Getting the Most Out of the Space Station (Before It's Too Late) 155
bmahersciwriter writes: NASA administrators are strategizing a push to do more science on the International Space Station in the coming years. The pressure is on, given the rapidly cooling relations between the U.S. and Russia, whose deputy prime minister recently suggested that U.S. astronauts use a trampoline if they want to get into orbit. Aiding in the push for more research is the development of two-way cargo ships by SpaceX, which should allow for return of research materials (formerly a hurdle to doing useful experiments). NASA soon aims to send new earth-monitoring equipment to the station and expanded rodent facilities. And geneLAB will send a range of model organisms like fruit flies and nematodes into space for months at a time.
Mother Russia... (Score:4, Interesting)
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oh really, where are their space stations?
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Besides, they've done it before, remember Mir ?
Re: Mother Russia... (Score:2)
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Personally, I do think that SpaceX has a good thing going at the moment but they're a failure or two or a political fuckup or two away from never launching again.
Just like the three failures that kicked off SpaceX's program ended SpaceX? And how does this really differ from Russia? I'd say Russia is a political fuckup away from ending its primary meal ticket, the launches to ISS. That would have much the same effect.
The state of Russia has more experience, more expertise, more infrastructure and endless seas of funds in comparison.
How many rockets and engines has Russia developed in the last ten years? How can it have and retain such experience and expertise, if it's not actually doing the sort of things any more that generate experience and expertise? Russia may have more funding
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You do not know what you are talking about. They recently developed the RD-191 and RD-0124 staged combustion engines. They are developing the Angara rocket to replace Proton. Russia is one of the largest launch services providers in the world.
The largest problem they have had by far has been funding. The main reason for the delays in Angara has been lack of funding and lack of a launch pad because they have had no funding to build one. The first stage of Angara was launched rather successfully with the Sout
Re:Mother Russia... (Score:5, Informative)
You do not know what you are talking about. They recently developed the RD-191 and RD-0124 staged combustion engines. They are developing the Angara rocket to replace Proton. Russia is one of the largest launch services providers in the world.
In other words, they upgraded the labels on rocket designs from the 1960s and 1970s. The RD-0110 was first flown in 1964 and the RD-170 was first developed for the Engergia rocket in the late 70s.
If instead, we're going to compare apples to apples. we'll also have to note that SpaceX has similarly upgraded its rocket engines during the same period. For example, there are three substantial upgrades of the original Merlin 1 rocket engine (the rocket used on the Falcon 9) and a second upgrade to the Draco rocket engine (a in-space rocket engine used for maneuvering). So
And while Russia claims to be developing Angara, as you already noted, they aren't due to the "delays" attributed to funding (which is actually the easiest part of the puzzle for Russia to fix - just add money).
So to summarize the current count: SpaceX has developed four rocket engine designs from scratch and upgraded these four times in the same sense that Russia has upgraded the RD-170 and the RD-0110. Then they developed two launch vehicles while Russia has experienced delays in its alleged development of the Angara. Finally, SpaceX developed a new spacecraft and vertical landing technology while Russia did neither. I think you see where I'm going with this.
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Re:Mother Russia... (Score:5, Interesting)
You call replacing a gas generator engine (RD-0110) with a staged combustion engine (RD-0124) with over twice the chamber pressure an 'upgrade'? You don't know WTF you are talking about. The engine is completely new with no relation other than that it is used as a drop in replacement with compatible interfaces.
The RD-191 to a lot of people maybe be just an RD-170 with a quarter of the combustion chambers but things are a lot more complicated than that. Plus I only gave those two engines as examples. There are more.
Pump fed engines, Kestrel and Draco, are trivial to design in comparison. The Russians also designed some of those much later than what you mention such as the S5.98M engine used in the Briz-M upper stage used in Proton. They also designed a LOX/LH2 expander cycle engine called the RD-0146. No man. The Russians are the world leaders in liquid rocket engine design and anyone who thinks otherwise are deluding themselves.
SpaceX is doing a nice job so far but their engines are still not state of the art.
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Pump fed engines, Kestrel and Draco, are trivial to design in comparison.
[...] SpaceX is doing a nice job so far but their engines are still not state of the art.
I guess you don't get the point. State of the art is not economical. An engine that is trivial to design and build, and which gives reasonable ISP and thrust/weight is a superior choice for rockets where you want more value out of them than you put in.
SpaceX has a rocket which is already cheaper to fly than Angara and that includes the higher labor and operational costs of flying out of the US. And if, at some future point, it becomes within the interests of SpaceX
Re:Mother Russia... (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you don't get the point. State of the art is not economical. An engine that is trivial to design and build, and which gives reasonable ISP and thrust/weight is a superior choice for rockets where you want more value out of them than you put in.
The Russians claim staged combustion engines are more cost effective than gas generator engines. Who am I to say any different? As for SpaceX they wouldn't be working on the Raptor using a LOX/Methane staged combustion cycle while moving away from gas generators like Merlin if they thought the Russians were wrong.
In fact if you look at the Merlin-1D a lot of the advances it has are clearly Russian tech derived like the channel wall nozzle. You know which other two stage to orbit LOX/Kerosene rocket is available in the market other than Falcon 9? Zenit.
SpaceX is not using staged combustion now because solving those issues to get LOX/Kerosene oxidizer rich staged combustion is certainly not trivial. RD-171 took a long time to develop. Supposedly it is easier to solve the technical issues with LOX/Methane staged combustion, of which the Russians also have working engines, because it has less polymerization and coking issues.
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The Russians claim staged combustion engines are more cost effective than gas generator engines.
The Russians claim a lot of stuff. I have no reason to take their word in the absence of evidence. My view is that the Russians let their program go to seed. Maybe you're right and they'll turn that around in the next few years. They are doing somewhat better than I thought they were. We will see.
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The Russians have the resources and experience that a world power with interests in maintaining security accumulate over years of rocketry development.
This is not Ford and Tesla.
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The Russians have the resources and experience that a world power with interests in maintaining security accumulate over years of rocketry development.
Which I might add, is not that useful for actually doing anything in space at an affordable price. The problem here is that cheap space launch is primarily a matter of economics not of experience, expertise, mostly irrelevant infrastructure, or funding.
The space industry suffers from remarkably low expectations. Just because the Russians have a cheaper space program than the US or Europe (which is a very low threshold to achieve IMHO) doesn't mean that they have experience with the cheap space launch str
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Angara is being developed alright [russianspaceweb.com]. The launch pad was finally funded circa 2010 and they finished construction of it at Plesetsk recently. The first Angara 1.2 rocket is supposed to launch from Plesetsk at the end of this month [bloomberg.com]. The first Angara 5 rocket is supposed to launch late this year or early next year. They also funded construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome as a replacement for Baikonur on Kazakhstan.
Also guess what the Soyuz capsule already uses rocket assisted propulsion for softening up capsule
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The bottomline here is Russians can launch cheaper than SpaceX and have way more experience at it.
No, that is not the bottom line. And the Russians don't have that experience.
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"When a human dies horribly in a gigantic government agency fireball"
There, FIFY
Deaths in private ventures are less likely to have politicians in a frothing rage.
There have been a significant number of deaths on the ground in various space programs in the last 20 years(*), but NASA copped the flak because it was so visible - and the deaths were avoidable from the outset if a hopelessly compromised design hadn't been rammed through.
(*) The two which spring to mind immediately are an entire chinese village wh
not an issue for russia (Score:2)
IOW, Putin can count on the GOP constiting of traitors who will continue to help him.
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XKCD should do a what if? for how a trampoline could be used to get to the space station.
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no need to jump from high place, just jump along with a very heavy weight that gets removed to the side when the trampoline is at maximum displacement
Mistake to go in with the Ruskies (Score:2)
It always seemed like a mistake to get involved in such a venture with the Russians. Any joint venture with two co-equals with somewhat cold relations seems destined to lead to problems as each side has conflicting goals (sometimes unrelated to the joint venture).
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So are you suggesting that it was up to the Americans and Russians to determine the choices a sovereign people should make? How about if someone made those choices for you? Oh Wait, they already do...
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So are you suggesting that it was up to the Americans and Russians to determine the choices a sovereign people should make? How about if someone made those choices for you? Oh Wait, they already do...
First, sovereignty isn't an absolute, especially when Russia and Ukraine were in fact a single sovereign country until very recently. Crimea is historically Russian and was only part of "Ukrainian" territory in the USSR because of an internal administrative boundary change.
Hell, throwing your "choices a sovereign people should make" back at you: what about the parts of Ukraine that are heavily Russian and WOULD rather be part of Russia?
Obama didn't just allow the Ukrainians their own choice - he actively
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Re:Mistake to go in with the Ruskies (Score:4, Insightful)
It never was really a science project, it was a diplomatic venture. Precisely because of the cold relations between the USA and Russia, the ISS was to showcase how antagonistic nations could set aside their differences to work together for the good of humanity. The ideal was that such a display would encourage other nations and tribes to see their personal conflicts as a little less important in the grand scheme of life. As an observation of wars since the launch of the ISS can show you, it didn't have much of an effect outside the nations that were already getting sick of open warfare.
If Russia goes through with effectively confiscating the whole project, the RSS (too bad they're not claiming the title "Soviet" like before, "SSS" has a fun ring to it) will change from a sign of cooperation to a sign of Russian ascendency and peerlessness. What, if anything, that changes on the ground is hard to guess at. I'm not even sure most nations or people would notice, it would just be mentioned whenever someone thinks it can be used to shame an opponent in an argument (debate hasn't been the rule of politics in quite some time).
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It never was really a science project, it was a diplomatic venture. Precisely because of the cold relations between the USA and Russia, the ISS was to showcase how antagonistic nations could set aside their differences to work together for the good of humanity. The ideal was that such a display would encourage other nations and tribes to see their personal conflicts as a little less important in the grand scheme of life. As an observation of wars since the launch of the ISS can show you, it didn't have much of an effect outside the nations that were already getting sick of open warfare.
And this is why the Vulcans haven't contacted us yet. It's not about warp drive, it's about a society being civil and evolved beyond internal disputes.
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We will never evolve beyond internal disputes. heck 60% of all marriages end in failures do you really think we can cooperate on a national level over the long term?
The thing is over time our disputes are getting less violent. we will still have them but in another one or two hundred years we will talk them out instead of shooting. well unless we fall completely back.
I am not convinced that even aliens attacking us could get current leaders to work together.
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During the cold war, the stakes where high. Now the stakes are low, so both sides are starting to get petty.
Neither side will allow the diplomatic spat over Ukraine to escalate to all out nuclear war. Conventional military conflict must also be avoided as that contains the implicit threat of an out of control escalation into nuclear war. Thus the game of tit for tat escalation of hostilities progresses in baby steps, we have now escalated from "nasty letters" to economic sanctions. In Soviet Russia economic
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With the constant pettyness and renegging on agreements by the US government, it seems like a very risky business to go into such a venture for the Russians as well.
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This is similar to how people disagree on the Olympics, or the UN as a whole. Some people say "the UN is a sham if Country X is on the human rights committee." I say "what, you think Country X would have better human rights if they weren't on the comittee?"
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No, I think they'd have exactly the same (lack of) human rights, but they'd spend a lot less time telling the rest of us that they're a paragon of human rights, what with being on the Human Rights Committee and and all....
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If we had a cheaper option on hand we'd be doing it by now!
How do you figure? I'd say that's a tautology, but it can't be because it's just not true.
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we got involved in the ISS ages ago. First plans were in the 80s and Russia got involved in 1993 (first piece went up in 1998). And frankly, we are only not seriously talking about decommissioning the ISS because it ran so far over schedule. It should have been at end life before the shuttles.
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For some reason Russia and the US seem to be able to compartmentalize things like cooperation on space projects. The Russian scientists and engineers have to put up with the same amount of bullshit from their politicians that the US does.
Have to laugh at the stupid Russia (Score:1)
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Pray tell. How would you?
The Space Launch System [wikipedia.org], which expected to be ready to fly in 2017.
Granted, using that to put people on the ISS is absurd overkill. It would be like commuting in an 18-wheeler.
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So you are expecting to use future technology that doesn't exist to put people in space now.
Well done.
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which expected
The Ares V was expected [flightglobal.com] to fly in 2018 and put something in orbit around the Moon in 2019. Expectations have a way of not happening in the aerospace industry. Congress can expect the SLS to fly any time they want, but that doesn't mean it actually will do so.
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Don't joke man. The SLS is a white elephant which will probably never fly in the final configuration.
If you said SpaceX Falcon 9 or Boeing Delta IV Heavy I wouldn't laugh.
Direct economic confrontation with Russia (Score:4, Informative)
Now, if Russia wanted to negatively impact US, then they'd mass produce tech and sell to anyone/everyone willing to pay. This would remove technological edge from US and enrich Russia.
Not when Europe is dependent on Russian gas. (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's gas that isn't traded in Russian currency. The U.S. can huff and puff its imperialistic hypocritical fascist coup supporting chest as much as it wants, but it can't do anything of significance as long as giving up Russian energy supplies would throw the continent into a depression. That, and Russia still has it's Security Council veto pen, and recent American efforts to make another round of "regime change" have stalled everywhere but Ukraine.
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The U.S. isn't being hypocritical by treating an illegal fascist-powered coup as the voice the people only to turn around and whine that an election to join Russia was totally illegitimate? Same for the rest.
Methinks you're a poutraged American Exceptionalist in denial.
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You don't understand how the world works if you think a molehill is equivalent to a mountain. The United States has special forces deployed in 70% of the world's countries - how many for Russia? Does Putin have robot planes murdering people on the ot
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the space program had disasters under air force too. you must be young. plenty of successes under NASA for 1960s until now
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The Apollo Program showed it was capable of getting people to the moon, but the point of NASA isn't just getting people to the moon over and over, the point is to eventually establish a permanent, expanding presence in space. Pointing a V-2 rocket up at the sky is effective but is also a dead end.
And of course the space program had problems under the Airforce.
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If we want to continue to have an expanding economy sooner or later we're going to have to use the resources available off planet. The human race is built for expansion and until we get into space in a big way we will continue to be vulnerable to all sorts of things. If we don't expand into space we have no real future in the long run.
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Well then sooner or later we'll have to build a social model with no economic growth. We aren't "built" for expansion anymore than we're "built" to live under the water; we can do it as long as we can bring in extra energy. Left to nature, the death rate is quite high and we're mostly built to reproduce, suffer and die young.
There was no human race a million years ago, and there won't be one in another million; evolution is still happening you know.
We never had a "long term" future.
Grow up.
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You're blaming NASA.
Why don't you blame who is in charge of NASA?
Let me hint who it is: They're the opposite of Progress
The shuttle's failings were largely (Score:4, Insightful)
the fault of the USAF!
The USAF demanded the ability to launch, retrieve/deploy a payload, and return to earth in a single orbit. They also wanted the ability to get into a polar orbit, which required a huge cross-range capability not in the original design.
After forcing all this crap into the design (and sinking billions on a shuttle launch/landing facility at Vandenberg AFB), they gave up on the project entirely, leaving NASA stuck with a vehicle that was no longer optimized for what NASA wanted to do with it.
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Uh, what great successes did AF have before the "late 50's"? Launching captured existing German rockets?
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The USAF did develop the Atlas ICBM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas) in the late 50's which had little to do with the Germans. The Germans were over in Huntsville working for the Army where they developed the Redstone IRBM and its successors, which included the Saturn line of boosters. But in the meantime the USAF developed the Titan line of boosters independently of the German/NASA/Huntsville team.
In the early space program the Huntsville team had the first visible successes with their derivati
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I generally meant space missions. Perhaps they made great rockets, but there is more to space exploration than rockets. Military projects usually get deeper pockets than civilian projects, I would note. Civilian programs tend to get more scrutiny, in part because the military understandably has to keep most things secret, and second because Republicans are more critical of civilian projects than military ones for some reason.
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Ah, you're right. USAF didn't do squat for space exploration as we usually define it. Their boosters were great enablers though. I guess I jumped on your, "captured existing German rockets" statement which doesn't credit the enormous amount of rocket development done in the 40's and 50's independent of the Germans. I read a fascinating recent bio of von Braun, however, which concludes that the V-2 probably pushed rocket development ahead by10 years over the natural progress of technology in the mid-20th
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The US launched a captured V-2 into space (but not orbit) in 1946 with a camera. Perhaps there were USAF-built rocket space missions after these V-2 experiments, but I am not aware of any until the "Sputnik scare" pushed military rockets into space use for a brief time until NASA took that over.
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The X-37? It has been launched into orbit by Lockheed Martin Atlas V rockets that use Russian RD-180 engines.
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On the other hand, we had the USAF Man in Space Soonest program. The acronym proved prophetic, as we missed getting into space first.
Before NASA there wasn't much (Score:2)
Wow - you've really wound the clock back as far as when everyone was using tweaked V2 rockets and the British had just as advanced a rocket program as the USAF - good job!
For a while after NASA started the USAF improved their own rockets a great deal due to an extent to some people being involved in projects for both.
To a lot of people involved in making rockets, the USAF and NASA were customers instead of the sources of the technology themselves.
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The mistakes in the Space Shuttle design was made for the Air Force:
Only because NASA made too much rocket and had to get Air Force funding to cover the funding gap. One bad decision lead to another.
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"The Air Force was mildly interested, but demanded **a much larger vehicle**, far larger than the original concepts."
Nonsense. NASA would have been able to fund a small vehicle without Air Force involvement. Note that the current Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] you quote (which incidentally asserts the above without citation) also claims that NASA had already designed a vehicle too large for existing funding and only went to the Air Force to get additional funding.
Also we have original concepts mentioned in the Wikipedia article like launching a reusable launch vehicle on a Saturn V. Do you really think the final Space Shuttle is la
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No man. The DoD wanted Shuttle to be a lot larger so they could launch big reconnaissance satellites with it. The USAF also wanted the ability to do polar launches from Vandenberg plus a lot of cross-range capability so it could fly back to where it launched from. Both those features made the Shuttle immensely expensive and bloated.
The original Shuttle proposals by Max Faget were supposed to launch only astronauts not humongous cargo.
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Assuming the people actually controlling the money were interested in two different launcher projects that is. The same people that pushed through the F-111 one plane fits all.
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Shuttle was supposed to replace Titan with the use of the Shuttle-Centaur stage. USAF had Titan III like NASA had Saturn V.
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AFAIK the US controls most of the electrical power supply panels and the Russians do orbital reboosts and have most of the toilets. So it cannot run 100% without both.
Somebody should tell NASA (Score:1)
Nematodes last about 2 months, so that one's ok.
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Fruit flies don't live for "months".
Normal Earth fruit flies, yes. But on the Space Station, their Space Station fruit flies apparently live much longer. It looks like they have slipped up, and lets us know what they are *really* experimenting on up there. Obviously, a secret space station longevity serum.
Because they are doing the experimenting up in the Space Station, it probably means that there are still some bothersome side effects, like turning folks into zombies and stuff like that.
Getting the most out of the Space Station - easy (Score:2)
Easy. Just open all the doors. That'll get just about everything that isn't tied down out.
Time to consider another Skylab? (Score:2)
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NASA's Skylab II concept, for earth-moon-L2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
ACME ACYOU (Score:2)
What about aiding the push for better trampolines?
Purity Of Engagement (Score:1)
"Well, cancelling our programs to save billions better-spent, votewise, on social programs, and paying Rooskies to ferry us up there to build goodwill and keep their scientists and engineers employed in non-terrorist jobs seemed like a good idea at the time."
better start now (Score:3)
before we have a trampoline gap!
But seriously we can find ourselves in a situation with no space station. Like there is no Shuttle, Orion is decades away, we are depended on Musk to make Dragon2 work. After Apollo there was concern at the time if US would have a manned space program in early 1970s when still debating Shuttle, and it could have been no Shuttle meaning Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 could have been the last time US put people in space. Hear Dale Myers talk about this per MIT OC course in 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Everyone is spending a lot of time arguing budgets. That's a big chunk of hardware in orbit, c'mon you guys it may not be ideal but it's something.
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But seriously we can find ourselves in a situation with no space station. Like there is no Shuttle, Orion is decades away, we are depended on Musk to make Dragon2 work. After Apollo there was concern at the time if US would have a manned space program in early 1970s when still debating Shuttle, and it could have been no Shuttle meaning Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 could have been the last time US put people in space. Hear Dale Myers talk about this per MIT OC course in 2005
sarcasm?
...
2005 was before any COTS success, before any SpaceX success, before NASA's Commercial Crew program,
Now Falcon 9 is launching Dragons to ISS and returning them to Earth, there are 3 different companies funded to build human spaceships, an Orion capsule is built and launching on a Delta IV Heavy within a year, and Bezos' Blue Origin is secretly building rockets and spaceships.
Centrifugal gravity (Score:5, Informative)
For your reading enjoyment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
Yes, I agree, here's my previous post (Score:2)
What level of gravity do humans need to THRIVE for long periods of time? (That is so that they do not suffer from bone density loss, cardio-muscular problems, etc.) Is it 1/6 gee (moon)? 1/3 gee (mars)? Or will humans need a full 1 gee to live and, eventually, safely REPRODUCE?
If the answer is humans need a full gee, then we might as well just resign ourselves to limiting our trips into the solar system to quick jaunts and robotic explorers. (While you *might* convince colonists to spend say an hour a day d
Translation: Let's waste more money on manned pork (Score:2)
Water Balloons (Score:2)
Please, for the love of god, don't let this opportunity go to waste. :)