Posted on 01/19/2016 9:50:25 PM PST by Marcus
2015 ended and 2016 began with the space program on the cusp of tremendous and potentially very positive change. Congress gave NASA a great Christmas present in the form of a $1.3 billion budget increase. The perennial argument between advocates of commercial space and supporters of space exploration was settled. The commercial crew program, designed to build NASA-funded, commercially operated spacecraft that will return crewed space flight capability to the United States was fully funded for the first time. The heavy lift Space Launch System, the center of NASA’s plans to explore deep space, also received lavish amounts of money. Planetary Science and even Earth Science, have gotten generous amounts of money. A mission to Europa will now land on that icy moon of Jupiter in the 2020s.
(Excerpt) Read more at us.blastingnews.com ...
Buy OA stock.
I would bet money on being underwhelmed.
And maybe by 2023 the US will be able to lift a man to earth orbit.
Heh, I was looking at it and I thought, gee, isn't it going too fast? So I estimated that the station was 700 feet in diameter and turning about once per 30 seconds. This came out as an "artificial gravity" ... v^2/r ... of just about 15 ft/sec2 ... 1/2 g
Well, the question is moot.
But how about that New Horizons Pluto flyby, eh? Considerable consolation, for me. It’s incredible that the whole thing worked perfectly. Of course, it’s work perfectly or nothing in the deep space business, but that makes it no less incredible.
And what’s incredible to me personally, is that I got to see it. I was looking forward to it, but now that it’s happened I look back on my whole life, or most of it, where Pluto was barely more than a dot, an enigma. And now it is revealed in a blaze of glory.
I just watched ( belatedly ) the flyby news conference, and Alan Stern was on fire, I thought. After all that Pluto demotion business, he is exulting in this. He can barely contain himself. In fact he openly referred to Pluto as planet! ... if I’m not mistaken.
So like the song says, “You can’t always get what you want ...”
Doc, thanks for posting that Great 2001 clip.
That brings back fond 1960’s memories of a time when we had the audacity to think we could keep up our stellar technological and civilization advances.
Unfortunately, our future has been robbed of great potential thanks to leftist’s Great Society 5 Trillion dollar theft creating a diseased gimmedat culture who’s gravity has proved difficult to escape.
Where, exactly, are we going to go? The moon, Mars, a couple asteroids, that's it.
Venus? Lethal heat, lethal atmosphere, and lethal atmospheric pressure.
Jupiter's moons? Intense gravitational tidal forces will quickly collapse any near surface underground living quarters. Above ground? Intensely focused solar radiation on the back side of Jupiter and at least one deadly radiation belt will make that all but impossible.
I completely support basic scientific space research. And I believe that Star Wars-style space travel will be a reality one day.
But we are talking millennia - not decades.
In fact he openly referred to Pluto as planet!
...
I think most planetary scientists still do. It was some sneaky astronomers who demoted it.
And maybe by 2023 the US will be able to lift a man to earth orbit.
...
If we really had to, we could do that within a few months.
Maybe hussein’s mohammaden outreach will send them into space, all of them.
“...thanks to the recent feet by SpaceX in landing a rocket, will be a lot cheaper to operate”
My feet are getting pretty old, and I feel it.
Russia’s medium lift Angara engines will be on line in a few years - lifting about 37 tons to orbit, and later the super heavy lift Fenix new technology first stage engines will appear around 2020 - lifting up to 150 tons.
The Pluto flyby was great. I never thought I’d live to see it.
Using what? We have no operational space vehicles. It would take longer than a few months to put together an organization that could even plan such a thing. All those engineers from the shuttle program have been laid off.
SpaceX has a crew vehicle that will be sent on an unmanned orbital test by the end of the year. It is planned to be sent on a manned mission in March of 2017. Boeing (CST-100) has a manned capsule that is close to completion and also planned to be launched with a crew in early 2017. Sierra Nevada has a winged spacecraft that could be used. Lockheed (Orion) tested their unmanned crew vehicle on a flight into space in 2014. All of these could be ready in a few months if there was an emergency.
We’ll have multiple manned vehicles to choose from, and multiple rockets to launch them. The costs will be lower than ever. They will all be much safer than the Shuttle with much better operational readiness. No other country comes close.
Here is SpaceX’s crewed vehicle (unmanned test) going through a successful pad abort test in May of last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8
The launch of the Orion capsule, December, 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuOpxOrA_0
I hope you’re right, but you’re a lot more optimistic than I am.
Currently none of these vehicles have a manned launch date before 2017, if then. And both Boeing and Lockheed are dependent on NASA for their launch vehicles. NASA could have their budget cut again at any time and delay these launches for years.
Maybe SpaceX can pick them up. That would be cool.
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