission is targeting something the size of a washing machine not a car. Something around 5,000kg is reasonable, but asteroids are denser than your thinking.
This is the low cost version of the ARM program that funding was chosen for. It is kind of marginal because there are literally only 3 near earth asteroids with little enough spin that this design would work.
Yes, but you don't need to use chemical propulsion for 100% of the needed energy -- just a well-timed and well-aimed change in angle to slingshot it off of a gravity well.
Of stable masses capable of analysis in advance to their mechanical properties under thrust. Asteroids are known solely by their orbital elements and we have literally no idea how the specific mass works as an aggregate or bonded entity, under load or stress.
Having created literal mayhem in an unstable orbit of uncounted masses, ie for a giant externality. Next flight up, don't be within a large amount of space nearby in orbital terms, without care. (Maybe. Im not a kerbal person or an astronomer or flight engineer. This is a precautionary question to risk and to whom it applies)
Asteroids are very far apart from each other on the whole. Kicking one off in a different direction with a rocket isn't so different from a change in direction from a (rare) collision, except that it will almost certainly only affect one asteroid. ~25% of all the mass in the asteroid belt is the dwarf planet Ceres, which is only 0.0128 the mass of our moon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)
There’s a vast amount of rubble flying about any which way up there already. About 100 tons of rock and dust enter the earths atmosphere every day, it’s just that space is so vast the chances of any of it hitting a vehicle are quite small.
It could take years for each mission, but of course at industrial scale you could have a continuous delivery queue and processing each asteroid could provide months or years worth of material. Think of each asteroid as a new mine being opened up. These initial missions are just proof of concept to test out techniques. You have to start somewhere.
The energy cost of changing something's orbit is not just mass times distance, otherwise launching a 1 metric tonne probe to Mars would have been impossible. Thanks to orbital dynamics, there are a lot of opportunities to get huge bang for your delta-V buck.
That's a massively complicated endeavor and would require a lot of knowledge we don't have at the moment principally zero G mining and remote robotic assembly (time lags will mean it'll have to be very automated).
The faster you can accelerate them the more dV you get out of each chunk so you want to get them moving as fast as possible. If you're barely tossing them off the asteroid you might need to throw away a majority of the asteroid's mass to move it into Earth's orbit.
A simple first step done sooner is better than a complex first step done later. Also, seems like there's a lot to learn about space habitats just by building another one - we haven't made that many yet.
Most of those things were largely too tiny to count as much more than practice runs for building actual space stations - in that list, the majority were less than 1/30th the size of the ISS - did you see the column on the side listing the cubic feet of space in them? 100m^3 is a ~4.5m box.
So yes, we've put 11 space stations in orbit: only if you count a one-room flying can as a space station. I think we have a few more practice steps to go before we start hollowing out asteroids as GP was suggesting we do next.
That's science fiction with no grounding in reality. You may as well be going on about transporters and transparent aluminium.
Every time a Moon mission comes up, Helium 3 gets trotted out, but it's just absurd.
For one, billions of tons of rock would have to be mined to extract any reasonable amount of Helium 3. Even with heavy machinery and robotic miners operating 24/7, this is a stretch.
But much more importantly, Helium 3 is utterly useless. It was proposed as one possible fusion fuel but then a much cheaper alternative was developed almost immediately: breeding the required fuel from a blanket of Lithium.
Last, but not least: There are exactly zero fusion power plant operational on Earth right now. There will be exactly zero commercial fusion power plants operational on Earth for at least a decade, no matter what new technologies are developed. At the current pace, according to current plans (e.g.: ITER/DEMO), there will be one (1) power plant generating a trivial amount of power staring in 2048. Likely well into the 2050s there won't be many more.
So to summarise mining lunar He3: We should spend trillions of dollars digging up the Moon for power plants that won't exist for three decades and don't need need the helium anyway.
Good sci-fi always has an eye towards the future - we have transparent aluminium now. The whole point of science is to push the boundries of our knowledge.
I just find those timelines hard to believe. We just condensed a 10 year vaccine development and rollout process into 1 year, and that was mostly because of human trials. The reality is that nobody is interested in funding such an effort for fusion.
> The reality is that nobody is interested in funding such an effort for fusion.
Go check out the money being spent building ITER. I won’t spoil the surprise here, just to say if it doesn’t make your eyes water there something wrong with your tear ducts.
In principle, it is in the best interests of every nation on Earth to get together and organise along the lines of the famous Manhattan Project to develop fusion. Throw money at it like we've been throwing at COVID. Multiple teams working in parallel in a race to solve the problem, like the vaccine development teams were. Eliminate the red tape. Cut the bullshit. Get on with it.
The payoff would be worth it a hundred times over. Not just because of cheap, clean energy, but also because the earlier we start weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, the better.
But did you notice my choice of words? I said nations, not governments. Governments do not represent their nations. They represent themselves. And they are made up of a small number of greedy, self-interested, mostly corrupt individuals looking out for their own personal benefit. They benefit from bribes (coughconsulting jobscough) from their "partners" in industry. The oil industry. The coal industry. The gas industry. Not just mining! Even power generation industries have a vested interest in delaying fusion as long as possible.
There is no fusion industry yet, and non-existent industrialists cannot pay bribes.
This is the essence of why governments are disinterested in the future. They're only interested in the bribes they get in the here and now. Oh, I'm sorry. "Alleged" bribes, I mean... perfectly legal donations.
Worse, the scientific bodies involved in the nascent fusion industry, like ITER, have become cancerous. They exist now only to justify their own enormous scale. A growing bureaucracy that benefits only from its own size, not in achieving its goals. Hence the plans out to 2050. The longer the better. Got to think about all the project managers that want to reach retirement age and start collecting that pension without ever having to actually deliver.
There is no possibility of a Tokamak ever producing one commercially-viable erg of energy. It wouldn't matter if every nation on Earth joined in. The entire concept is useless. Even with absolute success at every step, such energy could never get below even 10x the cost of solar + wind + storage, even ignoring all the $billions already poured in.
There is exactly one reason we spend $billions every year on Tokamak: it is a jobs program for high-neutron-flux physicists, to maintain a population to draw on for weapons work.
That is not to say fusion is itself a dead end; just that Tokamak is stealing the funding that could otherwise develop practical fusion power. E.g., the FRC DFD project shows every sign of near-term viability, but is starved for the small amount of money that would take them to fully practical power generation and also spacecraft propulsion.
The project is in "Phase II" development under NASA, and needs just $50m to get to a viable prototype -- pocket change for the Tokamak club.
Precisely. Instead of one sunk cost fallacy after another used to justify ITER and its enormous bureaucracy, there should be a billion each thrown at a couple dozen likely alternative ideas.
I read a paper recently that basically said that the best bang for buck is to just work on better superconducting magnetic tape. Stronger fields make everything better, and the scaling law is cubic!
Even if such a tape is developed but doesn't lead to fusion, we'd have better MRIs and DC power lines as a side effect, so it's not even wasted effort!
Even the best HTS tapes won't make fusion competitive. Limits on power/area through the first wall guarantee fusion will have bad volumetric power density compared to fission, even at high magnetic fields.
It is my understanding that FRC fusion could make good use of HTS tape.
We can still say that no amount of HTS tape, or of anything else, will ever make Tokamak hot-neutron fusion competitive. But that is not a reason to abandon HTS tape development.
Hard problems aren't comparable in that way. The vaccine timeline was "shortened" because the timeline doesn't include decades of foundational work in molecular biology that made it possible for the vaccine formula to be determined within days of the virus' genome publication.
If you postulate a still non-existent fusion reactor, and then postulate an enormous industrial lunar mining program- 150 tons of lunar regolith gets you 1 gram of He3- this might, might, might work out. Most people who crunch the numbers think that this will never be sufficient in and of itself to justify a lunar program, it only makes economic sense if it can piggyback on top of a program that exists for other reasons.
If you want helium3, seawater is probably a better source than the moon. The difference between 150 tons of lunar rock and something like five times that of seawater is probably a wash, even ignoring the expense of gravity wells.
Helium-3 coming from active seafloor vents has something like 10x (to in some locations 30x) the ratio of 3He/4He in the atmosphere. This is so consistent that it is often used as a way to detect underwater vulcanism. Yeah, it's still an order of magnitude less than in the lunar regolith, but we have lots of experience handling seawater at scale, and we have zero experience handling rocks in 1/6th G at scale, so I would probably bet on it taking a long time for the lunar mining to get to the same effectiveness as the seawater handling.
Sci-fi author Charlie Stross had a wonderful take-down of He3[1] a decade ago. It's alas not very technical. The short of it is that there are no reactors, if we do make them they are going to be insanely fantastically hot (a billion degrees), there's only ~10 parts per billion (according to your wikipedia link) on the moon & mining that will be hard, and then we'd have to transport the stuff too.
I'd read something else about the challenges of reactor design, but not sure what it was. I haven't been enthused about He3 since. I feel like the one interesting use would be a Project Orion / Nuclear Pulse Propulsion system, but wow, boy does that seem like an expensive way to do propulsion: what's the use case?
Because it was selected on the basis of what spending it could justify (in particular, that it would give the SLS something to do), not on the basis of the value of any technology produced.
I’ve come to see this as a feature not a bug. To get a significant amount of money from elected officials there has to be a there, preferably their district. SLS was the giant scaffold that allowed for the effective seed of commercial resupply missions to occur and grow. Without SLS’ distributed network of Government friendly contractors and contracts all lined up in an immaculately conceived waterfall the focus would be on the commercial efforts which have to be run a different way to get better results. Imagine instead of Joe Rogan, Musk is spouting off to some committee of crusties. That wouldn’t be pretty, and success means avoiding that conflict in world views by funding SLS. In some ways it is kind of like funding a semi-fake cathedral in order to attract and develop the bazaar you really want.
It's a feature if you're feeding at this particular trough. It's not a feature for the nation as a whole. It leads to money being squandered. The goal should be to benefit the nation, not maximize a budget line.
Is the effort to build a scaffold squandered since it is used to build something but is not the thing being built? I'd rather see economically sustainable off-Earth enterprises built without a scaffold but I'm not so loss averse to take nothing over something.
If the technological advancement is funded by a private entity (whether or not for a profit motive, there needs to be no such justification). If it's public sector you need to at least come up with some public benefit excuse for it, jobs program is a bit of a steel man for the political funding of a science program. If you want your science to be free of that entanglement you should be figuring out how to fund more things like Glynn research ltd.
Well, maybe SpaceX ends up providing free near-earth Starship operations for an advanced ARM.
Basically, launch a probe that goes to the asteroid, spins up to match, collects it in a net/blanket, and maneuvers to meet up with a Starship in an highly elliptical or maybe lunar flyby orbit. The Starship would rendezvous, match spin, load the cargo in it's payload bay, and proceed to de-orbit.
As long as you engulf the asteroid, the spin shouldn't be more than a minor nuisance (e.g. pulsed thruster firing control systems, reinforcement to endure centrifugal loads). You might even be able to de-spin on your way back to earth.
My understanding is that Starship is capable of landing with full 100+ t payload, thanks to the aerodynamic reentry. Also, with no passengers, it could easily spend a few orbits getting the apoapsis from "almost Earth-Sun L5" down to a LEO before re-entry.
Absolutely disagree, and I think the waste majority of space nerds do so as well.
ARM was a mission literally designed so Obama so NASA would have something to do with SLS and Orion. It was a pretty terrible mission that basically nobody wanted except the president.
The actual ARM that they settled on would only pick up a small bolder from an asteroid and bring it to earth orbit. Not large enough to live in, not even close. And not even useful for resources.
Water is by far the most useful thing you can find, and its what makes everything else possible. The moon has a huge amount close to each other. Almost every expert I have heard talk about is, think getting water from the moon is the best way to use space resources early on.
>In terms of resources the moon itself only has water
This is completely false. Just FYI.
There is lots of different useful materials on Mars.
Check out this video by former NASA engineer who has work on in Space manufacturing for many decades:
They're talking about living inside an asteroid that has been moved to the lunar gateway. You can imagine a looped track dug inside, to provide simulated gravity. I don't think that's very feasible, I prefer the "Islands in space" idea from Gerard O'Neill. To provide artificial gravity.
That must be a giant rock that you must carve an internal loop out of.
And then, how much energy would it even take to spin such a huge rock? I think you’d need a new exotic propulsion system just to rotate it. Maybe nuclear or a sustained ion propulsion.
Being beneath the surface provides radiation protection.
Specifically by digging out tunnels beneath the surface of moderates size asteroids, putting down butyl ruber tubes, and laying tracks within. By having the cars on the track go around the curved track an artificial gravity is induced.
But you can stop the space train cars, step outside, and there's no deep gravity well to make getting things to and from there so expensive.
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I'd also like to make it clear that the Asteroid Retrieval Bus, the mission that was canceled, is the reason the lunar gateway concept exists. Having the lunar gateway but not asteroid de-spin and retrieval is putting the cart before the horse without intentions of getting a horse.
>The Asteroid Redirect Vehicle... ...mission was cancelled in early 2017 and the spacecraft's propulsion segment became the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) for the Deep Space Gateway, now known as the Gateway.
I don't know exactly what the OP means but putting something big and sold between it and the sun is a good way to limit radiation. Maybe the moon in this case?
The process of mining helium-3 won’t be cost efficient for a long time. It’s an overhyped material that requires sifting through kilometers of lunar regolith for grams of H3
For sure and I don’t agree with the GP that the Lunar Gateway is useless. Even it just existing and people going to and from the moon will breed new systemic knowledge and inventions we otherwise wouldn’t have or need. Plus having a constant group of people living in orbit around another celestial body is just sexy in its own right.
The moon is a body with enough stuff to sustain heavy industry, is easily accessible from the Earth in a few days all the time, and a gravity well weak enough that a space elevator, or even a rail gun, can be build with todays material science.
Long term all of those make it a very valuable place for exploring the rest of the solar system.
Putting an asteroid into orbit would take an ass ton of fuel, more than is reasonably achievable. However crashing an asteroid into the moon or into Antarctica to mine would be much much easier.
> Putting an asteroid into orbit would take an ass ton of fuel, more than is reasonably achievable.
That's simply false.
First of all, asteroid is already on an orbit...
You can move stuff around solar system with relative ease and little energy if you are patient enough.
For this, you go very far from the Sun (ie. Kuiper Belt) where things fly very, very slowly and then you can use very little energy to nudge it in direction of Earth orbit. You can match velocities and use gravity assists so that the object is captured by Earth.
Technically you can use as little energy as you want depending on how far you are willing to go, how long you want to wait and how precise you can steer the object.
You take a nuclear reactor and you can use asteroid as reaction mass.
Sure we have. We have rockets to get there and we have nuclear reactors to vaporize stuff. Asteroid itself can be used as reaction mass.
The amounts of energy can be as little as you want if you go far from the sun where orbits are very slow and very little energy needs to be used to move an asteroid in any direction you want.
How exactly would you use a nuclear reactor in space to melt stuff? I assume it would be indirectly right?
On earth, the nuclear reactors are radioactive rods that heats up water, to create steam, to spin a turbine, to create electricity. This is like a 5 stage process to indirectly generate electricity. But all the intermediary products are now radioactive.
So in space, I assume you can use the same steps to generate electricity, and then use the electricity to run a furnace, to heat up the minerals to melt it into pure metals.
Or is there some other process of using the nuclear radiation directly in space?
You can use part of it to power electronics and actuators, part to melt a piece of asteroid and part of it to convert it to ions and send whichever way you want.
An RTG is not the same sort of thing as a regular fission power plant. I don't believe they are efficient or high powered - they are just useful as batteries that last a long time without maintenance or recharging.
Also, RTGs have been used on earth, contrary to your implication they are only in space for safety reasons. Russian equipment in the arctic, for instance, has been powered by RTGs.
The point is you don't need huge complicated nuclear reactor to produce practically endless supply of energy in space, which is what the parent said he thought is a problem.
You probably need more energy than RTG but probably not as much as most people think. If you can apply a steady force for years, you would be able to give the required 10-100cm/s velocity delta to even large asteroid.
To what do you refer, that is not a "huge complicated nuclear reactor" but also is not an RTG?
There are and have been fission reactors in space already. RTGs seem to typically be in the hundreds of watts, while the reactors are more in the kilowatt range.
The reactors are not RTGs, and they are definitely a lot more complex.
This is pure sci-fi. We don't have the technology to travel within our solar system in any reasonable amount of time, let alone to bring back and mine an asteroid.
People said the same thing about reusable rockets only a decade ago. Now they're common place.
All the things above are fully realizable in the coming decades, they are not in the realm of science fiction what so ever they are merely engineering problems.
The meta-technology of R&D and socio-economic programs that will make these things happen exists and gets better every day. If a method to perform the needful does not exist, it will given the right conditions.
Again, that is simply not true. The technology already exists. Need a modest rocket that can bring a nuclear reactor to an asteroid and heat up part of its mass as exhaust for a long enough time to deflect it by couple cm/s to maybe 1 m/s.
The only thing you need to do is to be patient. A lot depends on how greedy you are, if you want a smaller one it gets exponentially easier.
Did you read the "Note" at the top of that link? From that it's clear that this is a many-decade project: if it had been started in 2011, it would only be partially done by 2030. That would not be the "reasonable amount of time" requested by parent. Technology will improve, and eventually all sorts of things will be feasible. More reasonable plans can be hatched at that time.
There is huge difference between multi-decade projects and "pure sci-fi" or "impossible".
"Reasonable" is subjective to define, but there are many multi-decade projects running right now so I don't think of multi-decade projects as unreasonable.
Things like sending man to the Moon or building Space Station would have been deemed "pure sci-fi" with the approach of the parent commenter.
with the number of billionaires walking around, it probably can make a decent money as a tourist destination. Especially if there is an option to get down for a walk on the surface. Though it can become quickly at least partially outdated once one can just charter a Starship to make a quick long weekend trip around the Moon.
Oh great, the jet-setting class destroying the earth wasn't doing it fast enough: now the rich jerks are going to ruin the planet & burn gobs of energy going to into space.
What a dark evil Neuromancer 'the rich floating above the problems of earth (that they have created)' prospective.
I don't understand how NASA's manned space program has become such a mess and basically a political football while their unmanned scientific missions seem to go pretty well. Whenever I hear something about SLS I feel sad for the people working on it. Although the James Webb also seems to be a disaster.
Human spaceflight has always been, first and foremost, a political thing. The only thing that's changed since the mid 20th century is that the politicians can no longer agree on where to move the football and how for more than 4 consecutive years at a time.
It's worth mentioning, that manned spaceflight isn't only a political thing.
Counterexamples include huge inspirational value - to the tune of a generation of scientists and engineers. Also there was a period when automatic satellites couldn't be used for even rather simple, by today's standards, tasks, like space telescope on e.g. Skylab. Also at some scale involving human presence into a space project (Apollo) turns out to be more beneficial, science-per-dollar-wise, than doing everything with robots only. And there are other reasons.
Today's NASA is what happens when you give people who don't believe in government control of government. Unlike other areas of government, like say education, where failure is difficult to see a rocket that fails does so with a handy fireball that lets you know just how badly you've fucked up.
I think this is a jab at some or a group of politicians, but I genuinely don't know who -- it seems NASA's problems go far enough back that several different parties/groups have held control of the government and NASA has mostly stayed the same, for better or worse.
>I think this is a jab at some or a group of politicians
Yes, all of them. The last politician that matter who believed in government was Nixon.
Everyone since then has done their best to weaken it, with the result being a country that is unable to build any engineering project larger than a football stadium without cost and time overruns larger than the original projections.
The US right now is in the position of the barbarian tribes squatting in the former Roman Empire. Using the infrastructure build before them, wearing togas and pretending to be Romans, constantly sniping each other over who is more virtuous, while everything rots and falls apart, only it's happening slowly enough that no one notices. We didn't need those baths anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin
That's a pretty terrible argument. First of all 'believe' can not be measured, and the argument that Nixon believed more in government then Obama is more then questionable.
In fact it was Nixon who totally fucked up the manned space program, so your analysis makes no sense in that aspect.
It seems you are not addressing NASA or know much about it, you are just trotting out your hobby horse.
> The US right now is in the position of the barbarian tribes squatting in the former Roman Empire.
Another terrible argument.
> Using the infrastructure build before them, wearing togas and pretending to be Romans, constantly sniping each other over who is more virtuous, while everything rots and falls apart,
As somebody who a deep interest in roman history, it is incredibly clear that you have not studied, and just repeat boring old cliches that every single modern scholar of the roman empire would laugh at.
Ah, fair enough. That's far before my time, so my frame of reference was much shorter.
Can't say I haven't thought the same about where we are as a civilization, and how eerily similar it really is in some regards to the "End Game Roman Empire". I guess we had a good run while it lasted?
There are almost zero similarities between the current US and the late Roman Empire. You could make a case that there are similarities to the late republic, but even that is a fools errand
>Can't say I haven't thought the same about where we are as a civilization, and how eerily similar it really is in some regards to the "End Game Roman Empire". I guess we had a good run while it lasted?
>If it's any broader, then, just, no, not even close.
Apart from Sanders name one Democratic president or major presidential candidate that wanted to re-nationalize anything since the 70s. That isn't some sort of radical socialism, it was policy under the New Deal.
Where is the Lyft of SpaceX? When Uber came along many people assumed only the first to market will be able to take the cake, but as we saw Lyft was able to come in after Uber and play a great complimentary role. Now that SpaceX has proven reusability is possible why can't a couple of engineers there start their own company and compete against SpaceX on these lucrative Nasa and other commercial contracts? The capital required shouldn't exceed what Musk had to put in in early days of SpaceX, roughly equal to Series B of a random uninspiring SV start up [0].
Is Blue Origin failing? Utterly so? Do you mind expanding on what makes you say this. I have no information as to whether they're doing good or bad - I assumed they were doing fine but at a slower and less public pace - but your usage of a clear, non ambiguous critique makes me wonder.
Blue Origin seems to be targeting a slightly different market. I'm not sure exactly what that market is yet, but its public goals have always seemed to lean further toward crewed vehicles than SpaceX's have.
I think it's still too early to be able have an interesting discussion comparing the two companies.
Well New Shepard isn't ever going to bring tourist to orbit but it'll still be much more popular once it comes out because it will be significantly cheaper than the SpaceX offering.
Their launcher is only suborbital which is much simpler and smaller than an orbital vehicle. They have plans for a larger orbital reusable rocket but because they're less public so it's hard to know if it's anything beyond an engineering drawing at this point.
I didn't really mean that it was never coming out just that it was still extremely early in development, lots of steps left between engine and a landing rocket.
The reality is no one is even close to SpaceX, SpaceX went from launching it's first orbital rocket, the Falcon 1 in 2008 to launching the first Dragon capsule into orbit on the Falcon 9 and recovering it in 2010. No launch company iterates or advances like that, no one. There simply is no Lyft to SpaceX's Uber.
The closest private competitor to SpaceX right now IMO is Rocket Lab. They are the only company that has an orbital rocket that has a path forward for reusing the first stage right now. Rocket Lab's rockets are already pretty cheap for launching small sats and when they start reusing their first stages they might be able to get their cost per Kg to orbit close to what SpaceX can offer right now. But Rocket Lab's rocket is tiny compared to the Falcon 9, even SpaceX's first rocket, the Falcon 1 could put more payload into orbit than Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. It's not clear if Rocket Lab has any plans for making a bigger rocket.
Blue Origin is the only other company (besides the Chinese) that is currently building reusable first stages. Blue Origin's BE-4 engine also looks really promising and was designed from the beginning to be reusable. I think a lot of people are giving up on Blue Origin because they have yet to launch anything into orbit and they've been around longer than SpaceX. If Blue Origin does get it's New Glenn rocket off the ground and can recover and reuse the first stage they have a good chance of being cost competitive with the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy.
The reality though is if SpaceX is successful with their Starship/Superheavy project they will be so far ahead in the cost/reusability department it will take a competitor a decade or more to catch up. Keep in mind part of what makes Starship even possible is the Raptor engine which SpaceX started developing in 2009. It's likely SpaceX has spent hundreds of millions of dollars just developing the Raptor, the Air Force chipped in over $40 million to the Raptor program at one point and SpaceX has built over 30 Raptors already at a cost of about $1 million a piece.
Rocketlab is trying to carve a niche with smaller payloads -quicker to orbit clients. This is why their rocket is smaller. If you have a small payload and you don't want to wait for a ride on a Falcon 9, you go to them.
Designing and flying a Falcon 9 competitor is a very risky proposition. They would start heavily behind SpaceX and with Falcon 9 proven record, it's doubtful they could ever win that fight.
Are there many companies that tried to do what SpaceX did but failed? I think the current incumbents are more like Sidecar and GetAround than Lyft tbh.
Exactly. The author of the comment you're replying to doesn't seem to be familiar at all with the commercial launch industry, which, even putting SpaceX aside, has more innovation and competition than ever before.
Blue Origin (New Glenn), Rocketlab (Electron), China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (Long March 8), Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (Long March 6), Landscape (Zhuque-2), iSpace (Hyperbola-2), Roscosmos (Amur), ArianeGroup (Themis), United Launch Alliance (Vulcan Centaur, reusable engines only), Indian Space Research Organisation (RLV, aiming for two stages and a winged shuttle)
I might still be missing a few. SpaceX has a head start but absolutely everyone else is looking at them and thinking "If we don't catch up to that, SpaceX is going to eat this market."
If you measure by amount of space craft or tons to orbit, SpaceX is so utterly dominate its not even funny. More then 50% global tons to orbit and SpaceX themselves are already the largest operate of satellites.
Not only are they the largest sat operator, they are also growing faster then anybody.
Amount of launches is a terrible metric because is counts a 200kg RocketLab launch the same as a 20 ton SpaceX launch.
Drawing the line between private/public/government is kinda tricky. The way I understand CALT and CASTC is that they are government owned enterprises as opposed to a government agency like NASA. Maybe its a distinction without a difference, especially when their contracts are all government and presumably their "profits" go back to government as the owner?
I agree. The point I was hoping to get at is that most people misconstrue Spacex being the first “private” rocket company as the first non governmental manufacturer. ULA is public in the sense you can buy stock, not that it is run by federal servants.
Maybe the difference is mostly marketing in that SpaceX seems to make more of its non-governmental identity than many other US companies and within the US other companies, if thought of at all, are thought as part of their linguistic or national heritage. Like Arianespace "is" French or any *cosmos "is" Russian.
I was thinking that SpaceX seems more private because they have a seemingly valid consumer market with StarLink, but how different is that from Hughes, HughesNet, EchoStar and Dish Network? Ok, Hughes didn't build their own rockets but they still had to pay for them.
SpaceX is neither the first nor the last entity to build reusable rockets. It's the most successful one, by far, but now that's it's shown to be commercially doable every launch provider on the planet has a roadmap to (partial) reusability. It's going to be a very crowded space.
They are so many years ahead that it is a totally different league (and will stay this way for many years).
By the time other launch providers get to reusability SpaceX will probably be already flying Starship, decreasing price even further along with other advancements.
A great thing rocket lab has done is demonstrate the feasibility of electric fuel pumps which dramatically simplify rocket engine design. Raptor is a breakthrough work of art obviously but the Rutherford engine lowers the barrier to entry for at least beginning the propulsion conversation.
The idea of electric fuel pumps is certainly interesting and I guess it works for Rocket Lab, but the idea of tossing out batteries as you gain altitude [0] just feels wrong. Maybe batteries are an intermediate step to decoupling the fuel pump from the turbo part, like the M-B F1 tech [1]?
Between NASA, SpaceX, and various other space initiatives, there probably aren’t enough skilled people available to do the work. It’s literally rocket science.
Every decade there's a plan to return to the moon by the next decade and it always gets cancelled half way through.
I doubt the US can do this any longer as it has lost all the institutional knowledge of how to run such a program since the 70s. I'd go so far as to say that it is impossible to run a successful manned mission past low earth orbit with the current incentives in government and the risk aversion in terms of both cash and lives.
Plot twist: China is just goading the United States into spending another shit ton of money into stupid vanity space projects.
All China has to say, is that they’re going to put the first Chinese woman on the moon by 2029. Then the American politicians will go apeshit and say that they must beat the commies. “How dare these bat-eating orientals try to outdo us? We’re going to show them what capitalism and white privilege means to the world!”
Btw, what the fck is an oriental? Who uses that anymore? Apparently, a lot of racist white people still uses that term. And Senator John McCain kept calling Asian people “gooks” until they day he croaked. What a scumbag.
Then the USA goes and spends another $500 billion on this Artemis and Lunar Gateway missions. Money that they don’t have, so the Fed will just have to print more money to sustain the national credit card.
Whether the project succeeds or not, is irrelevant, as the moon missions really adds no further strategic advantage to the United States. And all the allied partners are just leeching off America’s money printing, to say that they’re also lunar partners with NASA.
Meanwhile, America keeps spending big on their military. They keep sailing warships and aircraft carriers up and down China’s coastline as a big fck you to the Chinese.
Meanwhile, Texas freezes to death. Oregon is starving to death. The national minimum wage is still $8.50, because Joe can’t give the poor people a raise. Infrastructure is crumbling. Young adults have crippling student loan debt. Millennials can’t afford a house, and can’t afford to start a family.
Then 2029 rolls around, and China say: “Naw America, we were just fcking with you. We were just trolling you when we said we were going to put a Chinese woman on the moon. We didn’t think you’d actually believe us. Thanks for the LOLz btw.”
But also, it really doesn't matter. The US has way bigger problems than whether it could launch a successful moon mission for pointless political posturing.
1968, the 2020 of the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy were assassinated, race riots in many cities (much worse than our current riots), general mass protests, a criminal president, and a war going poorly.
There's nothing indicating that this initiative is any more serious. There isn't a space race, people don't care. If this were canceled in favor of any other program (say, relief for climate-related crises), there would be very little opposition.
> There's nothing indicating that this initiative is any more serious.
I think Artemis 1 and 2 are very likely to happen. The hardware for Artemis 1 is fully constructed, they are just in the final testing/bugfixing phases; hardware for Artemis 2 is currently under construction. Probably going to take longer than they plan, but they'll get there. They are politically very difficult to kill because of how much money has been invested in it, the lobbying power of the contractors on them, the international cooperation with the Europeans (who contribute Orion's service module). That is just sending people in orbit around the moon (as in Apollo 8), not landing on it.
I think it is also very likely that something like SpaceX DearMoon is going to happen (probably even that specific mission, but if not that one, some other). The market exists – billionaires – it isn't a huge market, but it is enough to make a successful business out of it. But that is still in the Apollo 8 rather than Apollo 11 category.
Moving ahead, I think some kind of human landing on the moon is very likely eventually – whether or not the current NASA Human Landing System procurement leads to it. If a government space agency doesn't eventually do it, probably sooner or later private space tourism will.
NASA's current goal of 2024 is unrealistic, but I think it is very likely people will return to the Moon's surface within the next 20 years.
We evaluation the plan of its own merits beyond just saying 'didn't work in the past so want work now'.
The reality is a lot of knowledge was GAINED since then as well. This program will be very different then Apollo, not a copy. So the institutional knowledge of Appollo would not really apply and would not be a help. Going back to the moon the way Appollo did is totally impossible now, you could never pay for it and it would be to unsafe.
We now actually have situation that is very different then Constellation and other programs. The program Artemis actually has buy in from Republicans and Democrats, both in congress and in the white house.
The New Space movement has happened. Lead by SpaceX there have been massive amounts of improvements in the industry as whole and in launch in particular. NASA can now get access to a super-heavy class rocket whenever they want at a low price.
NASA has also learned and evolve quite a bit, NASA actually does learn from its failures. The way NASA does contracting now for the most part is quite different compared to the past. NASA now prefers to use fixed size contract with contractor submitted milestones and designs. This is far more successful compared to cost-plus contracts of the past.
Sadly, SLS and Orion are still on the old model. However all the Gateway System, CLIPS (cargo to the moon) and the human lander are contracted that way.
Importantly, SpaceX is Starship is one of those commercial landers and if NASA finances that, going to the moon becomes not just possible, but the capabilities will be way beyond what Apollo could do.
Even if NASA cancels the Artemis program again, if they finance Starship, its very likely that somebody would develop the capability and go anyway.
Being pessimistic is fine, but the situation now is incredibly different then 20 years ago.
It's not clear for me how important gateway is. Many critics say it's not needed for lunar or Mars missions. It means just using more fuel to get there.
There may be some advantages, like re-use ascent modules and risk reduction for lunar missions.
Gateway makes heaps of sense in a reusable spacecraft future. You have vehicles specialised for certain tasks such as ferrying crew from Earth to Lunar orbit and back, and specialised vehicles for landing crew and cargo on the surface.
Starship is trying to be launch vehicle, cruise stage, landing/ascent vehicle and reentry vehicle all in one and has to make huge sacrifices in terms of payload capacity and delta-v to achieve that.
Starship can land on the Moon and return, but it needs a fleet of tankers to refuel it for each trip. A specialised crew transfer vessel (no heat shield, no aero surfaces, no landing legs) would be able to head directly from LEO to LLO and transfer crew without having to be refuelled in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth first. Using Starship to get from Earth to the Moon is like using a Ram 3500 to pick up groceries from the corner store.
> Starship can land on the Moon and return, but it needs a fleet of tankers to refuel it for each trip. A specialised crew transfer vessel (no heat shield, no aero surfaces, no landing legs) would be able to head directly from LEO to LLO and transfer crew without having to be refuelled in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth first
SpaceX is already talking about a few different variants of Starship (Crew, Cargo, Tanker, Lunar Landing). There's no reason why they couldn't come up with a special "Lunar Transfer Starship" variant to meet the use case you describe
I'm sure they will, especially if they ever get to research nuclear thermal propulsion. For the meantime that Lunar transfer ship is Orion with a small boost stage.
Useful for human life on earth? Yes, through scientific advancements similar to what happened with the Apollo missions. Useful for human life on any other celestial body? Absolutely critical
In the long term, they're pretty much the most important missions possible - even absent disasters, Earth only has so many resources, so designing and testing the technology for extraterrestrial habitation is rather essential.
Admittedly, there are alternatives to manned colonialization (e.g. seeding), but it seems rather worth exploring multiple options, considering the stakes.
Just because something is valuable in the long term doesn't mean it's justifiable in the short term. Perhaps the route to colonizing Mars is to develop technologies that have nothing to do with going into space right now.
Perhaps we can focus on quantum teleportation instead?
Solve that first, and then we can easily quantum teleport ourselves to anywhere in the solar system. Then reconstitute ourselves at the destination point. And hopefully your device didn’t make a quantum error during the rematerialization process.
You’d have to send the complement quantum teleportation receiver device to Mars, and set it up there first.
Then the device would have to rematerialize you back into fleshy form from pure quantum information residing in your quantum storage buffer.
Oh and make sure that a fly doesn’t enter the quantum teleportation device with you, as you initially get quantum scanned and dematerialized from Earth.
And you must enter the quantum teleportation device without any extra external clothing on. Since version 1 of the device has difficulty differentiating between organic and inorganic materials.
I was thinking more of advances in manufacturing that would make living on Mars more self-sustaining. Labor will be extremely expensive in space, so extreme levels of automation would be very useful.
I doubt the sort of teleportation you are talking about there could be made to work, but if we assume that it could, it would make Mars more like Antarctica than colonial North America. It would be a place to visit, but would just be a research appendage without its own self-sustaining population or manufacturing infrastructure.
I think the other way around: we don't have the knowledge or technology to even make a reasonably feasible teleportation theory.
Once we colonize the solar system, the next frontier to explore will be interstellar travel. I think research on faster than light travel will be what brings teleportation to us rather than the other way around.
I see no reason to think FTL will ever be possible. That FTL is a trope in SF stories doesn't meant it's an aspect of the reality, it just means that it enables one to write more interesting stories.
So.. invent faster than light travel, go to a distant planet rotating around a distant star, to find a bunch of friendly advanced aliens, that will bequeath us some advanced teleportation technology?
> NASA's budget for fiscal year (FY) 2020 is $22.6 billion. It represents 0.48% of the $4.7 trillion the United States plans to spend in the fiscal year.
NASA uses less than half of 1 percent of the federal budget. If you care so much about budget waste, there are a myriad of other places you could complain about (how about defense or healthcare spending?)
The practical benefits of NASA's science and engineering efforts have been laid out many times in many different places. There are also less practical benefits; for example, how can you quantify the impact that the Blue Marble photo had on the environmental movement? That was only possible because we put someone on the Moon.
Curmudgeons like you will always be around, and those of us who enjoy seeing humanity push itself and accomplish incredible things are happy to ignore you :)
Long-term, humanity will die. That's the reality of the situation, we'll never travel beyond our small solar system, even. We can't technology our way out of fundamental physics problems.
Falcon Heavy is the cheapest kg to orbit rocket in the world by far right now and the largest one.
Super Heavy is only a first stage booster. Combined with the Starship upper stage this system is also called Starship. This system is still in development and has not yet made orbit.
NASA does not just pick some rocket for a huge expensive payload like that. A rocket needs to go threw a complex certification program, have a proven flight record and be well understood by NASA.
While SpaceX hopes to be flying with Starship by the point this would launch, NASA simply doesn't work in those time lines.
Superheavy doesn't have an upper stage yet or even a complete first stage so if they're trying to start soon Falcon Heavy is the most economical option.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is a goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo. It seems a rather obvious choice for a program determined to land the first woman on the moon.
That's good to hear. I always hate when they take a classic movie and remake it with an all female cast. Glad this won't just be a remake of apollo staring amy schumer.
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I predict that the program will end after Artemis flies and they have a plan in place for the jobs it creates