> 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.
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.
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.
dragon V2, scheduled to do its maiden flight sometime in 2017 will have.
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.
And a crew module without a service module is not good for much.
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.
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?
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.
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"?
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.
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
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.
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.
- 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