Could VSE cancellation spell the end of "Humans Beyond LEO"?

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>a) Is it possible that other nations, notably China, will cancel their lunar programs if NASA cancels VSE due to lack of support? <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Not likely, as Chinas ambitions probably have little to do with VSE in the first place. Their program has been going on towards their goals at a slow but determined pace long before US realized they are going in circles in LEO with uninteresting future.<br />

 

[holmec]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The major problem facing mankind short-term is global warming<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Not really validated. Global warming is really a long term problem. Earth is not the only planet that it warming, Mars is too. An asteroid is more of a threat than Global warming is, but politicians have not grasped that yet. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[holmec]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Other species like, say, the food we eat. Sure people could live here after the warming gets worse, but not all of them. I'd say a die-off of a few billion people would be a "human problem". <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Well that's better than all life one earth being extinguished in a matter of hours by an asteroid. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[holmec]

1) China has too many reasons to go to the moon. Prestige to catch up to US from Apollo program (so nothing to do with VSE), Economic Power source (helium3, etc), and don't forget that Russia and Europe are teaming for the moon (so US is not the only competitor to China).<br /><br />2) I think that will depend on how the market responds to the upstarts. So I think new space will be market driven not based on government funding. There is an initial response with Virgin Galactic signing up people for suborbital flights. We shall see as we go. NASA is good for DATA! They have the know how. Companies are using the know how and will continue to do so to make their own developments. COTS is neat in that it shows NASA acknowledging startups. But I doubt it will lead to too much in the short term. But if its successful, it might make NASA rethink how it goes to space, thus useing commercial ships to space (in the long run). I kind of think of it like in Darwin's days where scientists hired sea ships to a distant land to make observations. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[thereiwas]

Would the Arctic Ocean seasonally free of ice 30 years earlier than predicted be short term enough that we should start worrying about it now?

 

[rsa_4]

"Would the Arctic Ocean seasonally free of ice 30 years earlier than predicted be short term enough that we should start worrying about it now?"<br /><br />I dunno about the source of that article, but I'm sure happy to believe anything that the researcher Marika Holland says... <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br />

 

[no_way]

this is the place of issuing Global Warning, that the thread is straying way off topic. GW discussions are interesting, but the topic here is space and spaceflight.<br />Plus, GW has been positively proven quite some time ago:<br />http://www.scienceandsupermodels.com/pictures/Global%20Warming%20Bikini.jpg<br />

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow"> They seem more interested in Shackelton crater and finding water in areas where the sun don't shine.</font>/i><br /><br />Actually, "where the sun don't shine" happens to be right next to where the "sun shines all the time", and I think it is the latter reason which is a greater driving force for NASA. By exploiting near 24x7 sunshine, NASA can power an outpost with solar power, avoiding the actual and political cost of a nuclear-powered outpost.</i>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Oil has mostly to do with transportation market, and He3 fusion would only have indirect impact on that, i.e. without mainly battery-electric ( or plug-in hybrids as they now tend to be called )</font>/i><br /><br />A major shift to E-85 plug-in hybrids (all the technology is here today) would have a significant impact on oil-consumption in the US and all the political baggage that comes with it (e.g., maintaining a major military presense in the Persian Gulf since the 1980s to protect the oil).</i>

 

[MeteorWayne]

Well you still need all that oil to produce and harvest whatever your Ethanol source material is, so it really doesn't circumvent the problem. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>major shift to E-85 plug-in hybrids (all the technology is here today) would have a significant impact on oil-consumption in the US and all the political baggage that comes with it<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Yes, or biodiesel plug ins or full battery electrics. But this currently has nothing to do with He3 fusion. He3 fusion would be a stationary electric power source, feeding the grid. With current state of affairs, it could replace coal and nuclear, but not oil. Getting rid of oil dependence is a separate problem altogether.<br /><br />Primarily electric transportation would decouple power generation from its consumption, wich would diversify sources that could power the fleets of vehicles. He3 fusion reactor is just one of these possible sources.<br /><br />As a general advice for people discussing future of transportation: dont fall into the same trap that lots of people that bought into hydrogen hype did, and confuse methods of energy storage with methods of energy production. <br />

 

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Well you still need all that oil to produce and harvest whatever your Ethanol source material is, so it really doesn't circumvent the problem.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />A big, resounding, HUH ? What on earth are you talking about ?

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">A big, resounding, HUH ? What on earth are you talking about ?</font>/i><br /><br />You still need energy to kick-start the conversion of biomass to biofuel. Some plants use oil to do that. Others, and the way it should go, use some of the biofuel to power the conversion. For example (numbers are just for illustration), you might produce 5 barrels of biofuel, but you take 2 of those barrels to provide the energy to produce the next batch of 5 barrels for a net production of 3 barrels.</i>

 

[no_way]

right, it takes energy to make biofuel, likewise for hydrogen. where does the oil ( as in crude oil from mideastern wells ) get into that equation ? im still saying, huh ?

 

[josh_simonson]

> > Well you still need all that oil to produce and harvest whatever your Ethanol source material is, so it really doesn't circumvent the problem.<br /><br /><br /> />A big, resounding, HUH ? What on earth are you talking about ?<br /><br />The above assumes zero technological development in this field, ever. It's not ready for mass rollout now, or they'd be doing that already. Also most of the agricultural activities involved in producing ethanol that are claimed to burn oil could be powered electrically. Tractors can be battery powered since they don't need to go 400 miles on a tank of gas, the refinery can be electric, agricultural chemicals can also be made electrically. Even at lowish efficiency levels, ethanol can still be viewed as an energy storage medium where the energy stored is as green as the energy inputs. Who cares if your ethanol produces only 1.2x the power put in if that power is solar-electric or wind (or He3)?<br /><br />Regarding food supply: people are able to produce food in almost every climate on earth - we can adapt to our environment within a couple years, which is faster than the climate is expected to change. The rest of the animal kingdom cannot. This is why climate change is more of an ecological disaster than a human one. Humans have flourished through ice ages and warm spells of greater magnitude than are predicted for the near future, it's ludicris to think that people in 2200 won't be able to adapt to change that people in 2000BC were able to. Mastadons and giant sloths, however, were another story.<br /><br />He3 probably won't be economical in time to have much use for climate change purposes. As it is, fusion may never be economical compared to other power generation methods. It may be interesting to get a few Kg of the stuff to try out in the successor to ITER, in about 40 years but probably not interesting enough for the fusion research industry to pay the bill to get the stuff. Lunar resources are much more use

 

[MeteorWayne]

I was replying to RadarRedux, who suggested that E85 will reduce oil dependence. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

Where do you think the resorces come from to run the tractors and harvesters comes from? Where do you think the fertilizer comes from?<br /><br />Right now, pending further developments, the answer is OIL! <br /><br />However this is only marginally on topic, so I'll let it drop.<br /><br />MW <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[no_way]

er, we run our harvesters and tractors on biodiesel, and fertilizers come from various sources. your answer is wrong <br /><br />EDIT: to be more clear, the whole agricultural production chain for various biofuels can be run entirely on the very same biofuels and energy sources. fossil fuel reserves can be totally out of the picture, and are for some parts of the world.<br />Likewise oil is completely out of the picture for personal transportation needs for people who buy the Tesla roadster or any other battery electric vehicle and charge it completely from renewable sources, like home-installed solar panels.<br />OIL is not a fundamental requirement for our daily needs, the only reason why its in so widespread use is that the altrenative technologies are relatively young, and oil is basically free, at least in US, where even bottled water is more expensive. <br />The picture btw is quite different in the parts of the world where i live, for example the nearby city of Stockholm plans to be completely fossil-fuel free by 2025 IIRC. The current price of the gas at the pump is somewhere around 1.4 EUR per litre, and is bound to rise during summer.

 

[radarredux]

A similar sounding article with lots of pithy comments can be found at SpaceRef:<br /><br />Plan B for Outer Space<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>As events unfold, it appears that the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), the President's plan to return humans to the Moon and then onto Mars, is on the classic pride-before-the-fall trajectory.<br />...<br />For those who don't know, pride before the fall refers to the pattern when mature organizations falter in the face of new challenges. Instead of adapting to contemporary opportunities and constraints, the organizations gut themselves in a last-ditch effort to recapture old glory. Failure becomes evident only when their "new" product fails to garner the expected enthusiasm. That failure is exacerbated when younger organizations step up to answer contemporary needs.<br />...<br />o be a bit more specific, funding plans for this Vision were lowballed by roughly a factor of 2-3 (Averaging $2.4B/yr requested versus $6.7B/yr required [Congressional Budget Office 2004]). And now even these lowballed requests are coming in under-funded.<br />...<br />t is a telling sign of the times that also during that same week, Elon Musk's SpaceX, an emerging low-cost launch company, test-launched their Falcon-1 rocket. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin filed plans with the FAA for another round of launch and landing tests. Sir Branson's Virgin Galactic has booked 200 people for spaceflights planned to begin in 2009. New Mexico is getting ready to vote on building a spaceport to accommodate these commercial ventures. And there are others. This progress is just 3 years after Burt Rutan won the Ansari X Prize for the first private spaceflight.<br />...<br />Typically incumbents will deny the trends and just intensify their retrograde efforts. The upstarts are dismissed as irrelevant when judged against the established visions. In this case, those visions</p></blockquote>

 

[rocketman5000]

Shame on all of you. VSE won't fail because there is nothing else for our space program. We didn't get Mars in the 70's because we thought we needed to spend more time in LEO. We have done that. Politically it will take a long time to assemble another station in LEO. More Americans may get excited about the MERs but they would cry foul if we no longer had human flight capability. <br /><br />I would conceed that the current architecture of ESAS might get changed, most noticability the "stick", but other than that it will be business as usual. Clinton trimed the fat of the goverments budget, but he didn't have the guts to kill widespread NASA programs.

 

[holmec]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>first of all, even if He-3 fusion was a possibility ( It shows promise, but aint there ) it would not replace OIL, as most of the crude oil is not consumed in power stations. Power stations happen to run mostly on coal, hydro, wind, solar and so on. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Well, you need electricity to make hydrogen from water to run fuel cell cars on the road. That is where I see Helium 3 impact the oil market. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[no_way]

that is very indirect "impact", we already have plenty of different electricity sources to choose from, and new ones are being commercially deployed.<br /><br />it like saying that one day i will crossbreed a squirrel with a cow, this will have an impact on burger market or something like that.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">that is very indirect "impact", we already have plenty of different electricity sources to choose from, and new ones are being commercially deployed.</font>/i><br /><br />I think that is a major challenge to fusion as a viable commercial solution -- alternative clean energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Neither large-scale nuclear fusion or Lunar mining operations will be available before 2030, so the commercial viability of fusion will have to compete with alternatives circa 2030 (not today's versions).<br /><br />The "Lunar killer app" still isn't obvious. It may be Helium for fusion, PGM for the hydrogen economy, oxygen for rocket fuel, or something else. But no Lunar application has lept out as a "must have" yet.</i>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">VSE won't fail because there is nothing else for our space program.</font>/i><br /><br />That is the point of this thread. Support for ESAS (the initial trasportation component for VSE) appears to be neither wide nor deep, and it is the source of considerable grumbling. Add in the loss of budget increases NASA anticipated to fund ESAS, slips in schedule and timeline, and there are some serious concerns.<br /><br />My guess: NASA's future manned space program is literally in the hands of ATK. NASA has bet the farm that ATK will be able to deliver, and so far there isn't a lot of confidence that they made the right bet.</i>

 

[josh_simonson]

>More Americans may get excited about the MERs but they would cry foul if we no longer had human flight capability. <br /><br />It's a little disengenuous to compare plans for the distant future to something that's happening right now. Of course the current rovers are more exciting than something 10 years or more down the road. Ask again in 2018 and they'll say the astronauts on the moon are more exciting than whatever 'flagship' mission goes somewhere else around the same time (unless it finds life).