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From my Jewish perspective, I think of it as oral tradition vs written tradition (like the pre-Mishnaic distinction between the Written Law and the Oral Law).
They need a space flight talmud
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Here we go again... Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279 Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back. I’ll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It’ll probably be repeated in some form today. “ Someone dying is dev…
I mean, we have already been exploring the solar system with machines, for a good while. Humans are much more capable today (and for the foreseeable future) at conducting a wide range of tasks in space than the machines we can currently send up. It could be argued it would be faster to send humans up to build the infrastructure for more humans now (in the near future) than it would be to wait for robotics to get adva…
we'd be back on the moon by 2023.
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Would you mind elaborating on that first point?
The people who did it are dead or dying, the tribal knowledge wasn't written down.
Much of that tribal knowledge would have been very esoteric and focused on technologies that are no longer critical. for example, fabricating magnetic core memory. I'm sure some of the required skill is gone, but we don't need to use that memory technology anymore.
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Yes, the Shuttle was expensive and Project Constellation was going to replace it. We’d only be without orbital capabilities for a few years. https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/163092main_constellation_program_ov... Unfortunately, that was canceled 10 years ago. That was superseded by Orion?
More or less. Constellation was effectively broken up into smaller chunks (Artemis, Orion, Commercial Crew) versus being a unified program.
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The people who did it are dead or dying, the tribal knowledge wasn't written down.
Isn’t it odd that the most important political and military mission of a generation relied on “tribal information which wasn’t written down?”
Especially in an era where you had to literally write things down versus throwing in a link to a slack message onto a Jira ticket somewhere (Which no one will ever read anyway since text search in Jira sucks)
Also its worth emphasizing that a lot of the actual physics regarding like rocket combustion was not understood so the design process had elements of "make a rocket engine that satisfies some generic constraints and we can figure out the black magic parts such as POGO". Not that useful to write down.
Would be better to spend that on robotic exploration. More probes to other planets, the Sun, asteroids etc. and space telescopes. Much greater scientific return on the dollar.
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Would you mind elaborating on that first point?
The people who did it are dead or dying, the tribal knowledge wasn't written down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More or less. Constellation was effectively broken up into smaller chunks (Artemis, Orion, Commercial Crew) versus being a unified program.
Why have one manned space program when you can have three for 3x cost.
Commercial crew is for ISS trips, so short duration trips, so limited life support or things like toilets required.
Artemis needs to send a lander to the moon and come back. So 3-7 days with extended life support, and the ability to land on the moon with a vehicle and take off within the size confines of a single launch.
Orion is for deep space exploration, no lander necessary, and extended life support.
So yes, three completely different vehicles. The last time we tried to combine multiple roles into a unified chassis, the F35 happened.
NASA wants to go to moon in about 4 years (!) but today they can't even lift a human into earth orbit since they discontinued their last spacecraft capable of such a task. Dream on.
That will change this spring which isn’t too far away. > Elon Musk’s SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing on Sunday in a dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, a big step its mission to fly NASA astronauts for the first time as soon as this spring. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-spacex/...
> Nearly 45 years after NASA astronauts last embarked on a lunar mission, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced his company's plans to send two private citizens on a flight around the moon in 2018.