The space program is doomed.

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nec208

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Well chemical is very very very very very very much NOT fuel efficient of going into space and going in space cost so much most contries do not want to cough it up but the US,China and Russia.

Is there other option?

Has of now anti-matter is hard to make and cost is very very expensive and cannot be stored has a fuel .And laser propulsion or pulsed lasers will burn the hole through the earth and is very very expensive not to say Gigawatt power 20 times the capacity of the world's larges nuclear power plant.

And Ion and plasma propulsion does not have the thrust to take of from earth.And microwave propulsion is very bad on the health.
 
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vulture4

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Liquid hydrogen costs 98 cents a gallon at LC-39. LOX is 60 cents. The cost of chemical propulsion is trivial. The expense is in building a rocket for every mission. That's why the Shuttle was built. Obviously the Shuttle is much more expensive to fly than predicted, although the marginal cost of an additional mission is only $100 million. But it is not expensive because it is reusable. It is expensive because it is the first reusable system ever built, and a lot of mistakes were made. Giving up on reusables, and the and going back to throwaways, as Mike Griffin irrevocably committed NASA to do when the parts manufacturing for the Shuttle was shut down, was the largest and most costly mistake in the history of the space program.
 
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SteveCNC

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When I first read the title of this thread a picture of a guy walking up and down the sidewalk in NewYork with a sign that says "The End in Near" came to mind . Funniest part is I still think of that even after reading the OP's post .
 
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bdewoody

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SteveCNC":fyd3er9a said:
When I first read the title of this thread a picture of a guy walking up and down the sidewalk in NewYork with a sign that says "The End in Near" came to mind . Funniest part is I still think of that even after reading the OP's post .
Yeah, his title had nothing to do with the content of his post.
 
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DarkenedOne

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vulture4":80a7r3ij said:
Liquid hydrogen costs 98 cents a gallon at LC-39. LOX is 60 cents. The cost of chemical propulsion is trivial. The expense is in building a rocket for every mission. That's why the Shuttle was built. Obviously the Shuttle is much more expensive to fly than predicted, although the marginal cost of an additional mission is only $100 million. But it is not expensive because it is reusable. It is expensive because it is the first reusable system ever built, and a lot of mistakes were made. Giving up on reusables, and the and going back to throwaways, as Mike Griffin irrevocably committed NASA to do when the parts manufacturing for the Shuttle was shut down, was the largest and most costly mistake in the history of the space program.

That is not true. Many of the newer rockets are reusable. Including the Falcon 9/Dragon. The Ares I was going to be reusable and parts of the Ares V was going to be as well.
 
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Boris_Badenov

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SteveCNC":2vsk2c0j said:
When I first read the title of this thread a picture of a guy walking up and down the sidewalk in NewYork with a sign that says "The End in Near" came to mind . Funniest part is I still think of that even after reading the OP's post .
EndIsNear3.jpg
 
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dryson

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Well chemical is very very very very very very much NOT fuel efficient of going into space and going in space cost so much most contries do not want to cough it up but the US,China and Russia.

Is there other option?

Has of now anti-matter is hard to make and cost is very very expensive and cannot be stored has a fuel .And laser propulsion or pulsed lasers will burn the hole through the earth and is very very expensive not to say Gigawatt power 20 times the capacity of the world's larges nuclear power plant.

And Ion and plasma propulsion does not have the thrust to take of from earth.And microwave propulsion is very bad on the health.

I understand what the OP is trying to state. The OP is saying that because of the cost of fuel and continued loss of each type of booster or fuel tank that is used to send a mission into space the cost of each mission is overunning the productivity of each mission.

In order for any space program to continue forward methods have to be developed of ensuring that each segement is able to be re-used several times before needing to be replaced. The Orion Program was such a program that allowed for the crewed portion of the vehicle to be re-used at least ten times before being replaced which would have cut down the cost of mission.

Basically the current mode of space exploration is like driving a Cadillac to pick up a gallon of milk and cookies from the store and then throwing the Cadillac away.
 
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Skyskimmer

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DarkenedOne":1ypbse5a said:
vulture4":1ypbse5a said:
Liquid hydrogen costs 98 cents a gallon at LC-39. LOX is 60 cents. The cost of chemical propulsion is trivial. The expense is in building a rocket for every mission. That's why the Shuttle was built. Obviously the Shuttle is much more expensive to fly than predicted, although the marginal cost of an additional mission is only $100 million. But it is not expensive because it is reusable. It is expensive because it is the first reusable system ever built, and a lot of mistakes were made. Giving up on reusables, and the and going back to throwaways, as Mike Griffin irrevocably committed NASA to do when the parts manufacturing for the Shuttle was shut down, was the largest and most costly mistake in the history of the space program.

That is not true. Many of the newer rockets are reusable. Including the Falcon 9/Dragon. The Ares I was going to be reusable and parts of the Ares V was going to be as well.
Too true but in the short term, it dosen't matter, disposable rockets are good, because there is such a short number of flights a year. It's a lot cheaper per launch to use cheap disposables than to use, 3 or 4 reusables.

It's simple economics, if you needed to wipe your face 3 times a year would you spend 15 cents on napkins, or buy 3 clothes for 2 dollars each and spend 50 cents a year on washing these items.

The shuttle was killed by a lack of volume you'd need atleast 12 shuttles doing 15 missions a year each for it to ever pay off ecnomically.
 
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nec208

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Has of now anti-matter is hard to make and cost is very very expensive and cannot be stored has a fuel .And laser propulsion or pulsed lasers will burn the hole through the earth and is very very expensive not to say Gigawatt power 20 times the capacity of the world's larges nuclear power plant.

And Ion and plasma propulsion does not have the thrust to take of from earth.And microwave propulsion is very bad on the health.

bdewoody":5kzbsfli said:
SteveCNC":5kzbsfli said:
When I first read the title of this thread a picture of a guy walking up and down the sidewalk in NewYork with a sign that says "The End in Near" came to mind . Funniest part is I still think of that even after reading the OP's post .
Yeah, his title had nothing to do with the content of his post.

I did not know what to give the tile.
 
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bdewoody

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Claiming the space program is doomed because rocket fuel and rockets in general are too expensive is stretching things a bit. Whose space program are you referring to? The USA's, ESA, the Russians, The Chinese, the Indians or the Japanese? Or do you feel they will all shut down for lack of funds?
 
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JonClarke

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Depending of the mission launch costs are between a 10% and 25% of the total. Sometimes even less. The real cost of space missions is not the propellant or even the launcher, it is the payload.

All the talk about "If could get cheap access to space if only we could get launch costs down" is chasing a red herring.

If you want to reduce the cost of spaceflight, reduce the cost of the payload. When launch costs are only 20% A 10% drop in the payload cost will have a similar impact to cutting launch costs by 50%.
 
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