America losing new Space Race

[edawg]

so what does everyone make the current rankings?<br />russia possible lunar flyby 2008 commercial return to moon by 2015?And chinas 2017 moon landing? The CEV is supposed to be late in 2012 and not operational until 2014-16..elections are coming up why is this not an issue?

 

[tomnackid]

Well, considering that the US won the "moon race" well over 30 years ago and has launched more probes, landers and satellites than any other space faring nation (almost as much as all the others combined) I guess we figure "What's the rush?" Or are you one of those who thinks that the shuttle disasters mean that the US has "failed" in space exploration? When you attempt more you take greater risks.

 

[edawg]

if we give up a 40yr lead..America will not be around for the next 500yrs <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" />`Hell the only feasible way for America to get out of its current 7 trillion dollar deficit is another Industrial Revolution i.e space all the natural resources ,energy and room for our species.For 1/4 the price of the iraq war it could be done

 

[tomnackid]

How has America given up any lead? No other nation has anything even close to Spirit and Opportunity. No other nation has explored the outer planets as extensively as the US. Europe is only just now implementing their version of GPS. Our communications satellite system is second to none. Keep an eye open for some amazing things related to antimatter, beamed power, space elevators and other exotic technologies in the not so far future. <br /><br />I'm not saying we should be complacent, but Kruschev's simple minded idea of a "space race" full of spectacular stunts designed to impress non-aligned nations and shame foes is over. The USSR were the first to put a satellite and a human in orbit--nothing can change that. The US was first to put a human on another celestial body--nothing can change that. Neither country "won" the space race. Each pursued different paths. The future wil be about competition, but no one can point to a specific feat in space and say that proves one country is "ahead" of another.

 

[spacelifejunkie]

Why are we talking about governments? They are so sensitive to the political winds. The new "space race" will be by corporations who will profit in space through tourism, scientific research and materials brought back from the moon and asteroids. Granted, the government will finance a lot of this through the private sector but the major human exploration achievements of the next 25 years will not be done by NASA or ESA. China and Russia will not be able to invest in the infrastructure necessary like a profit motivated US corporation. Especially the ones like SpaceX and Bigelow who are flipping a lot of the bill themselves to get started.<br /><br />SLJ

 

[craig42]

Whichever nation puts someone on Mars first or begins ISRU would be the key players in the 'new space race', IMHO.

 

[egom]

" China and Russia will not be able to invest in the infrastructure necessary like a profit motivated US corporation."<br /><br />It seems to me that Russia does exactly this....<br /><br />EgoM

 

[spacelifejunkie]

They can do it in short bursts or small amounts of time but not over the long haul. The cold war proved that and I'm not sure they are capable of becoming an economic superpower. Man on the moon in 9 years? They don't even have a vehicle to get them there. Do they have Apollo like committment that it takes to get to the moon in less than a decade like we did forty years ago? I'm not saying they can't do it, but it is a much bigger sacrifice for them to make than us. SpaceX, SpaceDev, Bigelow and others are the new race. Boeing and Lockmart have too many assets tied up in other areas to make the kind of space committment that is competitive with the new alt spacers. I'm not sure they are willing to risk the money in their entrenched bureacracy to make cheap, reliable new spacecraft. This is where China and Russia will fail. A profit motivated US corporation has an incentive for better and cheaper spacecraft, governments don't. Capitalism is superior to government operations in this regard over the long haul.<br /><br />SLJ

 

[rrl2]

As soon as we get are...<br /><br /> <font color="red"> NUCLEAR MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM !<font color="white"> up and foating above our hand USA can shoot down all hostile, non-hostile, friendly, Russsian, Chinese, Japanese, German, and Alien spaceships etc. from ever advancing in space exploration, alien contact, and ( oh, yeah) I forgot the nuclear missiles.</font></font>

 

[j05h]

edawg- did you stay to the end of ISDC?<br /><br /> />so what does everyone make the current rankings?<br />russia possible lunar flyby 2008 commercial return to moon by 2015?And chinas 2017 moon landing? The CEV is supposed to be late in 2012 and not operational until 2014-16..elections are coming up why is this not an issue?<br /><br />The next lunar flyby will probably be a Soyuz financed by an international billionaire flying his trophy wife on honeymoon. The trip will upstaged by Sir Richard doing a once-around in the middle of the mission in his new SpaceShipThree.<br /><br />The next passenger-capable orbital craft will be a minimalist, privately-built US capsule flown on an international booster to a Bigelow station. This will be followed by a consortia-driven demand for a more capable LEO craft based around the current Kliper effort. <br /><br />The craft used to land on the moon will be made in a Texas machine shop for $100,000. It will use a complicated orbit-pumping scheme to dock with a Space Adventures funded Soyuz and drop a wealthy cancer patient with Vision to spend his last few hours on the Moon.<br /><br />The first craft used to land on Mars will be a fan-built exact replica of James Cameron's Mars architecure enabling a dramatic reality TV plot to unfold among the crew. Will Suzy lock everyone out of the Rover for another night? "Look, he was like, just being a total dweeb." Stay tuned tomorrow. <br /><br />Final prediction: the first major off-world base will be built on Phobos, will be commercially funded and consortia-developed. It will provide vast quantities of water to thriving LEO hotels, teleops of cis-Martian equipment, hosting surface expeditions and other activities. <br /><br />Further final prediction: once we, as a species and biosphere, learn to live and grow in freefall, planets are going to become curiosities for sight-seeing and resource extraction. <br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[qso1]

JO5H:<br />supposed to be late in 2012 and not operational until 2014-16..elections are coming up why is this not an issue?<br /><br />Me:<br />Presidential elections are still over two years away so if this becomes an issue at all, it won't surface until a few months before November. In all likelihood, the issue will be to probably kill the CEV in part because it was a Bush proposed program and in part because it will be seen as unaffordable. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[j05h]

qso- that was Edawg's question. <br /><br />I agree that CEV may die because it is seen as Bush's baby. That is part of why Dr. Griffin and others are fairly quiet on it, and also why they chose a conservative design. Conservative in the sense that they know it will work, not GOP. <br /><br />The affordability aspect is why I keep emphasizing CEV as a capability instead of a vehicle. <br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[qso1]

JO5H:<br />qso- that was Edawg's question.<br /><br />Me:<br />Sorry about that, must have linked to your post by accident.<br /><br />Your correct about CEV as a capability. Any project regardless of who does it is a capability until it becomes otherwise. I have no doubt NASA will eventually be able to develop a CEV. My doubts are in the politics rather than the engineering. And what I have always called the cost barrier.<br /><br />Another factor is the possibility that private enterprise may have something roughly equivalent to the CEV that would allow NASA to focus more on lunar/mars exploration instead of that plus LEO access. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[j05h]

NASA needs to write a one-page prospectus (like the Administrator did when speccing the F1) that sets a current price for US flights to LEO. This creates a point that aerospace companies can take to the bank for investment. Buy tickets, don't build capsules. It's really just common sense. The US government doesn't build it's own airliners and shouldn't build it's own LEO craft. Build the deepspace craft that no-one else can build. There are plenty of organizations that can offer LEO flights with that single incentive. No tax breaks, kickbacks or pork are necessary, just set a price!<br /><br />This of course leads to a more sensible spaceflight paradigm: it practically requires LEO/HEEO/L1 fuel depots, space tugs, and other logical infrastructure. Reusability and hardware recycling become de rigeur in this scenario. Deepspace craft will need to be capable of aerobraking into LEO, too. <br /><br />Political pressure and Not-Invented-Here (ie. w/ President Hillary) will guarantee VSE/CEV dies. This is yet another reason to produce a set-cost prospectus. No one, not even a Wild Hillary, is going to be able to shut down a set-price scheme that encourages innovation and costs nothing.<br /><br />On the thread subject: America is not losing the new Space Race. I don't think this is a race, first off. This is the opening of the Second Space Age, it will be international commercialization that drives our expansion outwards, especially in cis-lunar space. Short-sighted governments may be able to hold down specific sectors/companies but there isn't much that is going to stop this development. There are trillions of dollars at stake here, and it is foolish for politicians anywhere to hold this kind of development back. <br /><br />The new space race (as such) isn't between governments, it is different companies and consortia scrambling to generate paying customers using space applications. By this measure, the US and Russia are clearly tops, followed closely by China and Europe. All o <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[tomnackid]

I guess it depends on how you define "we" or "America". American companies are not losing anything (except a little business because of ITAR), whereas NASA is squandering their future building something they can already buy. You can buy 50-100 2-person rides to LEO on Soyuz for the price of developing the CEV. Just development. The US isn't losing the competition, but certain groups here are bringing about short-sighted suffering upon themselves. <br />------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />NASA isn't building the CLV and CaLV to put people in LEO! It is building them to go to the moon and Mars--a much more daunting task than what the Soyuz launcher does. The fact that the CLV can be used as an ISS ferry and resupply ship and that the CaLV can be used to launch big station modules is just gravy. An added bonus to defray the development costs. No one has anything "off the shelf" that can take us to the moon and LEO is a dead end.

 

[j05h]

> NASA isn't building the CLV and CaLV to put people in LEO! It is building them to go to the moon and Mars--a much more daunting task than what the Soyuz launcher does.<br /><br />Thank you for missing my point entirely.<br /><br />What I'm saying is that the rockets to do it are already here: launch people on Soyuz or commercially sourced equivalent, build fuel depots (from upper stages) and follow a schema similiar to the T/space and SpaceHab trade studies. Above all, it's about commercially available services and recycling of components. <br /><br />LEO is not a dead end it is a parking lot and departure point. <br /><br />Josh<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

>>"America losing new Space Race"<br /><br />Where is this new race to exactly? Cause if you peg the finish line at profitability, I don't think you're doing too bad. <br /><br /> />>"NASA needs to write a one-page prospectus"<br /><br />What NASA needs is to have all of its science programs moved over to the NSF and DARPA, and then die a quick and painful death.

 

[j05h]

>Where is this new race to exactly? Cause if you peg the finish line at profitability, I don't think you're doing too bad. <br /><br /><br />Yes! That is the new "space race" - we can make a buck (or more) by delivering space applications. There are no Evil Commies anymore.<br /><br /> />What NASA needs is to have all of its science programs moved over to the NSF and DARPA, and then die a quick and painful death.<br /><br />I don't completely agree with this, but it would streamline US Fed efforts. NSF/NOAA/NAS are the proper organizations for space sciences if NASA can't handle it. DARPA/AFRL are the proper places for military aerospace development. NASA can be an exploration and research organization, but they really need to work on becoming relevant in the new order. The only bright spot in NASA is being gutted to pay for ISS/STS. Their greatest successes in recent years have been with the various robot probes and they are cutting everything to pay for Albatross and White Elephant, at the same time they are apparently squandering the whole VSE opportunity. <br /><br />I met an actual astrobiologist at ISDC, this is the most important scientific quest after (maybe) fusion research. His entire field is about to be gutted because they rely on NASA for funding. NSF grants and a little more independence would go a long way to remedy that.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[edawg]

1 earths natural resources are already getting kind of tight.platinum for a hydrogen market , and he-3 for better/more fusion 2 overpopulation,when the sea levels rise in another50-100ysr the costal plains are gonne be flooded where we grow most of our food..China ,russia,india and japan are getting the idea of space as a solution and industry .We could get out of our 9trillion dollar deficit in within a decade if we invested maybe 5 billion in the commercial space market...but we spend a billion a day on this damm war...<br />

 

[qso1]

I suspect the reason they don't do this is because they lowball their estimates to begin with because stating a realistic estimate will be too much for the politicians and public to swallow. Case in point, ISS. ISS was proposed in 1984 as an $8 billion dollar project that could reach IOC by 1992, in time for the big "C"s 500th anniversary.<br /><br />The actuality...ISS reached IOC in 2000 at a cost depending on whos estimates one believes, ranging from $40 to over $100 billion dollars.<br /><br />Had NASA stated in 1984 that ISS would take a decade and a half and cost $100 billion, or even $40 billion...think the public and politicians would have gone for that?<br /><br />I see no reason why NASA budget could not be 1.5 to 2 times its current level. But I'm pro human spaceflight. The general public and politicians are pro HSF until costs are brought into the mix. Your second paragraph says it all. To do business the way you say it ought to be done requires LEO infrastructural support.<br /><br />Those items you mentioned...space tugs, fuel depots, all proposed by NASA years ago and all rejected due to the cost barrier. Propellant depots were proposed as part of the station in its power tower dual keel days (Mid 1980s) and space tug was proposed as far back as well..."Space tug" circa 1973.<br /><br />The NASA way of doing business is however, the reason NASA cannot hope to build a shuttle replacement. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[j05h]

>I see no reason why NASA budget could not be 1.5 to 2 times its current level. <br /><br />I wouldn't trust NASA with that much money. They've not shown any ability to manage the funds they currently get, and have received a failing grade in accounting practices from the GAO for years. ISS over-promises and under-delivery are a big part of it. If they had said in 1984 "We'll pay $5 Billion flat for this type of facility, and $1G/year in ops costs" they wouldn't have had this kind of trouble.<br /><br />The point of setting a price for human transport is exactly because NASA and the Primes underestimate. There is a growing, commercial market for LEO flights, and it already has rough price. I suggested doubling it for US purposes. If we can't stay within an order of magnitude of Russian prices, American spaceflight simply will not be competitive. The Soyuz system as it stands now is beginning to make money, there is nothing close to it in the US. NASA's profligate spending practices are part of this problem and I've suggested a one-page solution to it. <br /><br />When I talk about fuel depots, space tugs, etc, I'm not talking in any way about NASA doing them. I'm talking about commercial services provided mostly to commercial clients with govt. as just another customer. The purpose is to build self-bootstrapping industries that are sustainable and profitable, not fatten certain cost-plus contractors. <br /><br />Bigelow Aerospace is a perfect example of where NASA can do good: they developed the original TransHab, then licensed the discontinued tech to Bigelow. It's now going to become a line of space station modules that anybody can purchase. That is commercialization, it is good business. <br /><br /> />The NASA way of doing business is however, the reason NASA cannot hope to build a shuttle replacement.<br /><br />NASA is not going to build a Shuttle replacement. CEV is a minimal capsule system that they may or may not construct. I have my doubts about CEV being successf <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[qso1]

JO5H:<br />I wouldn't trust NASA with that much money.<br /><br />Me:<br />At one time they were trusted with that much money and more...the Apollo era.<br /><br />Again, the over promise and under delivery is the direct result of public and politicians expecting fairy tale space exploration. We can build stations on the moon for dirt cheap which is what the public/politicians want to hear.<br /><br />JO5H:<br />The Soyuz system as it stands now is beginning to make money...<br /><br />Me:<br />Do you have a link that proves this? Soyuz, at least if you are referring to the manned craft cannot make enough money due to its low flight rate. Sure tourists pay $20 million to fly aboard it, but how many flights has that been, two...three? Everyone talks as though Soyuz is so much better than what we have economically but they fail to see Soyuz actually flies to ISS less than the shuttle did until Columbia. When the Progress tanker is included, the rates about the same or slightly higher than shuttle.<br /><br />This flight rate is determined by production rates. What are the Soyuz operating costs? What is the cost of Russian human spaceflight compared to their total GDP? And if cheaper as it could be, look at how they operate manned spaceflight. The military largely runs it so naturally personnell costs, especially engineering, are going to be cheaper. Relatively speaking, if the Russians did so much better economically than we do, it could be said they have won the space race...they would own LEO.<br /><br />JO5H:<br />The NASA way of doing business is however, the reason NASA cannot hope to build a shuttle replacement.<br /><br />Me:<br />Prior to CEV, NASA spent the better part of two decades trying to develop a shuttle replacement. Orient Express, Delta Clipper, Shuttle II, NASP, and Venture Star. I agree NASA may end up buying Soyuz craft...but not because they can't build the CEV, because as a program...the CEV will be axed by what in all likelihood will be a Democratic Presidential A <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[edawg]

the technology is only 4 or 5yrs away,with falcon 9 10 tons to leo for under under 15million is going to revolutionize the industry+bigelows habs...anything is possible<br /><br /><br />josh didnt i meet u at the isdc?? i still gotta organize my cards

 

[j05h]

Yes, anything is possible once the "sweet spot" of costing is reached. SpaceX is well on the way to providing that kind of flight. <br /><br />Edawg- yes, you did meet me - I gave you my extra ticket to Buzz Aldrin's lunch, we hung with Evan and all that. Don't talk to much about my special project until I'm ready to go public. drop me an email anytime.<br /><br />josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[pupniks]

Why does everyone seem to think the we (the US) won the space race of the Cold War? Yes, we got the first man on the moon, but that was about it. Russia made ICBM's first. Russia launched Sputnik, and our response blew up before it moved 10 feet. Russia had a dog in space before we had anything in orbit. Russia had the first man in space. Russia had the first women in space. Russia had the first "spacewalk". Russia had the first space station. Russia had the first moon landers. Russia had the first just about everything. So when you say we might lose the space race, we have ALWAYS BEEN losing the space race, in every aspect except the moon. Which wasn't even considered important at the time in Russia. As for China, I admit I know very little about their program, but it seems to me that they are a steadily growing country economically and will not be detered from their goals. Yes. We are losing the space race. We always have been losing the space race, except when Neil Armstrong made his "one small step". If you don't believe me, check out the timeline at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/technology/space.timeline/frameset.html<br /><br />My personal opinion - we should fix up our own planet before idolizing the idea of ruining others. But history has shown that we won't, unless we break a long-stading human tradition of apathy. I wish us the best of luck. <br />___________________________________________