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Still no photos, no documents?
You now claim you piloted a jet capable of exoatmospheric flight, but you still don't do "tech stuff"? Yet don't know who built your spaceraft or where they launched from?
Thirty percent is the launch cost farction of the comparatively mass produced items, still a smaller that the cost of building. You can find exceptions no doubt.
It amazes me the obsession over reducing launch costs and nothing like the interest in reudicng construction costs, which is the largest component
And yet, historically, the price of boosters is about 30-50% of the total launch cost, no matter what launcher or payload you are talking about...
More like 5-30%. Launch costs are largely a red herring. It is the payload that costs.
The module was built and resides in Japan.
Kibo has some centrifuges onboard http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stati … /CBEF.html
There is also a nanoracks centrifuge experiment to be launched http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.asp … 426744.xml
I, or we, were tasked with flying around the planet with the saucer aliens, and they were to follow our instructions, and they complied.
Large areas of the surface were extremely offensive to human beings, just worse than anything you could think up.
Insects tend to make hives, and these larger, highly intelligent aliens, had made thousands of them...hideous amalgamations of humans, monkeys, insect and other lifeforms, always dominated by statues, likenesses of themselves.
They were asked, or rather ordered, to knock down miles of this stuff, and they did so, boom, just like that.
Other things were unacceptable and were covered up with sand. They did this in a matter of seconds. There was the corpse of a wooly mammoth up there, the largest mammal that ever lived, a creature they had grown on the pre-cataclysm earth I think. It was covered up, but it is so large that it now functions as a museum, containing all the lifeforms that have ever existed in our solar system.
There is more rock carving up there than you can look at, and much of it was extremely offensive as well. I suggested that some of it be erased or better, replaced with something less offensive and, minutes later the entire landscape had been 'photoshopped' , from the saucer, into something else entirely.
After once round the planet, we landed and picked up the female member of the team, and she decided what was offensive to her, and down it went. Specifically, I remember the battlements at Victoria crater bugged her, there was a gigantic likeness of the male saucer alien, horns and all, and she said 'knock that down'. Boom. We were about to leave when she said 'no, hit it again and knock that horn off'. They were not pleased about knocking down their ancient monument but they hit it again and down it went.
Sounds like the interplanetary Taliban, blowing things up because they are "offensive".
I was Liason, OK? Problem-solving, diplomacy. logic. I was familiar with the players. The tech could have been done by anybody and I would not be part of that. These missions weren't planned as such - they were neccessary and were carried out with as little hoopla as possible. Need-to-know every step of the way.
A) Who were “the key players”
B) How were you familiar with the “key players”?
C) How do you go to Mars without planning “as such”?
1) Where did you launch from?
In 62 we were towed up to max altitude and dropped off the plane.
I have no idea where we left from in 76ish, but must have been somewhere on the west coast of N. Am.
1a) What was towed to maximum altitude?
1b) What towed you?
1c) What was maximum altitude?
1d) What happened after that?
2) What did you launch on? Dunno.
Really? I know how I got to work this morning and the type of plane I few to Europe in in 1965 but you don’t know what took you to Mars?
Who built the spacecraft? No idea.
Really? I know the make of the hire car that I pick up at the airport but you don’t know who made the spacecraft that took you to Mars?
4) What were the spacecraft specifications - tonnes, volume, power supply, mission duration, propulsion?
Who cares! Aliens involved, no problem going to Mars and back.
I care, because I am interested in such stuff. Being able to give such details helps your case.
5) What mission architecture was used?
What is mission architecture? Not my job. We had a unique situation to deal with, not something normal people would want to take on. We were not bound by any rules or military folderol.
Mission architecture is basically the means you use to get to and from Mars. It’s not my job to book travel from A to B, that’s the travel agent’s business. But I still know the travel archiecture – taxi, bus, plain, etc., so you should know how you did.
6) Why were cameras not allowed on the surface of Mars?
Uhhh.. too scary, too much, way too much.
What was scary? We have photos and video of terrorism, genocide, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mass executions, torture, war crimes, murder, tornadoes, hurricanes, pandemics, attacks by wild animals, horrible diseases, landslides, surgical procedures, dreadful injuries, plane crashes, ships sinking. How were what saw on Mars more scary than these?
7) What are the "best early high-resolution images" that have "vanished from every online site" are you referriong to? a) What spacecraft were they taken by? b) Where were they of? c) Where were they originally hosted? b) What evidence do you have that they have existed?
Dunno, doesn't matter, there are plenty more. But the SE Candor pic was a personal fave.
Myself or others are visible in the early photos if you know where to look. The ship stayed overhead at all times, though we were only in danger in certain areas of the planet.
7a) If there are “plenty more” pictures, where are they? Links or book references please. Especially ones that show you and “others”.
7b) How did the ship manage to stay overhead at all times?
7) Why the secrecy?
Common sense. They kept testing parts of it on random civilians and there was trouble, psychological problems.
a) Why was it common sense? What’s so secret?
b)What parts were tested on civilians?
c)What evidence you you have that it was so tested?
d) What sort of psychological problems did the civilians suffer?
e) Why only the civilians?
8) if it is secret why tell us?
It's been long enough. This has to happen a bunch of times, it's very tedious. 6 billion sheep don't wake up easily.
So where is your evidence?
9) Why can't you remember the number of times you have been off planet (not the sort of thing you would forget)?
Ah, well the sleep states, yknow? Read Ultra, all of it, then use your imagination.
It took approx. two weeks to put it out of mind. Alpha, Delta refers to sleep states. You couldn't go there in a normal mindset, and there were problems up there, people fainting, locking into foetal position, running in circles, stuff like that.
9a) Why put an amazing experience out of your mind?
9b) Why were there problems?
9c) What triggered them?
When we returned and debriefed we were told we were 'off the hook' until disclosure happened.
Funny, people who secet stuff are generally “on the hook” until they are allowed to talk about it.
Tech questions are a waste of time, not my job. Aliens, I know about.
I don’t do technical stuff either, but I am interested enough to know observe the details of the ships and planes I go on. Going to Mars should impress even a non-technical person with some details.
10) So aliens you say you know about. Where did they come from?
Pilots reported the saucers many times. One pulled in beside me and it's pilot was clearly visible. This was in the sixties. I landed and reported that the pilot of the saucer was a rather large insect-like creature, like a spider.
So you are a pilot who doesn’t do “tech questions”? Right.
There was no reason to doubt me, or the other pilots, so everything since then has been virtually dictated by common sense.
What is common sense about saying you went to Mars in the 60s and 70s or that you personally encountered aliens? Which is why evidence would be nice.
Proof was found in the fifties, a buried room with detailed evidence of the pre-cataclysm earth, aliens, working model of Gisa...a bunch of stuff.
11) What buried room and where was it found?
12) What is the “precatacysm earth”?
13) What’s a Gisa and why is a working model of it significant?
Telepathy is very real and it obviates computers and most tech, and that's what we ran into up there.
14) How does telepathy “obviate computers and most tech”
15) What “tech” are we talking about? Electronics? Mechanical watches? Optics? Chemically powered engines? Slide rules?
Some real questions. Evidence for each required.
1) Where did you launch from?
2) What did you launch on?
3) Who built the spacecraft?
4) What were the spacecraft specifications - tonnes, volume, power supply, mission duration, propulsion?
5) What mission architecture was used?
6) Why were cameras not allowed on the surface of Mars?
7) What are the "best early high-resolution images" that have "vanished from every online site" are you referriong to? a) What spacecraft were they taken by? b) Where were they of? c) Where were they originally hosted? b) What evidence do you have that they ever existed?
7) Why the secrecy?
8) if it is secret why tell us?
9) Why can't you remember the number of times you have been off planet (not the sort of thing you would forget)?
It certainly is a useful conceptual device and is pretty much the most minimalistic mission proposed, at least in terms of departure mass and crew size. It is not even a conceptual outline like MD , more like a back of the envelope sketch. I am not sure what value it is, except as a bench mark for one extreme. What you you find useful about it?
There are many things wrong with Zubrin's two person Dragon based Mars mission. No margins, very tight allocations, and it isn't based on Dragon anway, but on the Falcon Heavy.
Is that so?
What you evidence for this?
What secret missions? Are you claiming there have been secret missions to Mars?
I predict there will some effort to make a "space race" among some of the participants, sort of a "who can be the first to do what the Americans did and now can no longer do" sort of thing. I hope the other spacefaring countries are not stupid enough to do it that way. There is no need to race, nor to do a "crash program" so very rapidly. What the Chinese are doing is the right thing. And they are being slow and careful enough to make it work right. I have no doubt they will go to the moon in a very few years.
There is a problem with a hostile power on the moon, if you cannot go there yourself, and international conditions are hostile enough to cause warfare. This is an old science fiction concept from the 1930's and 1940's, but it was also a very real fear during the buildup to the space race in the 1950's. A base on the moon with an appropriate "catapult" can throw guided rocks back at specific targets on Earth, because lunar escape velocity is so slow. The guidance need be no more sophisticated than a 1970's vintage missile to work. The rock hits atmosphere at Earth escape speed, and if monolithic, explodes with the force of a large nuke weapon on impact with the ground, not up in the air.
It is easy to shoot "down" at the Earth from a shallow gravity well, it is very hard to shoot back up out of our deep gravity well at the moon. Very asymmetric warfare situation. The moon really is a "high ground" in that sort of war scenario. You can bet your bottom monetary unit (whatever it is) that the US , Russian, Chinese, and several European countries are at least considering what a future like that might be, and how to forestall it. It's a risk as long as humans make war on each other. Hopefully, we all can keep it a low-probability risk. But that's another problem: the history of the 20th century makes that outlook look more than a little grim.
But, even that's no reason to "race" back to the moon. It's hard to shoot back up the moon, but not impossible these days, not like it was ca. 1960. A base there is not invulnerable anymore. The war is asymmetric, but not unwinnable. All the major spacefaring countries understand that. There's a couple of "wannabes" that might attempt such an ugly thing if they could, but fortunately, they can't. Not for a long while yet. No need to name them. Y'all know who they are.
That's why the form and detail of a space treaty is so important. You want to promote business and trade off Earth and with Earth, but you want to try to forestall any warfare, because it can be so very devastating here (or anywhere). That's not an easy thing to do, especially when the very best propulsion concepts we have, mostly involve nuclear stuff out there.
We still don't have the right treaty, or any mechanism to enforce it other than warfare.
GW
The whole "race" analogy is an anachronism.
The Moon is useless as a military base, despite a lot of bad SF to the contrary. The high ground in space is LEO
No hostile power is likely to get to the Moon. Al Qaeda does not have a space program
I'm trying to draw a distinction between what activities have been done so far (satellites, manned docking, space-station building) which have a lot of justifications other then national glory and a manned Moon landing which has no justification BUT glory. The Moon is not a military 'high-ground', it's in another gravity well after all, systems developed to land on the moon are usable only for that one purpose. After-all, if the Moon was really intrinsically worth going to then the Soviets would have done it even after the US got their first, just as each nation did every other step along the way and the US eventually did stations despite not being first, truly justified development you do regardless of being 'first'. About the only thing you can argue is that the space industry is expanded and matured by the effort but any space-program goal can do that. Thus I conclude that China wishes (if they can be taken at their word) to begin a program in the 2020 time frame that will achieve a 'glory mission'. And if that is their goal I'd recommend the NEA mission instead, it's even arguable that the NEA mission dose far more to advance human space-flight generally and their capacity specifically then going to the moon, they would need to solve the radiation and bone-loss barriers which would be HUGE.
There are a lot of reasons to go to the Moon other than "glory". A great many scientific reasons for certain, far more than an asteroid mission (interesting though that is) there are potentially logistic and economic reasons as well, which we won't know until we try.
Radiaton and bone losses issues are exaggerated. Both can (and to a large extent have) been addressed in Earth orbit, any residual radiation issues related to being beyond the terrestrial magnetosphere can be addressed incrementally on the Moon.
JonClarke wrote:(.../...)
It is a very rational and admirable program.+1
Please note that the political stability brought by their political system helps a lot. No elections, pure merit promotion. Of course, this system also has drawbacks(I will not dig them, I hope everyone knows them).
Possibly, although note that ESA also has a rational program based on a multi-year cycle,like China, and that the US military and security services have steady funding and rational developmenty (as far as we can tell), despite elections. Conversely the Soviet space program suffered from very nasty infighting.
Steady progress would appear to require broad political support and separation of policy from short term partisan objectives, regardless of the political system in question.
Lets not get into a political food-fight here.
I was discussing only the relative risk-tolerance of the Chinese program and I'm saying it seems to be more risk-averse then both the US and Soviet systems in the original space race which is perfectly consistent with the fact their is as of right now no race.
Clark: I never said that national glory was the only justification for their program, your making a straw-man argument as their are obviously huge military and civilian technology benefits. But you would have to be a fool to claim national glory is not A part of the justification, particularly something like a Moon-landing which is the mission I was specifically contrasting with a NEA mission.
With respect to possible Chinese crewed missions to the Moon.
But they can't win glory ware their is no credible competition and in doing something that's already been done. Their is so much less glory for being second it's hardly worth the cost..
And
If I was Hu Jintao (or the guy who will be in charge of China in the 2020 time frame) I'd direct the program at achieving a NEA visit. It's a genuine "first" that would win a lot more glory then a Moon landing while actually leveraging the knowledge that would be gained in this decades space-station phase without the need to develop radically different (and single use) stuff like a Lunar lander or a SHLV. The NEA visit also a stated goal of the US so it could be spun as a genuine race even if the US largely doesn't rise to the challenge, nor can the 'been-their-done-that" defense be employed.
Both clear imply the "glory" is (or should be) the prime motivation.
I suggest that "glory" in this era, plays a much smaller role in Chinese policythan you propose, and very much a secondary concern. Of course they have every right to celebrate their achievements.
You are talking about the regime that murders trade unionists and journalists, tortures nationalist protestors, was responsible for millions of deaths of its own citizens, cheats at international trade, indulges in forced abortions, has the highest legal execution rate in teh world and zapped a satellite with a laser?
Please stop the Soviet-era propaganda. It's not at all "admirable" that a totalitarian regime should have a successful programme - it can only be worrying.
The Chinese with a population of one billion plus, all the resources of a centralised state since the Sputnik era - nearly five decades - and the benefit of Soviet designs are not that impressive when compared to Space X who have managed to leap from nowhere to orbital assembly in 8 years. Let's hope they keep up their plodding progress.
By the same token you should avoid demonising a country that, while far from perfect, has made enormous strides in the past 50 years and whose people on average are better fed, housed, educated and enjoy greater freedoms than at any time in their history.
Admirable achievements are worth admiring, regardlness of the nation that carries them out. Someone may find little to admire about the US, but still admire their achievements in space.
If you think that the Chinese space program is based on "Soviet designs" then you know very little about the topic.
Comparing the efforts of SpaceX to the entire Chinese space program is comparing thr fruit of a single tree, not matter how sweet, with the produce of a diverse orchard.
You are assuming the only justification for the Chinese space progam is "glory". The converse is true. the Chinese space program is driven primarily about needing national needs, building capabilities they deem neccessary. Hence the emphasis on Earth observation, communications, tracking and data relay, navigation, and technology development. A crewed orbital laboratory is clear seen to be part of that.
Space exploration is a small part of this, but the Chang'e 1 and 2 missions have been grerat successes, Chang'e 2 is currently on the way to asteroid Toutatis for a January 2012 rendezvous. More lunar and asteroid missions are under development.
They are in no hurry, there is no "race", they build capabilities rationally within the larger constraints of national policy. They minimise risk, as any rational organisation does, with the result they have the most reliable rockets in large scale service today. Space program goals are detailed in the five year plans, which to date have always been met, with longer term goals outlined to ten years out.
It is a very rational and admirable program.
This is the third crew related launch by China in nine months. There is a reasonable chance of one more before the end of the year.
So, I suppose we can say there are two manned space stations in orbit? It's an improvement, I guess...
How many people do we have in orbit at a given time, then?
It's step in the right direction. We currently have nine people in Orbit, and wll have for the next ten days.
Hard dock achieved, hatches about to be opened.
Rolling replays of the launch - some great images
http://english.cntv.cn/special/shenzhou9/index.shtml
Some other good videos on the site with launch preperations
Docking on the 18th at 06:00 UTC
You can watch this on http://english.cntv.cn/live/
Great coverage so far
But haven't we got Mars satellites in orbit? I imagine small devices would be able to speak to the satellites that then relay info back to Earth.
The smaller the load, the more impact it can sustain I would imagine e.g. if you have a 2 kg wrapped up in 3 kgs of sophisticated wadding. Or can you do a last minute mini launch before you hit the surface, so landing speed is really slow.
You might not want it to be slow - the DS-2 probes were penetrators after all.
Not sure whether the were meant to communicate directly to Earth or via a relay. Relay would be easier, I would have thought. There was MGS already in orbit and of course MCO was supposed to be there as well.
The Deep Space 2 probes massed 2.4 kg. Although they failed they show that it is possible to have an interesting and useful minimal surface mission in the nanosat class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2
Actually, most people believe the core of a large planet like the Earth is a natural nuclear reactor. Neutron radiation will breed uranium-238 into uranium-239, which decays in minutes into neptunium-239, that decays in hours into plutonium-239, and that is fissile. Neutron radiation will breed thorium-232 into thorium-233, which decays in minutes into protactinium-233, which decays in about a month into uranium-233. U-233 is more fissile than U-235. Heavy elements will tend to sink to the core, so it's highly likely there's a natural reactor there. In fact, I've been told the largest uranium deposit in Canada has never been mined. The reason is it's a low level reactor, producing a lot of radiation. Human miners can't approach. Since that exists in the crust, it's highly likely a large one exists in the core.
Evidence that "most people" think the Earth's core is a natural reactor?
Evidence that the largest uranium deposit in Canada can't be mined because its a "low level reactor"?