Overall, the fact that the US experiencing the longest period without capability of sending humans into space seems to be a serious organizational problem.
It's not an organizational problem, it's a money problem and a lack of goal problem. Sending people up is vastly more expensive than unmanned probes and as technology improves there's not a whole lot a human can do that can't be achieved remotely with those probes.
It's a bit sad but at the same time it makes complete scientific sense not to send squishy humans when a robot would be vastly more efficient overall.
Our best chance to get humans in space again is another propaganda war starting a new space race. Maybe between USA and China this time around, to find out who gets to Mars first?
that is an organization problem, but anyway I disagree with;
> Sending people up is vastly more expensive than unmanned probes and as technology improves there's not a whole lot a human can do that can't be achieved remotely with those probes.
It's not incorrect, but the Apollo astronauts would have covered the entire curiosity rover distance in 7 years in about an hour.
The rate at which humans on site would accomplish things is not to be scoffed at. Whether it's worth the other costs getting them there is still up for debate. But robots are not hands down better.
How so? I guess I misunderstand what is meant by "organizational problem". For me it's "we want to do X but due to bureaucratic inertia and lack of organization it's impractical to do it". Like "we need to buy a new blackboard but in order to do it we have to go through a 29step process and 5 commissions so nobody bothers".
My point is that we're lacking the 'X' to begin with for space exploration. What's the big end goal currently? Putting humans on Mars? Some talk about it but nobody seems to be in a hurry and it seems more about propaganda and boasting rights than hard science.
>The rate at which humans on site would accomplish things is not to be scoffed at. Whether it's worth the other costs getting them there is still up for debate. But robots are not hands down better.
There's a trade-off of course but I would be very surprised if it wasn't in the robot's favor. For one thing to this day it's still unclear how we could send humans to Mars while maintaining them in good health. What do we do with them after the mission? They settle on an inhospitable planet or we find a way to retrieve them back to Earth?
Curiosity weighs 899kg, I doubt that humans + habitat + supplies + power + experiments + all the safety-related overhead of having live humans involved will probably amount to several time that mass (which as we know is a big problem with rockets, since more mass means more fuel which means more mass which means more fuel...). Let's not even talk about the trip back.
Sure Curiosity is slow, but once it's landed I suspect that the ongoing operating costs aren't insanely high.
That's all back-of-the-enveloppe calculations of course but I would be very surprised if sending humans to do Curiosity's work wasn't at least an order of magnitude more expensive, even if you factor the shorter total mission time.
Of course they could move faster but Curiosity isn't just travelling it's also taking a lot of measurements and doing experiments while it's moving. Additionally they're very careful with it because one the the main limiting factors for Curiosity is the lifetime of its wheels. It could move faster but there's no need and maintaining resources like wheels is more important than moving quickly.
The setup isn't trivial, but in the long run I think it is best for everyone.
The rocket equation says that if you want to do anything besides sitting in one place, it's super expensive. Moving mass around requires throwing huge amounts of mass away.
Throwing rockets' worth of water away seems wasteful, but if we have it then it isn't that expensive.
And NASA has what the team will work on specifically: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/exp-61-...
All things that are needed for future exploration/colonization.
And I'm not sure sunk cost fallacy applies, especially in the context of SpaceX / Dragon. Although it could definitely apply to SLS.
If you wanted to argue that extending the life beyond 2024 or whatever it is, then I would agree with you, sunk cost is irrelevant.
I tend to only apply the term to something incomplete with run-away costs to finish. Or if something changes (demand-side) that renders said product to become obsolete before completion. I'd argue neither applies to the space station. Political whimsy shouldn't be a factor.
But, 194X to 1961 is a shorter time frame than 196X -> 2019.
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