NASA Vision of Space Exploration

About the costs, why not try to build a mass driver?

 

Development and contruction of a maglev would be far more than any previous launch system. Workable, but very expensive. However, I do know that NASA has done some math and a craft accelerated to 600 mph comes of the end of a ramp and the craft then uses rockets to get the rest of the way to orbit. The vehicle weight would be a third less with the maglev being used as a first stage. The problem is getting power into the maglev track quickly. The cost is cheap, less than $1,000 in electricity used per launch, but current power supplies cannot get the needed power into a system fast enough.
The price to orbit could be as little as $200 per pound compared to the Shuttle's $10,000 per pound. Me plus a decent amount of luggage could be hefted into orbit for around $45,000. This price would drop drasticllay since a maglev could launch on an hourly basis rather than once every few months.
The second stage is the craft itself using air breathing engines, the faster the better. Scramjets would be nice. The third stage would be a conventional rocket engine.

So, we need quick power distribution, better materials to handle the stress placed on the maglev track, a scramjet, a lifting body design, and alot of start up money. Maybe instead of near $100 billion for a space station NASA could have proposed a maglev system to Congress.

 

Do you have a paper or a link on that VLM? I'd like to know more.

 

My last post was cobbled together from a few different articles, info is kinda scarce really probably from very little R&D actually being done on it. However, all the pages I looked at refer to this article:

NASA Explores

Brief ain't it? A google search didn't give much more in details.

EDIT: If you can find a copy of Michael Savage's Ho to Colonize The Galaxy In Eight Easy Steps he has a chapter devoted to maglev launchers. He gets very carried away at times, and the book is a bit fanciful, but it's a fun read and the maglev chapter seemed sound. I have not read this book in a long time though, it is far out of print so a library might be your best bet.

EDIT 2: Or you could possibly PM MasterAero to post some info for us.

 

How's this explanation: Continuing the human race without extreme sacrifices in standards of living or in population.

I mean, it would be great if people would just willingly slow down the birth rate, but the combination of selfishness and institutional opposition to birth control (the Catholic Church, for example) seems to indicate that we're not likely to fix things in time. The global population is just going to keep exploding. Overpopulation has several possible solutions:

Solution 0 (the one no one will do): Birth control and efficient management of Earth's natural resources.
Solution 1: Somehow kill off half the planet's population, creating a more manageable ratio of population/resources.
Solution 2: Continue sucking the planet dry and increasing our numbers until there aren't enough resources to sustain the human race. The human race expends all the resources on Earth to the point that the species cannot be sustained. Humanity becomes extinct.
Solution 3: Research and development of living spaces and resources other than those on Earth.

Although I'd personally prefer a combination of 0 and 3, I don't think most people are willing to make the sacrifices associated with 0. Assuming that, bow can one choose anything BUT 3?

That's one reason for space exploration, and I think it's more than enough.

 

Nice points, but I'm not sure I agree 100%. Let me see if I can reason this out.

So long as the status quo in other areas stays the same there will be haves and have-nots. If the population starts getting too big for our ability to get resources to that population the haves continue on while the have-nots die off. Third world nations fit the bill for have-nots, though even First World nations have a poor populace. However, the poor folks in the U.S. have it alot better than people living in many African nations. Kind of a cold way to look at things, but that's the way it goes. The point is though that humanity will probably not go extinct from overpopulation.

I would worry more about large asteroids and comets that come out from behind the Sun with little or no warning and impact the Earth at 50,000 mph. I worry about Global Warming too. "The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." - Larry Niven

 

VadersLament, thank you. It would be nice if Congress gave more money to NASA, but considering the current Government, eh.

Um, thanks. Also, Michael Savage wrote this.....WT*

And Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon, well World War III is coming, we can see it now.

Oh, China's population isn't going too high, and with their population control policy, it is stabilizing somewhat, but unfortunately, there's more males and it will get bad there soon.

 

Oops. That's "How to colonize" not "Ho to colonize". And I should make a correction that it's a futurist named Marshall Savage, not a controversial radio personality named Michael Savage. I goofed.

The maglev launcher he described was called Bifrost, like the Norse magical bridge between Earth and the heavens. The Living Universe Foundation is all but gone but before they departed they did figure out that Savage's Bifrost would not actually work as shown. It involved a ramp going up a mountain at 70 degrees and would have "pulped the occupants". Other than that Bifrost featured the spacecraft as having water as fuel which would have been heated by a series of lasers as it left the ramp making it a steam rocket. I have no idea if that is workable.

There is one thing I remember about the book that I always loved, this piece of art:

[image=http://www.luf.org/graphics/pics/p04-312x476.JPG]

It was a sea city grown out of the ocean. His writing about it and what the laws would be there seemed a bit too Utopian, but I love the imagery. If such a thing could be built perhaps problems with population could be eased. I'm pretty sure inspiration for this sea city comes from roving arcologies.

 

From Spce.com:

Burt Rutan on Civilian Spaceflight, Breakthroughs, and Inside SpaceShipTwo

?I?d love to be working on going to the Moon. I?m doing this really because I don?t think I can convince a funder to go out and invest in an orbital system that we?re not sure would work.?

In Rutan?s plotting of things to come, Tier 2 is orbital.

?My bottom line is that we have to have some kind of breakthroughs,? Rutan explained. ?What?s needed is to create an environment to have breakthroughs ? to try things that may seem illogical at first.?

I've heard Rutan make a statement like this before, as well as Bigelow, that once a foothold in orbit is established someone is going to make a b-line to the Moon. Branson has said he wants to step foot on Mars before he dies.

Taking a long look out to the next ten to twelve years, Rutan predicted that ?there?s going to be some very good news and some very bad news.?

The bad news, Rutan advised, is related to the government space programs. ?I hate to say that, but the reason is that they are just structured so there will be a lot of money spent and they are not likely to reap the benefits that are going to help us.?

The good news, Rutan suggested as a guess, is that there will be breakthroughs forthcoming, stemming from what happens after the first generation of suborbital craft?including competitors, now known and unknown?take to the sky.

Rutan is always critical of NASA when anyone asks him his opinion on them. Rutan and others were offered a chance to be the designers for the replacement to the Shuttle fleet. Rutan dropped out because the paperwork for safety alone would have driven up the payroll too far.

 

Oh, thank you

 

You're welcome.

Looks like NASA has A new Logo for its Moon endevours.

Two teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co. are currently competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in the coming weeks.

I read a story from an engineer who used to work at Boeing. I will not get this right word for word. There was a project meeting in which 14 engineers had science and math and facts and such concerning how the project should go forward. The 15th member of the team, a lady who was married to the project manager, had a totally different view of how the project should happen. She commented, "We'll see who's right after I talk with my husband in bed tonight."
The next day the project manager came in and his wife got her way. A few weeks perhaps months later the project was cancelled because it was not finsihed on time, and the money spent was wasted.
According to the engineer who told this story this was not exactly typical, but not exactly rare either.

 

NASA goes back to the future

 

Facing tight deadlines and uncertain budgets as it works on President George W. Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars,

I really wish the "Bush plan" wording was dropped. Rocket science is not his forte.

Ares 1; Zubrin should be partially happy. That's the name he wanted for a super booster for Mars Direct.

 

What of the potential for antimatter propulsion? It's clearly part of NASA's long-term vision, but is it actually viable?

 

The solar system might gain 3 planets

The International Astronomical Union proposes to add Ceres, Charron, and 2003 UB313 as planets.

comments?

 

LV there is a thread here in the Senate on naming planets already.

Antimatter. When we can make it cheap, then we go for it. The amounts needed to get around in the solar system better than chemical rockets can be measured in grams.

There is also a substance called Americium 242 which is a fissionable material that can reach a critical state for one thousandth the mass of uranium or plutonium. The basic design in super thin film sheets pf Am242, something like thousandth of a milimeter, which could possibly make trips to Mars in less than two weeks.

 

In my biology lab, we talked about a theoretical bacteria that grew exponentially in a beaker. Starting with just one bacteria, in one hour the beaker would be full. The bacteria would only be up to 1/16 full at 56 minutes. Then if you added another beaker at this point, they would only buy themselves minutes, not another hour. It then went on to say in a short period of time you would have the entire earth covered in meters of the stuff.

I do not think we are growing at a pure exponetial curve, but if, as you suggest, we were, going into space wouldn't save the human race. We would fill up another planet within years if we did grow at such a rate. (which we don't because while population starts off exponentially, it slows as it reaches the earth's carrying capacity.

Investing in Space as a way to continue the human race is too great a gamble. Space travel is expensive and risky. There is no other planet we know of like Earth. Technology invested in Earth has a much more immediate and more secure investment for the future. New technology based here on earth could all of the resource problems we have now. We don't worry about supplies of flint anymore because of new technology.

Going to space is an extreme sacrifice given current techology. Instead of the government trying to go to the moon again, they should first make sure they can do it at half the cost they did before, not quadruple.

 

Investing in Space as a way to continue the human race is too great a gamble.

There is a reason we can't ask the dinosaurs thier opinion on the matter. All your eggs in one basket = extinction. The biggest gamble is not investing in space travel, exploration, and eventually colonization.

Space travel is expensive and risky.

Expensive for now but coming down thanks to others outside of NASA. Risky? Of course it is. Is that reason enough to just stay here? No it's not.

There is no other planet we know of like Earth.

Correct. However, this first:

[image=http://www.patrawlings.com/images/large/S019.jpg]

The one day this:

[image=http://www.patrawlings.com/images/large/S162.jpg]

Do you think we are not capable of such things? Since we are they are more than worth doing.

Technology invested in Earth has a much more immediate and more secure investment for the future. New technology based here on earth could all of the resource problems we have now.

Much as I posted above, but we are not an immortal civilization here, and can never be so long as all humans live here on this planet.

We don't worry about supplies of flint anymore because of new technology.

And our current technology is not the end all be all, it can and will improve, and we can move people off he Earth that want to go.

Going to space is an extreme sacrifice given current techology. Instead of the government trying to go to the moon again, they should first make sure they can do it at half the cost they did before, not quadruple.

I could probably link to many examples of how Moon missions should be done, but even if NASA goes over budget they still are operating at less than 1% of the total budget each year. It's actually a small sacrifice if any, for a huge payoff in long term survival.

On another note Voyager 1, already the most distant human-made object in the cosmos, reaches 100 astronomical units from the sun on Tuesday, August 15 at 5:13 p.m

[image=http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/image/images/spacecraft/spacecraft.jpg]

Isn't it beautiful?

 

What good is a moon base if costs a million to get there? I will admit it is cool and the government wastes enough money the least they can do is make us look cool, but why does NASA need to go to the moon again in the near future? If they built a platform for cheap space travel, the moonbase would build itself. Instead of shooting for the moon, if they thought more closer to home we would eventually get further into space. If they built a scramjet shuttle that shortened intercontinental flights, created cheap space lifting abilities, and basically paved the road instead of trying to get further down the road, the road will be explored. I am talking about manned missions, sending out probes and such isn't all that expensive and they are doing something the private sector wouldn't do.

 

What good is a moon base if costs a million to get there?

It will cost NASA billions to get there. the private sector may get there for far less, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I will admit it is cool and the government wastes enough money the least they can do is make us look cool, but why does NASA need to go to the moon again in the near future?

It's not so much looking cool as giving inspiration. Apollo spawned many kids into becoming angineers. NASA should never have stopped going to the Moon in the first place. The Moon is huge in resources, makes for a possible settlement to grow later into larger proportions, and makes for a great technological test bed.

Instead of shooting for the moon, if they thought more closer to home we would eventually get further into space.

The only way to get to the Moon is develope technologies to...get to the Moon.

If they built a scramjet shuttle that shortened intercontinental flights, created cheap space lifting abilities, and basically paved the road instead of trying to get further down the road, the road will be explored.

Building a working scramjet will be inredibly difficult and it's not even proven that it would be cost effective against resuable or partially reusable rockets.

Paving the road versus getting further down the road? I gave no idea what that means.

I am talking about manned missions, sending out probes and such isn't all that expensive and they are doing something the private sector wouldn't do.

Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11, Galileo, Casini, DS 1, all of these were hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. There's nothing cheap about them.

BUT, NASA has gone and done something very, very good:

SpaceX, Rocketplane Kistler Win NASA COTS Competition

Basically, A COTS award has been split between SpaceX and Rocketplane/Kistler totalling half a billion dollars. With the Shuttles retiring in 2010 and the replacement not due until 2014 NASA wants a bridge of 4 years of ISS service supplied by the private, and cheaper, space sector. Kistler was a two stage reusable design that has been in development hell for over a decade, has been claimed to be 75% complete, and over $200 million could finish it and get it launching. SpaceX has numerous plans for orbital service and worlds beyond.
I can't even describe how important this is.

 

Your argument is built around a huge blind spot - the fact that we are much, much closer to developing the technology necessary to translate human consciousness into computer-based code and/or developing sentient AI than we are to developing the capacity to build sustainable offworld colonies capable of supporting human biology indefinitely. We're going to be at that point within our lifetimes, and it will come more or less as a byproduct of stuff we're already doing now, and once we make that transition, we can potentially live anywhere, under almost any conditions.

The solution to the long-term issue of human extinction is to become fully posthuman, not to send canned primates* to Mars.

None of which says anything to other reasons for wanting to support space exploration, but it's just silly to present it as an issue of survival. Human civilization and even human consciousness on an individual level are rapidly approaching the point where they are independent of human biology.

* A turn of phrase I will gleefully admit to having stolen from a Charles Stross story.

 

I have to disagree there diz. We are nowhere near being able to uplaod minds into machines. If we were, since computer tech is far cheaper than space tech, there would be people doing it right now.

But thisBottomland)

[image=http://www.patrawlings.com/images/large/S162.jpg]

All the tech needed to make that happen exists. The only thing holding it back is funding. We could do this right now. We cannot upload minds. We don't even know if uploading is a possibility, or if said uploading is a mere copy of you. But we do know that we could put a colony on the Moon with plants and trees and grass and water and solar power, right now. Money, money, money. Had NASA used it right, there would already be a Bottomland. Oh, there would be a few details to be worked on, but what exists to make Bottomland a reality is far in advance, and will be for some time, of any uploading technology even if Moore's Law holds up.

 

Yes, we are. On one hand, we're mapping the brain at extraordinary speed. On the other, computers are nearing human-level complexity. We're talking about a few decades at most.

Your position is overly optimistic. You're totally discounting long-term effects of things like cosmic radiation, the psychological effects of isolation, degenerative bone loss, etc. Yes, we could put people in a little dome on Mars or the Moon if we wanted to, but how long would it take them to die of cancer and/or go crazy? How many people would have to be sent in order to make anything resembling a self-sustaining community? We're talking thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people. How expensive would that be, and how unlikely would it be that we'd get qualified, psychologically well-balanced people in sufficient numbers?

Plus, there's going to be at least one catastrophic event. A critical systems failure, mass psychosis, etc. There are too many variables, and too many stresses, for it not to happen. Once something goes wrong (and it will) and everyone dies, how do you convince other people to go? How do you convince people to put forward more funding?

You don't see people rushing to colonize the Gobi Desert, or Antarctica, and either of those places is many levels of magnitude more hospitable than the Moon or Mars. They're easier to get to, less isolated from human society, you can breathe the air, the temperatures are less extreme, and rescue teams can get there within days if something goes wrong.

Building a permanent colony is a great deal more complicated than the basic life support technology. You have to take into account huge logistics issues, long-term environmental exposure issues, and (crucially) psychological and social issues which we are nowhere near tackling. There's a huge difference between sustaining individual lives in space and sustaining a community. Human bodies need Earth-like conditions to survive and remain healthy long-term, and at the present time there is no reason to believe that that will ever change, much less that it will change in the near future. Furthermore, humans are primates, and like all other primates are social animals, and they need normal social interactions with a functioning society to stay sane in the long term. Humans are simply not built to survive off-planet, and they will need to become something else to realistically do so in the long term.

 

Some funny points diz. I also believe that humans in order to survive must take on a better form than these bodies we currently have, but instead of turning men into robots, which then wouldn't really be men, I would much rather take who I am and have my body perfected and changed intead of turning into a pile of silicon.

IIRC, we have the moon mapped better than the bottom of the ocean. Oceans take up 2/3s of the planet, so wouldn't it make sense to extend ourselves horizontally first instead of vertically? Going by the dinasour example, we still have VERY good odds we will live several thousand more years without becoming extict by some natural event.

The problem with trying to predict the future is that we always just displace our own time into what we think will happen. The future of technology is going towards things we can't really imagine. The 20th Century saw a huge advancement in physics and chemistry, but this communications boom we have seen is something we couldn't have really imagined. Like you said, computers are cheap and space travel is expensive, thus it is a lot easier to make the parts for A.I. than a moon colony.

I just discovered this site: SimpleLife that is a virtual world where you can do almost anything you want. I see this sort of thing as a way for humans to explore and expand their world without having to leave their room. Before downloading minds (which I find very creepy BTW) there is going to have to be something people will want to download into. The MMORPGs have always been far too nerd-oriented to attact a really mainstream audience.

Another important human advancement is genetic and nano engineering. The ability to change and create new forms of life would be a much better "backup plan" than fragile humans in hostile outer worldly environments.

 

Esp
What good is a moon base if costs a million to get there? I will admit it is cool and the government wastes enough money the least they can do is make us look cool



BTW, I don't even think it will look cool. It will probably look like a huge piece of crunched tinfoil with pipes and ugly square boxes adjoined to one another.