Senate The Final Frontier: 2013 no space, ship no moon base.

I would love for us all to go back into space, but we should probably focus on fixing this planet first environmentally and socially.

 

Yeah well, when it comes to going to Mars there's not really any military or economic advantage to be gained over any of our supposed rivals.

Anyway speaking of space, just read this about how our two old Mars rovers are still going at it.

 

Economics, risk responsibility, politics; this is a good example

Virgin Galactic is on the right path but they apparently are looking for shield against risk. It indicates here if they continue they will start launching next year. If the sub-orbital launches work then they might get to orbit in a decade.

 

I think it's truly exciting that so many private ventures have demonstrated an interest in taking on truly long-range strategic planning toward the eventual development of a viable space industry. But, really, even if Rogue_Ten was insincere, he's still right. The first place I would start for space tech is long-range planning for a near-earth object protection scheme. The long-term risk to human populations is real. A private company could start developing the technology with an intent to, say, license it or sell its services to the UN, which could incorporate asteroid collision insurance into its mission. It needs to be an international effort, so why not start with a multinational corporation to help get it started. It needs public funding obviously, since governments are the only customer for this service.

Also, developing this technology would have uses in the event an actual asteroid mining/space industry ever emerges.

 

This just in:
Iran claims to have shot a monkey into space



It is not known if the monkey returned alive, or dead.

Question is... do they really want to be a spacefaring nation, or do they just want long-range rockets?
Note that Iran has not ratified the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits nuclear warheads in space.

 

Definitely seems like the signal they're sending is ICBM.

 

Maybe. One thing with ICBMs is that the warhead(s) are tough to get light enough to remain launchable and get an intercontinental range and keep a significant yield per warhead, which is why the Minuteman 3 had only 3 of them per missile for all of it's operational history until recently-it's now reduced to 1 because of treaty requirements IIRC. Iran still hasn't produced a viable nuclear warhead to begin with; when they do they're going to have to lay the design screws on to get the weight light enough-as an example the Minuteman's Mark 12 weighs eight hundred pounds, and the warhead itself weighs about 250. When taken in context-that's the equivalent weight of one 2,000-pound-class bomb, which is hardly 'large' by any standard, but the weight proved quite alot to actually get to launch 6,000 miles across space.

In contrast, this Iranian rocket with about 20 pounds of monkey on board didn't actually achieve orbit proper:

Space Monkey

 

Ok, so the I in this case stands for "Israel"

 

They can already do that, albeit with conventional warheads. The Shahab 3's maximum payload is about 2,000 pounds. Still...I wouldn't expect that to be sporting a nuclear warhead anytime soon. Maybe, if Iran was immune to outside pressure (IE assassinations and malware) to the extent the DPRK is. As it stands now? Not really.

 

Ok, Spock.

Edit, Sorry, forgot this was a senate thread. Nice work.

 

See, why doesn't anyone (politicians, defense experts, media) mention that? No, we just let Netanyahu tell the world about his stupid "red lines" when in fact it's nowhere near that urgent.

 

Because none of those people are subject matter experts. Come on now, you know some guy on the internet with a username he thought was cool 13 years ago is a vastly better authority.

 

oh, that hurts.

 

Are you absolutely sure that you're not a conservative?

 

Depends on what you mean by that word.

"Is that your minkey?"

 

Eh, I did include "defense expert" on that list...I would imagine that they ought to be knowledgeable about this. And so should our Secretary of Defense. And come to think of it, Israel's Ehud Barak used to be a general as well, right? Why is he supporting Netanyahu on the Iran issue at all?