The future of space flight

[Guest]

18 hours ago, KSK said:

Much as I wish it wasn't, the future of spaceflight is essentially the status quo with some of the companies shuffled around a bit.

Unless transport to orbit really does become close to airliner levels of routine then space tourism will be the thing to do for a while, then we run out of billionaires and the market subsides. And I haven't seen any other sensible commercial model for space flight.

I love what SpaceX are doing and I love the fact that somebody is trying to break the current chicken-and-egg (aka market size and launch costs) loop, but outside of the same old geopolitical point scoring, I'm still skeptical about their future beyond LEO.

They are going to the moon in 2018 or 2019

[KSK]

30 minutes ago, Leftykap said:

They are going to the moon in 2018 or 2019

Like I said - space tourism will be a thing for a while until they run out of billionaires.

7 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

Since NASA has gotten more funding, they're pretty much gonna blow everyone out of the water again with Orion and the new space telescope. SpaceX is going to end up killing somebody with that Moon mission.

I don't see why SpaceX's moonshot should be any more or less risky than NASA's. Orion ain't going to blow anyone out of the water. It'll get its flight around the Moon for political reasons of which I will not speak here, and then it'll be scrapped for being too expensive to run.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, KSK said:

Like I said - space tourism will be a thing for a while until they run out of billionaires.

I don't see why SpaceX's moonshot should be any more or less risky than NASA's. Orion ain't going to blow anyone out of the water. It'll get its flight around the Moon for political reasons of which I will not speak here, and then it'll be scrapped for being too expensive to run.

Wait, NASA creating a new rocket for political reasons, only to be scrapped for being to expensive? Wonder why that reminds me of the shuttle 

[Bill Phil]

5 hours ago, Leftykap said:

Wait, NASA creating a new rocket for political reasons, only to be scrapped for being to expensive? Wonder why that reminds me of the shuttle 

It shouldn't. The Shuttle was an old idea. From 1948, if we're being technical. Older, if you want to stretch some things.

The Shuttle was only expected to fly for a certain amount of time... As it stands, it's the longest flying manned vehicle for the US (the Russians got us beat by quite a margin, unless you can support the argument that the Soyuz-TMA is sufficiently different from Soyuz-TM).

The future is hard to predict. Development for space travel is slow. It took nearly a decade to develop the space shuttle back in the late 60s and 70s. It's taking a while to get Orion/SLS off the ground. Falcon 9 wasn't all that fast, either. Space is slow. The future will likely be figuring out ways to make it cheaper to build things in space using resources already in space. Getting from Earth to orbit will likely remain expensive. But if we can get stuff to space using far less energy and with much less expense, by using materials already in space, we could get some interesting developments.

[Guest]

No, I said it reminded me of the shuttle because instead of doing something like building, say, a moon base, they did the space shuttle, because the government security agency's would pay them to put up spy sattillites etc., and because of (relative) lack of public support, the program was shut down

[HebaruSan]

14 minutes ago, Leftykap said:

they did the space shuttle, because the government security agency's would pay them to put up spy sattillites etc.,

Why would you think that the shuttle was any better at launching spy satellites than a conventional rocket?

14 minutes ago, Leftykap said:

and because of (relative) lack of public support, the program was shut down

The original plan was for the shuttle program to operate for 15 years. It lasted 30 years. If your statement was correct, shouldn't the shutdown have occurred before 1996?

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Why would you think that the shuttle was any better at launching spy satellites than a conventional rocket?

Not launching, but recovery... But better methods were devised before the shuttle's first launch, so the DOD stopped supporting the shuttle.

[KSK]

If anyone's interested, Into the Black is a pretty good look at the history of the Shuttle and its first test flight. I'd want to verify it with other sources but the politics are interesting. A lot of it seemed to be NASA trying to find something (anything) to do after Apollo and the fact that there was national pride at stake - America needed, or was felt to need, some whizzy new space technology to prove that it still had the lead in space post Apollo. NASA needed the Air Force on board to justify the Shuttle and everything else followed on from that.

[Guest]

Actually, NASA was considering doing a manned mission to mars, but did the shuttle instead because of the reasons I stated earlier 

[Guest]

Update: spacex cancelded launch the 16th, moved to the 30th

[Bill Phil]

On ‎4‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 1:41 PM, Leftykap said:

Actually, NASA was considering doing a manned mission to mars, but did the shuttle instead because of the reasons I stated earlier 

The mission to mars was considered along with other infrastructure, including the shuttle. If I recall...

[wumpus]

Shouldn't this question allow multiple answers?  And the problem is that some of them are dependent on other funding agencies...

SpaceX: funded by NASA and satellite companies.  No other funding source for Mars, but does have a steady income launching the most (and cheapest) rockets off the planet.

NASA: both a rocket designer (for limited bits of design, pretty much contractors are going to be doing any actual drawings, let alone construction) and funding source.  Famous for funding most of the rest of the groups on this list.

Blue Origin: Only NASA, Blue Origin, and Roscosmos can both build and fund rockets (and I'm probably greatly simplifying Roscosmos's position, but the list didn't detail Russian operations).  This is a big difference.

Interorbital Systems: cool, but they hardly have the track record for "future of space".  It also looks like they hardly have guaranteed funding.

Orbital Sciences: Ok, I lived in Germantown, MD for ~20 years, I'm a bit partial to these froods.  Still, their gameplan of reuse through using surplus means they really can't lead the way into space.

Bigelow Aerospace: their entire mission appears orthogonal to most of the rest listed (save NASA/Roscosmos) in that they don't build launchers but things to put into space.  You might as well list satellite manufacturers.  That said, cutting the mass of space habitats/interplanetary vehicles is *huge*.  While Spacex is dropping the cost to lift things into orbit, Bigelow may very well dropping the mass of everything needed to bring people along into orbit, and that counts just as much (and multiplies together, instead of having to choose between spacex and blue origin).

SpaceDev: a bit more impressive, but still a group that desperately needs funding to be listed with the rest of the group.

[Guest]

Well, looks like I killed another thread