Posted on 09/05/2016 1:34:08 PM PDT by Rockitz
The explosion of a SpaceX rocket last Thursday will have an impact across the space industry, far beyond the losses on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral.
An Israeli satellite operator’s deal to sell itself to a Chinese company is imperiled. Planned launches of communications satellites that support international mobile phone service and digital television are delayed and put in doubt. NASA’s cargo deliveries to the International Space Station will probably be disrupted.
All of them are customers of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, whose rocket exploded in Florida. The private space launch company, led by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a generally solid safety record.
But last week’s setback and a failed launch last year, when its rocket carrying a NASA cargo fell apart in flight, are raising questions about SpaceX, a company that has risen rapidly by offering lower costs and promising accelerated launch schedules.
At this stage, there are more questions than answers. The key for SpaceX will be how quickly it can satisfy federal investigators, rebuild the damaged launchpad at Cape Canaveral and resume sending satellites into space. For commercial telecommunications customers, getting a satellite manufactured is time-consuming and expensive, taking two years or more and costing $200 million to $400 million each.
The launch itself is a high-risk step, but once in orbit the satellites are money spinners. The upfront investment is paid back in a few years, and they then generate hefty profits for the remainder of their useful life, which could be as much as a decade.
So once a satellite is ready to go, time on the ground — and delay — are financially painful. Among the commercial satellite operators lined up for SpaceX launches later this year are Iridium Communications, SES of Luxembourg, EchoStar and KT Corporation of South Korea.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It gets x amount of dollars and decides what it will spend money on. It’s directors have no foresight and are quite content to watch China and other nations eclipse us if they can.
We had a 50 year jump on other nations, and we diddled it away.
We could have had Moon bases by now, Mars colonies...
Instead we have NASA that can’t put a man in space, much less on a heavenly body.
It spent $90 billion of a $10 billion space station, and quickly labeled it an international space station.
It’s so terrified the U. S. will be seen as a premier “anything” that it dodges any chance of it quite successfully.
I agree with your Trump suggestions.
We will either dominate space, or be forever talked about as a nation that declined by choice.
I think it’s a bit nuts, but SpaceX exists because of Musk’s obsession with Mars. The company wouldn’t exist at all if the Russians hadn’t tried to rip him off when he wanted to buy some of their low cost rockets.
A conspiracy to bankrupt ULA doesn’t fit in with the known history of SpaceX.
Eventually our Sun will use up all of its hydrogen, and start expanding. The Earth will no longer be habitable, and humans will have needed to establish independent places elsewhere. The sooner we begin, the better.
Eventually our Sun will use up all of its hydrogen, and start expanding. The Earth will no longer be habitable, and humans will have needed to establish independent places elsewhere. The sooner we begin, the better.
Time is a wasting, only 800 million years and counting!
The human body dwindles and deteriorates in zero g. After a lifetime of observing this childish fantadt of flight and escape and science fiction, the obvious conclusion is that it will never happen. We are stuck in our sins on this world, and the only way off is repentance.
Which is why any long term space going vehicle will have a rotating habitation core, such as we planned with the Variable Gravity Research Facility many decades ago.
ISS is a research facility to characterize the environment...and how to counteract any negative effects.
This has to have been one of the stupidest, moronic statements ever uttered by a political appointee, and that's saying a lot.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims.html
There is gravity on other objects in the universe.
It is not a childish fantasy to wish to go out and inhabit space.
The pursuit of new horizons generally improves things we didn’t know we could improve.
I agree with your take on it.
Congress should have stepped in and removed him at once.
If we had one that is...
I believe it is human nature to explore and conquer. By conquer I don’t necessarily mean people or beings. I mean the challenges (in this instance) of space.
We have two options.
We can choose to look at it negatively and declare we can never do it.
We can choose to look at it positively and declare that where there is a will there is a way.
There is a way. We will find it and move off planet if it is God’s will. I’m not positive it is, but I think we should attempt to expand our horizons.
I repeat: there is absolutely no need for human beings to explore space by actually being in space—the ISS is ridiculous, waste, an appalling vanity. Give it to the Rusdians and quit worrying about resupplying the humans there. Instead, develop robots who never have to return to earth and use them to explore our solar system. There are too many infantile technos trying to fulfill an infantile fantasy of Star Trek. We are eons away from making it a reality.
So your intellectual argument includes a reference to a desire to fulfill and infantile fantasy based on Star Trek? LOL
Space is the new high ground. One nation will conquer it. It will be the United States, China, or Russia who does.
Do you want China to develop an extensive Moon base? Do you want it to control access to the Moon?
How about our planets, do you want them to control access to them also?
What about our satellites, the space station, and anything else space related?
Our orbiting satellites aren’t worth defending? Really?
There is much more at stake here than fulfilling a Star Trek Fantasy, and the only thing infantile about that topic, is the attempt to lower the conversation to that level.
How much money do we “waste” on the space program each year? It’s a pittance in the overall scheme of things, and yet the up side is limitless.
What is your problem with having humanity move off planet? Is it partially because you don’t want humanity to survive should something happen on the earth that wipes out human civilization?
People thought the West was so important to open up and inhabit, they risked their lives to do it. This is no different. As a people we have decided to inhabit space.
I guess you’ll continue to smolder over that. Fine if that’s what you want to do.
I’m a can do person, not a can’t do person.
I can think of reasons not to do a lot of things. If I did, I would stick to pertinent issues, not not some dunderhead meltdown over Star Trek.
Did you think we could get to the Moon in eight years?
It seemed a very long shot in those days. So how did we do it? We did it by studying, improving, inventing, manufacturing, and executing.
If we hadn’t set the goal, we never would have attained all the discoveries we made. Without sending people to space we don’t know what the problems will be. And once we know them, those will be things we overcome as well.
Discovery isn’t a straight line. There are always obstacles to overcome. And unfortunately, you have to run into the obstacles to realize what they are. Then you develop a work-around. You overcome and move on to the next.
You seem to want to talk about Star Trek. Do you think a civilization waits until all the technology needed to build a star class vehicle has been discovered before they enter space? Of course not! It is the entering of space that brings on the problems of bone mass, muscle loss, heart deterioration. It is that same thing that brings about cures for such problems.
Then when we live and work in space, we develop new and better modes of power generation, travel, exploration, and the benefits of them all.
When people first started coming to California from back east, do you think they all know there would be gold here? I’m sure there were people who thought it was crazy to come here. Why risk all that? You can be very happy here.
You talk as if the space program was set back decades by manned exploration. Sorry, you’re dead wrong. Sending a team of horses connected to a Conestoga wagon to California wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
Sending probes to planets accomplishes little beyond a certain point. You have to send humans to these heavenly bodies to learn real world things.
Oh boy, we sent a box of goodies to Mars. Bless my soul.
Oh boy, we landed humans on Mars. Now that is something worth crowing about.
Mamzelle, the put upon taxpayer wouldn’t save one single dime if NASA shut down tomorrow, and you should know that.
Increases in government handouts would swallow it up in seconds.
We landed on the Moon in 1969. Today, 47 years just a couple of months ago, we’ve done essentially nothing of import since.
We should have had a colony on the Moon and Mars by now. And if we did, we would have discovered ways to overcome some of the major problems we face in space.
Where are we today, with your robots? Are we any closer to colonizing space? No! We not one foot closer.
We should have had a space plane in the late 1990s, or at least by 2005. We’re 11 years beyond that now, and headed nowhere.
I don’t really care about space probes. Yes we needed a few to confirm certain parameters we needed to overcome, but beyond that the expenditures on those probes might just as well have been burned in an incinerator here on earth.
Today we have no way of getting our people into space. We have marginal increases in knowledge that doesn’t really improve our route to space.
We have nothing!
And you’re proud of this and want more of it.
NO!
So sad you don’t care about space probes. Really, I am. As for NASA not costing me anything, it’s been turned over to a few egomaniacal oligarchs. The agency is not the agency anymore. The agency is just a shell. Space is about the billionaire chronies and their vanities and their “private” tourism projects—which are LEO! You want footprints on the planets to satisfy a fantasy —I want to send dispensable scouts first. I know we can’t send men without the technology of sending robots.
It’s silly to keep expounding on robots.
They don’t need a life support system, and for that very reason they contribute absolutely nothing beyond this point.
You’ve had your way. Those robots are now the only game in town when it comes to space exploration. What a complete waste of time and money.
With your mindset, we’ll still be sending out probes in 2100.
We’ll know the soil composition of all the planets and still be earthbound.
If all we are going to do is sent out probes, I would rather see the whole space program done away with.
Your great grandchildren can deal with China or Russia colonizing space.
Think our ideals will dominate space then?
Why do you keep bringing up China and Russia? They don’t have much interest in Mars.
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