New survey outlines what NASA must do over the next 10 years to help astronauts thrive beyond Earth

[Admin]

NASA wants astronauts to thrive on the moon, Mars and in deep space. A new survey outlines key challenges to solve over the next decade.

New survey outlines what NASA must do over the next 10 years to help astronauts thrive beyond Earth : Read more

 

[Classical Motion]

Wow, the two most important aspects were not mentioned. Gravity and shielding. Only that will insure health for astronauts.

But I'm not looking at the political picture. And spending taxpayer money. Spending was the wrong word. Spreading taxpayer money. All around. For the health of astronauts of course.

 

[KenMac]

Agreed. The crucial efforts for rotational gravity and dedicated radiation shielding seem to be relentlessly blocked by the NASA biomedical staff, who have endlessly failed for 60 years.

 

[billslugg]

They're in there, look at the list of priorities. Number one item: "Scientists with NASA's biological programs must identify the health risks presented to humans and other biological systems by space environments..."

 

[Atlan0001]

The total authoritarian government rule (essentially communistic rule) of all space frontier beyond the Earth hasn't done one thing in sixty-odd years to move the needle off zero to open the space frontier to mankind. Not a single thing! And it isn't going to do a single thing because with what it is, an immovably massive 'iron curtain' lump, it can never move that needle.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The total authoritarian government rule (essentially communistic rule) of all space frontier beyond the Earth hasn't done one thing in sixty-odd years to move the needle off zero to open the space frontier to mankind. Not a single thing! And it isn't going to do a single thing because with what it is, an immovably massive 'iron curtain' lump, it can never move that needle.

Wrong!!!

Governments have taken the economic risks to develop technology that commercial firms would not have done, so now we have the technology. And multiple countries are now fostering non-government companies to use that technology commercially.

I would argue that NASA now needs SpaceX more than SpaceX needs NASA - both financially and technologically.

 

[Atlan0001]

Wrong!!!

Governments have taken the economic risks to develop technology that commercial firms would not have done, so now we have the technology. And multiple countries are now fostering non-government companies to use that technology commercially.

I would argue that NASA now needs SpaceX more than SpaceX needs NASA - both financially and technologically.

Where is the opening to mankind for all the hundreds of billions of tax dollars and more governments have spent in "iron curtain" government circling on a treadmill in space over the last fifty years (since 1973CE) going absolutely nowhere? Had frontier entrepreneurial minds and risk investments been involved throughout (as they have been throughout human history and I dare say all life history throughout the universe) instead of fifty years of Orwellian bureaucratic space science always "first, last, and always continuing without end," the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey' would have been a prediction far short of reality for the time period. As it is, we aren't even close to the progress in opening looked to by every private source and predictor had government simply been in the background backstopping history's massive, massive, private investments of risk capital and means in energetic human spatial frontiers. Money is just a token of energy and is nothing but wasted paper, and wasted energy, literally burned up without the "mass energies" (the massed energies) of far more than [one government-industrial sector] involvement.

To borrow from the applicable military truism of Helmuth von Moltke with applicable changes: The advantage which a government [feels] it can attain through continuing government control is largely illusory. By engaging in it, governments assume tasks which really belong to others whose effectiveness is thus withered and destroyed. The government also multiplies its own tasks to a point where it can no longer fulfill the whole, or really any part well, of them.

 

[Classical Motion]

It's easy to criticize institutions. I do it all the time. Institutions are cat herds. There's a lot of screaming and clawing. But it ain't bad what NASA has done with it's bureaucracy. For a whole new science it's done remarkably well.

There is lot's of neat stuff coming down the line. And already out there.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001,

How does SpaceX fit into your fantasy historical rant about governments killing the space industry?

It looks to me like the private sector was available to take over when the technology had been developed enough for it to proceed without government support.

There was never anything stopping Boeing or other commercial firms from using the technology they helped develop to make their own commercial ventures in space. But, those firms got lazy, psychologically, with cost plus fee support from the governments. Now they are rapidly being competitively eclipsed by purely commercial entities like SpaceX and Rocket Lab. Even United Launch Alliance is having a hard time making the change from government contractor to commercial stand-alone. But, there are also lots of purely commercial failures, like Virgin Orbit. So, it is not as if the process is easy and is only being held back by government actions.

Remember, the industry needs investors to raise capital to try these things. Until people think it is a good investment, companies are not going to have the capital to do things. And, frankly, there are obviously a lot of investors that have been over-promised returns from startup space companies that are failing, now. So, raising capital is not really that hard when the prospects look even mildly likely to make substantial returns on the investments.

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001,

How does SpaceX fit into your fantasy historical rant about governments killing the space industry?

SpaceX was founded in 2002, not 1963, not 1973, not 1983, not 1993.

Where is there any privately started up and owned spin-gravity space stations? Or any spin-gravity space stations period? How many people are in space, circa 2023 after 60 odd years, out of 8-billion people? How many of them private individuals? There are only two stations in space, both very small and very limited -- essentially 0-g -- government science stations (I emphasize government! science!), hardly an advancement toward any kind of opening.

How is any human setup whatsoever in space, that has been in space from first to last to date, any different from Marxist Communist total authoritarian 'Iron Curtain' structure? Utopian planned and only Utopian planned people, society and human hands-on economy allowed in space. In fifty odd of sixty odd years NASA, supposedly an agency of a free and frontier nation, has done nothing whatsoever to help American citizens reach the space frontier. It was supposed to get us there, exploding out to space, by way of design and assist and backing! Rather than a nova of frontier, human space has been a black hole of total quality management and control under NASA.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

So it just isn't fast enough for you? There are currently plans to put commercial space stations into orbit. NASA hopes to use them after the ISS is retired around 2030.

If it wasn't fast enough for you, but could have been done so much sooner, why didn't you do it yourself?

 

[Classical Motion]

It takes time. But we are starting to see it happen. We now have private competition for installing low flying birds. Evidently going to be in very high numbers. Can we blink them, ha ha.

I'm sure in the future private manned space flight will come. I don't think we are ready for Mars. Maybe Musk will realize this and play with the moon for awhile.

 

[Atlan0001]

So it just isn't fast enough for you? There are currently plans to put commercial space stations into orbit. NASA hopes to use them after the ISS is retired around 2030.

If it wasn't fast enough for you, but could have been done so much sooner, why didn't you do it yourself?

Don't be stupid! In the past fifty years there have been plenty of articles put out by entrepreneurs with ideas and money to invest complaining that a government of too many blocking agencies, too many barriers, most especially including NASA, was the prime choke point standing in the way of opening space.

 

[Atlan0001]

As I have written in the past I have no interest whatsoever in Mars. And my only interest in the Moon is as a mining resource for growing construction in space, on the high vast surface of space, where all the real frontier expansions and energies . . . this side of the interstellar . . . will be.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Don't be stupid! In the past fifty years there have been plenty of articles put out by entrepreneurs with ideas and money to invest complaining that a government of too many blocking agencies, too many barriers, most especially including NASA, was the prime choke point standing in the way of opening space.

All allegations without supporting evidence.

To be credible, you will have to provide at least one example of an entrepreneur who had an idea and the money to pursue it, close to 50 years ago, and show how that was blocked by the government. No conspiracy theories will suffice. You need to provide names, ideas, and government actions that suppressed the development of the idea.

And then you will need to explain how SpaceX was not stopped by the same mechanisms.

 

[Atlan0001]

I don't need or have to prove the negative. The negative of fifty years with time, regarding space and mankind, at essentially a standstill. Demand I prove the negative all you want. You apparently don't even know, can't even see, that time is money and that time (from 1973) in a closed system of Earth without space frontier for eight billion people is growing in cost toward infinity.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Nobody asked that you prove a negative. I only asked for a positive example to support your allegations. I asked you to show us that, several decades ago, somebody did have a good idea for innovative space infrastructure, did have the money to pursue it, and was blocked by the government. That is your allegation.

Seeing not even one supporting example, I give your assertions zero credibility.

 

[billslugg]

In the beginning, the space race was a national security issue. Civilians were limited, and still are, from making guided rockets without permits. Anyone can get one, you just need to meet the requirements. Always been that way.

The only reason private individuals have not entered the space race is because of the insane amount of money it costs. It cost 4% of US GDP for ten years to put us on the Moon.

The cost went down from there. Also, wealthy entrepeneurs were created due to loosening of US laws over the years. (Like the 70% tax rate). Once those two curves intersected, private launches flourished.

If you have different explanation, lay it down along with your supporting data.

 

[Atlan0001]

In the beginning, the space race was a national security issue. Civilians were limited, and still are, from making guided rockets without permits. Anyone can get one, you just need to meet the requirements. Always been that way.

The only reason private individuals have not entered the space race is because of the insane amount of money it costs. It cost 4% of US GDP for ten years to put us on the Moon.

The cost went down from there. Also, wealthy entrepeneurs were created due to loosening of US laws over the years. (Like the 70% tax rate). Once those two curves intersected, private launches flourished.

If you have different explanation, lay it down along with your supporting data.

Bill, I don't know exactly who you are communicating with but nice going. My references would start with Gerard K. O'Neill and T. A. Heppenheimer, G. Harry Stein and John S. Lewis, the National Space Society, the L5 Society, the Space Foundation, the old Space News (newspaper), the historian and once Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.... and too many other source people and written articles over the fifty years since Richard Nixon cut funding for space without dealing any blow to the Outer Space Treaty and the followed Moon Treaty (though unratified by the U.S.), to name here. The man obviously doesn't understand I've been a student of history and natural laws of how things work and don't work for seventy years, and that I see that he is as blind and immovable as a rock.

I do see that things may now be starting to turn around a little but even Elon Musk and Richard Branson, and Allen (though I forget his first name), among other investors, and would have been investors, and producers have complained in the past of the strangulation of governments, the barriers of government today, regarding the opening of the space frontier. What is slowly beginning to open the system is implosions of tyrannies (as the Roman lawyer and Senator Cicero once said, and the Science of Complexity today confirms, the existence of too many laws will mean an overall lawlessness) in a growing chaos of systems. I've learned you are no fool, Bill, and quite old and experienced, and knowledge enough, to understand the fragility President Richard Nixon's administration, and the totalitarian Communist administrations, as well, made clear existed in an almost total government rule of all aspects of the space frontier effort and would be effort. That heavy government interference, costly and chaotic government interference, is coming back . . . growing again! I've referred to it elsewhere in the forums.

I'm done with this person, Bill, before....

 

[billslugg]

News flash. Governments are too powerful. Get used to it, it will never change. Some people learned their way around it, and showed up NASA by pulling rabbits out of hats around 250 times now. It was the $$ and technology took us so long, not the regulations.

 

[Atlan0001]

News flash. Governments are too powerful. Get used to it, it will never change. Some people learned their way around it, and showed up NASA by pulling rabbits out of hats around 250 times now. It was the $$ and technology took us so long, not the regulations.

We had the Saturn rocket and several trips to the Moon by '73, plus a shuttle on the drawing boards, back in '73.

What was the dollar worth in '73 versus intrinsic worths, versus what the dollar is worth today versus intrinsic worths? Time is money, wasted time is wasted money, and anyway money is nothing but a token of energy (when energy is wasted or lost the token loses value, and more value, and more value).

 

[billslugg]

Dollar value is hard to convert, but CPI index from 1966, the peak year of Apollo spending, is 9.7. US GDP that year was $813B in 1966 dollars, Apollo program was 4% of GDP that year. One year spending on Moon program was $33B nominal, adjusted for inflation is $315B. I believe the average was 2.5% of GDP from 1960-1973. In today's money, the Moon program cost roughly $11.4 trillion. Richest person in the world at the time was J. Paul Getty, worth $9.6B in today's money. The Moon program was 1185 times his net worth.

 

[Atlan0001]

The total cost of the Apollo Program from 1960 to 1973 was 25.4 billion dollars. That was the total cost of the program over 14 years inclusive, an average cost of 1.82 billion dollars.

The U. S. GDP 1966 was 788.6 billion dollars.

The total cost of the program in 2023 dollars was 230.52 billion dollars.

The total cost of each successful Lunar landing in today's dollars was 53.11 billion dollars, or less cost than was Columbus's three ship discovery initial cost and each succeeding voyage cost to Spain's rulers in the 1490s.

The more effort into expanding frontiers, the cheaper the frontier grows . . . or rather the less the cost means for the growth in energy (the universe's energy proves that as well as the history of life on Earth, as well the history of human expansion in frontiers on Earth, as well as the hundreds of ships that were crossing the Atlantic and passing around the cape of Africa within a hundred years of the Portuguese and Spanish initial efforts. With costs to gain the universe of frontier, it is only the initial startup costs that are always tough to bear. Frontier universes seem to become superconductive.

Which altogether means the figures given above for Apollo would be meaningless had frontier continued to be pushed on larger and larger scales of opening and returns in energies. It is only in a closing system, in diminishment, like in a womb with life advancing into time past due for birth with no burst of birth, where costs tend toward growing infinitely untenable.

It seems the expansion in wealth of frontier energies is driving the expansion in wealth of the observable frontier universe, and the expansion in wealth of the observable frontier universe is in turn driving the expansion in wealth of frontier energies. Certain physics tend to work across the board of frontiers.

 

[billslugg]

I believe you have summarized the situation quite well.