Astronauts enter China's space station [video]
bbc.com
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That's because manned orbit is motivated by prestige, not rational economic behavior.
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/09/01/nasa-oig-report-delay...
I also have customers who have been sold slots for their satellites on Falcon Heavy which is now 4 years behind schedule (the first demo flight was originally meant to be 2012, with the first commercial flight in 2013, as yet nothing has flown, with the current estimate being 2017). It's frustrating for these customers.
I point this out here just because HN can have too many credulous website designers saying [to the effect of] 'No but Elon will be on Mars in 10 years so we should just fund private companies' and the reality for everyone in the industry is somewhat different. The Indian Government is currently about the cheapest and most reliable commercial satellite launcher in the world with its PSLV vehicle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle
It's only commercial in the sense that say there's say commercial manufacturing of ballistic missile submarines. It's just an implementation detail of how the US (v.s. say China) does manufacturing for purely state-sponsored projects, not something indicating that there's an economic incentive to put people into orbit outside of government sponsored programs.
So how is any of this a counterargument to stickfigure's "manned orbit is motivated by prestige, not rational economic behavior"?
The only difference is that you now have a window out of your propaganda bubble.
There's a reason that Chinese space progress is barely reported, if at all, in the west. It's embarrassing, and doesn't tie in with the deluded "west is best" worldview.
The reason we don't hear much about China is because that don't do much:
Launch a man into space once a year? Land a rover on the Moon? That's 1960s news.
If it would be more serious, there would be a "Sputnik scare" like in the 60s, not silence
We should keep telling ourselves that. It may also help us convince ourselves that our arsehole is indeed the best place for our head to be.
Ironically, had it not been for the space race, we might have a more mature space program now, rather than one largely based on 1940s technology and engineering. They rushed to production and massively invested in a single model on both sides, rather than exploring options fully before commencing - similar applies to nuclear technology, insofar as thorium would have been the better tech, but was too late to the party to gain traction, never mind the weapon byproduct bit.
The US on the other hand built an impractically large moonshot rocket that was too expensive to keep on producing. Then the US moved on the the Space Shuttle, which overpromised and underdelivered (e.g. did not serve the air force and get funding from there) and didn't provide a contingency into the future and had to be retired leaving the US with no manned space launch capability.
Also, something about hubble.
Skylab was a great project and good utilization of leftovers from the Apollo program (although the Soviets did much better with Salyut -> Mir -> ISS when it comes to technology reuse). The end of Skylab was a bit embarrassing as it did not survive long enough to be serviced by the shuttle and there were no more Saturn launchers remaining. Although the damage sustained at launch/deployment makes it arguable whether it would have been a good idea in the first place.
Hubble is also neat (and a testament to the capabilities of the Shuttle as it was repaired twice), and JWST is going to be a good successor.
But there's still very little continuity in the American space program compared to their Russian counterpart. I guess it's partly to blame on the fact the the NASA budget and goals change dramatically when the occupant of the White House changes but I've read some news that they're trying to establish longer term goals. I'm afraid that whoever is the next president will again move the goal posts and set back the SLS + Orion program, which is closest to being the first manned deep space capable space program after the Apollo program.
My point of comparison is the fact that variants of the Russian Soyuz rockets and space craft have been in continuous operation since 1966.
- First probe to reach Jupiter (Pioneer 10)
- First probe to reach escape velocity needed to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10)
- Arguably, first probe to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1, depending on the definition of "leave the solar system")
- First probe to orbit Jupiter (Galileo)
- First probe to fly-by an asteroid (Galileo) -- passed by 951 Gaspra
- First probe to reach Saturn (Pioneer 11)
- First (and only) probe to visit Uranus (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Neptune (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Pluto (New Horizons)
- First probe to reach Mercury (Mariner 10)
- First probe to orbit Mercury (MESSENGER) -- also, to date, these are the only two probes to visit Mercury
- First probe to orbit two different celestial bodies (Dawn) -- it orbited the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Also, the first time either body has been visited by a probe.
- First photograph of Earth from orbit (Explorer 6) -- not a particularly good image by modern standards, but a pretty significant first given the importance spy satellites have played in international relations since then (You can see the image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_satellite_photo_-_E... )
Somewhat less significant by modern standards, but still interesting:
- First probe to send back data from Venus (Mariner 2) -- the USSR had a fly-by before this (Venera 1), but lost contact with the probe and so couldn't get any data from the fly-by, unfortunately. Mariner 2 didn't have a camera though.
- First probe to successfully return images from Mars (Mariner 4) -- the USSR had the first fly-by (Mars 1), a few years earlier but they lost contact with the probe before it actually reached Mars.
- First probe to orbit Mars (Mariner 9) -- also the first to orbit another planet. Only just barely beat the USSR Mars 2 probe by about two weeks though.
Some other interesting links on space history:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration
What China is doing right now, the USSR did in the 1960s, and the US did in the 70s (it had a ten year detour to go to the moon first).
While NASA hasn't done anything innovative in manned space-flight since 1980 (sunk costs, politics, no _real_ need, etc), they've done crazy work with unmanned spacecraft.
Think landing a _car_ on Mars (and then driving it around), launching routine missions to outer planets (and beyond!), being the only agency to get a probe out of the solar system.
Honestly, if Congress ever feels it necessary to launch someone to the Moon, they'll get it done in less than a decade.
> What happens if US and Russian relations break down?
Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets?
I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper to launch with the Russians" rather than "we can't do it" problem to me.
So no, we really can't send anyone to space right now.
And the Soyuz is actually pretty safe, relatively speaking. Aside from two notable failures early on, Soyuz hasn't had a fatality in 27 years.
And a crew module without a service module is not good for much.
Dragon has all three. The reason there are not people it right now is just that there is not enough experience with it to rule it safe. If the risk was ruled worth it, the very next CRS mission could take people up to the ISS.
dragon V2, scheduled to do its maiden flight sometime in 2017 will have.
The integrated life support system is designed so astronauts can access Dragon while attached to the station, not to sustain them. It receives all utilities from the station and returns "used utilities" (i.e. consumed air) back to the station's systems. It cannot reprocess/regenerate the components by itself.
The decision to go for a lander with wings and wheels looked so progressive then, and looks so misguided from today's point of view. NASA could build upon decades of expertise with Apollo-like spacecrafts today in order to build their Orion. Having switched to a shuttle, now they have to begin from scratch.
Observe that pork barreling is holding back any NASA options while the private companies are pushing forward.
Months? We're fucked.
Whatever doomsday scenario you are concerned about, it's not a realistic goal.
But there aren't any spare rockets lying around like that. And we're talking about a standard LEO mission, not a doomsday scenario one off special mission.
Do you know why they beat you into space? It certainly wasn't because they had a head start.
Your universe sounds fun. Can I join?
The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.
As for studying long term space flight the only thing it really doesn't provide a model for is radiation which we can model on the ground pretty well. You still get the other health impacts from microgravity that we're still trying to figure out how to effectively combat.
Also there's no good alternative way to study the long term microG effects on humans other than a station since you need both space for people to live for up to a year and space for the various experiments on how to combat the deterioration that happens. Having a station up there also teaches us how to work and repair things in space and how things break when they've been running for 15+ years.
Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, but we could have sent 3 of them up for less money.
As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.
PS: Some of the most interesting recent experiments have been flame studies in micro gravity. But many of these can be done with 20 seconds of vomit comet zero g time or just a simple drop test like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZTl7oi05dQ
Not even close. It cost ~900M for the repair mission and the cost to build Hubble was ~2.5B.
>No, the ITER robot needs to deal with heavy loads, micro G means even small forces add up. Don't forget without people they could send 3x the science payloads. So, scrapping things and trying again really is viable.
Less forces only means that the motors can be weaker but it doesn't lower the overall complexity required, you still have to have X degrees of freedom to get an arm that can barely replace a human in limited circumstances. Telerobotics just isn't there or cheap enough to make it make sense.
> As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.
We /could/ do simulated gravity but there's a lot of engineering issues with that that make it a Gen 2+ solution for a Mars trip or for a more long term solution like a Mars cycler. Just the size required for a spinning torus to be comfortable and provide enough gravity to be worth it would make it much larger than the ISS [0] [1]. There are other problems like dealing with communication equipment and docking which would want a stationary center which brings in more complexity with the seals between the stationary section and the ring. There's other options like a bolas but they're also pretty complex. Until then we'll need to deal with space travel as it comes to us which is without gravity. In short to test and build them we'll need either a large decrease in launch costs or a truly massive pile of money.
[0] http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/artificial_gravity_and_th...
[1] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1308/why-are-there-...
There where 6 Hubble servicing missions. "this last Hubble servicing mission is expected to cost about $1.1 billion" http://www.space.com/6648-hubble-faq-space-telescope-repair-...
Further, 15 years is considered a relatively short lifetime for a satellite, so Hubble 2 and 3 could have easily had a longer total lifespan if they had kept them in a higher orbit because there was no need for servicing. Instead "the space telescope was designed to typically go only three years between overhauls."
AKA, they designed it to need 'fixing'.
There's a big difference between designing to fail and designing to be repairable. Even if it's possible it could have been cheaper to launch multiples but it's unlikely NASA could have gotten the funding to start making Hubble 2 in time for it to replace Hubble.
However, as to lifespan, from April 24, 1990 to Dec, 1993 the Hubble was significantly 'impaired'. If the next two averaged 10-12 years and the original continued to be useful for a few years that's well past break even. Especially considering the Hubble always suffered from a defective mirror even after the first servicing mission help that's not unreasonable.
PS: By designing to fail I don't mean they intentionally made it worse, just assuming servicing caused a wide range of problems. Sure, NASA did learn something from going though this exercise. But the highly political nature of the organization limits such benefits.
Edit: Yes, many telescopes had a very short lifespan though that was often by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossi_X-ray_Timing_Explorer Mission duration 16 years, 6 days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ultraviolet_Expl... 18 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOST_(satellite) 13+ (still up) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_Space_Telescope 13 years and counting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAMELA_detector 10 years and counting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Anomalous_and_Magnetosph... 11 years 11 months. There are also quite a few up which may or may not last a long time.
Russia loses the ISS, because it can't be maintained without USA ground facilities.
Essentially, it will be the end of Russian manned space flight, until they build themselves a new space station.
Sort of. China is banned by the US government from participating in the ISS (or any other cooperation with NASA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NA...
Also, China is responsible for the largest single space debris generating event in history, from the intentional destruction of Fengyun-1C in 2007. That kind of thing doesn't matter to the politicians so much, but it was kind of a dick move, and had all the appearances of gratuitous saber-rattling. Space is too important for nationalist dick-measuring contests in LEO when it is already perilously close to Kessler cascade.
We managed to cooperate with Russia, too.
> Space is too important for nationalist dick-measuring contests in LEO...
I posit that's exactly what the policy forbidding China from collaborating with NASA is.
I laugh at all this talk about going to Mars to save the human race. We're just going to show up, if we get there at all, and fuck it up just as hard as we have on Earth. We're a species of idiotic assholes.
Humans are humans - and at least currently it appears we learn and improve all the time.
Or you could also look at it like this: the Chinese have made it to the early-70s "Skylab" stage (minus the Apollo program that came before it), the Russians are content to stick with 1990s Soyuz/Mir/early ISS technology and their orbital shots. NASA has little to show of their manned space program since the shuttle retired in 2011, but still leads the world in robotic exploration of the solar system.
Hardly as dire a situation as you paint.
Space is portrayed as having been there, done that. Worse, there are some trying to portray it as a rich man's place with the advent of space tourism and thus not a place government should be except to regulate it.
With regards to NASA, the shuttles, and such. Losing the shuttle was probably the best thing to happen to NASA long term. In the short term it wasn't and not because of the decision but because the management is so dysfunctional they don't know what they need. They have enough wants to fill a Sears Christmas catalog but none spark the imagination of the public and as such get little support.
They need a good spokesman, a long term goal, and some flashy steps that are achieved along the way to keep people interested and thereby keeping the funding alive. I would love to see a permanent moon settlement for more than just a few astronauts, more like a few dozen. Tie it in eventually with private trips to help keep it up and expanding...
Astronaut is still valid name for crew member of a spacecraft in any nation.
Currently there are only two - Russia and China - so it's great we can all live vicariously through their achievements!
Cosmonauts = Russian Taikonauts = Chinese Astronauts = Western
Let's call them Earth orbitonauts. :-)
As they’re obviously not sailing between stars, but in the cosmos, Cosmonaut is obviously the correct term.
"Astro- a combining form with the meaning “pertaining to stars or celestial bodies, or to activities, as spaceflight, taking place outside the earth's atmosphere,” used in the formation of compound words:"
It sounds like the Greek(?) meaning has been lost now in English, which is fine since it's a different language. Astronomers still sometimes look at other planets afterall.
Sometimes linguistic prescriptivism is necessary to keep a language actually understandable, and to ensure it makes sense, and doesn’t just become thousands of independent statements that you have to learn by heart.
Cosmos, on the other hand, derives from the entire universe. Obviously, the universe surrounds us completely, but if you're willing to call someone in LEO a cosmonaut, I'm not certain you couldn't say the same about someone driving a car on the planet's surface to the grocery store to buy milk. Both are traveling through the cosmos. Where's the cutoff? Earth escape velocity? Solar escape velocity? Galactic escape velocity? People in LEO just aren't going fast enough.
I have no qualms about calling the flight personnel of the Apollo program "astronauts", as their goal was to reach another celestial body, even if it was not literally a star, and several of them actually made it there. "Selenauts" would also have been appropriate.
But since 1972, we have only been sending humans as far as LEO. Maybe "lacunauts" would be better for those in space, but not traveling to other celestial bodies?
They will be called 'Vyomnauts' apparently.
A quick search of matches in actual translated texts returns 'astronauts' as the term in the vast majority, and a few cases of 'spaceman' and 'man in space'. 人 'ren' in Chinese is genderless.
Taikonaut is however used by the Global Times and China Daily, tabloid and broadsheet papers published in the mainland. Am pretty sure the term wasn't termed in China, however. Otherwise the pinyin would be correct.
So it's possible, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer at the moment.
So why isn't it universal? As usual, XKCD has a compelling explanation: https://xkcd.com/927/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgynous_Peripheral_Attach_...
Emphasis on principle. Until they confirm that their intent is to be compatible and some testing is done to verify it, I don't think anyone wants to dock.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/astronaut
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cosmonaut
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/taikonaut
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astronaut
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cosmonaut
[ Merriam-Webster doesn't define Taïkonaut ]
I just wanted to highligth that only NASA (or English speaker world) call their astronaut "astronaut". In europe, we call them spationauts. And in russia, they call them "cosmonauts".
Also, nobody in Denmark says spationaut. We say Astronaut, so not all of Europe and not only English speakers.
But yeah, the american word it has probably won in the popular culture and in the day-to-day language.
Sorry. I didn't want to sound like Mr. know it all.