Nibb31

Not gonna happen. Of course money is relevant. India doesn't have the budget to do much more than a few probes and maybe have a small manned capsule in a few years. They're not going to Mars. Neither is China. If you want something spectacular, it's going to have to be through cooperation, which rules out purely nationalistic goals.

Yep, you can't have nationalistic space race and international cooperation at the same time. It's one or the other and no single space agency has the money to do much on its own.

Why did you create yet another thread about this?

I feel sorry for the poor souls of all nationalities who lost their lives to the arrogance and stupidy of the European ruling classes of the time. The Dardanelles campaign was one of many poorly planned and vain battles of WWI. Militarily, it accomplished nothing and resulted in 100 000 deaths. My great grandfather was killed in Belgium in October 1918, only two weeks before the armistice.

Absolutely. It's more likely see them succeed with industrial heat exchange technology and a multi-stage launcher than with an over-ambitious SSTO that doesn't make any sort of economical sense. It's not a set back. It's a much better strategy. Which is why I'm glad.

A 747 is not designed to be expendable nor does it have the same flight rates as rockets. If airplanes were designed to fly for only 10 minutes, they would be much cheaper. Rockets that are designed to be expendable and mass produced are "relatively" cheap compared to rockets that are designed to be reused and built in smaller numbers. I know that you're fond of analogies, so here's another one: If you are throwing a party once a year with 50 people, it makes sense to buy paper cups and disposable napkins. If you have a restaurant with 50 people every night, it probably makes sense to buy proper glasses, and depending on other factors, it might still be more economical to keep the paper napkins. My point here is that reusability is not automatically cheaper. The final operating cost depends on plenty of other economical factors. Thanks for that press release. I'm glad to see REL finally admit that an SSTO Skylon is not realistic at this point. A multi-stage vehicle makes much more sense technically. I'm still not sure if it makes sense industrially, but we'll see.

Can you even have a discussion without resorting to strawmen ? You're right, we can't predict the future. That also means that we shouldn't be shaping our space program plans based on stuff that might or might not exist in the future. We should be doing stuff that we know we can achieve now, with technology that we have now. We could initiate a new round of lunar exploration now, or we can try the ARM mission now, because we have the technology now. Or we can sit around another 30 years until we have developed what we need to go to Mars. - - - Updated - - - It is very unlikely that it will ever make sense to mine He3 on the Moon because: - He3 is not required for fusion. Helium3 fusion is only one among several potential processes for fusion, and it's actually a not very promising one. - He3 is not "abundant" on the Moon. It's more abundant than on Earth, but you would still need to process 150000 tons of lunar regolith to get 1 ton of He3. And you would need many tons to run a reactor.

Technology doesn't evolve overnight either. Major technological breakthroughs (semiconductors, nuclear power, internal combustion, etc...) typically take decades of social and industrial change to reach widespread implementation. Even if somebody demonstrates a warp field or postive-balance fusion tomorrow, we won't be seeing actual warp-powered spacecraft or fusion power plants before 30 or 40 years, because that's the amount of time that is needed for technologies like that to reach a useful TRL. And even then, there are very little chances that we actually get a sudden breakthrough. The law of diminishing returns applies to science too. 100 years ago, it was possible for single scientists like Marie Curie, Pasteur, or Einstein to make major discoveries pretty much on their own. Nowadays, research needs large teams, complex equipment, and huge resources, and the results are much less spectacular. A Zephram Cochrane inventing a warp drive in his garage isn't very likely. We know a lot more about the universe than we did 50 years ago, so the probabilities of completely turning our understanding of physics upside down are slimmer. It's actually less likely to discover a game-changing new technology today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. No need for a crystal ball. - - - Updated - - - Why would asteroids be easier to mine than, for example, the Moon?

Actually comparing the world of the 1960's with the world of today is pretty bad too. It was a different time, with a lot less bureaucracy, a lot less people in charge of design, and unlimited resources in order to beat the Soviets. Humanity was on the brink of self-destructing. Today is a very different world, where large projects typically take a lot longer, with more documentation, more committees, smaller budgets and higher cost, because everything is infinitely more complex. No, if anything, exploration might be a tool used to prepare colonization, not the other way round, but you can also have one without the other. They are two different things. NASA has a goal of exploration and scientific research. It does not have a mandate for colonization. There is no political push or towards colonization. There is no social demand for colonization. Elon Musk isn't God. He has accomplished a lot, but colonization is not a goal for a single man or even a company. It's a choice of society, and society doesn't give a *crap* about space colonies. Why would any organization want to spend massive amounts of money to establish colonies that would ultimately demand independence as soon as they become self-sustaining? And why would people want to emigrate to raise their children in hab modules or underground bunkers in a deadly environment that will kill them instantly if technical glitch occurs? Forget colonization, it is not going to happen. Please do not use that word if you are trying to have a constructive discussion anchored in reality. - - - Updated - - - Space is and always will be expensive. If you ignore the economical, social, and political factors, you're not going anywhere either. They are just as real as the engineering factors, and in some cases, more difficult to work around.

There aren't many non-profits that can throw billions away "because". And no, not even Musk.

The problem with a private program is that it needs a viable business plan to justify the investment, and there simply is no viable business plan for anything except for comsats and government contracts.

If and when asteroids are mined for resources, it will still be mainly robotic activity. There might be a need for some short manned EVA maintenance missions, but any commercial activity will want to avoid super-expensive manned presence whenever possible. There will be no space gold rush with space cowboys and space saloons.

The N1 wasn't "planned to be an ICBM". It was planned to be a Moon rocket. There were ideas floating around to use the N1 to deliver the 50MT Tsar Bomba, but no one really took the military applications of the Tsar Bomba seriously, let alone using the N1 to deliver it. The soviet military considered that one big rocket on one big launch pad was too vulnerable for military applications. Instead they preferred to have a multitude of mobile launchers to ensure redundancy.

I really wish we could drop the Columbus and New World analogies once and for all. Space is not the Americas. It was a totally different world back then, people had different motivations, different technology, different politics, different requirements. In the Americas, you could easily get off your ship, build a camp, and live off the land. In those days, Kings didn't care about public opinion or if they lost a ship. And the explorers of those days didn't even know where they were going. Colonisation was about building trade routes and bringing riches back to the home country. Immigrants had rational reasons to expect a better life by moving there. Colonisation also ended up by backfiring against all of the nations that practiced it. None of the analogies with modern space exploration are applicable, so please let's finally stop using Columbus and the Far West as examples of how we should colonize space. Mars is out of the question for now. The OP is between the Moon and ARM, which are both within reach with current technology and SLS/Orion. Both simply require the development of a mission module (either a Lunar Lander or the ARM SEP spacecraft) which would be possible within 10 years from now. Development of a Mars spacecraft is simply a much larger project which is at least 20 years away. So what do we do until then? Sit around and look at SLS sitting in a hangar? - - - Updated - - - Human exploration is not the same thing as a colony. It's not a technicality. Colonies are science fiction at this point. They are not something that will happen in the next century at least, because there are no rational reasons for any organization to build a colony or for any individuals to sell their house to buy a ticket to emigrate. A colony would only be sustainable at a huge cost and there is zero return on investment in building a colony anywhere. There is no political will or public support or commercial motivation. It is not happening. Please, let's stop using that word.

There were a few Saturn Vs, Saturn 1Bs, and Apollo CSMs left at the end of the Apollo program, but they were out of LMs. What was left was transferred to the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) for the Skylab missions and ASTP. Then it was it. I think they flew all the Saturn 1Bs, and then they had nothing left to put on top of the leftover Saturn Vs. So one is at KSC, the other is at JSC.

Constellation as in "Let's tell NASA to go to the Moon but don't give them money to actually do it" had some merit as a PR stunt. Constellation as in "Let's build these deeply flawed rockets that are designed to make our contractors happy" had to be put to death without mercy. Constellation was supposed to be Apollo on steroids. SLS is Constellation on life support.

Yes, costs go down when the number of launches goes up. Reducing launch costs is about economies of scale more than reusability. Reusability is just one way of doing it, and mass-production is another, but those only make sense if demand increases dramatically. To break the vicious circle, you have to start somewhere. Will reducing the price of a launch by 10% increase the global launch market volume by more than 10%? SpaceX is already a lean machine. It's set up to be about as low-cost as a launch operator can be without taking too many risks. I'm pretty sure that haven't overhired in the janitor department.

The sole reason for the existence of the ARM mission is to give something for Orion to do. There is no other rationale for it. The scientific goals of the ARM can be reached without any manned presence for a fraction of the cost. Grabbing a small rock and moving it around is a stunt that has no real application in terms of mining or asteroid avoidance. Orion was designed for cislunar exploration, to support 4 crew members for 21 days and to reenter from the Moon. When Constellation was cancelled, NASA was specifically ordered not go to the Moon, so the only mission they can propose under the current administration is ARM. I suspect that this will change after the presidential election. I'm personally in favor of a new series of Moon landings with some critical objectives: - Studying and developing techniques for closed loop habitats, hydroponics, and ISRU. - Studying and developing techniques for using and maintaining exploration equipment off-world. - Studying and developing mitigation techniques around the biological impact of partial gravity and cosmic radiation. The idea of "colonies" is stupid, but these objectives would probably benefit from some sort of semi-permanent lunar outpost or lab facility. Something equivalent to one or two ISS modules would allow long duration experiments to run unattended between manned visits. A lunar outpost would also benefit from some sort of supply-line infrastructure, with a reusable lander, a fuel depot, maybe commercially operated. The Moon is the easiest and most obvious place we can get to. It's within our reach, with a lot of (relatively) low-hanging fruit.

Given that this report is 13 years old and we hadn't heard about it before, that would be a bit of a failure. No, it's just a paper study. NASA does dozens of these every year. Some ideas are applicable, others aren't. The point of these studies is to figure out which ideas are applicable and which aren't, nothing more.

I think the solution is in the software. They need to change the landing trajectory to cancel out the horizontal velocity higher up in order to limit low altitude gimballing.

Professional simulators typically use real cockpit windows and a projected 180° screen that is beyond the windows. That provides a more realistic view.

NASA is not a monolithic structure. It's thousands of employees spread out over a dozen centers working on many areas of expertise such as aerodynamics, nano materials, robotics, hypersonic propulsion, air traffic control control software, exobiology, astronomy. Manned spaceflight is just a small part of NASA's budget. There are people at NASA whose job is to think up prospective papers like this. "A small team at NASA wrote a paper 12 years ago" does not equate "NASA wants to send humans to Jupiter". The title of this topic is misleading.

That's a red herring. - There is nothing that can happen to Earth that wouldn't leave more survivors than a potential Mars colony could support. - We will either eventually go extinct or evolve into something else. It ultimately doesn't matter if we survive as a species. - You don't save a species with a colony of several hundred people on Mars or the Moon.

[Citation needed]

Getting to orbit requires a lot of high-density energy. You will always need some sort containment and expensive handling measures to manipulate that sort of energy. This is why getting to space will always be a complicated and expensive process. People won't have this sort of energy available in their garage or their back yard, because the probability of that energy being unleashed in an uncontrolled manner would be too catastrophic.