Space news /comments

[Winner]

OK, many of you know that I am one of those space nuts who actually care about space exploration and "all that stuff"

I read a lot of interesting articles and I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread here in the OT section where I could give links to them, maybe with a short summary and a comment for those who are interested. If others want to do the same, by all means, go ahead.

Also, if anyone has any questions pertaining to this matter that a self-educated layman like me could answer, just ask.

(I'd really appreciate if this thread was NOT moved to the Science&Tech section. I don't want to be discussing specific science/tech questions in too much detail here; I just want to provide a sort of window into the world of space exploration for the general CFC public.)

A few links:

Spaceflight Now
NASA Spaceflight
SEN
Space Review
Space.com
Aviation Week
Space Show
Atomic Rockets​

.

 

[Winner]

Well, to start:

NASA's budget for the next year as proposed by the current administration cuts funding for most planetary probe missions - on other words, the only thing NASA's been doing right in the last 20 years. As a result, NASA has pulled out of the joint ESA-NASA ExoMars programme that was to include an orbiter and two landers (one of them a rover), launched in 2016 and 2018 respectively.
That's literally a stab in the back of ESA's Mars exploration programme, since it had in the past redesigned the whole mission on the assumption that the Americans would, I don't know, stand by their word. ESA is kind of clueless as to what to do next, and it appears it is trying to get Russia on board to ease the burden. It is doubtful this will work though, since Russia can't provide the key asset ESA wanted - the landing system for the ExoMars rover*. In any case, the Russians have had an incredibly bad luck in their Mars missions, so joining with them doesn't sound like a very good idea in principle.

This fiasco of course diminishes NASA's credibility as a partner, since it is painfully obvious now that it can't stand up to its promises due to the huge political uncertainty in the US about how the US space programme should proceed. A group of US legislators backed by vast majority of scientists oppose the move to cut funding for planetary missions (link).

If this budget passes, then we can kiss goodbye exciting results from new planetary probes. I wonder what will NASA use then to justify its existence, since it won't be flying any new robotic missions, nor humans in space, and still spend about $18 billion per year on.... stuff. Yeah. Remember how retiring the Shuttle was supposed to free funds for new exciting missions?



---

(* - Landing on Mars is actually quite difficult, and it gets harder the heavier the payload is. Mars has some atmosphere, but it is so thin that friction itself cannot fully slow down a lander. Parachutes do work on Mars, but they have to be much larger in relation to the payload than on Earth. If the payload is heavy enough, then we get into the problem of "supersonic transition":

The major conclusion that came from the session was that no one has yet figured out how to safely get large masses from speeds of entry and orbit down to the surface of Mars. “We call it the Supersonic Transition Problem,” said Manning. “Unique to Mars, there is a velocity-altitude gap below Mach 5. The gap is between the delivery capability of large entry systems at Mars and the capability of super-and sub-sonic decelerator technologies to get below the speed of sound.”

Plainly put, with our current capabilities, a large, heavy vehicle, streaking through Mars’ thin, volatile atmosphere only has about ninety seconds to slow from Mach 5 to under Mach 1, change and re-orient itself from a being a spacecraft to a lander, deploy parachutes to slow down further, then use thrusters to translate to the landing site and finally, gently touch down.​

 

[dot80]

NASA was only created to win the Cold War and unsurprisingly has been facing cuts and more cuts as the perceived need for such ventures grows smaller and smaller. I think the future to space exploration is in the private sectors. The initial challenge is to make space commercially viable. Once that happens I think it will quickly take off. If people see that someone has already developed the technology, and was able to successfully make money off of space flight/mining/study/ect they will all quickly follow. With economic interests in space comes societal and governmental interests in space. Take for example the colonies. Just like space flight the initial interest was government funded (Columbus, Cabot, ect), but then it was the economic opportunity in the new world that fueled colonization. Afterallll the early American colonies were funded by joint-stock companies initially, and only later made royal colonies.

One such company looking to capitalize on "Space Tourism" is Virgin Galactic. Though I believe space tourism, once made affordable to the middle class, is potentially a big industry, I am sure there are even more lucrative prospects. A possible industry could be space mining (the first thing that comes to mind when i think of this is Aliens ). The possibility that mars used to hold life means that there is also a possibility that mars could hold oil. In this article they talk about using the techniques oil companies use for finding oil to see if there could be oil, which would mean past life, on mars. Such a discovery on mars could have the double effect of proving the past existence of life and sparking interest in the private sector to get this oil. Especially in Europe and the United States, this would create a large and real interest in Mars by governments looking to stop the dominance of OPEC, and end dependence on the unstable Middle-East.

I am very interested in this as well, and I think a thread tracking and discussing new developments in this area is a great idea! Though this might end up getting moved to the Science and Technology forum simply because it is about Science and Technology.

 

[Crezth]

The future of space exploration lies in private enterprise and unicorns.

Seriously, it's one thing to say "if it were commercially viable, then it'd take-off" but another thing entirely to suppose that it will be. And the wall that exists between making it commercially viable and not is unsurpassable without some non-profit body pouring billions into fruitless ventures thereof.

 

[dot80]

The future of space exploration lies in private enterprise and unicorns.

Seriously, it's one thing to say "if it were commercially viable, then it'd take-off" but another thing entirely to suppose that it will be. And the wall that exists between making it commercially viable and not is unsurpassable without some non-profit body pouring billions into fruitless ventures thereof.

Well a non-profit body did... the government. Current and past space programs have developed the basis for the private sector. There obviously is enough technology already present to develop private space shuttles, and the technology can only improve as people become more experienced with it. Sure the jump from privatized space flight to mining on mars is a big one, but I was just giving examples. There would be a lot of in between before that happened.

Like for example the privatization of the international space station. This article is about a private company who has developed new technology for transporting supplies up to the station:

SpaceX announces a date for first private space berth with space station

 

[Ayn Rand]

Space news seems pretty grim right now. Or is it always darkest before the dawn?

 

[Winner]

The future of space exploration lies in private enterprise and unicorns.

Seriously, it's one thing to say "if it were commercially viable, then it'd take-off" but another thing entirely to suppose that it will be. And the wall that exists between making it commercially viable and not is unsurpassable without some non-profit body pouring billions into fruitless ventures thereof.

On that note, read this article (part 1, part 2).

It's a Q&A with the CEO of Arianespace, regarding the future of the space launch business. They keep asking him what he thinks about SpaceX and the other "NewSpace" companies, and he keeps explaining that so far, they have been completely irrelevant in his area of business. Maybe he's just short-sighted, but he seems to know what he's talking about.

NASA was only created to win the Cold War and unsurprisingly has been facing cuts and more cuts as the perceived need for such ventures grows smaller and smaller. I think the future to space exploration is in the private sectors. The initial challenge is to make space commercially viable. Once that happens I think it will quickly take off. If people see that someone has already developed the technology, and was able to successfully make money off of space flight/mining/study/ect they will all quickly follow. With economic interests in space comes societal and governmental interests in space. Take for example the colonies. Just like space flight the initial interest was government funded (Columbus, Cabot, ect), but then it was the economic opportunity in the new world that fueled colonization. Afterallll the early American colonies were funded by joint-stock companies initially, and only later made royal colonies.

One thing space cadets need to understand is that any comparison or analogy between exploring/settling space and the European settlement of the Americas are largely fallacious.

Why? Well, America offered a pretty fast return on investments. Simply put, anyone who invested into colonization, be it a government (Spain, England, France) or a non-governmental subject, could expect to get something out of it relatively quickly.

This is not the case in space. There is arguably money to be made in the low Earth orbit (LEO), potentially - I might talk more about it later - but there is very little reason why anyone should invest into a lunar base, or a Martian settlement. It would be very expensive so only very large companies or rich/big countries could afford it, and the return on the investment would be zero in terms of immediate pay-off, and intangible/hard to quantify in secondary benefits (technology spin-offs, the effects of spurring innovation in the economy, etc.)

One such company looking to capitalize on "Space Tourism" is Virgin Galactic. Though I believe space tourism, once made affordable to the middle class, is potentially a big industry, I am sure there are even more lucrative prospects. A possible industry could be space mining (the first thing that comes to mind when i think of this is Aliens ). The possibility that mars used to hold life means that there is also a possibility that mars could hold oil. In this article they talk about using the techniques oil companies use for finding oil to see if there could be oil, which would mean past life, on mars. Such a discovery on mars could have the double effect of proving the past existence of life and sparking interest in the private sector to get this oil. Especially in Europe and the United States, this would create a large and real interest in Mars by governments looking to stop the dominance of OPEC, and end dependence on the unstable Middle-East.

This is a joke.... right?

Because transporting oil from Mars to Earth, even if there was oil on Mars (it isn't), would be totally uneconomical. Basically, you'd spend much more energy to bring a litre of oil from Mars to Earth than that litre of oil can produce.

I am very interested in this as well, and I think a thread tracking and discussing new developments in this area is a great idea! Though this might end up getting moved to the Science and Technology forum simply because it is about Science and Technology.

I hope not, because then nobody will read this, and the whole purpose of this thread is to bring the news to a wider CFC audience.

 

[Tambien]

Private space exploitation IS the future. There are many reasons. Among those are the valuable metals and elements found on other planets and in asteroids.

Government programs are simply too constrained.

 

[peter grimes]

I'm glad to Crezth here. I have a question about part of the Mars landing challenge.

What is it about the transition from Mach 5 to <1 that is so tough? Is there something unique about crossing the sound barrier(s?), or is it simply the technical challenges of automating the deceleration of that magnitude in that environment?

 

[Winner]

Private space exploitation IS the future. There are many reasons. Among those are the valuable metals and elements found on other planets and in asteroids.

Even Elon Musk - the hero and god of all the NewSpace believers - has repeatedly said that mining stuff in space makes very little sense. He believes that the only export a Mars colony could offer in the short/medium term is information - software, data obtained from research there, that sort of stuff. Information can be exported to Earth very cheaply and at the speed of light, unless pretty much everything else.

And he's right. Unless something big happens (we invent anti-gravity - aka magic, build very efficient and cheap space elevators, enact global ban on mining certain stuff on Earth, etc.), it will always be cheaper to get all the elements we need here on Earth. Earth is made of the same stuff as asteroids, but geological processes have created concentrated deposits of certain elements/minerals, which makes them more accessible.

Mining stuff for import to Earth on Mars or the other planets makes even less sense than mining the asteroids.

Government programs are simply too constrained.

Yet governments are still the best hope if we want to have a robust space exploration programme. Especially if the governments engage with the private sector more and on different terms then before.

I'm glad to Crezth here. I have a question about part of the Mars landing challenge.

What is it about the transition from Mach 5 to

Basically, there isn't enough atmosphere to stop the re-entering spaceship.

On Earth, the atmosphere slows you down to a very low (in aeronautic terms) velocity before you even enter the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere). You then have plenty of time to deploy parachutes or engage thrusters to land safely on the surface.

On Mars, you're still moving at hypersonic velocities when you hit the ground, which obviously isn't good if you want to leave a footprint on the surface instead of a sizeable crater. This means you have to use either parachutes or thrusters to slow down on your own, but that's impossible with current technology - no parachute can be deployed at such speed (it would be torn to pieces), and trying to use retro-rockets while moving at hypersonic speeds creates very dangerous aerodynamic instabilities.

Simply put, our two tried and proven methods of landing on other celestial bodies don't work on Mars if your payload is too heavy. We need a completely new system if we want to land our people there in one piece.

 

[caketastydelish]

I'm taking Astronomy right now at my college, as a science class is required for an associate's degree. I also have the program "solarwalk" on my Mac which is pretty cool.

Do any of you have telescopes that you would recommend to buy?

 

[History_Buff]

You guys might want to check out Copenhagen Suborbitals. They're doing the whole thing from scratch, basically as enthusiasts. They publish regular update about what they're doing.

 

[kramerfan86]

Space news seems pretty grim right now. Or is it always darkest before the dawn?

US is wisely investing its resources into occupying third world countries over space exploration. Because after all, virgin is trying to master letting millionaires go to orbit so clearly the space situation is under control and in good hands

Seriously, the private industry taking it over is a joke. They dont have the money or resources to do projects like go to Mars or explore the moons of the gas giants.

 

[Winner]

US is wisely investing its resources into occupying third world countries over space exploration. Because after all, virgin is trying to master letting millionaires go to orbit so clearly the space situation is under control and in good hands

Nope, not even to orbit.

Sub-orbital tourism is about shooting people up on a ballistic trajectory that gives them a few minutes of weightlessness and a nice view of Earth. I'd take it, if I had the money, but it's VERY far from actual orbital spaceflight - which is the real spaceflight.

 

[kramerfan86]

Nope, not even to orbit.

Sub-orbital tourism is about shooting people up on a ballistic trajectory that gives them a few minutes of weightlessness and a nice view of Earth. I'd take it, if I had the money, but it's VERY far from actual orbital spaceflight - which is the real spaceflight.

But but but that will be the next step. If you just give it time private business might get itself to a 1960s level where they can put people into orbit!

 

[Winner]

But but but that will be the next step. If you just give it time private business might get itself to a 1960s level where they can put people into orbit!

Well, I am fairly confident SpaceX will do it relatively soon. Musk has built a solid company which is quite innovative in the way rocketry is done (he essentially copies the Russian approach with Western quality control, a powerful combination).

However, I am pretty sceptical about the target prices for his launch vehicles he has announced. It remains to be seen if expendable or even partially reusable rockets can really be made so cheap.

---

I wish someone in Europe decided to invest in this neat spaceplane (article):

Unlike the other concepts, this one offers a chance for a real breakthrough in orbital spaceflight.

 

[dot80]

One thing space cadets need to understand is that any comparison or analogy between exploring/settling space and the European settlement of the Americas are largely fallacious.

Why? Well, America offered a pretty fast return on investments. Simply put, anyone who invested into colonization, be it a government (Spain, England, France) or a non-governmental subject, could expect to get something out of it relatively quickly.

This is not the case in space. There is arguably money to be made in the low Earth orbit (LEO), potentially - I might talk more about it later - but there is very little reason why anyone should invest into a lunar base, or a Martian settlement. It would be very expensive so only very large companies or rich/big countries could afford it, and the return on the investment would be zero in terms of immediate pay-off, and intangible/hard to quantify in secondary benefits (technology spin-offs, the effects of spurring innovation in the economy, etc.)

I disagree that using the European settlement of the Americas as an example is fallacious. Though there were quick riches to be made for Spain and Portugal the English did not have such an easy time of it. The only quick return the English could get out of colonization is lumber, but they could have gotten that in the old world. The English came up with inventive ways to use the land to make the venture profitable. For example, Jamestown almost went to ruin, and was only saved by the start up of the Tobacco industry. The south was made profitable off the farming of Rice and Dyes, and later Cotton. The north only off of fishing and shipbuilding. Mars could be used in similar respects. Maybe the mining of an abundant metal, or a natural gas. Or maybe even the large amount of unclaimed, unregulated land could be used for automated factories. This of course would need a large advancement in technology. Right now we can be compared to the Vikings, who with great difficulty were able to make it to Greenland. With more advanced technology it became more viable and more profitable.

This is a joke.... right?

Because transporting oil from Mars to Earth, even if there was oil on Mars (it isn't), would be totally uneconomical. Basically, you'd spend much more energy to bring a litre of oil from Mars to Earth than that litre of oil can produce.

Well supposedly there is a possibility. I was just trying to give an example of something that would really help boost space exploration. And yes, bringing one liter of Oil back from Mars would be very uneconomical. If there were sizable deposits of oil to be found on Mars, it is likely that someone would find a way to get it and bring it back in large quantities, that would offset the price of mining and transporting it. In addition to the large demand for oil, I am sure European Governments and the USA would be happy to give tax breaks to a company that could end dependence on OPEC oil. Also, while it may take a lot to get something off the ground on the Earth, wouldn't it be much easier to get it off the ground on a planet half as big with a thinner atmosphere? Even so, I admit I was taking a little bit of an imaginative leap there.

Sub-orbital tourism is about shooting people up on a ballistic trajectory that gives them a few minutes of weightlessness and a nice view of Earth. I'd take it, if I had the money, but it's VERY far from actual orbital spaceflight - which is the real spaceflight.

It all has to start somewhere is where I am saying. And besides government programs are only becoming increasingly more marginalized because of economic downturn and loss of public interest so then where is it going to come from? Is it not? Then what is the point of tracking news about Space if you think space exploration is ending?

 

[Quackers]

Is there any way a sub orbital flight and a full on orbital flight will ever become affordable in my lifetime?

 

[caketastydelish]

This of course would need a large advancement in technology. Right now we can be compared to the Vikings, who with great difficulty were able to make it to Greenland. With more advanced technology it became more viable and more profitable.

I don't think we're even at the Viking level yet. The vikings actually technically made contact with Native americans (or so I've heard, and yes it was violent contact) and we have not made contact with any other intelligent life. Further more, we've only been to the moon. That would be like England going to Ireland, not Greenland. And the vikings had COLONIES on Greenland, and we are nowhere near to the point where we we can colonies on the Moon, forget anywhere else.

No we are not in the viking time, we are in the early middle ages.

 

[bathsheba666]

I agree this is interesting, and I would not read it in Sci & Tech forum, as I never go there...
Keep it up...