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I don't like it when people compare computing advances with rocketry.
Rocketry is about big infrastructure--raw power, etc. This is very blue-collar work that the Soviets mastered with Lycurgus' currency of iron.
Many computer-types are pie in the sky libertarians who simply don't understand big infrastructure or big science.
Space launch is more TVA than MSN--and will remain so for some time.
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...SpaceX of El Segundo, CA, is one of at least a half-dozen companies seriously competing to revolutionize space travel in much the way a few savvy entrepreneurs transformed computing in the 1970s and '80s. The new companies are trying a variety of approaches aimed at reducing launch costs by a factor of ten. Many of the companies started out competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 for the first privately financed rocket to fly into space twice in two weeks. (That rocket, the suborbital SpaceShipOne, was built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, of Mojave, CA.)
As with the others I don't think the analogies is a very apt one. First and most obviously, rockets simply do not have the potential for geometric advances like computers chips do. We are already at just about the edge of their theoretical performance, and any further advancment is going to have to come at signifigant cost no matter how you slice it. There is no Moores law for rocketry.
The second reason this analogie is not very apt is that the computer pioneers of the 1970's and 80's realy didn't do anything to dramaticaly lower the price of computers, they just figured out a way to market them to a larger audiance. Sure prices dropped some due to increased mass production and reduced per-unit costs, but no multiple order of magnitude cost reduction took place. And that is exactly what space-flight needs. Eliminate of most of the pork might reduce costs 5 fold or even more, but as Musk is finding out (the hard way) spaceflight is still difficult and expensive.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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I am calling on all the best minds on this forum to think real hard because I am serious about colonizing Mars I too am tired of NASA wasting valuable time.
*I, too, am serious about going to Mars and am a member of the MS for 3 years.
But is NASA a servant to the Mars Society? As far as I'm aware, no. Mars doesn't, unfortunately, seem to be very high up on NASA's agenda. In fact, as far as NASA is concerned, isn't it in 2nd place as manned destinations go?
NASA apparently doesn't consider itself as wasting valuable time. The next question, then, is: What now?
--Cindy
Can NASA Survive?
Complied by Don A. Nelson
http://www.nasaproblems.com/
Retired NASA Aerospace Engineer
Can NASA survive the failure of the Vision for Space Exploration? After two failed attempts to define the space shuttle replacement and the lunar cargo launch vehicle, there is no doubt that the February 2004 space vision endorsed by President Bush is in shambles. NASA’s first attempt to define Project Constellation (the vision’s space vehicles) spiraled out of control when none of their options were considered feasible.
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$229 Billion dollars???
Okay, so let me get this straight...
NASA plans to spend over $229,000,000,000 ($229 thousand million, or nearly a quarter of a Trillion dollars) developing the capability to send astronauts to the moon in tiny little capsules on merry reminiscing sight-seeing voyages to the moon and back.
$229b / 16 = $14.3b
$14.3 billion is about one tenth of one percent of our $13.2 trillion economy.
Thats less than the current NASA budget, it's really not that much money when you consider the US GDP combined over the *last* 16 years is $145.74 *trillion* dollars!
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Yeah, the guy Nelson is a real hater allright...
~Says CEV is too heavy, but now it isn't
~Says aerodynamics of Ares-I are too hazardous, but the rocket doesn't exist yet
~Says J-2X engine will cost $3Bn without cause
~Says a few months delay is "unacceptable"
~Ignores the difference in volume between CEV and Soyuz/Progress, instead only quotes mass figures
~Says Mars crew return version of CEV will require "total redesign" without saying why... etc etc
Further investigation of the flight system indicates that the CEV will be the most dangerous vehicle ever designed for human space transportation.
Booga booga! Wooo scarry! Should have saved this one for Halloween...
~20G deceleration. Right. Sure.
~Service module debries a problem? Please, composite structures reentering at orbital velocities would vaporize.
~Option for manual control doesn't mean they have to
~Single-point failure is a lie, SM RCS thrusters can perform deorbit.
~"The CEV command module doe not have a crew safe haven compartment." Dude, the CM is the compartment.
~Says Ares-I emergency separation difficult in the event of off-axis thrust, but this is easy to detect before it becomes serious
~Says SRBs might explode. A lie, if they pressure gets too high they leak. Wasn't he complaining SRBs leak?
Again trying to use shuttle components for a mission that they were not designed for has failed
Dude, you say that like the first draft of The Plan was this gospel truth. It was never intended to be the final plan, and was mostly a sounding board. Oh, and the Ares-V will fit in the VAB, unlike your lie to the contrary.
All of these changes will require extensive testing and development costs will soar!
Booga booga! Oh come now... sure there will be signifigant development costs, but those are one time costs. We're going to be using Ares-V in some form or another for a very long time, better to spend the money now once to save per-flight later.
Lunar Lander issues: Too expensive, too heavy, and lunar stay time of one week is too short
Why?
Launching the crew and cargo on different vehicles requires a long on orbit loiter time. Storing cryogenic fluids for long periods will require new technologies.
No they won't. The simplicity of Ares-I and this dread awful parallel launch team will ensure timely launch.
The lunar vehicle must be redesigned for the Mars endeavor.
Um. Huh?
There is no viable plan for establishing a permanent base on the Moon with this lunar transportation system. This will requires a space transportation system based on reusable and space based vehicle
Why? 20MT modules to the Lunar surface, two flights anually with crew stays of 6mo. A week or so without nuclear power is as long as you can safely stay, since the Moon's "day" lasts two weeks. Adding extended power/oxygen supplies to Shuttle wasn't very hard either.
But most of all, this guy is a dyed-in-the-wool Shuttle Hugger, and rediculously proclaims that Shuttle is the only hope for NASA, and its abject failure to date has been because of agency execs "keeping the poor engineers down" when they come up with some cost-savinig idea. The very notion is absurd, 25MT at a time, with this two of the evil boosters he wails about with Ares-I, on a launch vehicle able to lift 100MT+. Lifting 80MT of spaceplane to launch 25MT of rocket fuel is crazy.
Flyback liquid boosters for a 50MT class launch vehicle might eventually be nice for supporting a Lunar base and refueling Mars cyclers, but there isn't much of a reason in this treatise that the ESAS plan should fail.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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There is one Ares basher over at nasaspaceflight who really has a sorry attitude.
His name is Jim. I don't for an instant doubt that he is a true rocket engineer--but he is out for Griffins blood and I find it really disgusting. I wonder if it was Oberg.
Griffin has all kinds of enemies:
Space Libertarian frauds
robots only dweebs (Delta II being the biggest LV most of them want)
air-farce "let's put wings on everything' types, etc.
I think Griffin is the best NASA Chief we've had in quite awhile, and I choose to support the man.
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This is one view on the current situation and of the topics title for sure as Nasa has litteraly been going around in circles for almost 3 decades.....
Oh and its time to fix another old topics that has the artifacts and shifting going on.....
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If educating the workers of NASA will help it change its course I am all for it as they have finally noticed just how many have retired....
Aerospace Workforce Training - A National Mandate for 2019 and Beyond
Nasa was not even in the wanted jobs oportunity list... ouch...
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CASIS Is Still Broken And No One Really Cares
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2022/06/c … l#comments
old thread
'Budweiser on Mars' Economy?
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7942
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