Space, The Final Frontier
Nick Carraway has thoughts —
When you are worried about the health of the republic, some issues end up taking a backseat. Space exploration happens to be one of those. However, since Ms. Carroway is one of those rocket scientists at NASA, space exploration and the politics around it are very important. For instance, I’m sure you heard about the successful launch for SpaceX this past week. Did you know that the Russians used to charge 70 million round trip per astronaut? That fact and the fact that they are crazier than a bed bug is great incentive for making our own way.
The two interesting questions with the transition will be what happens with Space Force and what happens with Moon 2024. Forgive a humble school teacher for pontificating on this, but the usual course is for agencies and military branches to remain once they are created. Ronald Reagan talked about killing the department of education back in 1981. Somehow, it survived the purge. Space Force might as well even though most people in the industry chuckle every time it’s mentioned.
Moon 2024 is another of what we call the unfunded mandate. They were already robbing Peter to pay Paul on that one, so it would be easy for Biden to scrap it and move on. However, you have a group of scientists without a clear direction. Where are you headed? Do we want people to walk on Mars? Do we want a colony on the moon? Do we want to focus on more unmanned exploration in the solar system and beyond? Should we make more Tang and Velcro?
Even small government decisions effect the lives of millions of people. Upwards of half of the Clear Lake area where we live make their bones through the space industry working on site or working as a contractor or sub-contractor. Who knows if a Biden administration will be good for the space business or not. It’s been a pretty tough go for over a decade now.
I will support any mandate that keeps Tang on the market.
1TrulyTexan, thanks for the chuckle with my first sips of morning covfefe.
2The difference with this decision is that most of our future space travel is dependent upon private enterprise – SpaceX and others. Government can be a help or a hinderance but it is moving forward regardless. To quote a famous line from “Hidden Figures”, SpaceX is already on the moon and using it as a launch pad to Mars. Gwynne Shotwell rocks.
3“Where are you headed? … walk on Mars? …. colony on the moon? … unmanned exploration”
I’m a big fan of space exploration, I don’t have a clear memory of Sputnik, but from the Mercury program on, I was watching. Moon 2024 had one purpose, to put a man & woman on the moon before the end of Trump’s second term. So he could take credit and gloat.
“Houston, Trump Base here, Ivanka Module has landed.”
If Moon 2024 was the first step toward a permanent base on the moon, I’d say stick with the program. Especially if it includes a long, long passageway with a restricted airlock that connects with a Trump Lava Tube Horizontal Tower & Presidential Library beneath the surface. As living quarters for the entire Trump extended clan. Permanently.
4Space enthusiast here, so you’ll know where I’m coming from. As long as we’re dependent on legislators for space advances, it’s best to understand their motivations, especially in the absence of clear hints from Biden and Co. They love government-funded jobs programs, for the largess they get to ladle out. Hence Orion, with its huge budgets and limited usefulness. Second best choice for them is contracts to let out to private companies, for the back door bribe opportunities (being realistic here). So my guess would be, as PEOTUS Biden is a creature of the Senate, his plans will pro ably be what a legiator would want.
5Sputnik kid here, whose dad worked on the Gemini and Apollo fuel cells. (Boy did it get quiet at our house when the news said there was a problem- but it was, Dad pointed out, never “his” fuel cells.) So I’m a space enthusiast too with a basement full of memorabilia.
But that Musk kid is so dang annoying- a poster child for why engineers need to have a rock-solid education in the humanities. To (sloppily) quote someone on the Twitter machine, It’s too bad it’s not NASA flush with money taking us into space, instead of a trust fund kid with a big mouth.
6Space enthusiast here who programmed computers for NASA for 35 years, spanning virtually the whole of the space shuttle program: Yes, I want us to explore the solar system, both by smart machines and by people. Yes, I want us to eventually expand our presence out into the solar system. Yes, I want to know if life exists on other planets. And, yes, I’m a big fan of Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, and all the rest.
What bugs me is that NASA and, in particular, its budget are so political. Every new administration that comes along changes its goals and finances so that it seems it never gets there. How can we prize it away from the politicians? I wish I knew.
7The problem with space travel [as with so many forward-looking enterprises] is that it started out as chest bashing. And then it got all romantic.
Nothing practical about walking on the moon. But hey, the Russians might get there first so we pulled out all the stops because we couldn’t allow that!
Then came the movies and TV series about how sexy space was.
Not a word about how we could exploit it, and the politicians didn’t have lobbyists battering down their doors and handing over money to revive the public interest. So it went the way of the hula-hoop.
There is one thing that’s practical about it, though and where there’s money, the lobbyists won’t be too far behind:
It’s getting harder and harder to get at the iron and tin and copper that’s inside the earth. We’ve pretty much pulled out all the easy-to-access stuff. So it’s getting more and more expensive to go after what’s left. But our appetite for it hasn’t diminished in the least — aamof it’s growing.
BUT, if we built an industry on Mars — with it’s shallow gravity well — we could mine the asteroids which are right next door. They’ve got chock-a-plenty of the minerals we covet — and they’re right on the surface. All we have to do is get out to them, send them into orbit around mars or the moon and mine them at our leisure.
Then, once each one is depleted, shove what’s left of it into the sun. That’s one less chunk of rock to possibly get nudged out of orbit to collide with the earth.
Finally, a practical use for space. I’m betting we’ll be doing it within the next century or so.
And after that, once the technology is perfected, we might even get back into the business of exploration for exploration’s sake? One can hope, anyway.
8P.S. Maybe we could even make the funding of exploration a condition in any company’s contract to be allowed to go after all that lovely money **cough** I mean those minerals.
9I just don’t understand why we need a Space Force when we already have NASA–National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This whole idea seems like a stupid Trump trick to me. Do we really need another whole branch of the military? Can’t we save money by just funding one entity?
10Not only is Space Force not necessary but you could argue that it violates the Space Treaty of 1967. Of course, it depends on what actual things get done by Space Force, but izewhy have a military branch specialized for space unless you actually use it to weaponize space? However, it is illegal to weaponize space.
What’s interesting is that the head of the Russian space agency has claimed Venus for themselves. Beyond the lack of practical application there, it shows how little regard for the rule of law they have. Claiming an entire planet is about as stupid as Balbpa claiming everything that bordered on the Pacific ocean for Spain. This doesn’t even mention that machines can’t even make it for very long on Venus.
The trouble with exploration is that exploration itself is not tangible enough to justify financially. Walking on the moon doesn’t matter in terms of tangible direct benefits. However, the discoveries made along the way were more than worth the effort. Think about everything space exploration has given us (technologies, use of satellites, medicines, research, ect). One cannot yet imagine what we might discover by going beyond the solar system with probes or with manned exploration of other planets. What could we possibly use the new technology we would need to make it to Mars for? What medical discoveries would we make along the way?
Ms. Carroway works in the radiation group. I’m just imagining what we have learned about radiation here as it pertains to nuclear power and other forms of radiation. Imagine what we would learn about our own environment and atmosphere based on how the lack of an atmosphere might effect humans and machines elsewhere. This is just a small piece of the puzzle.
11Didn’t know this was going to turn into a space forum. I agree w Twocrows that asteroid mining will be important in the future. There was a corporation till 2019 doing development toward commercial robotic asteroid mining. Long term I think we’ll do as Gerard O’Neill suggested and build orbital living spaces, spinning cylinders of massive size, such that we can set the “gravity” (centrifugal force), atmosphere, temperature and soil conditions we choose, rather than trying to make Mars or Venus do.
But as for Biden I think we’ll go in about the direction we are now..
12The only reason we went to the moon was to show we could do it before the Russians.
Although we did have to put a Nazi war criminal in charge.
The only reason to do that twice would be to show that we are really stupid.
Although manned space exploration bores me to tears, I did keep up with it as part of my newspapering, which means I know more about it than most people. For example, Congress was sold on the space shuttle with the promise it would fly 48 trips a year.
The actual total was 4 per year, but to get there you have to count the ones that were one-way.
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