191–200 of 237 posts
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"Even"? China has never been a space exploration powerhouse.
They are in the process of becoming one, and they have a bit more focus than the US.
Yeah, sounds just like Trump to rush this program (and endanger lives while doing it) just so he can bask in its (hopeful) success...
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Not to mention SLS which is just nonsense at this point. As well as the numerous delays on the demo missions to the ISS. This feels to me like an ultimatum to NASA... move the ball forward or get out of the game. I get the sense there is real fear we could lose the idea of ‘space’ if we don’t start showing some progress. As it stands now there isn’t a platform for the moon and there’s not going to be a platform by 20…
NASA is going to end up being the label on the shipping crate. They don't have a funding model sufficiently detached from political actors trying to sell the sizzle and uninterested in somebody else's steak.
No chance. This isn't the 1950s. We don't just throw people atop rockets anymore. These are vehicles, aircraft. There is absolutely no way any of the current crop of space vehicles could be made ready for a trip to the moon anytime before 2024. Going beyond low orbit, away from the sub-45min return time, is something we haven't done in generations. The craft need to be tested, repeatedly. Each test flight then has to…
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>almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper ... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apoll…
You are right but it's comparing apples to oranges. If you compared missions of comparable weight you would find that capability of robotic missions increased many times over current missions, reason is that any human mission would be much more massive than current unmanned missions. This is especially true for long range manned missions where crew needs food, water, shielding and space to survive long term in space,…
For any given fixed distance (e.g. mars) at some point there's a crossover where sending some people up there to go kick rocks is actually cheaper than sending a series of robots that kick rocks in progressively more detail. I'm not sure if we've reached that technology point yet but as space flight gets cheaper and cheaper it will eventually happen for the moon and then for mars.
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Did we throw away everything we learned in the apollo program? They won’t be starting from scratch on the design.
I have a friend who ordered the mechanical drawings for a P-51, intending to make P-51 assemblies. In investigating this, he talked to some P-51 experts who told him that the drawings were nearly useless. The real specification of the airplane was the tools and jigs created to make and assemble the parts. Those are long gone. The mechanical drawings were made after the fact to satisfy some DoD requirement.
No chance. This isn't the 1950s. We don't just throw people atop rockets anymore. These are vehicles, aircraft. There is absolutely no way any of the current crop of space vehicles could be made ready for a trip to the moon anytime before 2024. Going beyond low orbit, away from the sub-45min return time, is something we haven't done in generations. The craft need to be tested, repeatedly. Each test flight then has to…
We launch people on rockets every year to the ISS.
I hope not. I like telling old people that nobody has been to the moon in my lifetime. Last moon landing was December 1972, which puts bounds on my age and what I consider old people...
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It needs more than just the rocket. You also need a lunar lander, and all we have right now are paper sketches of designs that would take more than four years to finish and build, on conventional timelines. (One wild card is the SpaceX Starship, which Elon is talking about having some lunar capability for, on extremely aggressive timelines. But Starship is a risky project in all sorts of ways -- besides which, before…
> One wild card is the SpaceX Starship, which Elon is talking about having some lunar capability for, “Some lunar capability” is an understatement. If high elliptical orbital refuelling of Starship works it will completely change the game - eliminating the need for a lander & service module. Instead of delivering a 25-30 ton lander, they’ll land the entire second stage, with 100 tons of cargo (or dozens of passengers…