Light at the end of the tunnel....SpaceX?

[polydeuces]

Looks like my worst nightmare may fail to materialize - private enterprise dropping the ball and making commercial (manned) spaceflight just another wishful-thinking pipe dream.
Unfortunately it is getting little exposure as few are aware of the significance of what's happening.
But then, watching a bunch of nasty Armenian skank-ho's wallowing in decadence is far more rewarding and exciting.

As much sense as it makes, privatization/commercialization of low earth orbit spaceflight is still precariously tethering on SpaceX succeeding, beyond "simply" achieving orbit and docking with station.
Not exactly a cakewalk, by any means. And a major milestone in the right direction.

Next on the agenda is that ever more elusive "Manned Spaceflight" - where everything has to be "man-rated". One can only guess how long this will take.
Good news-we've been doing that for a while, and (apparently) they've hired the right crew to make it happen, only a bit more cost-efficient.
All that's missing now is some good old fashioned competition to really make it solid.

And all this happening in plain sight while the masses remain blissfully ignorant.

In hindsight as much as it hurt (admitting that) cancelling STS, it was unrealistic and unsustainable (with the given budget), spending so much money on something as routine as low earth orbit.

Then with this mundane task of LEO (in this case - low earth orbit..;)) in the hands of those able to capitalize on it in any way feasible one can only hope and dream NASA is going (to be allowed and enabled to) concentrate on what should have been done exactly 40 years ago - go back to the moon, and beyond.

Perhaps now with reduced needs for defense spending, we can allocate a somewhat more realistic budget for this?
Instead of coasting on 40-year old fading glory telling NASA to do more - make us a great space-faring exploring nation - while giving them less and less to do it with.

Considering the boost the Apollo project has given us, it would a major stimulus for economy and education, and many other unforeseen pay-offs.
It is time for us to do something spectacular, because we can.
Just wondering what it would take.

[montanadave]

And who are these Armenian skank-ho's you speak of and where can they be located? :laugh:

On a more serious note, I've always been fascinated with manned space flight and am pleased to see a resurgence in interest. But having grown up watching the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and devouring everything Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke ever wrote, what would you expect?

[obucina]

that Armenian whore, the hot one with the big butt is honestly, a pretty good businesswoman. But, Ima let you finish! That being said, I think its rather cool that a private company is capable of doing this and doing it at a very respectable level. Private enterprise has helped fuel NASA and NASA has helped fuel private enterprise. To me, it seems to be a symbiotic relationship....from my cell phone to my memory foam pillow. I just want to see NASA focus on its singular mission....that space thing. By singular mission, that doesnt include PR campaigns to involve muslims and their contribution to space flight....

[Cesiumsponge]

My only worry is making sure there is money in it. Private business needs to make money as an incentive. We only have a finite number of billionaires who are interested enough in technology to keep their pet projects alive and I'm not sure if a profit-generating private spaceflight industry is currently possible.

However, I am optimistic as hell. I know a fellow that works at Blue Origin and things are getting exciting. I remember various upstart space flight companies giving presentations in an engineering and technology discussion about 10 years ago on campus with their scale models, mock-ups, presentations, and mission statements and it was exciting then as it was now. I only hope the government can keep their regulatory nose out of it as long as possible so innovation can continue unfettered. I only hope the bad ideas that fail in practice from various start-up companies won't be an excuse to start implementing NASA-like bureaucracy and red tape. Things are gonna get exciting!

[Belmont31R]

If it becomes profitable there will be a space tax.


I think its representative of the grind to a halt form of government we have now. NASA is a drop in the water compared to DOD. Wait until things get so bad DOD grinds to a halt. Already seeing signs of it. Things are becoming so politicized and so polarized government will not be able to do a single thing.


Not to mention in the 60's and up into the 80's NASA was a source of national pride. When they sent something up it was on every TV. Now they send stuff up and it doesn't even get 1/100th the viewers some of these shows are getting. More people are voting for American Idol than POTUS elections...we just have a huge shift from nationalism to entertainment/service oriented society.

[Heavy Metal]

Elon Musk has suceeded where world governments have failed.

Soon, he will put people in space and join a club even Europe and Japan cannot claim membership in.

[Moose-Knuckle]

If there is one thing I have learned about space exploration from reading science fiction it’s that the future of space exploration will be carried out by private transnational corporations.

Weyland Industries (http://www.weylandindustries.com/) anyone? :cool:

[Cesiumsponge]

I found the TED Talk with Weyland Industries really amusing (for the geeks out there)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8

It is unfortunate that we could send men to the Moon nearly a half century ago with what would be considered the crudest of technology today. Big thinkers thought up things like pulsed nuclear population as a novel method and it went as far as testing scale models with conventional explosives (a video clip survives somewhere on the Internet). They managed to do a test using a nuke to accelerate a 2000lb steel plate. The escape velocity of Earth is just under 7 miles/second (minimum final velocity needed to escape the planet's gravitational pull). The plate exceeded this factor 600% (over 42 miles/second, (211,200fps!)) and it's theorized that it vaporized from the friction with the atmosphere because they never found the damn thing. The irony is that no solution exists today that matches the efficiency. We're still using glorified chemical rockets, which is a mature, dead-end technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29

NASA is no longer an organization that does projects with shooting humans into space because the risk of a black eye and even more red tape is too great. It's time for the colorful cowboys of private enterprise to step up. No doubt that a few people are going to end up exploding in a ball of flame but the pioneering human spirit in pushing boundaries into the unknown has always been fraught with blood, sweat, and tears so that future generations may reap the benefits from their sacrifices. If we continue as a risk-adverse society, we're never going to achieve anything or get anywhere.

[Redmanfms]

I found the TED Talk with Weyland Industries really amusing (for the geeks out there)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8

It is unfortunate that we could send men to the Moon nearly a half century ago with what would be considered the crudest of technology today. Big thinkers thought up things like pulsed nuclear population as a novel method and it went as far as testing scale models with conventional explosives (a video clip survives somewhere on the Internet). They managed to do a test using a nuke to accelerate a 2000lb steel plate. The escape velocity of Earth is just under 7 miles/second (minimum final velocity needed to escape the planet's gravitational pull). The plate exceeded this factor 600% (over 42 miles/second, (211,200fps!)) and it's theorized that it vaporized from the friction with the atmosphere because they never found the damn thing. The irony is that no solution exists today that matches the efficiency. We're still using glorified chemical rockets, which is a mature, dead-end technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29



The problem with such a system and why it essentially went nowhere and why the preferred method of putting stuff "up there" is a "dead-end" technology is something known as inertia. The g created by such a system would destroy what is being launched and by the time you have engineered solutions to overcome this fact you could use a thousand "dead-end" rockets.

If we were truly serious about space travel and colonization we would be looking at elevators.



I do agree about NASA, however; the problem with that agency began in the '70s, when the idea of the space shuttle caught on and was implemented.

[MistWolf]

Obama ends government involvement in space exploration, stating it needs to be placed in the hands of the private sector where only large corporations can afford it, the same large corporations that are both evil because they control so much wealth and are too large to to be allowed to fail.

No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories out there

[Moose-Knuckle]

The problem with such a system and why it essentially went nowhere and why the preferred method of putting stuff "up there" is a "dead-end" technology is something known as inertia. The g created by such a system would destroy what is being launched and by the time you have engineered solutions to overcome this fact you could use a thousand "dead-end" rockets.

This combined with the fact that it costs "X" amount of dollars to put "X" amount of payload into orbit. It's not a cost effective venture. Rockets, like hot air balloons were obsolete from the time they came off the drawing board.



If we were truly serious about space travel and colonization we would be looking at elevators.


As usual, Arthur C. Clarke was right on the money. ;)