One of the Cydonia megaliths on Mars. I'd guess that had something to do with the big new push for space exploration. That structure is said to be around two miles long.
Posted on 04/18/2005 8:03:21 PM PDT by anymouse
Space policy ping.
The last thing we need out of this is for it to be "international." that has been the problem with the ISS. It will be a tipping poijt for America if we could just go ahead with it on our own.
And let's go back to the Moon, dangit!
One of the Cydonia megaliths on Mars. I'd guess that had something to do with the big new push for space exploration. That structure is said to be around two miles long.
The worst thing to happen to the US space program is the Space Shuttle. Plain and simple. It sucked the entire romantic ideal out of going to space since it BARELY even gets into space.
Perhaps with just a couple of partners. Japan and Israel come to mind.
We need to get out there and establish our culture first so that others will be at a disadvantage by having to adapt to *us*, not the other way around.
In addition, I happen to think that American culture is superior to all others on the planet (sorry, foreign FReepers) and is worth preserving. If we can get well established out there, we can ensure the survival of the human race as well as our values and culture.
I fully agree with this option. America must once again, become the leader in space exploration.
I am old enough to have watched Neal Armstrong land upon the Moon. I am ashamed to explain to with the people I work with today, that it is impossible for America to reproduce that achievement today.
There is no excuse for other countries to have a more advanced space exploration capability than America.
No excuse!
Something has to be done, that's for sure. It's far too easy for politicians who care nothing for the future of humanity aside from their own re-election to place space programs on the chopping block.
When I was a child, my father took me to visit the space center in Houston several times. Visiting the place was always an instpiration for me. When I was 20, I returned there - this time as a tour guide for my uncle who was visiting from out of town. By then, the inspiration had gone. The place looked more like a museum memorializing the great accomplishments of the past than anything else.
I seriously doubt that the up and coming public school educated puff daddy generation has the capacity to do anything worthwhile in space.
The moon race was a Cold War artifact. Once we'd decisively trounced the Soviets in that, there was no compelling reason to continue. So manned exploration ceased.
The Shuttle was a decent idea, in its time. To make orbital travel as routine as airline flight in, say, the 1930s. But the technology wasn't up to the task.
I remember the first shuttle flight. It was the height of technological sophisitication, just like Betamax VCRs and push-button LED digital watches. I don't know about y'all, but I'm not still using either of those. NASA's flagship is still a program authorized by Nixon.
NASA should have been working on the next-generation shuttle replacement at least a decade ago. Now they're talking about maybe having a replacement fifteen years from now. That's a whole generation of lost opportunity.
In fairness, it's less NASA's fault than that of the White House, Congress and the public. I applaud President Bush's ambitious exploration goals, but I'm not optimistic about anyone -- Bush, Congress or the electorate -- having the long-term commitment to carry it out. Within a year after Bush articulated the goal of putting people on Mars, the funding for that program was slashed.
Like a track star, NASA can only perform at its best when someone else is on its heels. I don't see us ever getting to Mars unless someone else is getting close -- either a private effort or a Chinese-led coalition.
Don't forget that while the shuttles were flying, NASA systematically sabotaged *every* private attempt at SSTO, including the proven-capable DC-X project as well as the Rotary Rocket (which was slightly less realistic, but they were moving to dump the rotor and use a DC-X configuration - which got NASA to shut them down).
Basically, NASA removed all competition to the shuttle on spurious grounds (FUD), and now that the shuttle has proven to everyone that it's been a creaky project for a while, they want to go back two generations and go back to capsules on top of non-reusable rockets, or worse yet, another spacecraft that "lands like an airplane." Hey, NASA, here's a hint - SPACECRAFT DO NOT NEED WINGS.
Read this about the DC-X and how NASA sabotaged cheap access to space: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/
Low bandwidth MOV of the DC-X rocket taking off, hovering, flying through the air sideways, and landing *vertically*: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/DeltaClipper.mov
High bandwidth version of same: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/DeltaClipperNoAudio.mov
Bump! We should have stuck to the original 1968 plan to have a man on Mars "by 1982." I think the war in Iraq is a cop out though, heck we went to the Moon while the Vietnam War was going on and we had the Cold War too, which the latter was also a boost to space exploration.
The SSTO is a neat concept. but I'd stop well short of calling it "proven-capable." It could take off and land. That's far short of being capable of lifting a usable payload to orbit cost-effectively (though the shuttle has been far less cost-effective than originally believed) and returning a crew safely to Earth.
DC-X proved that it could handle the easiest parts of the mission. That's like me proving that my car can back out of the driveway, drive around the block and pull back in. It's a far cry from proving that I can drive from Atlanta to LA on a tank of gas.
I'm no expert, but my general sense is that a retrorocket landing probably isn't practical, however cool it looks. You have to burn a lot of fuel to land that way, and you have to carry all that fuel into orbit. Hauling that fuel means adding launch weight, which means burning more fuel and oxidizer. Every pound of fuel you need to carry is a pound less of useful payload.
The DC-X's ability to hover is also way cool, but it's of no value if the goal is to get to orbit and back, or to get from orbital to interplanetary space. You just can't beat the efficiency of a glide landing, so I'd expect that to be the re-entry plan for the foreseeable future.
But you do have a good point in that NASA adopted the One True Plan and disregarded any alternative. NASA -- or the government working through another agency -- should be looking at and seeding innovative approaches to space.
We should treat space exploration like a venture capitalist treats any new technology -- offer a little funding to a lot of folks, then more funding to the ideas that pan out. Start with a hundred ideas, winnow them down to ten, then choose the one that has best proven itself. The odds on any one approach are long, but the potential payoff is enormous.
This is an unjustifiably optimistic assumption.
What you lose in having to haul the mass of the fuel up to orbit you gain in only having to have "heavy" heatshielding on the tail of the craft, where the engines are. And the vertical landing in a 1g gravity well was (at the time) considered to be the hardest part of the mission, aside from hovering.
DC-X did everything it was supposed to do, including high altitude test flights. The follow-on, DC-Y, would have gone suborbital or even orbital as a development mule.
You do know what they used for fuel, right? LOH and LOX. Highly efficient and non-toxic (combustion byproduct - steam!). And damned near free to make. Combined with the very light weight (compared to the space shuttle - I believe that the numbers were that to duplicate the Space Shuttle's functionality, they only needed 1/4 the takeoff weight) of the system, you get a far more efficient system than the Space Shuttle.
Yes, I think that the DC-X and successor programs would have been a cheap and effective way to get into space (note that NASA isn't even interested in reviving the program, despite the miniscule cost - it costs more to refurbish a shuttle for a mission than it would have to fund the entire DC-X/Y/follow-on program), but there were other options out there at the time. All should have been pursued, not killed.
Amen to that.
Rotary Rocket might have gone down the tubes all by themselves, eventually, but their demise was *greatly* hastened and assured by the hack job NASA did on them with the press. The situation was still very salvagable until that point.
Lets see here.. give NASA a shoe string budget and demand technological marvels.. mean while we just dump money into social programs and expect people to fix them selves. wait. we do not expect a thing.
*Sigh*
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