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#1 Re: Not So Free Chat » What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend? » 2007-06-13 16:30:44

Tell me when you make such a government, I would apply as a citizen.  wink

#2 Re: Human missions » NASA Exploration Roadmaps » 2007-06-08 09:13:04

Marginal cost of Ares V estimated between $200-300 million

Wow, that's great, would mean 2000 - 3000$/kg into LEO if Ares V has about 100 ton lift capacity. I hope they can pull this off.

#3 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Europe build a Heavy lifter ( 100 tonne Euro-HLLV ) ? » 2007-06-04 07:48:13

Actually Woerner is the CEO of the DLR, that's the German space agency, so more like Griffin than just some politician.
According to that link from gaetanomarano's post he just asked for a new vehicle launched on top of the Ariane 5, then he added "but best would be a space glider that takes off and lands horizontally".

The first suggestion seems to be realistic, Europe is long overdue developing its own manned spacecraft. I hope they will finally come up with something that is developed until it works and not stop at half way again.

As for more advanced, fully reusable launchers, that should be developed on relatively low budgets, until we have something that can be built with moderate development costs. If the shuttle shows anything, then that you can waste a lot of money by betting on the wrong horse.
My personal favorites for accomplishing something in that sector are the altspacers, they have more freedom to experiment since they're using their own money.

#4 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Europe build a Heavy lifter ( 100 tonne Euro-HLLV ) ? » 2007-06-03 18:39:54

Hmm haven't heard any details about such a new concept, but in any case I am sure it wouldn't take off from Germany, both the inclination and geography (on the west side of the Eurasian continent, with many cities to the east) are not well suited for that.
But going with winged, hypersonic craft from the Spanish coast down to the Sahara and making the orbital hop over it was being talked about, if memory serves.

#5 Re: Not So Free Chat » What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend? » 2007-06-03 18:24:57

Yes, it's similar, only this one would be in GEO, always pointing at the same spot as long as it's needed.

How predictable, that environmentalists are also against this idea, it's something technically new and challenging after all.

Even in LEO it should be possible to only focus the beam to a spot when it's above a city, so that the wildlife wouldn't be disturbed.
But we'll need to improve our knowledge of extreme lightweight space structures first, no-one has ever tried to do anything of that kind on Earth, gravity and weather would make it impossible to build and keep structures that light on the ground.

#6 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Europe build a Heavy lifter ( 100 tonne Euro-HLLV ) ? » 2007-06-02 18:19:32

I guess by that you refer to the Hopper, a concept for a reusable first stage of a TSTO that would start horizontally on a sled and land on wheels. I just hope it doesn't end like the Saenger concept, it sucks when you make design studies about a superb vehicle for all your life and in the end it is never built.

#7 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-06-02 17:02:07

Yes, at the moment the discussion is about pushing that date further out, but there are a lot of people even against that. By the way do you know how they will replace the lost power?

Either by importing energy from neighboring countries like France (who make some 90% of theirs by nuclear plants), or sadly more likely with gas though that new pipeline, for which our former chancellor Schroeder signed an agreement before becoming one of the chief managers of the consortium building it, after he lost the election.
That consortium mainly consists of the Russian corporation Gazprom, the one that Putin is using to limit the independence of former Soviet states. The pipeline is being built in the Baltic Sea, directly connecting Russia with Germany, bypassing the Baltic States and Poland.

You know, sometimes I think I'm in the wrong movie here.

#8 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Falcon 1 & Falcon 9 » 2007-05-31 10:44:26

Probably because they're too busy preparing for the next launches. That reminds me I should leave here now and continue writing that game.  smile

#9 Re: Not So Free Chat » What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend? » 2007-05-31 10:24:02

I agree that we should only use lasers if it turns out there is now other way to keep the reflected light focused over a long distance.
But actually my idea was to use a structure that rotates about an axis that always keeps it reflecting the sunlight to the same spot on Earth, completing one rotation every 24 hours, while moving along its geostationary orbit.

Peak performance would be when the Sun is almost behind the Earth, so at the mid of the night, then we would have a short "mirror eclipse" until the Sun "comes out" on the other side of the Earth. At noon, when the Sun is at it's highest point as seen from the target area, reflection area would be about zero (without multiple reflection), then increasing again and so on.

This means that those Earth-based solar power generators would simply have to be pointed towards the mirror at dawn, then stay in this position until sunrise.
But it would also be easy to build structures specifically for these mirrors, because you wouldn't have to follow the movement of the light source as is the case with the Sun.

Clouds would be no problem for this system because of its flexibility, you could have several possible locations to point the mirrors at and could simply redirect the light on an alternative target if weather conditions became bad.

#10 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-05-31 10:01:25

I didn't mean to offend you either, Robert. We probably just have different experience with that movement. Over here in Germany, when they were part of the government they actually stopped construction of all nuclear plants and forced the industry to sign an agreement on closing all existing plants within some 20 years.
I hope that there will be change in this attitude in the future, although there is still a lot of unjustified fear mongering going on and unfortunately many people still believe them.

#11 Re: Not So Free Chat » What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend? » 2007-05-30 18:18:53

Are there some good online references for space mirror projects?

I don't know if there are online references for mirrors, maybe try to search for the Moon distance measurement by using the mirrors on the Moon.
I write this because I searched up the presentation I've seen from one of the guys who developed the laser altimeter for Mars Global Surveyor (it's called MOLA).
There they say that at 400km distance the laser spot had a diameter of 160 metres, the beam had a divergence of 420 µrad, that should be an angle of 0.024°. By the way they measure the altitude by pointing a telescope with a view area of optimally also 160m at the same spot where the laser hits and send pulses and measure the time for the light to travel to the surface and back to the telescope.

Then in this presentation there is an interesting part about the Moon distance measurement. This is done with the mirrors left on the Moon by Apollo. In the document they state they used a laser in an Earth observatory with a beam divergence of 50µrad, leading to a spot diameter of 20km on the Moon surface, where the mirrors are.
Then say say the reflected beam had a diameter of 40km back on Earth. This can only be the case if the mirror reflected the beam very accurately, not adding to the divergence, which means it is far superior to that wall mirror I used this afternoon to see how much it spreads the light from the Sun, that can be assumed as parallel here (it was still fun lighting up all the neighbors walls and roofs  smile  ).
Anyway, if it would turn out it's still not possible to reflect Sunlight from GEO without significant divergence, we could probably directly convert the light to laser light with a set of central tubes (see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser)

There are some interesting ideas in there.  Light at nighttime, heat in winter, concentrated solar for industrial or energy generation, seems like weather control might be in there somewhere - may be hurricane intensity reduction as a first project.

Definitely, if we can make that happen the possible uses are endless.


Do the mirrors/shades have to be at GEO?  How low mass can we make them?  What's a low cost control method (mirrors don't have to move much to "turn off" but they still have to move)?  What's a high accuracy control method ("pinpoint" delivery of energy)?  If it were used to melt tar sands/oil shale would the local climate be unduly disturbed?  10 km radius?  100 km radius?


I would place them in GEO because that way anything you would have at Earth would only need to be pointed towards the same spot all the time. LEO is a no go because you would have to move the mirrors very rapidly, could only light a spot for a few minutes at a time and the gravity gradient forces would probably just rip apart such a flimsy structure. And it would cause a lot of drag because of the huge surface area.

It could be made very lightweight, I remember reading a post somewhere on this forum about some sort of plastic mirrors (I think it was mylar) with a coat thickness of just 1 or 2 micrometers, which would mean a few gramms of weight per square meter, so a few tons for a square kilometer.

Since we get 1300W/m² from the Sun here at Earth, this would mean over a gigawatt reflected per square kilometer. It would need some supporting structure, just look up solar sails on that issue, they thought about a lot of possible ways to make their sails stable and were thinking about even bigger surface areas if memory serves. Also look for solar sails for methods to steer it.

Anyway we could even cope with degradation by micrometeorites by changing the mirror surface while keeping the supporting structure underneath. One possible way would probably also be to use some liquid that doesn't vaporize at a high rate in vacuum, but I don't know if there is anything in the range we would need.

#12 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-05-30 17:22:30

It's good to hear that you and your family are well and have found a new home after Katrina, loosing one must be a terrible shock.
Basically I agree on not wasting energy senselessly and consumerism is something I never quite understood. Why work day and night to make more money, then throw it out on a lot of unnecessary luxury goods?

For example I have no car at all, go to the uni by train (both the uni and my home are very close to train stations). On the rare occasions when I need a car I use my parents' (better save that money for the Canada trip next year).

But on the other hand I don't think it would be good to establish some sort of upper limit on what amount of energy one may spend. There is that thermonuclear reactor up in the sky after all (it's also called the Sun) and we only use a very tiny fraction of its energy yet, most of it is spent making it visible as a little dot in the skies of worlds in other star systems.

In the end I have no problem with environmentalists, as long as they don't  try to decrease our chances of ever getting off this planet.

#13 Re: Not So Free Chat » What would you do if you got 15 Billion $ per year to spend? » 2007-05-29 16:40:21

I would start different projects at the same time.
First, we would need reliable and cheap launchers in the range from one ton to 100 tons, we could use existing ones, so I would just buy these.
Then we need a capsule for manned missions and a cargo transport. Once these are all together we can start on the more interesting part.
We need to do some development and testing on assembling very large, very lightweight structures in orbit. This will be the basis for space mirrors, solar cell arrays and tethers.
One of the first priorities will be developing a tug, mainly an orbital garbage truck really with a tether and some sort of a net. It would be equipped with electrical propulsion, some sort of plasma engines in the 10 to 20 km/sec exhaust velocity range would be ok. This tug (or several of them) I would use to collect space debris in similar orbits, then getting it to a processing plant in orbit, another early priority project.
This would enable us to clean EO of all the scrap while providing metals for simple orbital structures.

Let's assume this would take up the first 10 to 15 years.
By the end of that period we could start looking for the Moon.
While continuing the buildup of the Earth orbit infrastructure, we would send out early manned limited time missions to the surface of the Moon. Beyond testing the equipment designed to survive on the surface, priorities would be to start mining for any useful resources, from oxygen to metals and Helium3 of course, if there is any power plant on Earth we could sell it to. Most of the resources would be used on the Moon or sent back to Earth orbit, preferably using an increasing network of momentum exchange tethers, which would reduce the cost of two way cargo transfers along the Earth-Moon route.

If this infrastructure is set up, we will be ready to build our first Mars ship, it will be a large scale project with extensive in orbit construction and designed for settlement. Since we need to stay on the surface of Mars for about 2 years as a minimum, we could use parts of the spaceship to set up an initial base. The mission of the people (volunteers) would be to stay for this minimum of two years, then decide if they are still in a shape to stay for another two year period and so on. At every low energy route opportunity, we would send at least supplies for the colonists, or even better more of those Mars ships. While we have people on the surface, they should try to expand/improve the Base with in situ materials, radiation hardening the base would be a high priority and could be done by pouring Martian rocks on top of the base or digging an underground facility. Another important task would be setting up a greenhouse for oxygen/food production and mining water.

At this point the 15 Billion budget would get too tight to support all operations at the same time, so the space mirror/moon mining projects should better start bringing in some cash. This would also be the right time to start looking seriously for some Asteroid mining, since our knowledge of zero g construction would be advanced enough after all those years of EO assemblies.

This is basically one possible way to do it, though you can never know if someone will come up with a radically new type of propulsion for example. In that case, better Isp launchers would tend to reduce the importance of the Earth-Moon connection in this scheme.

#14 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-05-28 12:33:50

Similar with ocean currents, you can prevent moving the ocean current but once it has moved you can't move it back. It's just too big.

I have no idea how to move it yet, but will tell you if something comes to my mind.

Actually, the Kyoto Accord was based on the fact that modern industrial countries caused global warming, so they have to reduce their emissions first. Specifically, between 2008 and 2012 industrial countries must reduce their emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels. I saw a presentation by Dr. David Suzuki who said third world countries will have to similarly reduce their emissions after 2012. Emissions include all analyzed greenhouse gasses: CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, SF6

Good luck, we can't even stop countries from building nukes, how do you want to enforce such a law globally?

Science is a tricky thing. Scientists are always learning more, and always challenging established knowledge. Those who aren't scientists, especially those who regularly attend a church which says "you must believe" really don't understand science.

Yes and you remember that tv-show I was talking about? Two months after that episode it was off the air, against the will of the guy who run it and was quite popular before. Was it because of this particular subject, I don't know. But I've heard of other scientists being harassed because they questioned the mainstream propaganda, that, by the way, is as uncritical as some east block literature I've read from the '60ies.

It's a known fact that polar ice is melting, bays that have never thawed since Europeans first discovered North America have completely melted during summer, a chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf larger than Rhode Island broke off, ice is measurably thinner than ever before, tundra is melting and polar bears in northern Manitoba are fewer, the global temperature has measurably risen at a more rapid rate since 1970.

It is also known that there has been a minor "ice age" in the 17th century and the climate was much warmer during the medieval period. Why was Greenland called like that after all?

Extracting oil from tar sands is done with steam, but they aren't burning oil produced to generate steam, they're using natural gas.

That's intersting, I assume the net profit is still positive energy-wise, why would they be extracting the oil at all otherwise?

They don't care that they are consuming a valuable, limited resource at an irresponsible rate.

If these resources are becoming depleted, prices will rise to a point where it will be cheaper to switch to other sources of energy and there are alternatives (like the ethanol production you are talking about). The net CO2 output will drop then anyway, so you should really be happy that prices are going up if you really think that is the main cause of global warming.

I agree that there are lots of good reasons to end oil dependency. So why not use those reasons?

I agree, I always support new concepts like Windmills, solar cells, upwind power plants or nuclear reactors, not to forget power from space. It's just that over the last years I've become tired of listening to all this green political propaganda that's being preached like the gospel.

#15 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-05-26 15:33:10

Hmm that's the problem there are a lot of theories and every one says something different. I heard about this ice age thing first in a scientific tv-show on the Bavarian channel called Alpha Centauri. Luckily all their shows are on the net and I reviewed it, the guy really did say that we probably prevented an ice age, it was not just the voices that usually talk in my head. yikes

Anyway I searched up that theory and found it on the same wikipedia page you reffered to. Here it is:

William Ruddiman has proposed the early anthropocene hypothesis according to which the anthropocene era, as some people call the most recent period in the Earth's history when the activities of the human race first began to have a significant global impact on the Earth's climate and ecosystems, did not begin in the eighteenth century with advent of the industrial era, but dates back to 8000 years ago, due to intense farming activities of our early agrarian ancestors. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations stopped following the periodic pattern of the Milankovitch cycles. In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis Ruddiman claims that an incipient ice age would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the arrival of that scheduled ice age was forestalled by the activities of early farmers. Other important aspects which contributed to ancient climate regimes are the ocean currents, which are modified by continent position as well as other factors. They have the ability to cool (i.e. aiding the creation of Antarctica) and the ability to warm (i.e giving the British Isles a temperate as opposed to a boreal climate).


As I said all this seems too controversial to me to make some major changes to the way we are doing things based on it, although that rapid cooling you talk about can be potentially dangerous, we should definitely take a look into what we could do to stop it if we saw something like that beginning to happen.

#16 Re: Not So Free Chat » So about the environmentalists and global warming... » 2007-05-26 07:57:32

Did you know that if you extrapolate the periodic cycle of warm periods/ice ages during the last some 100,000 years we should have already been  in an ice age for a couple of thousands of years. It seems that when man started to grow crops and erased forests to make more room for the fields this cycle changed and we might have actually prevented a new ice age without knowing it.
If you compare vegetation during the last ice age and now you will see that there was generally much less life on the planet than now. he whole planet was a lot dryer, the Sahara was bigger, there were dry forests in Brazil where there are rain forests now...
But this whole issue is not so well founded as you could make the stone hard decisions some environmentalists are forcing through now. But I think that is not even their primary concern, they just want more political power/influence and if there would be no CO2 "problem" they would just look out for something different to have a reason to slow down growth (which tends to lead to change) and thereby consolidate their status.
By the way have you heard anything about the ozone hole recently? Seems like it doesn't change that much over the long term and was certainly there before we could even measure it. Anyway isn't it funny that it's mainly over the South Pole even though most of the worlds industry is located on the northern hemisphere? But such little details hardly can convince a die hard ecologist.

#17 Re: Human missions » Look out! Buzz Aldrins got a plan... » 2007-05-26 07:33:39

I agree with this, and even if the cycler had a big microwave beam, there is the simple problem that the difference in velocities is so high that the short time and rapidly changing focal point would make accelerating a shuttle impractical. Remember, you would need an awful lot of G's to change several kilometers per second over the short time (minutes? seconds?) that the shuttle would be near the cycler, too many G's.

What kind of shuttle are you talking about, one that would slow down and return to Earth after delivering the passengers?
In this case I agree, but if you make a two way capsule that goes on to the destination (Mars for example) lands there and waits for the next cycler to arrive, then rides along that one back to Earth, I guess it should have enough time to dock between the planets, same way capsules do the docking game in LEO, only on a heliocentric scale.
But I agree with you cyclers are very impractical for a lot of reasons. No minimum energy trajectory to make it periodic, no easy way to maintain it and by the time we need them we will have advanced nuclear propulsion/plasma engines or for the cheaper alternative one way modular spaceships that can serve as a space station in Mars orbit or even be ferried down to the surface in parts.

#18 Re: Not So Free Chat » Hypothetical - Secession of Conservative States » 2007-05-24 17:15:55

Sometimes I wonder what this war is being fought about today, is it still the prospect of a free Iraq or something else? After all I remember various statistics stating that a majority of Iraqis find it acceptable to attack(!) American troops.
If the majority of these people wants you to leave out of their free will, then why don't you just make a vote on that in Iraq and go if that is their wish. Isn't this the way Democracy works?
Getting Al Quida and their terrorists arrested is what should be our primary concern. The real shame is that Ben Laden is still running around somewhere seemingly undisturbed.

Do you want a historical example? How about when the Austrian Government allowed Germany to Annex them in 1936 without a fight? I'll bet you there were some Austrian Jews who felt safe in Austria in 1935, they couldn't imagine that the Germans would simply invade and the "peace loving" Austrians would simply let them in to avoid a war.

Ehh if you're talking about historical examples you should at least tell the correct dates. The annexation of Austria (a fascist country at that time) was in spring 1938. The stated main goal of post ww1 Austria was reunification with the Reich and the majority of Austrians welcomed the nazi troops led by a former Austrian guy btw.
Anyway it was a horrible time that shows what overly mighty state power with a just as mighty propaganda machine can do to the minds of a desperate people with such a sick ideology as nazism was.
I hope such a time never returns and I share your values of Freedom, Human Rights and Democracy but you must also keep standing true to these if the world ever ought to become a better place for everybody.

#19 Re: Human missions » Human Missions and Public Support » 2007-05-18 15:23:45

But then it also has advantages to start small and quiet. I remember reading the biography of Theodore von Karman, who emigrated to the US prior to ww2.
It's interesting what he had to tell about the people interested in rocketry in the 50'ies. He said they were a bunch of amateurs who were not taken seriously by the established aeronautical branch of people. Yet they became the key people in the Apollo program, one of them actually had to go back to China because he was accused of being a communist by McCarthy. He became the father of the Long March rockets then.
These people pretty much built the space industry up to a Moon landing within a decade and began from nothing.
The similarity between them and todays Altspacers is striking. I think they are our best bet for some completely new concepts being tried out and some really big advances to what space business is about today.

#20 Re: Human missions » Europe goes to the moon and Mars! - Human space flight.... » 2007-05-14 15:24:00

ESA is exploring the design for a CEV class spacecraft based on the ATV.
This new crewed spacecraft share
common hardware and software with the ATV (including autonomous
rendezvous and docking). Principle
differences are in thermal control, enhanced ECLSS, escape and
recovery capabilities and crew systems

Upgrading the ATV to a crewed capsule has been discussed as an option for quite some time.
Last thing I know it is planned as a gradual process with upgrading to an unmanned reentry vehicle and then possibly going to a manned capsule. But the Ariane launcher also would have to be man-rated for a full orbital capsule that can go up manned. It all depends on the success of the basic version in the near future and the political will I guess.
At the moment there is a plan to use a smaller reentry capsule within the ATV pressurized cargo compartment that would be protected by the burning up main vehicle around it.

As for smaller demonstration capsules, I happen to be currently somewhat involved with a plasma flow measuring experiment on the EXPERT capsule. At the moment the whole thing has become too heavy so that the side panels made of a nickel-chrome alloy would melt away because of the increased heat load. I guess it will only fly next year if the guys/gals can make some hefty weight reductions with this configuration.

#21 Re: Not So Free Chat » Hello all » 2007-05-14 14:59:51

Hi Josh, yes it's also more difficult to keep the pieces together, you know, all the stuff around you. Uhmm where is my pen now again?

Cohen I hope you got the private message, anyway my email is thfledrich@gmx.de if you want to talk privately.
All others you can spam my address now but you will make me angry.  :shock:

#22 Re: Not So Free Chat » Hello all » 2007-05-13 14:50:33

Hi Rxke, good to see so many of you "old"  big_smile guys still around.

#23 Re: Human missions » Human Missions and Public Support » 2007-05-12 07:52:56

Thanks for the compliment Marsman, but as for the need for professionals from the gaming industry, I think that at least in the specific sector of strategy games there is a trend towards very small groups or just one person designing a complete game. If you look at titles like the Europa Universalis series for example, I believe I can create a space game of a similar size within a year or two if I mainly work just on that project. (ok without the music but I have a friend who is a musician)
This is because of the advent of freely available graphics platforms like OpenGL which enable us to do things more quickly without having to bother about graphics too much.
The problem with larger companies in this arena is that they also have very high running costs (by the way most of these now large companies started out with doing small games in the '80ies and '90ies), which forces them to design their products for the mainstream market to get more costumers and stops them from trying out new things because of the risks. That's why these companies are having an increasingly difficult time to keep the public interested in their products.

Now for the film industry I am not that familiar with that field, but YouTube is certainly a chance to do something with a smaller budget even though the likes of Discovery Channel are doing a great job now in bringing tech stuff to a wider public.

I agree with you, noosfractal, that the environmentalists are driving away a lot of dreamers who could help mankind get into space otherwise.
But on the other side I can't even understand why they think the way they do.
I mean in the end their ideology comes down to establishing total control over everyone. That's the only way they can limit growth indefinitely, while we space people only need a relatively small place on Earth where we can do what we want undisturbed. We don't need to force our way of life upon them, if they like to live like they say that's fine with me.
But of course we can never go to orbit if everyone is forced to spend less than 3000W on average instead of improving the way we create energy.
Somehow they remind me of the people who forced Chinese sailors to scrap their own fleet and never go out to the sea again during the Ming Dynasty.
But luckily there are still different cultures on Earth today so even if they manage to turn over the west someone else (Chinese, Indians) will still do the job.

#24 Re: Human missions » Human Missions and Public Support » 2007-05-11 16:51:27

I agree that we need a different approach on how to reach out to get the public involved. It would be nice to have more of the Arthur C. Clarke style movies and games (I'm currently working on one) about the settlement of the solar system.
He and his author colleagues made an amazing job at creating a positive view of the future, which seems to be lacking in todays popular culture.

But I don't see how we could change that just by throwing money at the problem. It requires a number of people who have that mindset and the movie making skills and the best way to achieve this is IMHO exactly through projects like FMars or all the suborbital business. These projects are less important as an actual advancement but more as new ways to look at things, in ways that are cheap enough to get into the reach of people who don't have to be millionaires.

If we can get that kind of people interested, they will then create the books/movies/games we need. You could argue of course that we need to directly finance these people, but how can you see in advance which one of them will be the successful one? (you're welcome to finance my game though if you have that much faith in me yikes )

As for completely new concepts it is not true that all of them require giant investments in the first place. Most inventions in the past didn't. Just remember the Wright brothers as a good example. Who would believe that just two people can design and build a new airplane today, not even talking about building the first ever?

And my comment about being better off than former explorers, I would say we are. Look how much effort was spent on building robotic spacecraft with the sole purpose of looking for science data, while Columbus only got three existing ships and crews for a mission that had the goal of finding new lucrative trade routes.

Personally I would like to see a world where spaceflight requires such a small effort that society will put people on a spaceship and send them off to Moon or Mars just because they're too annoying to live with (like the colonization in old Greece used to be).
We still have a long way ahead before that, but consider me becoming one of the annoying persons if things go this way.  wink

#25 Re: Human missions » Human Missions and Public Support » 2007-05-10 17:47:31

I think the space community/industry has all the money they can get. Noosfractal is right in that we are competing against other advocates who are only begging for enough food or basic education for the many millions of people living in absolute poverty.
It is a wonder that we get as much resources as we do against these odds and personally I think it would be quite immoral to ask for a lot more.
What we really need is to lower the cost of spaceflight, this would often mean taking less expensive options that mostly are only slightly less capable than the high-end stuff we are using today.
Let's take heat shields for example, why waste money on reusable materials when you could have a simple and cheap ablator that can be refurbished and reattached to a reusable capsule?
Or take upper stage engines, there are variants that have a nozzle throat made of a platinum alloy where platinum is the cheapest ingredient, while it only improves isp by a few sec compared to cheaper alternatives.
At the same time, there are new materials like carbon/aramid fibers (kevlar and that sort of stuff) that could make fuel tank materials much lighter than metal ones at no significant price increase to the whole system.
But I'm digressing into the tech stuff too much....
Anyway my point is to contribute to the overall technical development to lower the costs, it might be a slow process or there could be unexpected leaps any time, but consider what proportion of the world's economy former explorers had at hands and you will see that we are quite well off compared to them.

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