If Apollo-Saturn was a beginning.

[The Jedi Master]

I've seen a lot of people on this forum forget one thing, the most important factor: money. Going to the moon to plant a flag and walk around isn't exactly profitable. That's why Apollo 18 was cancelled, that's why we haven't been to Mars or Europa, that's why the space shuttle was cancelled. It wasn't because Congress was feeling grumpy that day (though it may have been a factor ), it's because we didn't have the money.

That said, I think the situation is looking up. NASA plans to land a man on Mars sometime in the 2030's, China is quickly catching up, the ISS is still in orbit despite it being planned to be decommissioned a few years ago. The space age will continue.

[Drunkrobot]

Alright, so what is there for man to accomplish on missions? Plant a flag? Take some samples a robot could take at a fraction of the cost? Just lack of "imagination" isn't a good reason why Kryten was wrong.

Manned spaceflight has steadily proven itself through the years that it isn't (worth the money), unfortunately.

Then at what point in the future will manned spaceflight have a practical application? When we want to start sending colonists to Mars? The manned program is just as important as making that goal a reality as the unmanned probes.

Only two areas of exploration had arrived during the modern era, when we had a choice to send robotic probes-underwater exploration, and spaceflight. Unmanned deep-sea probes always go to new depths first, but do so as manned vehicles are built to follow them. The Surveyor Moon probes did the same, going forth to pave the way for Apollo. But for some reason, many people think robots are all that is needed for the exploration of space. These people cling on to the archaic belief that the Earth is permanent, when those same probes that they think is all that is required keep supporting the fact that the Earth is tiny, and vulnerable. The ultimate defence against total destruction of the human race is establishing a foothold on other worlds. Before colonists, and after robots, human explorers need to go live on other planets for a while, so we can perfect the technology we need to live there permanently.

[karolus10]

Main problem with space exploration and science is very large cost and no guarantee for immediate return, often it can't provide no real benefits in Your lifetime.

[Albert VDS]

This thread needs more Neil Degrass Tyson:

[Diche Bach]

I think the points about pragmatism and money are very valid. To be honest, the most powerful drive to explore space (we will NEVER 'conquer' it, just as we have never truly 'conquered' Earth) is wonder, marvel, imagination, elation, curiousity. These drives are common to many intelligent animals, particularly several of our primate 'relatives' and to a considerable extent some of the more social mammals (e.g., canines). These traits have persisted, and arguably elaborated substantially in our own hominid lineage (reaching a perhaps fever-pitch in we humans) because they contributed to Darwininian fitness: surviving, thriving, leaving offspring behind after an individual's death. But these traits only do so to the extent that they afford real material benefits to the individual. Exploring and the curiousity and interepidness that drives exploration can be beneficial to the extent that they lead an individual to discover useful or pragmatic things: food, water, shelter, unoccupied habitats, mates, perhaps even something as mundane as a moment of tranquility, peace or contentment at experiencing novelty or beauty (and yes, I do believe that other animals besides ourselves experience such things).

So in sum, these pragmatic things have always been issues with exploration and define the balance in the tradeoff between self-destructive and salutary exploration.

For about 15 years I was a _very_ active caver while I lived in Missouri and then in Atlanta. By this I mean, I was probably among the 500 most active and accomplished 'hardcore' cave explorers in North America for a few years there. I went caving literally every weekend, often on trips of 24 to 36 hours duration, and even on 4 to 5 day camp trips underground. While being 8 hours journey from the cave entrance is nothing compared to being millions of kilometers and days journey from Earth, I believe it is sufficiently analogous that it affords me some insight into the explorers 'euphoria.' I certainly always conceived of it as 'Well, since I didn't become an astronaut, this is a good second.'

Caving is of course a very physical activity, crawling, climbing, swimming, enduring mud and rock and cold, navigating pitches using technical vertical gear, traversing across chasms, braving low-airspace "water crawls," tight spaces, etc. But it is also a quite technological challenge, starting from the underwear or other bottom layer you wear (wetsuit, 'furry' suit or whatever) to the coveralls, boots, pads, helmet, lights, pack or shoulder bag, food, water, etc., etc.

I absolutely loved it. It was my life and, were it not for the self-imposed moratorium on caving as a result of White Nose Syndrome (something I hope/wish most cavers have opted to do in recent years given we are not sure the role that cavers have played in transmitting the terrible disease from one cave to another) I would be just as active today as I ever was. I hope to feel able to get back into an active caver lifestyle eventually, though if the WNS epidemic does not somehow resolve, I don't feel I will do so in good conscience.

I can tell you that there is NOTHING more exciting in life (not women, not money, nothing) than being the first to visit places that are remote from human experience, and where no one has ever gone before. I have had the great luck to have this experience quite a number of times. Yes, these were just caves, just cavities in limestone formed by water, but they were all marvelous and I can practically 'replay' some of the most poignant trips of discovery in my memory even today.

While I don't believe that most people would ever get into true hardcore caving, nor for that matter any specific form of exploration, I do believe that a drive to explore, to 'go where no one has gone before' _IS_ a species-typical human characteristic. We sate this drive in myriad ways, and unfortunately not all of them are particularly salutary, nor socially-positive.

And just like the other animals, at the end of the 'day,' exploration that does not actually yield something 'useful,' or worse, which exacts some sort of toll, cannot be justified by an individual much less a society.

I'm not entirely sure why I felt compelled to write all this down, nor if it is really salient to this thread . . but well, there ya go! I hope it might be of some interest!

ADDIT: and that Neil deGrasse Tyson clip was awesome! Very inspiring!

Edited August 13, 2013 by Diche Bach

[King Arthur]

I've seen a lot of people on this forum forget one thing, the most important factor: money. Going to the moon to plant a flag and walk around isn't exactly profitable. That's why Apollo 18 was cancelled, that's why we haven't been to Mars or Europa, that's why the space shuttle was cancelled. It wasn't because Congress was feeling grumpy that day (though it may have been a factor ), it's because we didn't have the money.

That said, I think the situation is looking up. NASA plans to land a man on Mars sometime in the 2030's, China is quickly catching up, the ISS is still in orbit despite it being planned to be decommissioned a few years ago. The space age will continue.

Actually, the original date for decomissioning of the ISS was slated for 2016 but was pushed back to 2020 to make up for the severe delays the ISS suffered during construction. It's anyone's guess whether the ISS can garner enough public, political, and financial support to keep flying beyond 2020 though, assuming the station is still spaceflight-worthy.

Then at what point in the future will manned spaceflight have a practical application? When we want to start sending colonists to Mars? The manned program is just as important as making that goal a reality as the unmanned probes.

Only two areas of exploration had arrived during the modern era, when we had a choice to send robotic probes-underwater exploration, and spaceflight. Unmanned deep-sea probes always go to new depths first, but do so as manned vehicles are built to follow them. The Surveyor Moon probes did the same, going forth to pave the way for Apollo. But for some reason, many people think robots are all that is needed for the exploration of space. These people cling on to the archaic belief that the Earth is permanent, when those same probes that they think is all that is required keep supporting the fact that the Earth is tiny, and vulnerable. The ultimate defence against total destruction of the human race is establishing a foothold on other worlds. Before colonists, and after robots, human explorers need to go live on other planets for a while, so we can perfect the technology we need to live there permanently.

Many conditions have to be met and achieved before manned spaceflight becomes actually practical, some of these would be:

* Inventing cheaper, safer, more economical and reliable ways to lift payloads (both manned and unmanned) into space.

* Inventing lighter, more economical, more sustainable, possibly even self-sustaining means of life support for crewed spacecraft.

* Inventing faster means of travel through space.

* Graduating spaceflight technology in general from a "every launch is a test flight" stage to "every launch is routine" like commercial air travel is today. Astronauts, scientists, and engineers all around still say spaceflight is not routine despite us launching so many rockets annually and for so long, and they are completely right.

* Finding a justifiable reason for human presence in space (sadly, the "Earth is not permanent" argument is not noteworthy enough for most of us). We are constantly proven to ourselves that robots are more than adequate for exploring space and performing scientific research there, and quite possibly even in terms of industrial endeavors in the future.

I am under no notion that the Earth is permanent, if we humans don't manage to "kill off" the Earth and/or we manage to live long enough then ultimately the sun will eat Earth whole as it undergoes its last stages of death turning itself into a red giant. However, I am also under no false belief that we have what it takes technologically, financially, politically, and willfully to be shooting off such utopian ideas like a Moon colony or Sci-Fi-style large-scale space stations or manned missions to Mars and beyond.

Take the ISS for example. The ISS took the combined technological and financial prowess of the world's greatest spacefaring nations/blocs (USA (NASA), Russia (Roscosmos), Japan (JAXA), and EU (ESA)) to launch and construct the ISS, and we still only manage to keep just six people (and this is under ideal conditions) living mid-term in LEO with a heavy reliance on resupplying from Earth. Meanwhile, we continually find it hard to keep justifying why we keep sending people into space when our life support system technologies are so inefficient and ineffective, our launch vehicles so primitive on the grand scale of things, and when manned spaceflight can do absolutely nothing that unmanned robotic missions can do already with substantially greater safety and reliability combined with far cheaper costs all around.

In fact, I bet that if we took the time to develop robots capable of handling and monitoring scientific experiments onboard the station (and this is actually relatively easy to do compared to landing rovers on Mars and doing science with them), we would likely quickly find that we don't need to keep a crew of humans on the station at all.

Overall, we lack the justification, the technology, and the finances to sustain any substantial form of human spaceflight, and with the advent of how successful robotic spaceflights have been we also no longer have the will to send humans to space because of one single question: Why?

[PakledHostage]

Something to think about: When was the last time that millions of people stayed awake until late in the night to watch a space event unfold in real time? When even non-space enthusiasts like my wife sat and watched in amazement? No, it wasn't the Apollo landings. It was the night of August 5th, 2012 when Curiosity, a robotic probe, landed on Mars.

Clearly it is still possible for space missions to capture the imaginations of people around the world and, to borrow a phrase from Niel deGrasse Tyson, to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers. It doesn't have to be manned spaceflight to be exciting. It just has to do something new, interesting and allow the public to share in the experience. Given the choice between spending billions to send a handful of astronauts into LEO, or spending the same money to send robotic probes to Europa, Titan, the outer gas giants, etc, I am sure many would choose the latter.

Edited August 13, 2013 by PakledHostage
Corrected a spelling mistake

[karolus10]

Take the ISS for example. The ISS took the combined technological and financial prowess of the world's greatest spacefaring nations/blocs (USA (NASA), Russia (Roscosmos), Japan (JAXA), and EU (ESA)) to launch and construct the ISS, and we still only manage to keep just six people (and this is under ideal conditions) living mid-term in LEO with a heavy reliance on resupplying from Earth. Meanwhile, we continually find it hard to keep justifying why we keep sending people into space when our life support system technologies are so inefficient and ineffective, our launch vehicles so primitive on the grand scale of things, and when manned spaceflight can do absolutely nothing that unmanned robotic missions can do already with substantially greater safety and reliability combined with far cheaper costs all around.

ISS, is not an good example, it's design was largely based on space station freedom which was designed with wrong assumption that space shuttle fleet will deliver all bits in quick succession and for lower cost.

Launching major space station components by heavy expendable rocket (shuttle derived launch vehicles are as old like space shuttle) would be done in only few launches, reducing complexity and cost, also allowing for much larger living space than ISS, especially with trans-hab technology.

[Necandi Brasil]

Great thread...

All of you can still dream... our destiny are the stars!

Unfortunately not in our life times... Maybe our Grandchildren will be able to look at the moon and say "I wanna go there in my vacation..."

We can also expect a major breaktrought in energy (Like fusion ...) to make the world economy go BOOM ... Then we are going to asteroids looking for resources...

[sojourner]

This thread needs an Elon Musk thread bomb.

[DerekL1963]

It's the same with all Apollo hardware--we could do much better with an all-new design based on the Lessons Learned rather than trying to replicate it today, simply because the technology has matured so much that many of the expedients and work-arounds involved in making it possible for us to land on the Moon with, as Spock once put it, "stone knives and bearskins" are no longer necessary.

A friend of mine, a practicing aerospace engineer working on the ISS at the time, once estimated that modern electrical and electronics systems alone would shave almost 20% off the dry mass of the CSM.

(And no, I don't recall offhand encountering anything on the FDAI. And yes, most of what most people 'know' about Apollo is wrong (and it's worse when it comes to the Shuttle).)

Edited August 14, 2013 by DerekL1963

[CoriW]

This thread needs more Neil Degrass Tyson:

Whoa, how come I've never heard of this guy before?

[Diche Bach]

So how the heck did this Musk guy, who never finished grad school, manage to design the first successful commercial space cargo vessel, whereas NASA's first dozen rockets blew up on the launch pad!?

Is he just that brilliant? Or are bureaucracies/committees/govt. projects just that inept? Or is it that there are plenty of experts to hire these days and Musk had the good business sense to hire the right ones and effectively facilitate them doing their jobs?

[Skyrunner27]

Because NASA first made rockets when rocket science was in its infancy but Musk made rockets now when rocket science is much more readily known.

[Drunkrobot]

So how the heck did this Musk guy, who never finished grad school, manage to design the first successful commercial space cargo vessel, whereas NASA's first dozen rockets blew up on the launch pad!?

It takes an Isaac Newton to create calculus, and a 15-year-old student to learn it.

[PakledHostage]

Because NASA first made rockets when rocket science was in its infancy but Musk made rockets now when rocket science is much more readily known.

Exactly. And because Musk isn't building rockets by himself (or even with just his dog), in his lair under his mansion. He's hired people with the knowledge and experience to make it work.

Edited August 14, 2013 by PakledHostage

[sojourner]

SpaceX now has around 3000 employees. Not exactly a "one man operation".

[Diche Bach]

Ah yes, the cult of personality . . . by which I mean, reading about him, you could conclude that HE was actually sitting in front of the computer screen, running the calculations, drawing the diagrams and actually _designing_ the things! What is it about intelligent, good looking and suave entrepreneurial type men that just makes every journalist and media voice go gooey eyed?

Well you gotta hand it to him; he is clearly a sharp cookie and knows how to make good use of being a filthy rich capitalist. What is he on now, his 4th wife and 5th kid (all sons of course!).

Modern day Genghis Khan LOL!

Edited August 14, 2013 by Diche Bach

[DerekL1963]

So how the heck did this Musk guy, who never finished grad school, manage to design the first successful commercial space cargo vessel, whereas NASA's first dozen rockets blew up on the launch pad!?

He designed the first commercial space cargo vessel, yes. How successful it will be remains to be seen, especially considering it's record to date is... less than stellar. (If it were a commercial airliner, it would likely be grounded and under investigation.) So, 'cult of personality' indeed.

[Uncle Mort]

...especially considering it's record to date is... less than stellar. (If it were a commercial airliner, it would likely be grounded and under investigation.)

I find that statement somewhat odd as it seems successful enough to me. Care to elaborate?

[Stinkk]

Falcon 1: 5 launches, 3 failures. 60% failure rate.

Falcon 1e: 5 scheduled launches, all cancelled.

Falcon 9 v1: 5 launches, 1 partial failure. 10% failure rate.

Falcon 9 v1.1: None flown.

A cheaper space launch company is great, but don't let your self get sucked into the hype too much.

Also I personally believe that once SpaceX has a pretty strong business going they'll just up their prices to what the market can bare, like all the previous commercial space companies have done.

[TimothyC]

One thing I've noted is that both the OP and a later post get the status of the F-1 incorrect (the OP more than the other post). When the F-1 production line was shut down, thousands of hours of interviews with people who designed it and built it were taken and recorded. These interviews included what problems they encountered, how they solved those problems, and hundreds of other details about the production line that were not a part ofo the original plans for the engine or the production line. The existance of this documentation is the only reason why restarting F-1 engine production is even on the table for the boosters for SLS - and why, even in early 1990s, it would have been lower cost than developing a single-use example of the SSME and putting that into production. To go further, most ofthe work currently being done on F-1 engines involves testing out replacement materials for parts that we are not allowed to make anymore because of environmental concerns (such as too much Chromium in the alloy). They have pulled an old engine out of storage for some of tests - but it is my understanding that those tests are at least partilly to validate the modes they have been using for subassemblies of the engine. Also, for the record, the engine they have used for testing so far was not on display, but was in storage.

Edited August 15, 2013 by TimothyC

[Uncle Mort]

Falcon 1: 5 launches, 3 failures. 60% failure rate.

Falcon 1e: 5 scheduled launches, all cancelled.

Falcon 9 v1: 5 launches, 1 partial failure. 10% failure rate.

Falcon 9 v1.1: None flown.

Falcon 1 was the testbed launcher, they learnt from the failures. Falcon 1e, the way I see it, was planned to compete in the small launcher market. That market has a number of providers already and SpaceX decided, sensibly in my opinion, to concentrate on medium/heavy launchers. Falcon 9, a big success. Even the partial failure achieved it's mission. Falcon 9v1.1, first scheduled launch is next month. It's not therefore an argument for non-success.

[sojourner]

I find that statement somewhat odd as it seems successful enough to me. Care to elaborate?

Yeah, I'd like to hear that too. The F-9 launched 5 times successfully, even proving it's engine out capability. The Dragon has been a complete success and fulfilled all missions to date. Hell, it worked so well that NASA let SpaceX combine COTS 2 and 3.

OK, on the mission with the engine problem the secondary payload (a small test satellite for Orbcomm) was placed in the wrong orbit. But it was never meant to be a long term satellite and Orbcomm did retrieve useful data from the mission.

And before you bring up small anomalies like the RCS issue on the last Dragon mission, please point out a series of missions that hasn't encountered any issues.

Falcon 1: 5 launches, 3 failures. 60% failure rate.

Falcon 1e: 5 scheduled launches, all cancelled.

Falcon 9 v1: 5 launches, 1 partial failure. 10% failure rate.

Falcon 9 v1.1: None flown.

A cheaper space launch company is great, but don't let your self get sucked into the hype too much.

Also I personally believe that once SpaceX has a pretty strong business going they'll just up their prices to what the market can bare, like all the previous commercial space companies have done.

As noted above, the Falcon 1e was cancelled due to market issues. Not a problem with the rocket. So you can't really count it as a failed. In Fact, I believe all of the payloads from those launches were relisted for Falcon 9 with the first f9 1.1 launch (scheduled for next month) being one of those.

Your personal belief is also wrong as Elon has stated many times that he's trying to change the industry. He wants to make a profit through volume (number of launches) and force the rest of the industry to innovate to keep up. Hell, he started the company because he originally wanted to send a probe to Mars but was shocked to find out how much launch services cost.

Edited August 15, 2013 by sojourner

[Javster]

Why would any of this happen?

That's the main issue. You'd won your race to the moon, there's very little point going beyond.

And that was why the Apollo program was so risky. They had to get there to win the Cold War. The golden-shiny-foil-stuff was so thin it could have been pierced with a pencil.