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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

#81

Post by pfdietz »

mikkupikku wrote: post #76
pfdietz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cargo cult requires a confusion of cause and effect. Airplanes carrying cargo didn't land because there was a control tower; they landed because of prior causes that also caused the construction of a control tower. And here, the US does not decline because of some symbolic action, but rather decline causes the action. This confusion of cause and effect is literally a kind of magical thinking.

You're broadly right, but I think you're missing the part where perception of reality feeds back into reality, e.g. through economic effects. Demoralized Americans with less hope for the future stop caring, stop trying, and this in turn hastens that same decline.

I think that's just an untestable rationalization.

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

#82

Post by Havoc »

mikkupikku wrote: post #30
Havoc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of crassness - human lives are pretty cheap and there are plenty of people willing to take the hit for a chance to be in space for an extended timeframe. Meanwhile building something with enough spin and shielding is a huge ask

We don't even know how much spin we'd need, and this is an important question to answer if lunar or martian habitats are something we're serious about. Maybe enough spin to match lunar gravity is enough, maybe less, maybe a lot more.

>We don't even know how much spin we'd need,

Forgive my ignorance on the topic, but surely "same as earth" would be the starting point? With everything less being a trade-off that is suboptimal

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

#83

Post by ramblenode »

Havoc wrote: post #10
mikkupikku wrote: post #2

Nobody can even come up with a coherent reason for any of these proposals to exist. Even the ISS is more of a political instrument than a real science thing. NASA likes to say its about studying how to help humans live in space, but those results were in decades ago: more than a few months in zero-g wrecks people. So why are we still trying to build old modular Salyut/Mir derivatives instead of trying to figure out t…

At risk of crassness - human lives are pretty cheap and there are plenty of people willing to take the hit for a chance to be in space for an extended timeframe. Meanwhile building something with enough spin and shielding is a huge ask

I'm sure there's plenty of people who say that (on earth), but how many are going to have buyer's remorse after the first month? We tend to only send the most exemplary humans to space because you have to be in excellent physical and mental health just to weather the difficult conditions.

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

#84

Post by somenameforme »

adrian_b wrote: post #51
somenameforme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended space spays doesn't really wreck people, it's just that your body adjusts to the new environment so your strength decrease, your bone density decreases, your orientation mechanisms shift to 6 degrees of freedom, and so on. Of course when you get back to Earth you're body again has to go through a readjustment phase because those previous adjustments are now unfit for the new environment, but it's nothing bey…

The results from ISS are much more pessimistic than you say, suggesting some irreversible damage besides the reversible changes, but I am lazy now to search links to the research articles. The weakening of the skeletal muscles is not the worst, but the deterioration of the heart muscle. However, the research done on mice on ISS suggests that the undesirable effects can be mitigated by creating an artificial gravity (…

As stated elsewhere, there's a very recent study [1] on astronaut heart health that's quite relevant. They studied the cardiovascular health of astronauts for 5 years after their return from long-duration stays on the ISS. They were all perfectly healthy.

For one obvious problem with rotation systems, stations need to be regularly boosted. You'll also need to occasionally reboost the local rotation. This sort of basic stuff is already fairly complex with a static station, and becomes exponentially more so with a local rotation going on. Even moreso because you want to be relatively fault tolerant in case of a partial or failed boost. Then you need to compensate for impacts, docking and undocking, and much more.

It's viable and almost certainly a solvable, but NASA is not the appropriate organization to do so. Their risk aversion makes it unlikely that they'll ever be doing much of anything revolutionary where failure could be catastrophic. They're having a tough enough time just trying to recreate what we already did 50+ years ago.

[1] - https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

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

#85

Post by avmich »

Rumudiez wrote: post #44
avmich wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a very broad statement. Do you have anything to confirm this opinion?

Do you have any grounds to deny it? If it were easy it would have been done already

No, but I'm not making a statement.

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

#86

Post by avmich »

mikkupikku wrote: post #66
avmich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Unlike other government agencies, space fans are electorally meaningful number of people, as far as I know. Wait till China start scoring firsts with manned Moon expeditions and journalists start explaining that Senate not caring, and situation will get interesting, uncomfortably so.

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

#87

Post by garaetjjte »

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…

By that logic, was ISS obsoleted by Skylab?
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