Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
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Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#2>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be.
>If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors should lower their sights. But not in terms of innovation; rather in altitude.
As if constraining ourselves to low-earth orbit were too ambitious. It is absolutely disgusting to suggest that, after we gutted NASA in order to make opportunities for private enterprise, we should just stop sending stuff to space altogether. We need to face it: we're never going to become a interplanetary, space-faring civilization under this current economic system.
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#3>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
> It is absolutely disgusting to suggest that, after we gutted NASA in order to make opportunities for private enterprise, we should just stop sending stuff to space altogether.
I do not think that was the point of the article. Some things do not absolutely need to be beyond the atmosphere, they only need to be up high. In the past, the technology to keep things at what might be termed "moderate" altitudes has not been available, so we pushed things above the atmosphere. But when you have technology to do the job better, it does not make sense to continue sending things up to space simply because that is what has been done in the past.
Not to mention, retrievable technology means it can be upgraded, rather than junked (as many satellites are). So this could very well reduce space junk (or at least reduce its rate of increase) and result in more rapid technology development.
There are certainly there are things which will still be easier or better served by the use of satellites up, and so that technology will continue to be developed.
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#4>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
Never is a really long time. Even if we make 0 investment in space travel, we will almost certainly be better equipped for space travel than we are today. The only possible exceptions to this that I can think of are: modern civilization collapsing (or some less extreme variant) or us having depleted some critical resource.
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#5>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
NASA sunk itself with the space shuttle and politics.
http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/good-riddance-t...
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#6>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
That's what Elon Musks are for :)
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#7>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
Lofting stuff up into space 'just because' rather than because it meets some technological or economic need is a waste of time. I am very much in favor of becoming a spacefaring civilization and will cheerfully argue for the necessity of manned missions despite the availability of robots and so on. But wasting money on putting things into space is counter productive to that end.
This has nothing to do with our economic system. It's basic economics, in the sense that it's resource-intensive to put stuff into space and some resources are scarce. Regardless of how your domestic economy is organized or what sort of monetary policy you favor, the physical resources required for space projects are steep.
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#8>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX, announced on the same day that two satellites it had tried to launch to join the European Space Agency’s Galileo constellation (intended to rival America’s Global Positioning System), had entered a “non-nominal injection orbit”—in other words, gone wrong—shows just how difficult the commercialisation of space can be. >If spacecraft are so precarious, then perhaps investors…
>That Arianespace, a French rival of SpaceX
Well... almost as much as the NASA being a rival of SpaceX, Arianespace being the French/European initiative for space access. Arianespace was founded in 1980 to commercialize the Ariane launcher (planned in 1973 after the europa launcher failure).
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#9If a network of these aircraft becomes a viable alternative to satellites, this could be a partial solution to the imminent problem of growing space debris, whose quantity and danger posed are decidedly super-linear to the number of objects launched into space:
> As the chance of collision is influenced by the number of objects in space, there is a critical density where the creation of new debris is theorized to occur faster than the various natural forces remove them. Beyond this point, a runaway chain reaction may occur that would rapidly increase the number of debris objects in orbit, and therefore greatly increase the risk to operational satellites. Called the "Kessler syndrome", there is debate if the critical density has already been reached in certain orbital bands. A runaway Kessler syndrome would render a portion of the useful polar-orbiting bands difficult to use, and greatly increase cost of space launches and missions. Measurement, growth mitigation and active removal of space debris are activities within the space industry today. [1]
(Anyone remember that scene from WALL-E where they need to punch through the debris to get out of Earth's orbit? It's not too far from the truth, and it would definitely make space travel a lot more difficult for future generations!)
On the other hand, an alternative to satellites for private industry means that there will be a lower demand curve for commercial launches, which may limit the amount of research and innovation that private space companies can support.
But of course Earthlings, in their infinite wisdom, have found a solution to low demand curves: government regulation! So the real question is: can our governments find a good balance between debris-proliferation and innovation? Only time and politics will tell!
Re: Pseudo-satellites: A cheap alternative to satellites is starting to take off
#10Missed opportunity at "pseudollite"