The Space Review: 'Racing to where/what/when/why?'

[DDE]

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3893/1

Quote

Unfortunately, the lesson that we seemed to learn from this early experience is that stunts, in the form of “firsts,” are important, perhaps more important than real capabilities. Even today there are those who try to exhort new “firsts” in spaceflight which have become more narrow, obscure, irrelevant, and sometimes downright ridiculous.

Like the so-called “firsts,” the phrase “space race” has persisted long after any such space race existed. Today, “space race” is often used by two groups: journalists who need a shorthand way to describe space activities and/or are too lazy to come up with something better, and advocates and politicians with agendas, trying to provoke a reaction and hoping that they can spur Western space activities by warning of a threat from China. Neither group may have even put much thought into whether a real race is occurring, and neither group may actually care if it is not. Both groups don’t know what they mean by space race, but want a term that they think applies to competition between countries in space, whether there actually is any competition. They know that a space race occurred in the past, and assume that it is happening now, even if the actual events and motivations are significantly different.

 

[Wjolcz]

I agree with this. I never really liked that term being used to describe what is happening right now. However, I do think that space related activity has definitely risen in the past decade.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Wjolcz

[Bill Phil]

Honestly, Apollo was a mistake. At least in the way we did it. 

It was a great accomplishment but it was a program that only existed to prove a point - as soon as it was reasonably certain that Apollo would land on the Moon the budget was cut and further Saturn V orders cancelled.

Meanwhile a much more methodical and capability based program would have served us better. Perhaps space stations and orbital manufacturing/construction followed by dedicated Lunar vehicles - something closer to von Braun’s proposals from the 50s or the Space Transportation System as originally envisaged. 

Essentially we should have developed more capability - starting with LEO space stations, then stations in higher orbits (though the van Allen belts would be a problem), followed by a robust infrastructure to deliver large payloads anywhere in the Earth-Moon system, then a Lunar station, then a Lunar landing. And there’s still room to expand such a system to interplanetary missions.

Shooting straight for the Moon ultimately hurt manned space exploration in the long term.

[wumpus]

I remember a discussion on USENET back when China launched its first taikonaut back in 2003.  Somebody categorically denied that this could possibly result in a space race, but I suggested confirming that with India (I don't think anyone believed that any other nation felt a need to prove themselves this way).

Oddly enough, both SpaceX and ULA are "racing" to be the first commercial vessel to bring astronauts to the ISS.  Winner gets to keep the flag that the last Shuttle brought.  Of course this largely rests on NASA letting one of them launch first (plus, of course actually bringing them to the ISS).  But nobody expects to see either of these expand their military via winning.  Anyone who heard Sputnik's distinctive "beep" knew they were in range of Soviet nuclear missiles.  Without understanding this, you can't understand a "space race"

Musk has stated that he feels he is competing with the Chinese to pioneer space (and presumably Mars).  But a "space race" is all about PR (listen to why JFK "choose to go to the Moon" if you have any doubts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwFvJog2dMw

Bezos appears to feel a rivalry with Musk (see the "welcome to the club" tweet exchange), but that hardly is a "space race".  Also anyone trying to break into the small sat market has to compete with Rocket Lab.  This isn't a "space race", but a bog standard "price and reliability" commercial market.  Being first helps, but also lets others see your mistakes.

4 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Honestly, Apollo was a mistake. At least in the way we did it. 

It was a great accomplishment but it was a program that only existed to prove a point - as soon as it was reasonably certain that Apollo would land on the Moon the budget was cut and further Saturn V orders cancelled.

That's all well and good, but the only reason NASA had the money to go to the moon was to prove the point.  Go listen to Kennedy speech¹: he explicitly says that we choose to go to the Moon to prove that the American way of life allows us to meet challenges that Communism couldn't.  That was the entire reason for Apollo.  Certainly NASA had a roadmap before that, but it was mostly torn up and replaced with this awesome goal.  And the JFK roadmap more or less stopped after we "bring them home again".

Once Apollo 11 landed, that goal was complete and there were other places that Nixon desperately wanted to spend tax dollars.  The Viet Nam war was obvious, and Nixon (and presumably the American public) saw Apollo as a Kennedy victory, something Nixon didn't want to pay for².

Note that the Saturn V didn't quite die with the Moon program.  Skylab was launched on one of them, and both manned Skylab missions and Apollo-Soyez launched on Saturn 1B rockets.  Then it died.  And part of the reason it was "dead dead" instead of "mostly dead" was that the only way it was getting funding was to just go to the Moon.  The thing was never documented enough to build on its own (probably standard procedure for government contracts, to protect the contract) and required extensive machinist notes on the blueprints to complete (although presumably if you wanted to build one badly enough, enough machinists could learn how to build one after a few tries.  A F1-B was printed/built well enough to test fire for SLS).  Another issue was that by 1980 or so we couldn't launch the remaining Saturn V if we wanted to: the countdown routine wasn't documented enough and the original technicians weren't all available or capable of doing it.

Note that this doesn't confirm the "NASA destroyed the plans" myth.  In complex systems, there's a lot of specific know how to get the job done that for various reasons isn't entered into configuration management (probably because there's no system for the machinist to submit them.  Just the engineers.  Also don't ever believe that all redlines are fully captured.  Not on a 6 million pound behemoth).  So we have 99% of the plans.  Which was enough to base a modified F1-B and testfire the thing, but don't try to "build to print" an entire Saturn V.

1.  My speakers aren't working, so I can't confirm that includes the right parts of the speech.

2.  This is 50 years old, and hopefully falls under "history" and not "politics".

[DDE]

59 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Meanwhile a much more methodical and capability based program would have

...not gotten funded in the first place. Unsustainable stunts are an easier sell with politicians.

[RCgothic]

I really would have liked to keep Saturn INT-21. 77 tonnes to LEO for any playload that could fit in a 10m fairing? Yes please.