D
DarkenedOne
Guest
We Americans like to think that we are the most advanced space power. This perception is true in a number of respects. We are the undisputed leader in space science, space technology, manned spaceflight, and satellite infrastructure. However we are lacking in one critical field perhaps the most important of all, launchers.
While it is true that our launchers are very reliable they are also very expensive. This fact is critical because launchers are at the base of the pyramid when it comes to space. Everything that you do in space from military to science to manned missions. They all cannot function without being able to get into space. It is the same way the automobile and airline industry rely on the oil industry. Every time the price of oil goes up they suffer.
Most recently this issue has become apparent with NASA. Both NASA and the Russians have the capability to transport both people and supplies to the space station. NASA is able to do this with the Space Shuttle, but it cost us several billion dollars a year. Of course since NASA was not going to get significantly more money from Congress, so it had no choice but to get rid of the Shuttle in order to release funds for other manned vehicles. The Russians on the other hand despite having a small fraction of NASA's budget are able to maintain their ability to transport to and from the station with ease, while at the same time develop its next generation Angara boosters. The reason of course is that it costs the Russians a factor of ten less to maintain the Soyuz as it costs NASA to maintain and operate the Shuttle. Thus we are left in this fairly odd situation in which a far wealthier and technology advanced space agency is dependent on a significantly less technologically advanced and poorer space agency for perhaps the most fundamental capability in manned spaceflight.
Fact of the matter is that the US will lose its space industry without reasonably priced launch capacity. The US use to have a significant faction of the market of space launches. Today we see that market declining. Practically everyone who is allowed to launch on foreign rockets do launch on foreign rockets. The only ones left are the government launches that are strictly US only. In fact only one non-government launch was made on the Atlas V and the Delta IV. By comparison Europe's rocket the Ariane 5 launched 10 non-government payloads.
Even US scientists are very worried that they will not have rockets that are cheap enough to launch their science payloads in the future.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -on-spacex
This problem is even more apparent by the fact that China, a new space power, has already surpassed us in the number of launches they made this year. I counted up all the launches so far by all of the US rockets and found that they totaled 10 while China has just recently launched its 12th rocket into space.
Yet these issues largely go ignore. People can sense that we are losing ground, but they focus on the wrong things like NASA and heavy lift vehicles, which I believe is why things have gotten so far. In reality manned spaceflight only accounts for a small fraction of the space industry at the moment, and manned spaceflight beyond LEO occupies no place at all. Yet you hear people talk about how the US will lose its space dominance if we do not spend a hundred billion on new heavy lift vehicles to take humans beyond LEO. In reality historically such vehicles have been a complete waste of time and a huge waste of money not just in this country, but in every country. Every country that has constructed a heavy-lift rocket has gotten rid of them after less than 20 launches. If actually care about maintaining our lead in spaceflight in general we need to focus on the launchers that actually matter.
Fact of the matter is that if America loses the space race, it will not be because our competitor nations have better satellites or more advanced technology. It will be because we cannot even get our stuff into space at a reasonable cost, and without that our superiority in every other field will be lost with time. We need to stop talking about NASA and these stupid heavy lift vehicles.
While it is true that our launchers are very reliable they are also very expensive. This fact is critical because launchers are at the base of the pyramid when it comes to space. Everything that you do in space from military to science to manned missions. They all cannot function without being able to get into space. It is the same way the automobile and airline industry rely on the oil industry. Every time the price of oil goes up they suffer.
Most recently this issue has become apparent with NASA. Both NASA and the Russians have the capability to transport both people and supplies to the space station. NASA is able to do this with the Space Shuttle, but it cost us several billion dollars a year. Of course since NASA was not going to get significantly more money from Congress, so it had no choice but to get rid of the Shuttle in order to release funds for other manned vehicles. The Russians on the other hand despite having a small fraction of NASA's budget are able to maintain their ability to transport to and from the station with ease, while at the same time develop its next generation Angara boosters. The reason of course is that it costs the Russians a factor of ten less to maintain the Soyuz as it costs NASA to maintain and operate the Shuttle. Thus we are left in this fairly odd situation in which a far wealthier and technology advanced space agency is dependent on a significantly less technologically advanced and poorer space agency for perhaps the most fundamental capability in manned spaceflight.
Fact of the matter is that the US will lose its space industry without reasonably priced launch capacity. The US use to have a significant faction of the market of space launches. Today we see that market declining. Practically everyone who is allowed to launch on foreign rockets do launch on foreign rockets. The only ones left are the government launches that are strictly US only. In fact only one non-government launch was made on the Atlas V and the Delta IV. By comparison Europe's rocket the Ariane 5 launched 10 non-government payloads.
Even US scientists are very worried that they will not have rockets that are cheap enough to launch their science payloads in the future.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -on-spacex
This problem is even more apparent by the fact that China, a new space power, has already surpassed us in the number of launches they made this year. I counted up all the launches so far by all of the US rockets and found that they totaled 10 while China has just recently launched its 12th rocket into space.
Yet these issues largely go ignore. People can sense that we are losing ground, but they focus on the wrong things like NASA and heavy lift vehicles, which I believe is why things have gotten so far. In reality manned spaceflight only accounts for a small fraction of the space industry at the moment, and manned spaceflight beyond LEO occupies no place at all. Yet you hear people talk about how the US will lose its space dominance if we do not spend a hundred billion on new heavy lift vehicles to take humans beyond LEO. In reality historically such vehicles have been a complete waste of time and a huge waste of money not just in this country, but in every country. Every country that has constructed a heavy-lift rocket has gotten rid of them after less than 20 launches. If actually care about maintaining our lead in spaceflight in general we need to focus on the launchers that actually matter.
Fact of the matter is that if America loses the space race, it will not be because our competitor nations have better satellites or more advanced technology. It will be because we cannot even get our stuff into space at a reasonable cost, and without that our superiority in every other field will be lost with time. We need to stop talking about NASA and these stupid heavy lift vehicles.