Shuttle Shock - Where Do We Go from Here?

Fiscal studies or shafting the public is the new form of exploration...
We have politicians and bankers boldly going where no one has gone before.
Del

Let's do both. The governments can get to work laying themselves off, and undoing all of the messes they have created.

The private sector can busy themselves with creating jobs and tackling space at a fraction of the cost of what the government was spending.

That's true for deep space, but satellites are always going to have to be launched. I feel pretty confident, that it will be cheaper for the government to farm out launches to private companies, than to do it themselves. We've also got ways to look into deep space without launching anything, like the VLA and VLBA.

I enjoy all of this stuff too. I like getting on line and seeing the pictures that come back from deep space, what things are comprised of, etc. _{No antiscience here.}

Do we fix problems down here first or is space still our destiny?

This is what I was responding to. We can do both. We've got to deal with our problems here first. Roger's not going to like this much, but we can get back to deep space 150 years from now. Space telescopes, long range probes, the origins of the universe.................are all very cool, but they won't mean diddly if human civilization is in the trash heap.

I know I'm preaching to the choir with you.

Well, all the launches that are not military are and have been done by private contractors such as United Space Alliance anyway. So despite all the rhetoric from Washington, nothing changes.

Even the Shuttle was maintained and run by contractors. NASA directed it, but private contractors made it happen.

I very much disagree with the premise of your reply. Man has always been an explorer and the need to advance is still present. As for the comment about there being no profit tp be made, that is wrong. There are resources and discoveries out there that we have scarcely imagined. Expanding our horizons is always a good thing, and among those is the fact that as space now becomes the domain of commercial entities they will do what they have always done, find a way to make money while expanding our base. Commercial exploration can and will do things that NASA and the other government entities can not because they have a different motive. NASA has blazed the trail now other will follow and take the next steps. My hope is that government will get out of the way and allow them to work.

Specifically, what profits await us in space?

The idea that we don't know, but there will be "gold" in them hills when we get there has the sound of pure folly.

Despite the urge to explore, the cost to LEO, let alone beyond our orbit is, if you excuse the pun, astronomical. Before any funds are going to be expended by any private enterprise there will need to be an iron clad business case to make it so, not just wild speculation.

SpaceX and its followers see a potential to serve NASA, but that is a long distance call from the days when three-masted ships sailed the seas for spices and riches. The cost factor is orders of magnitude different.

Instead of spending billions of dollars by various countries on space programs,why don't they get together and send only a few probes to save money.

Well, the race is already over! We already have been there 40+ years before China. Actually, it will probably be closer to 50 years from that historic landing by the time China develops (buys and steals) the technology to do it.

I think China's entry to space is a little different than the Soviet Union as far as what that means to the US, but we will have to wait and see how the next decade plays out.

China develops (buys and steals) the technology to do it.
Don't be so sanctimonious, all the US rocket poineers were Germans whisked out of Germany at the end of WWII and a blind eye turned to any wrong doing.
Del

True. So did the Soviets. So your point?

So did the Soviets..
Yes indeed..
My point was that you were being sanctimonious, with regard to the China.

sanc·ti·mo·ni·ous/ˌsaNG(k)təˈmōnēəs/ Adjective: Making a show of being morally superior to other people.

Mind, I s'pose my point this out makes me guilty of the the same thing.
Del

So, has the argument descended to moral equivalence?

I think not, because I believe the relevance of the morals of one country versus another has little to do with the original point.

However, if you would like I can say that the sins of one does not justify the sins of another. Additionally, the reality of the world is rarely built on a set of morals that are black and white. In many cases we are forced to choose what is construed as the lessor of two evils.

In the case of subjugating German scientists and forgiving any war crimes to gain a strategic advantage against an adversary is exactly that - the lessor of two evils.

If the Allies had not captured those scientists, Russia surely would have and things may have turned out considerably different for the Western world where we live today.

Back to my original point in my post, which I will clarify. That point is that China has not yet developed the capacity to develop its own technology to anywhere near that of the West. Even their new aircraft carrier is simply a rebuild of the purchased ship Varyag in 1998. The same thing is happening with China's stealth aircraft. It is technology chiefly borrowed from Russia with additional information gleaned from the West. China did not develop these technologies out of a vacuum, but mostly acquired them through covert methods.

Launching spacecraft to LEO and beyond is a complex task that involves more than simply the technology to lift a space vehicle to that point. Given China's position as far as developing it own technologies, the task of landing safely on the Moon and returning safely represents a hurdle that is not going to be accomplished in 10 years. Even China predicts that event for 2025 to 2030. There will likely be schedule slips and unexpected mishaps that could challenge that date.

Would such an event consolidate the US public into re-ignighting a space race with China? Probably not. However it will take China at least 10 to 15 years just to demonstrate the capacity to move toward that goal and political winds and public will are a little hard to predict that far out.

If I were to make a prediction, probably the most likely event to move the public will to reengage in the space program would be something like that of the book 2001 A Space Odyssey where compelling evidence of extraterrestrial life and a subsequent bread crumb trail compelled humans to travel to Jupiter.

In our circumstance I could see that as being strong evidence of life on Mars (existing or past), which I feel the odds of that are better than 50%. That might be enough to push us to put a human on that planet.

Jeez.
No there isn't an argument, I don't necessarilly even dissagree with you.
I'm just sayin' what you said smacks of the pot calling the kettle black.
I think I'll unsubscribe before we descend into overthink.
Del

China's entry into space is initiated by the search for another frontier to trade with.

If "little green men" were found, China would be the first to negotiate manufacturing of consumer alien goods in exchange for what would initially appear to be favorable terms for the green men....Should we warn them?...LOL

Shameless traders?

So come the mid 2020's when US and Russia are still just putting astronauts into LEO with Soyuz & Apollo technology and the ISS has been retired, the Chinese will have their own manned space station and be putting men on the moon. That's when Space Race 2 kicks off. It won't be to the moon and it'll be the rest of the world playing catch up to China.

I would not bet that it would be anything that soon, but more like 20 years.

]At that point China will have caught up with the Western technology of the 1980s and 1990 - at least landing a manned spacecraft on the Moon would be a demonstration of that.

That also assumes that the West makes no further technological progress on that frontier, which I find hard to believe. Even the Air Force has now acquired a robotic Shuttle with more on the way. I think we will be still developing technology, but nowhere near the rate of the learning curve of the 1960s.

And just what will the world be racing for in the Space Race 2?

Agreed China's plans are ambitious and likely to slip, but at least they have a plan! Don't forget the USA put 12 men on the moon in less than a decade with 60's technology. I really can't see why the Chinese couldn't do the same 50 years on. They may be behind the West, but its nothing like 50 or even 20 years and they are catching up fast.

Good question and one I deliberately ducked!

One obvious macho target would be Mars.

Given China's appetite for resources another might be a mining base on the moon or in the asteroid belt. That would require some far fetched thinking: Some element we had completely exhausted here on earth or a process that could only be carried out off earth. I read one rather far fetched financial justification for a moon base based on the production of He3. That would assume widespread adoption of fusion power something that always seems to be at least 40 years away.

For mankind it is not important who goes to moon first but what are the benefits to mankind?.

You wrote, "...but what are the benefits to mankind?"

Actually, we already have been to the Moon, but to answer your question on the benefits, you could fill bookshelves on that subject with the return on investment we got on the space program.

Obviously, returning would not yield the same results. We would need an even bigger challenge to push the envelope of technology like we did in the 1960s.

However, we live in a democracy and the will of the people is simply not there to make those commitments.

By Jove, I think I've got it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's sell the Chinese everything they need to get to the moon by next year.

Pricetag- $14 trillion

It was a "small step for a man", not a "small step for an American". That is what Del is trying to point out.

And there is an undefined "we" in the above statement.

Is that something we should be worried about?

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-09/575264.html

Unfortunately, I feel as if, if there are any more space races, it won't be to gather information. It will be to install weapons systems...................systems that are trained on ourselves.

Forget weapons! And why waste additional money to kill from space when we're doing fine here self-destructing...Oh, just give us another 40 years or so...

Our next venture into space will resemble the primitive space shuttles and capsules as much as modern industrial robots resemble Issac Asimov's three law bound 1950's era humanoid robots.

Stratospheric blimps, unmanned probes and ground based propulsion systems (microwaves and laser) are already here, though their economic usefulness may, as always, be sometimes questionable. Economic spin offs are an unintentional result of the research, and unpredictable in their utility and usefulness, but I for one would be happy to buy stock in a company which developed technology which supported those ventures. There are many such companies. (google is your friend)

It is worth more to ship goods globally by aircraft than it is to ship people. This fact of life is often overlooked when using our crystal ball, but it is the answer to those who wonder what profit there might be in space. The idea of a launch in London by a microwave powered shuttle craft which goes into space, and comes down two hours later in Brisbane Australia may be something only the idle rich would contemplate at this time, but it possible.

When it is determined that a thing is not only possible, but you can make money doing it...well, it is only a matter of time isn't it!