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No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

arstechnica.com

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Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#61

Post by LorenDB »

jfengel wrote: post #56
xoa wrote: post #40

It's pretty wild to me that in both the article (written by Eric Berger, who really knows his stuff and did two fantastic books on the history of SpaceX and the rise of new space) and the first 31 comments made here on HN as I write this that a Find for one word has zero results: "starship". That's the overwhelming behemoth elephant in the room. For the purposes of launching/building a space station, it doesn't matte…

I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed. That's a very big deal, because slowing down from that speed is a massive challenge unto itself. Orbit is scheduled for the test after next, if all goes well. They don't really need Starship just for orbit. They've already got ships that get to the ISS and back. They really do need to get Starship to orbit or their plans really wil…

AFAIK they are just cutting the engines off some seconds before they would achieve full orbit, and they have already demonstrated deorbut burns. So I don't think a proper orbit will be a big hurdle for SpaceX.

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#62

Post by maxerickson »

gus_massa wrote: post #53
Havoc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very surprised if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space. If that is actually true then humanity has a problem. >research that couldn't be done with automation I'd think there is room for both. Automation makes sense, but don't think the versatility of meatbags is entirely there yet.

> if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space A bigger problem is lack of expertise. Astronauts are not specialist in whatever is the topic of the current experiment. You need probably like 5 years of training (assume the second half of the undergraduate degree, and perhaps the first half of the PhD). So experiments must be fully automated except for a button to turn they on and off.

Lots of research has technicians doing the actual experimental tasks, your argument would benefit from even a short list of experiments that have not been done because astronauts couldn't be expected to handle it.

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#63

Post by llboston »

xoa wrote: post #40

It's pretty wild to me that in both the article (written by Eric Berger, who really knows his stuff and did two fantastic books on the history of SpaceX and the rise of new space) and the first 31 comments made here on HN as I write this that a Find for one word has zero results: "starship". That's the overwhelming behemoth elephant in the room. For the purposes of launching/building a space station, it doesn't matte…

Just a few days ago, NASA unveiled its plan to establish a permanent base on the Moon: https://www.nasa.gov/ignition/

NASA finally got a leader with a clear vision, and with technologies like Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn getting ready, the future is bright!

ISS is no longer the frontier, and I am glad NASA is focusing its resources on the future.

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#64

Post by ambicapter »

Loughla wrote: post #46
ambicapter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person will argue since it was in space, no laws were broken. You think the type of guy busy trying to put data centers in space right now is gonna say “mea culpa”?

And then it's up to the courts to decide. There's literally no difference between putting it in space and putting it in North Korea or some other country who won't extradite to the US or wherever. Except the massive cost. It just doesn't make sense.

> There's literally no difference between putting it in space and putting it in North Korea

Literally no difference except the likelihood of it happening and therefore whether or not we should be concerned about it. What even is this type of argument?

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#65

Post by xoa »

jfengel wrote: post #56
xoa wrote: post #40

It's pretty wild to me that in both the article (written by Eric Berger, who really knows his stuff and did two fantastic books on the history of SpaceX and the rise of new space) and the first 31 comments made here on HN as I write this that a Find for one word has zero results: "starship". That's the overwhelming behemoth elephant in the room. For the purposes of launching/building a space station, it doesn't matte…

I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed. That's a very big deal, because slowing down from that speed is a massive challenge unto itself. Orbit is scheduled for the test after next, if all goes well. They don't really need Starship just for orbit. They've already got ships that get to the ISS and back. They really do need to get Starship to orbit or their plans really wil…

>I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed.

I'm honestly kinda curious how you came to this thinking after watching the launches, like the last Flight 11 [0]? They have the velocity listed at all times right there in the bottom corner. It's peaking over 7.4 km/s, seems pretty clear they were stopping just barely short and maintaining a ballistic path on purpose exactly as they said they would in the flight plan they filed ahead of time with the FAA for deorbit safety purposes, not because they couldn't have technically squeezed out another few hundred m/s and different trajectory if that was the goal. It's a hardware rich program, and their testing sequence has been reasonably careful about controlling the space of out of bounds scenarios (on the scale of rocketry). What has lead you to believe that they can do 7.4+ km/s with Raptor 2 and Block 2 but v3 won't be able to do ~7.8 (or that they couldn't have done it with v2 for that matter)?

----

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tvK7flZ72c

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#66

Post by mikkupikku »

avmich wrote: post #37
mikkupikku wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senators care about ground control. Jobs is the whole reason any of them agree to fund NASA at all.

NASA is the goverment agency routinely favored by the general public. They can't meaningfully reduce funding, now that "race to space" with China is heating up.

Most of the public don't know there's another space race and would probably tell you that Artemis is a new brand of deodorant or something. Senators don't care about space fans, they just want NASA to be a consistent reliable jobs program that doesn't throw any curve balls (hence NASA's [nominal attempts to have a] low tolerance for risk.)

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#67

Post by Muromec »

pfdietz wrote: post #21
Muromec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disbanding NASA would be one of those symbolic things thay people will associate the dusk of American empire.

Avoiding something for such symbolic reasons is negative cargo cult thinking.

You are right and I don't think it should be avoided. It's just that, a symbolic milestone of sorts. A cutoff date.

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#68

Post by ceejayoz »

Muromec wrote: post #8
ceejayoz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International law says you spank whoever launched it. There’s treaties on this. Barring that, we have anti-satellite missiles.

What law?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#69

Post by Muromec »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #34
Muromec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person who wrote the prompt, the person who spawned the instance, the person who provided the access to infra, the person who launched it. At the end of the day, there is somebody who profits from it or could have prevented it

My worry is that networks can be established on and orbiting the moon which become extremely difficult to get data from if someone decides to abuse it. You can raid a data center if bad actors are utilizing it to break the law, but if some billionaire is using a moon relay to do bad stuff, the best you can do is de-allocate their bandwidth on the spectrum since you can't just hop over to the moon. Or to some craft in…

>You can raid a data center if bad actors are utilizing it to break the law, but if some billionaire is using a moon relay to do bad stuff, the best you can do is de-allocate their bandwidth on the spectrum since you can't just hop over to the moon.

You don't need to raid the data center, you just need to compel the flesh-bound weakling in your jurisdiction that has effective control to cede the effective control. Or hack into it by obvious means.

> If any country chooses to facilitate this and allows this communication to be received, and propagates it to their internet, what does the rest of the world do?

If a hostile country wants to do that they don't need space data centers. Case in point starts with r and end with ussia.

Even if it is in space, somebody assigns the AS numbers and provides peering. You don't have to reach the other end of the rope to cut it.

As a worst-case scenario, you just stop Internetting altogether and only allow information to flow to and from AS that are in your geopolitically aligned jurisdiction.

Re: No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations

#70

Post by ceejayoz »

ambicapter wrote: post #64
Loughla wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then it's up to the courts to decide. There's literally no difference between putting it in space and putting it in North Korea or some other country who won't extradite to the US or wherever. Except the massive cost. It just doesn't make sense.

> There's literally no difference between putting it in space and putting it in North Korea Literally no difference except the likelihood of it happening and therefore whether or not we should be concerned about it. What even is this type of argument?

It's likely easier to put it in North Korea than space.
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