The Space Shuttle Atlantis, on its final mission, and the final mission for the program as a whole, touched down successfully today just a few moments ago. Presumably NASA won’t be taking Charlie Martin’s costuming advice for the crew that will meet them at the Kennedy Space Center tarmac.
USA Today reports NASA control saying, “Atlantis is home. Its journey complete. A moment to be savored.”
I’m not sure if James Lileks feels the same way:
NASA is keen to tell you there’s a still a future for sending Americans into space, but there’s a general cultural anomie that seems content to watch movies about people in space, but indifferent to any plans to put them there. This makes me grind my teeth down to the roots, but I suppose that’s a standard reaction when the rest of your fellow citizenry doesn’t share the precise and exact parameters of your interests and concerns. That’s the problem when you grow up with magazines telling you where we’re going after the moon, with grade-school notebooks that had pictures of the space stations to come, when the push to Mars was regarded as an inevitable next step.
Just got hung up on the “why?” part, it seems. Also the “how” and the “how much” and other details. I can see the reason for taking our time – develop new engines, perfect technology, gather the money and the will. It’s not like anything’s going anywhere. But it’s not like we’re going anywhere if we’re not going anywhere, either – when nations, cultures stop exploring, it’s a bad sign. You’re ceding the future. If you have a long view that regards nation-states as quaint relics of a time in human history when maps had lines – really, you can’t see them from space! We’re all one, you know – then it doesn’t matter whether China or the US puts a flag on Mars. It’s possible a Chinese Mars expedition would commemorate the first boot on red soil with a statement that spoke for everyone on the planet, not a particular culture or nation. It’s possible. But history would remember that they chose to go, and we chose not to.
In a sense though, we’ve been marking time for the last 25 years or so, maybe even longer. Arthur C. Clarke, then basking in the fame of having co-written the screenplay to 2001: A Space Odyssey, wrote of covering the Apollo 11 launch as part of CBS’s team of experts, and hearing then-Vice President Spiro Agnew tell him, “Now we must go to Mars.” Needless to say, that mission was not to be – or, it’s not to be for many decades from now. But the Space Shuttle was but one arm in Wernher von Braun’s vision, which is what Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 displayed, though with sleeker technology and a further planetary destination in mind. The Shuttle would take astronauts to a large space station, which would double as a way-station to the moon, and an orbital rendezvous location to assemble the manned vehicle to take us to Mars.
Instead, due to budget cutbacks and Congressional apathy, by the late 1970s, the Shuttle was all that remained of von Braun’s triad. And its service life must have simultaneously amazed and baffled many of the men who kept her flying. After World War II, progress in American aviation moved at a clip that seemed nearly as fast as the jet engine itself. First the Air Force became a newly independent branch of the military. Then the B-29 was replaced by the B-36, which was replaced by the all-jet B-47, which was replaced by the even larger B-52 — which is still flying today. Similarly, the space program in the 1960s progressed quickly from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo. But just as American Air Force pilots are today flying 50 year-old B-52s, I doubt anybody associated with crafting the Space Shuttle in the mid-1970s thought that the vehicle would still be flying almost 30 years after its first launch. But space technology has been in a holding pattern. We couldn’t get men beyond low-earth orbit, and other than the Hubble, we didn’t seem to do all that much — at least when compared with NASA’s first decade. Today, though, that’s all in the past, at least for now.
I got up early this morning hoping to see Atlantis streaking across the Texas sky. It came in over Yucatan.
When Atlantis went up for the last time, it occurred to me that if in the Seventies we had known we were committing to using the same launch system for manned flights for the next three decades, to get the Shuttle’s typical payload to LEO we could have used Saturn 1B expendable boosters and saved ourselves a ton of money.
Not to mention the lives of over a dozen astronauts.
The original Shuttle plan for a manned, flyback booster wouldn’t have prevented the Columbia crash, but it would have prevented the Challenger explosion (liquid fuel vs. dubiously “reusable” SRBs). But when the Congress proxmired the manned booster, the Shuttle became an accident waiting to happen. And in the end, cost more per payload pound than the “expensive” one-shot boosters it was supposed to beat on economic grounds.
Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but somebody at NASA should have seen this coming.
As for what will replace the Shuttle, now that The One has 86′d both the potential candidates, I’m wondering if we still have any of the data necessary to build Saturns. One or Five, either one.
Old-fashioned, maybe. But at least we know they work.
cheers
eon
It is obvious from reading many of these comments that some of those expressing opinions have significant knowledge of the technical aspects of the space program, while it is also obvious that some readers have no idea of the history of the space program, or what they are talking about.
One case in point is that no one seems to remember that NASA constantly lied about how much the Shuttle was supposed to cut the cost of putting payloads into orbit. NASA originally justified the Shuttle by claiming the cost of putting payloads into orbit was going drop hugely, & that the Shuttle was supposed to fly every week with a bare minimum of refurbishment & make all expendable launch vehicles obsolete. Hah!!
First of all, NASA never explained where the money was going to come from to pay for all these hugely expensive payloads the Shuttle was supposed to launch every week – at least 50 launches per year to bring down the “per-launch” cost. Now we all know the true price of putting a pound into orbit is much higher with the Shuttle than with any type of expendable launch vehicle. And the Shuttle requires massive refurbishment by an army of specialists between each launch. Each Shuttle launch now costs somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion (with a B), & probably a lot more when you figure in all the associated support costs.
And NASA even attempted to fudge these cost numbers by not only allowing, but encouraging the makers of Delta & Atlas & Titan launch vehicles to raise their launch costs. The idea was that as the launch costs of expendable boosters got higher & higher, it would make Shuttle launch costs appear to be more reasonable. Unfortunately, the skyrocketing (pardon the pun) costs of US expendable launch vehicles has now priced them out of competition with the Europeans, Russians, Indians, Chinese, etc. US expendable launch vehicles today are excellent, & highly reliable, but no one except the US Government can afford to buy them. Titan was a quick casualty, as no one except NASA or the US Air Force could afford to buy a launch vehicle from the Titan family, so it disappeared.
But now that NASA is out of the launch vehicle business (forget that “heavy-lift” monstrosity NASA is currently supposed to be designing), it is up to SpaceX to show how the launch business should really be run. Barring a major catastrophy in its next launch or two, SpaceX will be “shuttling” US astronauts & cargo to ISS within a couple years. The Russians, Europeans & Japanese are already shuttling cargo to ISS as often as they can afford it.
It will also be the SpaceX Falcon-Heavy booster which will take US astronauts back to the Moon & beyond because it is the best design. Unfortunately the makers of other existing US boosters are so wedded to their bloated NASA-style bureaucracy & costs, that their launch vehicles never will be able to compete.
Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, the Saturn V blueprints have not been lost. According to Paul Shawcross, from NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the Saturn 5 blueprints are held at the Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm. The Federal “Archives in East Point, GA also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents.
More importantly, Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program (KRP). The KRP was an effort initiated in the late ’60s to document every facet of F-1 and J-2 engine production to assist in any future re-start. They even made tape recordings of the engineers discussing manufacturing tricks. Indeed, Rocketdyne at one point upgraded the F-1 to the F-1A and the J-2 was restarted for the upper stage of Constellation.
Restarting the Saturn V wouldn’t be difficult. With modern CAD application, computers, and components … It would probably be able to lift even more. Throw a NERVA upper stage and now you’re really talking about putting some weight into orbit!
***In 1992, AIAA published paper 92-1546, “Launch Vehicles for the Space Exploration Initiative”. This paper concluded that a revived Saturn V was actually cheaper than the NLS (National Launch Systems) vehicle then being debated.***
An overview of the infrastructure still available to support production of a 1990s Saturn V and how that vehicle might be used to support First Lunar Outpost missions can be found in the December 1993 issue of Spaceflight. Imagine if we had done this 20 years ago!
Michael Griffin, a former NASA boss, argued in 2007 that the shuttle had cost so much money and time that it had held back the agency for decades. Had NASA persisted with the much bigger Saturn rockets that powered the moon missions, argued Mr Griffin, launch costs would be lower, the agency would have had more money for science and deep-space exploration, and astronauts might have visited Mars already. http://www.economist.com/node/18895018 … Then he proceeded to screw it up with Constellation because he wanted to build a new rocket.
You know, I’m a little fed up with all this talk about “exploring space.” You know what? You can keep deep space. Who really needs it right now? Our economy is a disaster, our debt limit is a disaster, our annual fiscal budget is a disaster, and some people still want to go to Mars. That is just stupid. When Kennedy declared his plan to go to the moon, at least the country was financially solvent. Today, we’re not. We are literally about to go broke and exploring deep space is a luxury we simply cannot afford.
NASA should still be kept open for military purposes, to develop either new offensive satellites or aircraft that fly in our atmosphere and can take out enemy (i.e., Chinese) aircraft and missiles that want to destroy our satellites. That would be a practical use of NASA right now. But as for going to Mars, who really needs that right now?
The Pentagon does not need NASA for any such military purposes.
In fact, the Air Force’s dependence on the Space Shuttle proved to be a bad decision, when the two Space Shuttle disasters put the Space Shuttle program on hiatus for two years each time.
The Air Force has now developed its own vehicle, the X-47B, an unmanned automated space shuttle, which is orbiting the earth right now. Using traditional rocket boosters, the Air Force has put its own payloads into space from Vandenberg for a long time as well.
The Air Force always had its own plans for space, separate from those of NASA. Had it been up to the Air Force, we would have had a military space station and military space shuttle by 1970. It was JFK and McNamara that canceled those, preferring to show off NASA as “space for peace”.
So if the only justification for NASA is military, then you might as well shut it down and let the Air Force have the main road to space. The Air Force doesn’t need to depend on a civilian agency to defend America.
“Peaceful purposes” indeed! I remember the televised 1957 first launch of the peaceful Project Vanguard rocket. It went up a few feet, then backing back down into its flames, exploding, falling over — and a poor pitiful little satellite the size of a grapefruit rolling out and lying on the ground beeping.
Couldn’t use those immoral military rockets. Space was for Peace.
The tone sure changed when Sputnik I went up and they finally unleashed Werner von Braun and his military rockets.
Ellen, Vanguard happened *after* Sputnik 1 was orbited. Not only that, but in the strategic plan Eisenhower had, it was *better* that the Soviets went first, because that would justify US satellites overflying the USSR, without a propaganda storm from “the socialist camp” that would have forced us to stop our recon sat programs. Of course, he had not quite planned on the propaganda storm that Lyndon Johnson was able to unleash, and that Democratic Socialists in Europe were all too happy exceed, in showing their governmental programs were a better way to accomplish fast development of Science and Technology.
Thus, Eisenhower had to quickly give in to starting Lyndon Johnson’s socialist style Space Program. The first NASA Charter, and the Act built around it, were written primarily in Johnson’s Senate offices,…by his staffers. Ike tried a bit of political judo by giving in to Johnson. He may have succeeded just enough to get Kennedy the Democratic Nomination in 1960, but not enough to allow Nixon to win.
The sort of man who can ask the question is the sort of man to whom the answer wouldn’t make sense.
Firstly, the original space program to ultimately land on the moon had nothing to do with “exploration” per se though it did evolve to that end with concurrent Apollo landings and the space station and the shuttle. Most nations, throughout history, without strong government backing (pronounced ‘tax dollars’) would never have been able to explore the planet in the 1600′s through the 1800′s as they did.
Let’s for one second just imagine if the Moon was made of —- gold…or titanium…or other precious material. Because, the great nations previously mentioned were looking for profit first. Much of that was spurred on by simple rumors of great quantities of gold and gems to be had. But little is to be gained from space exploration in terms of material wealth and thus, the argument becomes one strictly of exploration and learning.
The trip to the moon by mission end was $25.3 billion dollars.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
Vietnam had, by 1968, cost an estimated $584 billion.http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_did_the_Vietnam_war_cost_the_US
In 2010 dollars it’s $2.8 trillion (roughly). The space program by mission end in today dollars cost $1.2 trillion. The Vietnam War and the Apollo moon program from inception to final moon mission both ended in 1973. (Check my math on the dollar amounts, adusted for inflation to 2010, I think I got it right)
But it’s hard for a nation to support a straight exoploration mission as in Frank Borman’s own words, “It was never about exploration but boy did we want to beat the Russians”. Exploring space for fun and profit is probably not going to happen for the lack of a reason to go short of intense exploration. China going to Mars? Not bloodly likely. That is, except they have lots of American dollars now and might try to go on a whim just to espouse technical superiority…but they’re having so much fun beating up the West with their own money right now, it might just not even be an idea. They’re much more interested in making a huge military with the most sophiticated gear, with all that cash.
Corection: the Vietnam war by 1973 had cost $584 billion, not by 1968, but in total.
I’m 60, so space exploration has been a part of my life. It was sad to see the last shuttle mission end this morning. Our manned space program has given us an edge in technology that no other national effort could have. I hope the private companies now involved in development of manned vehicles will move into the void left by our President’s action to end it all. But I fear his actions are symptomatic of a national “Can’t Do” attitude which will lead to our demise. The Democratic Party has come (fallen) a long way since John Kennedy set us on a course of 50 years of manned space flight. Very sad!
Ed nicely touches on a point I tried to emphasize in my prior story yesterday: “As Lileks wrote, ‘hen nations, cultures stop exploring, it’s a bad sign. You’re ceding the future.’
Watching the back and forth on this issue, a number of trends appear:
* “Private” spaceflight (almost wholly dependent on NASA contracts) are important and mark a welcome diffusion of technology. Whether spaceflight into low earth orbit can work reliably apart from a command economy structure in the long term remains to be seen. Let’s hope so, but lets also recognize it might need to quickly return to NASA’s umbrella if failure marks the effort.
* “Private” spaceflight has zealots on their side who leap to the blogs to defend it. Sometimes they don’t use their real names. It wouldn’t surprise me if some have some connection to the companies besides the idealogical attraction.
* “Private” spaceflight advocates seem to attach exactly zero weight to the idea that NASA provides a national resource that is treasured by Americans despite bureaucratic problems. The problems warrant reducing or eliminating NASA and no weight is attached to the intangible.
* One thing you never heard the private spaceflight advocates mention is who should be managing efforts to get beyond low earth orbit, and more importantly, IF it should be attempted. Obviously Space X or the others are in no position to do so in the near future, so that leaves NASA.
* Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important unspoken consern many have – why the gap? Why was the shuttle program brought a close before Space X was able to launch something more than cheese? STS-135 recognzied this problem and that was why the mission existed in the first place. But what if Space X fails? What then? What if the stockholders/owners decide they don’t want to continue in this line of work (one of the many welcome characteristics of the free market)? What then? Emminent domain? What happens if there is a massive failure of the low cost model after more tests? Do they run to Congress, hat in hand for a cash injection or threaten to walk from the project?
You ask some reasonable questions and I’ll attempt to answer them:
* “Private” spaceflight advocates seem to attach exactly zero weight to the idea that NASA provides a national resource that is treasured by Americans despite bureaucratic problems. The problems warrant reducing or eliminating NASA and no weight is attached to the intangible.
NASA was spun off from the older National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). For decades, NACA did a lot of important work that directly contributed to the advancement of US aeronautics companies. For example, NACA operated a set of expensive wind tunnels that companies could use to improve their designs without the expense of building their own tunnels. NACA also developed technologies to improve the state of the art, such as the NACA cowl that significantly lowered the cooling drag of radial engines and a set of airfoils that were used in many aircraft designs. At no time did NACA attempt to operate their own airline or monopolize air travel.
NASA was created shortly after Sputnik to be America’s civilian space agency. They did a lot of pioneering work, not only on manned spaceflight but also on technologies like communications, earth resources and weather satellites. Unfortunately, once the moon race began, massive funding flowed into the agency and their unofficial motto became “Waste Anything But Time.” As a result, they adopted a large, expensive Soviet-style approach to spaceflight with thousands of employees and a very expensive overhead. Yes, we beat the Soviets to the moon but the program was so expensive that it was unsustainable. That’s why we quit going to the moon.
IMO, NASA would best serve America by going back towards the NACA model. Let the agency focus on developing new technologies for aeronautics and space that will help make American companies more competitive in the world market. A successful example of NASA doing this is the PICA heat shield technology that SpaceX adopted for their Dragon capsule. There needs to be more of this sort of thing. This is how Americans can get some return on our investment in NASA. The Earth observation missions can be transferred to NOAA and the deep space missions to JPL.
As for intangibles, we’re in an era where we can no longer afford that luxury.
* One thing you never heard the private spaceflight advocates mention is who should be managing efforts to get beyond low earth orbit, and more importantly, IF it should be attempted. Obviously Space X or the others are in no position to do so in the near future, so that leaves NASA.
Elon Musk founded SpaceX because he wants to go to Mars himself, not just see some government employees go there someday. He designed the Dragon capsule to function beyond LEO. As for NASA, their project management is so broken that they’re not likely to go anywhere beyond LEO anytime soon (10-20 years in my estimate).
* Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important unspoken consern many have – why the gap? Why was the shuttle program brought a close before Space X was able to launch something more than cheese? STS-135 recognzied this problem and that was why the mission existed in the first place. But what if Space X fails? What then? What if the stockholders/owners decide they don’t want to continue in this line of work (one of the many welcome characteristics of the free market)? What then? Emminent domain? What happens if there is a massive failure of the low cost model after more tests? Do they run to Congress, hat in hand for a cash injection or threaten to walk from the project?
President Bush announced the end of the Shuttle program following the Columbia accident in 2003. The last flight was supposed to take place in FY 2010 but various delays pushed it back to this month. Following that announcement, NASA embarked on a program to develop a Shuttle replacement. Unfortunately, the management was horrible. The abortive Ares boosters and Orion capsule were slipping their schedule at least a year for each year the program existed while the price soared. The Augustine Commission estimated that to complete the R&D on the Ares I booster and Orion capsule would cost from $40-50 billion and the first flight wouldn’t take place before 2016 with further slips being highly likely, and they’d only be able to do that if they ended support of the ISS in 2015. The “Apollo on Steroids” architecture was getting so out of hand that it would’ve cost as much per flight as a Shuttle mission with much less capability (4 people to LEO in an Orion capsule with no payload verses up to 7 on the Shuttle with a large payload.). In other words, a lot of the reason why there’s a gap is due to poor management by NASA.
SpaceX is only one of several companies that are working to privitize space. Bigelow is working to develop their own space station using inflatable modules. Two test modules have been orbiting the Earth for years and doing well. They plan on launching a large manned space station as soon as the means to carry passengers is available. Boeing is working on their space capsule, the CST-100, to support Bigelow and NASA if needed. They’ve done a very wise thing in that they designed the CST-100 to fit on the ULA Delta IV or Atlas V or on a SpaceX Falcon 9. Not only does that give them more flexibility than any previous manned spacecraft (no need for a long gap in flights should one booster fail), they’ll be better able to control their launch costs. There are other designs in development, both manned and unmanned, that use a variety of boosters including the flight-proven Atlas V. One or more of these projects may fail ultimately but it seems unlikely that all of them will. In the meantime, NASA is still pumping billions into the development of the Orion capsule. Congress also directed them to spend billions building a heavy lift booster that will be hideously expensive to operate. There’s also no defined or funded payload for the beast except to carry the Orion capsule, a massive example of overkill.
“Why was the shuttle program brought a close before Space X was able to launch something more than cheese? ”
Short answer?
Because Dan Goldin chose the most technologically advanced X-33 prototype, which failed and because Mike Griffin thought it was a good idea to launch astronauts on a SRB, which also failed.
The manned space program may be at a standstill, but the unmanned program is…well, still going, anyway. Since the Voyager missions, all of the really brilliant discoveries have been made by robot spacecraft. It was a geeky little remote-controlled car that let us travel, virtually at least, around the surface of Mars for the first time. Other machines have rendesvouzed with comets and landed on asteroids. As their engineers and supporters point out, unmanned probes can explore other words more cheaply, more frequently, and with less risk than manned spacecraft can.
Look at the ISS. We’ve got PhDs and test pilots up there humping supplies in and garbage out, unclogging space toilets, and doing obscure little science fair projects that nobody really knows or cares about. While our best and brightest are taking notes on zero-g nematodes, Cassini-Huygens is exploring Saturn and its moons.
For generations raised on computer games, flight simulators, and the Internet, being someplace virtually may be good enough. No need to set foot on Mars when you can stay at home and look at it through the eyes of a robot. This strikes us old-timers as cowardly and sad – instead of Captain Kirk we’ve got some nerdy couch potato looking at pictures on a computer. But I’m wondering if that’s where the space program’s future lies.
Figure out what science you want to do and develop the tools to get the job done. Robot rovers, interplanetary orbiters and space based observatories are doing fantastic science. Put the money in robots.
As for maned space the next thing to do is a full geological mapping of the moon. We need cores drilled 100′s of meters down to get good core samples. This would give us information on how the moon formed and the resources available below the surface. A moon base like to the scientific base in Antarctica could do the job.
Let engineering service the goals of science, not the other way around.
I’m wondering, though – why should space engineering necessarily serve the goals of science? Isn’t that what got the manned space program into its current fix? The ISS is a manned platform mainly for doing science. So like I said, we’ve got PhDs are up there watching bean sprouts grow. Who cares?
The ISS is not for you and me. The robot space probes are not for you and me. They’re for the scientists – all these vast, expensive programs serving a tiny minority of the human population. In the old visions of space travel, a lot more people would be going to space for a lot of different reasons, not just to do science experiments. As long as space exploration is tied to the needs and goals of scientists, the space program will continue developing at a crawl.
Put it this way: The Wright Brothers did a lot of engineering in order to build their aircraft. But the purpose of the aircraft was not to “service the goals of science” – it was to enable people to fly. Why? Because people wanted to.
So why shouldn’t the purpose of spacecraft be to enable people to fly into space – because they want to?
Now for NASA: Muslim outreach!
One Houston newspaper wrote about Atlantis’ final landing as being a “triumphant” conclusion to the Space Program when, instead, it marks an ignominious wimper, of not “The Right Stuff” but of no “stuff” at all, our admission that we couldn’t “get it up” any more (pun intended); our slinking away, tail between our legs, and far more interested in welfare checks, TV, WWW, Lady Gaga, Potato Chips and Beer, and cutting our toe nails.
I agree that the unwillingness to explore whatever dangerous frontier beckons in your particular era is a sign of cultural decay and impotence, however it is concealed or justified i.e. more pressing needs here in Earth, or let the robots do it (say, can robots think and improvise, can they formulate hypotheses and test them, can they cope with or even recognize the unexpected?).
In the case of NASA, layers and layers of ossifying and constricting bureaucracy, ideological battles –i.e. what is the goal of our space program?, the politics of government budgets and spending and spreading contracts to every Congressional district possible (whether they were the best contractors, or necessary or not), timidity and unwillingness to really take chances i.e. unwillingness to absorb the human casualties (especially after the “Challenger disaster”) that will inevitably occur in such an inherently complex and dangerous endeavor and sticking with 50 year old technology, however “updated,” the unending fight between the manned faction and the unmanned faction, and international politics all conspired to doom the program.
Had our lives here in the U.S. and on our planet depended on getting into Space—as we once thought they did when the Soviet Union threatened to dominate Space, and as they still do today—on staying there permanently, and then moving outward to the solar system and, then, to the stars, had we had a space program that was focused on America’s national and strategic interests and not one that morphed eventually into some sort of UN, Kumbaya, international good will program, we would likely by now have a true fleet of current technology “space ships,” true, functional, and productive “space stations” in orbit, a permanent base on the Moon, and be working full tilt on establishing or perhaps even have a base on Mars by now.
Instead, we have the “truiumphant” end to our space program, and from now on we will be reduced to begging the Soviets or the Chinese for a ride on one of their rockets if we ever want to get back into Space again.
Feeling very old and very nostalgic about all of this. I was in grade school when the Mecury astronauts first went up. Every time one did (particularly Shepard, Grissom and Glenn) the TV was wheeled into class and we watched the launch. It was so exciting and real. The Gemini and Apollo programs followed Mercury in a seamless progression leading to the eventual moon landing.
It looked like the shuttle program would provide the transition to an orbital space station and permanent moon bases to be used as “stepping stones to the stars.” Then it all seemed to go “phffft.” All of that Carl Sagan-esque confidence seemed to evaporate almost overnight. As I tell my students – financial reality trumps everything else.)
Personally I blame “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” How could grubby, incremental advances in contemporary space flight compete with the instant gratification offered by special effects, laser pistols and the availability of blue-skinned women? Fictional space travel proved to be much more emotionally satisfying than the real thing. (It’s almost certain that the U.S. will never get back into the manned space exploration business in my lifetime. And I am still waiting for my damned jet-pack!
Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. Could the end of the Shuttle be the end of big-government space programs? Most of the great discoveries and inventions of the past were made by private individuals and groups of investors. Some had government sponsorship, but they did most of the work themselves. I think the American space program was an anomaly – a product of the post-WWII and Cold War “military-industrial complex.” At that historical moment, the government happened to have the technology, the money, and the contractors to allow it to pursue spaceflight. It was the ultimate “big government” program. Now we need a new system based on free enterprise. We’ll get one eventually if the government doesn’t suck the industry dry to fund socialist entitlements like the British, French, and other European countries did.
It’s no coincidence that the Apollo program was cut short in 1972, just seven years after LBJ launched his hideous “Great Society” welfare state. Now the neocons have swooped in and bestowed the perpetual warfare state on us. So it’s no wonder that the shuttle program has now ended. Bottom line: You can’t have a functional manned space program when the welfare/warfare state is bleeding the taxpayers dry.
You want manned space flight? Then eliminate all wealth redistribution schemes, take a chain saw to the federal bureaucracy (start by abolishing HUD, DHS, HHS and the Education Dept.), stop regulating the private sector into oblivion, and end the futile drug war and the equally futile wars in the Mideast. Do all that, and you might just have the cash you need.
And Seth (#9) is hereby invited to join the present day. FYI, next month marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Those that argue about monetary concerns when we just witnessed the end of America as a Super Power just don’t get it. There is never a status-quo. You or either advancing or falling behind. Any civilization that cannot understand that is doomed to failure and extinction.
Space Expolration is the business of government unlike most of what government is involved in these days. It benifits us all by keeping our country advancing and that also keeps our economy strong. When you advance you have what others want and they are willing to pay for it.
We have lost our way as a people. We used to look outwards and wondered what was over the next hill now we look inwards and are more concerned with our comforts. Since we have foucused our efforts inwards the chance of keeping our comforts has dwindled right along with our standing as a nation.
Will commercial space flight take up the slack? You mean will the politically correct, multi-cultural, trans-national, risk averse, private corporation bankroll the manned space trip to Mars? Not without the federal teat socializing the risk. Does Amtrak make money? Hell, Boeing can’t even use a plant they built in Georgia to build the Dream Liner because the feds are suing them for allegedly unfair labor practices in Seattle. But we can afford to waste capital to build a 60 mile bullet train from Bakersfield to Corcoran and ban the Happy Meal in the city of Saint Frances to prevent future fat people. Fat people don’t live long enough to pay taxes for all the other people’s toys that are too expensive to make on Mars.
Don, lets get you back on track, here, with a few corrections of fact.
1.)”Will commercial space flight take up the slack? You mean will the politically correct, multi-cultural, trans-national, risk averse, private corporation bankroll the manned space trip to Mars? Not without the federal teat socializing the risk.”
SpaceX needs to be nothing more than profitable, which it was by 2007. It was already moving along towards its goals, but since NASA wanted a faster pace, NASA was willing to pay for that faster pace. That’s all. The last thing that SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, have shown themselves to be is risk averse, beyond keeping people flying on their rockets safe. Musk has stated he wants to go to Mars, personally. To do that, he must make profits, from the contracts he ahs signed with private companies. He’s doing that. You are presumptuous in assuming he and SpaceX are infected with standard NASA contractor culture.
2.)”Hell, Boeing can’t even use a plant they built in Georgia to build the Dream Liner because the feds are suing them for allegedly unfair labor practices in Seattle.”
First, the new plant is in South Carolina. The NLRB is not suing them because of anything they did inside Washington State, like closing a unionized plant in favor of the new plant. They are suing because they don’t want a right-to-work State to get the expanded business the new plant will serve, and because they want the new business to be feeding the White House’s Union allies, in Washington State. It’s worse than you painted. They consider expanding anywhere there isn’t a WH Union ally to be “unfair”.
As to the rest,..the HST lines won’t be finished, and the fat people can be thinner within 15 years, as long as the FDA doesn’t rule out genetic and nanotech treatments coming forwards.
Don, Ask yourself a basic question, OK? Why go into space in the first place? Its really the same question the Spanish and other Europeans asked about going to America. To make money of course. We’re still going into space to make money – its called satellites. We do that just fine. Military advantage also came into play, once the money was being made. Again, we do fine there – ever heard of a Delta rocket? There have been over 300 of them launched with a 95% success rate. Got it covered. And no, spacemen shooting blasters at other spacemen isn’t what military dominance of Earth orbit is about. Also religion played a part. Which is what the gummit space advocates are advocating by the way. “Believe” in NASA. Sorry, having dealt with them they’re a welfare program for engineers now and that’s about all. Private enterprise will do fine if allowed to profit. Personally Mars holds zero interest to me. National pride and all that I get. But I discount that motivation because I want to own the Lagrange points around the Earth. Once we can get there safely and profitably the rest of our solar system will fall into place. SpaceX and others are doing fine getting there btw.
Don’t know anything about Space X. I do know the current president has a vision issue with America–or lack there of, and I say that with a healthy skepticism about isms. But, if private enterprise is the way to go to get to Mars and beyond with humans–and god bless you guys for volunteering to do it–because private enterprise is more efficient, more innovative, more financially hip and resourceful, then I suggest we shut down NASA. Why are we–meaning the feds, the public sector, the government, the nation– wasting public money funding robotic missions and putting a new telescope in space to replace the Hubble when, according to you guys and the president, you, the private sector, can do a better job of it? If you guys are so good for getting to Mars, then you guys are good for going to an astroid on your dime: you raise the money, float the bonds, the stock, and take the risk; we shouldn’t being using the feds powers of taxation to float your dreams. We should shut down NASA, have a fire sale, and you guys can bid on the accumulated knowledge, assets, and human capital. Good luck.
The big mistake was competing with the USSR instead of continuing the steady advances of the rocket planes. The X-15 was well on it’s way to being a stepping stone to a real space plane then they switched to big STUPID, oh sorry, that’s supposed to read Big Dumb Boosters and threw away any chance we had to maintain and have real space planes and intercontinental sub orbital airlines now. As for why go to space, I remember someone saying “it’s raining soup out there and we don’t even have a bowl.” The resources that are probably in the asteroid belt just waiting for us (or our successors) are phenomenal. Think how great a space station we could have if we intercepted one of these “Near Earth Asteroids” and managed to slow it down enough to put it in orbit around the Earth about 5 or 6 hundred miles up.
re: “near earth asteroid in orbit” also known as a weapon of mass distruction. Ditto for solar power converted to microwaves and beamed to Earth to generate electricity. And we don’t really know the economics yet. I’d like to think it’d be profitable. Not proven as of now. Someone show me the numbers, but its a damn long way to go for iron. Not to rain on your parade, but compare the mass of our planet, its relative nearness and cost of transportation. Think we ought to look a mining the ocean floor too. But that’s just me being practical.
What makes the iron soooo valuable is that it is already up there. Send a robot construction crew up to make a Club Space resort and then just show up and take occupancy. Need an old comet for water, but you could make a huge space station for the price of just lifting a few really sophisticated robots. (and a lot of time)
And still, another Obama Failure.