D
DarkenedOne
Guest
Personally I do not understand why some people are so eager to send people beyond LEO. If the goal of human spaceflight is to extend human civilization into space than how does sending humans to places like Mars at the cost of several billion of dollars each help us in this endeavor.
Apollo was a stunt. It was used to demonstrate the technological superiority of the US. It was never meant to create any type of sustained presence on the moon, nor was it to accomplish any major scientific objectives. What I do not understand is why it would turn out any different if we were to go to Mars at the moment. All these plans like Mars Direct of reaching and colonizing Mars are never going to happen because they require hundreds of billions over several decades before any there is any hope of a return on investment. All this in a time when interest in human spaceflight is at an all time low. NASA's budget has shrink significantly since Apollo, and there are practically zero prospects of growth in the next few years.
What we need to focus on is building a human spaceflight industry not a human spaceflight program. If we focus on developing relatively inexpensive human commercial transport as well as commercial space stations human spaceflight will grow. There are very useful commercial applications for human spaceflight that in the early stages of being developed including space tourism as indicated by Space Adventures, space research as on the ISS, satellite repair as done on the Hubble, and orbital construction. If developed human spaceflight would experience exponential growth.
Of course the development of a human spaceflight industry would improve the situation for BEO human spaceflight immensely. NASA would simply purchase tickets to LEO, thus allowing the agency to spend its limited human spaceflight funds on interplanetary spacecraft and bases. Of course the commercial sector would also contribute a great deal of money to technological development of human spaceflight. Also I personally believe that is a commercial human spaceflight industry was created than there would be much more interest in human spaceflight in general.
Apollo was a stunt. It was used to demonstrate the technological superiority of the US. It was never meant to create any type of sustained presence on the moon, nor was it to accomplish any major scientific objectives. What I do not understand is why it would turn out any different if we were to go to Mars at the moment. All these plans like Mars Direct of reaching and colonizing Mars are never going to happen because they require hundreds of billions over several decades before any there is any hope of a return on investment. All this in a time when interest in human spaceflight is at an all time low. NASA's budget has shrink significantly since Apollo, and there are practically zero prospects of growth in the next few years.
What we need to focus on is building a human spaceflight industry not a human spaceflight program. If we focus on developing relatively inexpensive human commercial transport as well as commercial space stations human spaceflight will grow. There are very useful commercial applications for human spaceflight that in the early stages of being developed including space tourism as indicated by Space Adventures, space research as on the ISS, satellite repair as done on the Hubble, and orbital construction. If developed human spaceflight would experience exponential growth.
Of course the development of a human spaceflight industry would improve the situation for BEO human spaceflight immensely. NASA would simply purchase tickets to LEO, thus allowing the agency to spend its limited human spaceflight funds on interplanetary spacecraft and bases. Of course the commercial sector would also contribute a great deal of money to technological development of human spaceflight. Also I personally believe that is a commercial human spaceflight industry was created than there would be much more interest in human spaceflight in general.