661–670 of 839 posts
Best video found so far of it that covers launch and landing of falcon 9. Alas loss of signal during the moment, though I'm sure another camera angle/footage will come about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JPLgs3ktyo
ERROR: -JPLgs3ktyo: YouTube said: This video contains content from National Geographic, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.
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I cringed when I saw the Tesla car though. Kinda cheapened the whole thing for me
Bit of a strange criticism. They've got to drive out in something, why not an electric vehicle? And the spacesuits are bulky and difficult to move in, so the falcon doors on that Tesla model make sense for easy egress.
It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close. And the last thing I'm feeling is the a…
>> into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. If we are talking pure commercial travel, it is a vehicle without a destination. The ISS is definitely not a commercial project. There are lots of reasons for the ISS to exist, and they have changed over time, but it has never been a money-making venture. While the dragons certainly do come in under budget, they are a more…
Asteroid mining comes to mind. And sure, we can do that with robots, but it's incredibly convenient to have actual sapient personnel in close proximity to coordinate things, perform repairs, etc. And Ceres is a reasonable choice for such a colony (more so than Mars, IMO, though I know plenty of people might disagree), given the low escape velocity and abundance of water (as ice, but you can always melt ice) making it great for both sustaining human habitation and for refueling return trips.
In general, the more people we can get into space permanently, the greater the chances of humanity's survival long-term, since we would no longer be tied to one planet (and importantly: if we can maintain permanent settlements in space, then we could likely survive all but the most extreme calamities on Earth). I feel like that alone more than justifies any and all efforts to get Earth-to-orbit infrastructure as cheap and robust and predictable as possible; the scientific and commercial objectives are critical but secondary.
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We (well, Europeans) explored the earth when it looked quite similar to space exploration today. Year-long journeys with very little chance of survival, and no idea what was waiting on the other side. We ended up making some amazing discoveries (the new worlds) that turned out to be of vast economical benefits. Who says space exploration can't be similar. (Yes, there is a lot of controversy over colonialism that I wo…
> Who says space exploration can't be similar. We can see into the space through telescopes, while the seafaring explorers needed to literally go to some place to see what it was like.
Robotics still ain't good enough to make it work alone, we'll need manned missions to establish a manufacturing-based economy in cislunar space, if we want to get anything done this century. Risky, manned missions, that in time will yield good profits.
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I appreciate your thoughts, but they are sad thoughts to me. Isn’t there something about “exploration” that seems important to a non-neglible amount of humans? I don’t want everything we do to serve the rat race we’re in. Let’s loose our money on something amazing.
Sure, as a society we do some things purely for emotional reasons. But we should be honest about that - we shouldn't pretend that the reason we're building the Washington monument is because of it's potential use as a grain silo. There's a lot more to exploration than space exploration (I think exploring something like the human brain will end up having a greater emotional and practical impact myself). But even if we…
Not to mention, a probe or rover sent far away all have to go through one of the few DSNs, that can only do so much and so fast[0], and are generally scarce services. Forget about e.g. running 20 simultaneous robotic missions in different areas of Mars.
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[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network#Curren...
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On the ISS you can produce higher quality optical fiber than on earth [1]. A demonstration fabrication unit is already on the ISS, and NASA has recently published prices for using the ISS for commercial tasks such as this. I suspect many other manufacturing methods can also benefit from zero gravity, and as launch costs drop more of these will be explored. 1: https://upward.issnationallab.org/the-race-to-manufacture-…
It's interesting to think about that from the other side, too. Just delivering the raw materials to the manufacturing facility would cost ~$3000/kg (assuming rock bottom SpaceX prices). Based on some loose googling, I think that 1kg of raw material would yield only something on the order of 100m of cable. It looks like a typical 100m fiber optic patch cable retails for about $60. So, there's clearly a lot of value to…
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Astronauts and pilots just talk PR to the public. "It's great, I'm so happy, we are all happy family. We had say on how these things work." Wait until they retire to find out the truth.
Astronauts are backed by NASA - no small agency mind you. If they would find things that they do not accept they can trigger safety reviews anytime. BTW - On Soyuz they would need sticks, literal sticks, to interact with controls that are out of reach.
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> I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space. Even if it’s hard, it’s still a lot easier than getting humans to work in space.
You don't understand the challenges. Sending humans up with semi-automated machines would actually be a lot easier than fully automated machines. The human race's entire experience so far has been with machines in 1g. We have almost zero experience making self repairing factories in any gravity. We have zero experience mining in low or zero gravity. It might take several generations of engineers and miners in space t…
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Once the job finished, the machine is dispensable, but the astronaut definitely wanna go home, which will cost much much more.
Has nobody considered sending an older astronaut and not bothering with a return trip? I could imagine a lot of volunteers if you promised 5 years worth of dried food, comms back to earth and lots of fame.