151–160 of 330 posts
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Going to space is only a secondary goal for SLS though. Keeping a bunch of people in politically influential states and congressional districts employed is the primary goal and it's succeeding at that.
Government spending "creating jobs" is a lot like a business plan where you pay people to buy your products, or a car that makes its own fuel.
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> It helps to answer the question of whether or not humans can even survive long term away from Earth How will it answer that question that we already don't know of? I don't think that was the aim of ISS anyways and will definitely won't be the aim of second ISS. Humans can survive in space for year without significant physical damage but with lot of training.
To me, it's just so odd that people don't seem to understand why we have an ISS. Is the main argument "We've already learned what's needed about life in space, and now we don't need a space station anymore"? That seems absurd.
This spoken-word work from 1970 conveys the sentiment well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
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> NASA's budget has been strangled for decades now It’s higher than it was in the 70s and has remained pretty constant since then trending upward (when adjusting for inflation) http://static1.squarespace.com/static/500caca8e4b0e4a25027aa...
Yes. But in another way to look at it, as a percentage of the US federal budget, in 2017 and 2019 it was the lowest it's been since 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
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> but how do we multiply & speed up that effort? I think it's pretty much politically impossible. The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake). It's pretty easy to come up with other major challenges that most people will consider more important that also aren't getting funding ... so private industry looks more likely to get some traction. States…
China's public plans include a semi-permanent base on the Moon. That oughta ruffle some feathers in Congress. Chinese paper on plant-based life support systems for extended crew stays. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.12.426282v1
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If the leaks are that small, sounds like putting an elastic coating on it should fix it.
A can of this should do it: https://www.holtsauto.com/holts/products/tyreweld/
Materials aging in space is a pretty deep subject. That it is the Russian Zvevda module that is leaking/cracking is likely related to the fact that it is also the oldest module in the ISS. The ISS is/was scheduled to be retired in 2024 (aka 3 years from now) but there are calls to keep it going. My fantasy would be to have SpaceX move it into the Lunar L1 Lagrange point which would keep it in use but it would have to…
I think we need a "Space New Deal", I'm honestly saddened by the lack of progress in space in my lifetime. I mean we've done some great work, but we haven't made any giant leaps since getting to the moon 51.5 years ago. Thankfully, we do have SpaceX et. al. who really are making some big strides -- but how do we multiply & speed up that effort? ... sorry, I'm being selfish, but I really want to go to Mars.
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Right, but why do you need to do station keeping at all. Tracking objects is cheap, and a normal graveyard orbit isn't going to be perturbed so much that it would be notably harder to reach again in any reasonable timeframe.
Few chances to have a collision with existing space junk in either L4 or L5.
I encourage everyone to get a sense for the sheer scale of this. Do it on your floor or walls. Try a scale of 1cm = 5000km or 1cm = 10,000km. Cut out little Earths and moons and map out geosynch, the lagrange points, etc.
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> but how do we multiply & speed up that effort? I think it's pretty much politically impossible. The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake). It's pretty easy to come up with other major challenges that most people will consider more important that also aren't getting funding ... so private industry looks more likely to get some traction. States…
> The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake). My understanding is that the Defense Department was interested in human manned spy satellites liked the planned Manned Orbital Laboratory early on, but that automation progressed to the point where it was preferable. I think that's one thing people miss when they talk about lack of progress in space.…
We clearly have issues with underestimating the complexity of these engineering problems and overestimating the pace of technological progress. I'd also argue, albeit more contentiously, that we systematically underestimate the utility of a physical human presence at exploration sites, and the cognitive dissonance of our biases cause us to scale back our ambitions so we don't have to admit to the limitations of the remote-controlled approach.
Exclusively committing to remote-controlled exploration also avoids the thorny issues around deliberately putting explorers into harms way or even actual harm. I think Musk understands, knowingly or at least intuitively, that the debate is basically impossible to have; our culture isn't equipped for it. Necessity will drive us toward human space exploration. Safety will be to some extent needlessly neglected, and then there'll be vigorous finger pointing and "I told you so"s after the fact--after the sacrifices have been made and after the benefits have been secured for all. Basically the same pattern will play out as with any other area where prohibition or abstention is the official choice despite its patent unviability.
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> Parking it in L4 or L5 could keep it for future generations but it would be even more of a challenge to go visit. "If your planet has one or more broken down space stations on its lawn, you might be a redneck colony." (Sorry.)
Missed opportunity to replace "lawn" with "Lagrange"
Can they duct tape it from outside?