patrick.net

I don't mind at all.

NASA doesn't need more money. $20B a year is enough, $30B would be great but not necessary to return to the Moon, crack the water and regolith, and "Do the Other things". It simply needs direction and ruthlessness in pursuit of a goal.

There are 3 competing groups:
1. Saganites/Search for Lifers: Only want big, expensive probe missions to Mars, Europe, Enceladus. Will not invest in long term abilities and infrastructure
2. MIC Engineers: Long Development Times for Overstuffed Projects that don't accomplish much (Shuttle, ISS, Gateway) for maximum profit
3. Exploiters: Develop long term capabilities with ISRU, long term habitation, and space-to-space refueling priority.

My three things:
1. Centrifuge Inflatable Habitat (Nautilus-X type) with 7 day, 7 week, 7 month test on partial artifical gravity on humans.
2. Positive confirmation of Water Ice near Moon's South Pole.
3. Token (several liters) extraction of water and conversation to liquid hydrogen (bonus: oxygen also) using KRUSTY.

Winner of #3 gets a contract to refuel an upper stage entirely with LH2/LOX for $4B for the US Space Force.

Cancel the Gateway, or reduce to propellant depot only. It'll almost certainly end up being a MIC Boondoggle.

All can be done with private contractors put out to bid, or better yet with a $10B award per milestone, basically, one and half years of NASA funding would pay out for all of these goals being achieved. NASA is just there for the DSN and Launch Facilities.

Alternatively, make the US Space Force responsible for expanding human capacity in space with set milestones for ISRU and Depots.

Onvacation says

Space The Next Frontier

The oceans are still less habitable than space.

CornPoptheOriginalGangster says

Our biggest problem with space exploration is our postmodern risk aversion mentality, part of the the weakening and hyperfeminization of our society.

That and so many resources are wasted on projects that will never bear anything worthwhile but will end up costing more resources to maintain. That whirlpool is already swallowing us.

If a Democrat president could get us to the moon in the 60s, why can't we go back?

I think SLS is the last bullshit Space Contract.

SpaceX has changed the game so much it's now totally indefensible. Remember that SLS was billed as a no brainer, taking 1970s era Fuel Tanks and SRBs and simply upgrading them. It's now $20+B in the hole and not one suborbital test yet.

It would be much more efficient to pay SpaceX $1B upfront and $2B on completion to complete a test of in-orbit refueling of a Falcon Heavy with another one.

CornPoptheOriginalGangster says

NASA doesn't need more money. $20B a year is enough, $30B would be great

How much is the space force getting?

What we really need in space is THE MACHINE.
Fully autonomous intelligent machinery that will mine ore, water from asteroid/comets, harvest solar energy, and use these inputs to essentially reproduce itself with incremental improvements, outside of gravity pits. Maybe initially with the exception of a few components.

Once we have this in place, we can safely venture in space, have safe stations, repairs, recharging, water, oxygen, etc... all in essentially infinite quantity.

We can easily mine the lunar ice for LH2/LOX and possibly also manufacture Hydrazine (Monopropellant), and in a decade or so Photovoltaics from lunar elements. Dumb mass is a no brainer, the Moon has huge stores of Aluminium, Titanium, and Iron.

If we create warehouses for smart mass (computer controlls, RCS thrusters), then we gain the ability to repair and maintain extensive, large satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO.

Creating a whole new range of utility as well as cost efficiency. No longer do old satellites last a few years; now they can be modular and repaired in space. Remote Robots launched from the moon with robot arms and replacement gear can fix satellites, and perhaps even construct

PV Satellite Networks can provide 24/7/365 Power via microwave to Earth. As well as Broadband coverage and a host of other benefits.

"Why is North America Commsat #12 not responding! Shit, looks like we have to launch another $30M satellite and buy a $70M spot on an Earth-based launch vehicle. $100M down the drain, dammit"
becomes
"Send Lunar Robot Maintenance System to Commsat #12 to run diagnostics. Oh, it's that shitty HF transmitter again. Replace transmitter and refuel monopropellant tanks for station keeping for $10M"

We don't bother repairing satellites much - except for rare exceptions like Hubble - and never do so for higher orbit satellites. And reaching GEO is expensive. With the dumb mass and propellant manufactured on the moon, only the smart parts (generally the lightest weight fraction also) need be shipped there, and we can create huge networks of long term, maintainable satellites.

This is why:





Heraclitusstudent says

How much is the space force getting?

No Clue, but as much as I'd like it to be the Space Marines, it's going to be the US equivalent of the Russian VKS, splitting the handing of recon/ASAT/ into it's own Child Agency.

* Cheap Satellite Launches and Maintenance
* Makes Long Term and Larger, more capable satellites at higher orbits vastly more economic than today
* Conduct medical trials (first commercial astronaut did so in the 1980s - can't find the reference but the medical product was worth making in space at a profit)
* Conduct hazardous medical research (doesn't get more isolated than beyond LEO)
* Conduct ultra-low temperature superconductor experiments/manufacturing.
* Refuel spacecraft bound for points beyond Earth/returning to Earth.
* Because Americans are frontier settlers.
* Humanity Insurance
* National Prestige

CornPoptheOriginalGangster says

* Because Americans are frontier settlers.
* Humanity Insurance
* National Prestige

*Technological Advancement

Remember Sputnik ? What about Kennedy and the missile gap? Those were powerful incentives for the moon program.

Many make the argument that we need to fix our problems on earth before we venture beyond our atmosphere. I argue that the venture will help solve humanities problems.

Onvacation says

Many make the argument that we need to fix our problems on earth before we venture beyond our atmosphere. I argue that the venture will help solve humanities problems.

Yep!

Many problems are solved laterally.

Robots and droids can provide the body count for space exploration, like all the disposable men did during the Age of Exploration (maritime for Western Europeans, continental for Russian/Cossacks). Human beings will be treated in space exploration like "women and children" were in the earlier age.

Eventually (and not too far into the future) however, space colonies (not on Mars or Moon,but actually in space in pods) will be the safest place to live: nuclear blast being so devastating on earth's surface is largely due to atmosphere. The mechanical shock wave and radioactive fallout are both propagated by the atmosphere. Without atmosphere, the damage from a nuclear blast would be localized to a very small area/volume . . . heat and radiation would be blocked / reflected by shielding that is necessary to block out cosmic rays to begin with. So, once the space pods are viable, people will want to migrate into space for safety, due to nuclear weapons becoming easier to obtain. Sooner or later the earth will be plastered with nuclear weapons, then the isolated primitives will come out of the hiding holes and rediscover agriculture, just like 10,000+ years ago. The only real issue is whether much of the humanity will have already migrated into space pods at that time. People will escape into space just like Europeans escaped from Europe to the New World in order to escape wars and famine in the old world.

Einstein once said "I don't know what WWIII will be fought with, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones" . . . what if that has happened previously?

I'm heartened that we have visionaries like Musk, Bezos and Branson, among many, who are looking outward rather than inward. There is a shedload of investment and opportunity already happening, and real progress in lowering the cost to orbit. Once Musk proved reusable boosters are possible, every country with a space program is being forced to pivot to the new tech, with private companies leading the way. NASA is trying to stay relevant while kowtowing to their congressional masters who force crazy untenable business models on a public agency. They're trying.

I anyone wants to read a possible (albeit grim) future of humanity's end and rebirth, pick up "The Seven Eves" by Stephenson. Excellent science and several possible "end game" survival scenarios for mankind - in space and elsewhere!

So my thought on progression would be a simultaneous development of AI robotic mining equipment, and centrifugal spin ships for mining near earth asteroids. Robot miners are great, but the unexpected problems will shut them down before the job gets completed. So you need astronauts on hand to fix those problems. Thus the spin ship because humans need gravity to survive long term in space. Figure a mission of 2-4 years at a time. The mined material would be sent back on rocket capsules to near earth orbit, or possibly cis-lunar orbit. These materials would be used to construct a truly major space station/orbital hotel that would be coupled to a ship dock and construction platform. Once the hotel was built, it could take millionaire space cadets for vacation stays and rake in some serious revenue, then use that revenue to construct new forms of space ships that would never see a gravity well but be able to cross vast distances to explore new planetoids and moons.

That’s how we get a real start in space. At least, it would be the cheapest way to get going.

Quick example of lateral developments:


Here is the Jacquard Loom, a device created to help weavers follow repeatable patterns:


Which Babbage was fascinated by and created an "Analytical Engine" with numerical mechanical storage equivalent of 16KB:



He also conceived of a "differential engine" which he never completed, but left notes and ideas for that inspired others, which incorporated most basic principles of the modern computer.

STARLINK

Not dependent on legacy DARPA Internet infrastructure
Promotes P2P mechanisms.
Will be encrypted end-to-end.
No last mile costs.
No undersea cables to tap or cut.
No Secret Rooms at Telecoms, No more 33 Thomas Street or 611 Folsom Street.
No more reasons not to live in a rural area.
First Mass Manufactured Commsats.
Total communications for US Military anywhere in the world, instantly deployable and unhackable.
Krypton Powered Ion Propulsion - first ever.

Goodbye, Comcast. Goodbye, AT&T.

https://www.starlink.com/

66 Mass produced satellites on a deployable stack.

CornPoptheOriginalGangster says

Krypton Powered Ion Propulsion - first ever.

Superman?

Boeing successfully lobbied to cancel a NASA initiative to test space refueling, as it would endanger the SDHLV/Ares/SLS.

Zubrin worked on the first version of the SLS back in 1988, when he was in his 30s. It was considered a no brainer and was expected to fly regularly no later than the mid 90s.

It is now almost 2020 and no Ares/SLS has preformed so much as a suborbital test, the total dev costs of Ares/SLS is in the tens of billions with no product nor even a tested prototype.

Since 2010, a family of two, soon to be three, reusable medium and heavy lift rockets has been created by private industry (SpaceX).

Now let's talk about Orion.

At a ridiculous 26 tons, it cannot land on the moon even if launched by the SLS, because it's so damned heavy. Hence, we have the Gateway Boondoggle. All the exposure of deep space with few benefits.

In comparison, the Apollo CSM weighed 9 tons, and Dragon weighs 10 tons.

Unlike the Orion, the Dragon has built in thrusters, not just RCS, which is a launch escape system AND has enough DV to get off the moon in it's basic configuration. With a supplemental service module and upper stage, it could orbit, land, come up from orbit on the moon, and possibly return to Earth (might need to replenish in LLO so it had a margin of safety when landing on Earth, and so it could circularize in a lower Earth Orbit before landing).

The Dragon has it's own built in LES, but Orion will have to have one added to the launch stack.

And Guess which one cost billions of taxpayer money for no product while the other had flown several times, delivered cargo to the ISS, returned and was reused (albeit without a crew, yet)?

In fact, the Dragon could have a self-propelled landing ON MARS (it would be cutting it real close without an extra propellant store, however).

We're witnessing the end of cost-plus contracting, the glory of Lockheed and Boeing.

There's simply almost no economic, scientific, technological, or engineering justification for SLS or Orion or the Lunar Gateway.

If it becomes possible to refuel just the Falcon Heavy in LEO, then there is no case for SLS at all, not even for Mars.

Since periodic comet destruction of the earth is inevitable, and has been found recently to be much more common than previously suspected (now it is known that celestial events have wiped humanity from civilization in the stone age at least several times) I think the first priority of space programs should be methods for re-directing space objects away from earth so that we can actually survive to continue scientific advancement and space exploration.

Yes, exactly. If we aren’t building a comet/asteroid shield for the Earth, we aren’t valuing our civilization. We’ve already had several near misses in the past hundred years. Why aren’t we making this a priority? We need to get into space stat! All this farting around landside is just wasting time and tempting fate.

The #1 problem is finding them.
The #1b problem is that finding them would be a cinch with a network of Lunar Radar/Infrared/Visual Telescopes, no atmosphere, solid foundation, maintainable with a lunar presence, and half of them would be outside all the radio noise pollution from Earth at any given time.
The #1c problem is that interstellar ones could be a huge bitch to find and even bitchier to do so before they got close. We only saw that Oumeatakalakahaymeinuyouwanalayme one on it's way out.
The #2 problem isn't really one if we can find them far out, that is just smacking them with something would throw them off enough not to hit earth. The further they are away, the lighter the push needs to be. We'd only need nuke level power if they were already too damn close.

The real terror threat is 200 years from now when terrorist symps on a belt miner decide to propel one to Earth unless their demands for $100 Trillion dollars ($1M in today's money) is satisfied (inflation, y'know).

There have been efforts to address cataclysmic strikes. I expect an "Earth Defense System" will be created well before end of Century.
Here is a link to Jerry Pournele's old blog: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/another-asteroid/
Jerry passed away but his comments, and comments from smart readers, live on. Smartest guy in the room on so many subjects!! Enjoy

Small package car:


Uh....

That's a prototype and not including the reusable Booster, of course. The final will be made of rolled steel rather than plates. We already saw two prototypes tested successfully this summer on short length hopes.

Meanwhile SLS hasn't even done a suborbital test yet, and it's really 35 years in development, itself just a modified Shuttle Launch System without a Shuttle on the side.

Zubrin worked on the first version of SLS, Aries, back in the 80s.

It’s good to see that Musk’a space company has detractors. Anything revolutionary has to have an opposition.

Detractor? I admire Elon as much as the next guy, but he's not above a joke.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/relativity-a-new-star-in-the-space-race-raises-160-million-for-its-3-d-printed-rockets/
"With $140 million in new financing, Relativity Space is now one step closer to fulfilling its founders’ vision of making the first rockets on Mars.

Tagging along for the ride are a motley assortment of millionaires and billionaires, movie stars and media moguls that are providing the money the rocket launch services provider and manufacturer of large-scale, 3-D printers needs to achieve its goals."

Get the Rocket Report from Ars Technica to stay on top of all things rocket:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/rocket-report-blue-origin-crew-flights-may-slip-to-2020-final-soyuz-fg-launch/

I subscribe and get a nice weekly summary.

BTW, anyone investing in Space companies?

Yep: billionaires.

Ha! Good one.

SpaceAngels.com seems interesting.

Good resource and pro-Entrepreneurship.

Zimmerman is also anti-Google/Facebook/Twatter

https://behindtheblack.com/

Good news:

Those comments resulted in some modifications intended to streamline the process and give companies more flexibility. One of the biggest is that NASA will no longer require lunar landers to dock with the lunar Gateway to serve as a staging point, at least for initial missions to the lunar surface.

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/nasa-solicits-proposals-for-manned-lunar-landers/

That's the hoped for SLS Part Two, another two decades of underperforming, overexpensed real estate that does nothing useful. "Oh we're gonna take it to Mars". Yeah, after 20 years in a high radiation environment, after decades of tech progress, we're really gonna put people on it for a 3 year mission to Mars and back. If you believe that, I have some revolutionary game changing Segways for ya.