What are we waiting for to get into space?

[ManDay]

Hi, why does everyone act as if we had unlimited time? Mankind is overdue, it's just a matter of time until a comet hits Earth or other unexpected things happen. In the meantime, scientists are making efforts to find earthlike exoplanets. And with all the respect for their work and achievements, where is the point in eventually finding such a planet one day, when it's several hunderd lightyears away?
I'm not afraid of being extinced in my lifetime, but I wonder why mankind appears so little ambitious making it into space.
Why are we sending one rover after another to mars, instead of sending some bacterial cultures and see how they perform and how eligible they appear for the purpose of terraforming.

I'm approaching this a little naive, of course, but the point stays the same: Why are things going so slowly?

 

[cristo]

Do you realize how expensive it is to send things into space, let alone actually land on Mars? What is the points sending 'bacterial cultures' if we don't know enough about the planet itself to know whether such cultures would survive?

 

[ManDay]

Yes, I realize how expensive missions to Mars are.

We know enough about the planet to have bacteria survive in a sealed environment, which can subsequently be gradually exposed to the environment.

If you are in doubt about how much we know about the planet you may consider Mars - Wikipedia. There is not much to know beyond atmospheric and lighting conditions in order to determine whether a species (plants, bacteria) can survive. We know enough about Mars to dare such attemps a long time already.

Spending billions on rovers to examine the mineral composition of the surface is just one part of the whole package which is necessary to turn Mars into the next earth. It will have to happen sooner or later. Acting reluctant to simply try things out is not the way to go. Yes, money is the decisive issue, but there is enough money in the world to fund these missions. You just have to set your preferences in the right order.

If we manage to take a first step into space once, we will have plenty of time for other things such as finding exoplanets and observing astronomy in the subsequent future.

 

[Astronuc]

What are we waiting for to get into space?

Unlimited funds. Notice how beaten down the financial markets are these days. $trillions of potential simply gone.

I'm approaching this a little naive, of course, but the point stays the same: Why are things going so slowly?

Basically priorities of various societies and lack of leadership.

We have the technology, but then it seems easier to invest in war and other silly diversions, IMO.

 

[Mk]

Also, NASA has been running things for a while. When you start to see privatization, you start to see development.

 

[Astronuc]

Also, NASA has been running things for a while. When you start to see privatization, you start to see development.

One likely will not because of the expense. There is no clear profit or return on investment for space exploration. That's why the government vis-a-vis NASA runs the space program.

Just review what it costs to put 1 kg into orbit around the earth, then multiply that by the mass of people and the infrastructure needed for life support and transportation. In addition, life support will be needed at the final destination.

 

[hypatia]

http://networking.entrepreneur.com/2008/07/30/entrepreneur-in-space/

A wink and a nod to Sir Richard Branson.

 

[Evo]

I see the private sector doing it on an extremely limited basis, either to say they did it (just for fun, the press, etc...), or in the hopes of making money, for example to take "tourists" up, maybe if it becomes possible/feasable to do something on the moon.

I don't see the private sector getting involved in interplanetary travel, at least not until long after a government has spent billions determining whether there is anything that can be commercially exploited.

 

[WarPhalange]

I'm just confused why it's taking so long to go back to the Moon. 2020 is their projected date? I mean, that's super for me because I'll be out of grad school with a Ph.D. and begging NASA to let me be an astronaut, but if we did it in 1969 (and no arguments here, we did), what's taking so long to go back?

 

[Evo]

I'm just confused why it's taking so long to go back to the Moon. 2020 is their projected date? I mean, that's super for me because I'll be out of grad school with a Ph.D. and begging NASA to let me be an astronaut, but if we did it in 1969 (and no arguments here, we did), what's taking so long to go back?

We only did it back then because we were in a race with the Russians.

 

[ManDay]

I see the private sector doing it on an extremely limited basis, either to say they did it (just for fun, the press, etc...), or in the hopes of making money, for example to take "tourists" up, maybe if it becomes possible/feasable to do something on the moon.

I don't see the private sector getting involved in interplanetary travel, at least not until long after a government has spent billions determining whether there is anything that can be commercially exploited.

Don't assume that. Mankind may be egoistic today, but there will come a day when average Joe's mentality will have changed. I, of course, don't dare to guess when this will be or what events will be necessary to trigger such a change of mind, but I'm sure there will be that day when a crucial majority got over today's small minded thinking.

 

[Astronuc]

Don't assume that. Mankind may be egoistic today, but there will come a day when average Joe's mentality will have changed. I, of course, don't dare to guess when this will be or what events will be necessary to trigger such a change of mind, but I'm sure there will be that day when a crucial majority got over today's small minded thinking.

Why spend $100's billions on establishing a colony on Mars when one can invade and occupy a weaker nation on one's home planet? Priorities.

The private concerns right now are suborbital flights that cost on the order of $100 K. That does not even get close to speeds necessary for orbit.
http://www.suborbitalinstitute.org/FAQ.html (not verified)

If you want a trip to ISS, just fork over ~$20-25 million/person. Somebody else - the tax payer has already payed for the destination.

 

[WarPhalange]

We only did it back then because we were in a race with the Russians.

Yeah, but we did it. And now we want to go back again and we are taking 2 decades to do it.

 

[Evo]

Yeah, but we did it. And now we want to go back again and we are taking 2 decades to do it.

There is no urgent need (like beating the Russians). NASA, I'm sure, would love to have a huge budget to do a lot of things right now, but they don't.

 

[WarPhalange]

How much of a budget do they need? We did it on technology that's 40 years old now. You can probably find all the stuff you'd need in pawn shops and junkyards.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Robots can explore space far more efficiently than humans can. No need to risk lives and spend $trillions. What's more, by waiting, advances in technology will make space travel more practical. The day of nanotechnology is here, but just barely.

A person truly concerned about the future of humanity should focus Earth, not Mars.

 

[B. Elliott]

Robots can explore space far more efficiently than humans can. No need to risk lives and spend $trillions. What's more, by waiting, advances in technology will make space travel more practical. The day of nanotechnology is here, but just barely.

A person truly concerned about the future of humanity should focus Earth, not Mars.

I agree 100%. As said before, the problem is funding. The best hope we have of developing cheaper ways of getting out into the solar system is through free enterprise, but there has to be a drive, and that drive will be rooted in profit.

When it comes to sending people out into space, no robot or computer can beat the direct critical thinking and analysis skills of a human. The primary concern is that you're putting someones life in danger when you do so. A major liability.

 

[Astronuc]

I agree 100%. As said before, the problem is funding. The best hope we have of developing cheaper ways of getting out into the solar system is through free enterprise, but there has to be a drive, and that drive will be rooted in profit.

For robot yes - if someone is willing for a payback a decade or so later. So far those with deep pockets have not come forth to propose a private exploration.

If it's manned - I doubt free enterprise could do it. Simply because it takes a huge amount of research, particularly in the area of nuclear systems, and the government may not allow that in private hands because of the special nuclear materials involved. A private entity would have to agree to significant oversight and safety regulations. NASA balked at what Naval Reactors folks said what they would have to do and what it would cost to develop a nuclear propulsion system. A private entity will not necessarily do it better or for less cost.

 

[B. Elliott]

For robot yes - if someone is willing for a payback a decade or so later. So far those with deep pockets have not come forth to propose a private exploration.

If it's manned - I doubt free enterprise could do it. Simply because it takes a huge amount of research, particularly in the area of nuclear systems, and the government may not allow that in private hands because of the special nuclear materials involved. A private entity would have to agree to significant oversight and safety regulations. NASA balked at what Naval Reactors folks said what they would have to do and what it would cost to develop a nuclear propulsion system. A private entity will not necessarily do it better or for less cost.

Good points. It's funny you mention NASA and reactors because I read this just yesterday...

NASA Eyes Nuclear Power for Moon Base

Nuclear power could make a comeback beyond Earth if NASA goes forward with a proposed a fission reactor in its future moon base.

A fission-powered system could generate up to 40 kilowatts and give any lunar outpost enough power to supply eight houses on Earth. More importantly, astronauts will require a reliable and steady energy source on the moon and Mars.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080917-tw-fission-moon.html

At least there's a few companies pushing to get out into space. Albeit lagging 40 years behind the government...

Bigelow Aerospace does rocket reality check

Bigelow Aerospace is on track to deploy its Sundancer habitable module, shown in this artist's conception, by as early as 2010. But once that module is launched, the company will need a launch vehicle that can send crews to the station at an affordable price.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21039277/

 

[Integral]

...

When it comes to sending people out into space, no robot or computer can beat the direct critical thinking and analysis skills of a human. The primary concern is that you're putting someones life in danger when you do so. A major liability.

The critical thinking human is sitting in a comfortable office in front of a computer controlling the robot doing the work. At night he goes home to his wife and kids.

I think that the capabilities of a man in a space suit are way over stated. Look at all the work that is done preparing for a Hubble repair mission. They train for months for the simplest tasks. If anything significantly out of the plan were to occur to a man on Mars, the first thing he would have to do is call back to Earth for help from the experts. The fact is that the skill sets of our astronauts is very limited compared with the skills many of you seem to think that they should have. One man cannot be space pilot, geologist, psychiatrist, electronics tech, and computer programmer. There simply is not time in life for complete training in all of the skills required. Further you cannot send a separate man with each skill because of space and mass limitations.

At this point in time manned space travel is a waste of valuable resources. Until we have the capability of launching and recovering spacecraft with 100% success rates why should we put a man at risk? There is much that can be done robotically, we need to continue exploration, while developing reliable rocketry and systems.

Meanwhile we need to guarantee that we can maintain our civilization on EARTH. What would be the point of launching a manned Mars mission, only to suffer a major economic or ecological disaster on Earth which demolishes our capability of supporting space flight.

 

[WarPhalange]

Meanwhile we need to guarantee that we can maintain our civilization on EARTH. What would be the point of launching a manned Mars mission, only to suffer a major economic or ecological disaster on Earth which demolishes our capability of supporting space flight.

The whole point is to get off of Earth. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to sustain humanity on Earth indefinitely so long as couples consistently produce more than 2.5 babies.

Even if you were to change the economic systems such that having population growth wasn't necessarily desirable, you'd still have people breeding like crazy, and eventually you'll get overpopulation.

I can't think of any solution to overpopulation that doesn't include ruthless violence. Telling people not to have kids isn't going to cut it. And I don't want to be the one to enforce the rule.

 

[russ_watters]

How much of a budget do they need? We did it on technology that's 40 years old now. You can probably find all the stuff you'd need in pawn shops and junkyards.

When sending someone to do something extremely dangerous, engineers have an obligation to give the occupants the very best available technology.

 

[russ_watters]

When it comes to sending people out into space, no robot or computer can beat the direct critical thinking and analysis skills of a human.

While true, that's irrelevant: the use of robots does not preclude the use of the critical thinking and analytical skills of humans.

There is no better example of this than the Mars rovers. The rovers are on Mars, the critical thinking skills are a team of scientists and engineers on Earth. Every [Martian] day, the scientists and engineers plan out the next move of the rovers with exquisite precision. Now that move may only be 10m and may only include a handful of measurements - perhaps 15 minutes of work for a human. But those moves are so much better calculated that they are much more efficient than coming from a human thinking about it on the spot. Let's say it's twice the efficiency. So every day, while a person could do, perhaps, 8 hours of work on the surface, the rover does 1/2 hour. But the rovers have been doing that every day for nearly 5 years (ehh, I think one of them had to hibernate for a winter, but whatever...). That's equal to a person working for 3 months straight.

Now what that doesn't consider is the benefit of spreading-out your resources. For the price of one human landing, we could do dozens of landers in dozens of interesting locations.

This oft-cited benefit of human missions really doesn't exist.

[edit] Ehh, if I'd have read further, I'd have seen Integral made roughly the same point...

 

[Evo]

The whole point is to get off of Earth. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to sustain humanity on Earth indefinitely so long as couples consistently produce more than 2.5 babies.

So how do we trick these over-breeders into boarding a spaceship that will ultimately become their tomb?

I don't think space travel will be a solution to over population.

 

[russ_watters]

The whole point is to get off of Earth.

If the point is just a fantasy, it really doesn't matter why people want to do it. Having a compelling reason to do it doesn't make it any less of a fantasy or any more reasonable of a pursuit.

This really isn't relevant, but...

It will be IMPOSSIBLE to sustain humanity on Earth indefinitely so long as couples consistently produce more than 2.5 babies.

False premise. Population growth is decreasing. In particular, it is inversely proportional to economic growth. Globally, poverty and overpopulation may be the two biggest human problems. And fixing the poverty problem (and progress this past half century has been dramatic) fixes the overpopulation problem.

 

[bassplayer142]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/howmuchis700billion


"NASA in fiscal year 2009 will launch several missions into space and pay for hundreds of people to operate a host of space telescopes and even remote robots on Mars and run a PR and media department that puts most large corporations to shame. The agency's budget: $17.6 billion, or 2.5 percent of the bailout sum."

The money is there, it is just being spent elsewhere...

 

[Integral]

The whole point is to get off of Earth. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to sustain humanity on Earth indefinitely so long as couples consistently produce more than 2.5 babies.

[...

There is virtually no guarantees that we will EVER have self sustaining colonies off of the planet earth. Currently they must be seen as science fiction.

Note that in my first post I included a rather unusual skill, psychiatrist. Lock a small group of humans in a small metal box for 2yrs... now guess who survives?

Throw 10000 humans on a colony ship... After 5 generations, are the occupants of this ship still human? Remember they only know of the concept of "sky" not the reality. Likewise for "ocean", "river", "mountain" and virtually every other concept relating to living on a planet. We take them for granted and that is a great deal of what constitutes a human.

We simply MUST learn to sustain our civilization on THIS planet, for there is no hope of continued space exploration without it.

 

[ManDay]

A person truly concerned about the future of humanity should focus Earth, not Mars.

We can, and we should do both. Problems here on Earth are just part of the whole package along with expanding into space. I think the 21st century is a century of transition - though the change hasn't yet commenced. There are many issues which are archaic and thus to be worked on and reworked from scratch: Economical, social, ecological and expansion are just a few.

But may be you are right. May be that's the matter by which people are used to shrug off exploration of space into the background and realms of science-fiction: There are problems which appear more immediate than that.
The first step is to become able to look beyond your own horizon and realize what's happening on the other side of the world - and act accordingly. The second step is to become able to not just look beyond a single horizon but see the world as a whole - and act accordingly. Only the third step is to see that there is more to come than just our world.

In my opinion step three is just as crucial as steps one and two. We can work on these things in parallel if resources aren't wasted on the wrong things, as mentioned already.

 

[Integral]

We can, and we should do both. Problems here on Earth are just part of the whole package along with expanding into space. I think the 21st century is a century of transition - though the change hasn't yet commenced. There are many issues which are archaic and thus to be worked on and reworked from scratch: Economical, social, ecological and expansion are just a few.

But may be you are right. May be that's the matter by which people are used to shrug off exploration of space into the background and realms of science-fiction: There are problems which appear more immediate than that.
The first step is to become able to look beyond your own horizon and realize what's happening on the other side of the world - and act accordingly. The second step is to become able to not just look beyond a single horizon but see the world as a whole - and act accordingly. Only the third step is to see that there is more to come than just our world.

In my opinion step three is just as crucial as steps one and two. We can work on these things in parallel if resources aren't wasted on the wrong things, as mentioned already.

Nobody is suggesting that we abandon the exploration of space. The question is whether or not you send a MAN (or Woman) to do the exploration. The fact is that with current technology it is simply to expensive to do manned basic exploration. This type of grunt work is best done robotically. Maybe a little slower (this is not clear to me) definably a lot cheaper and much more efficient.

 

[ManDay]

Nobody is suggesting that we abandon the exploration of space. The question is whether or not you send a MAN (or Woman) to do the exploration. The fact is that with current technology it is simply to expensive to do manned basic exploration. This type of grunt work is best done robotically. Maybe a little slower (this is not clear to me) definably a lot cheaper and much more efficient.

My original claim wasn't to send man or woman. I suggested to send either bacteria or plants to get started. We sent enough insufficient robots already, which keep collecting rock samples to the present day.

Just a little addition:

2 Years (due to launch windows) to (robotocally) build an environment, powered by solar energy and maintained by remotely controlled robots, which can hold simple life forms (shutters protect from radiation, temperature control). Another year to send cultures or samples and implement them in the environment.

Put very simple but that's roughly an idea how things could get started.

 

[D H]

Why are we sending one rover after another to mars, instead of sending some bacterial cultures and see how they perform and how eligible they appear for the purpose of terraforming.

Whoa there! Do you know the extreme efforts the world's space agencies undertake to ensure that any vehicle that goes to Mars is completely sterile? We do not yet know if native life exists on Mars. If Mars does harbor life, Earth-based life might well be a threat to Mars-based life. Until we know that Mars truly is sterile, the space agencies make sure that whatever is sent there is sterile. If we do find Mars does harbor life, that will be the death nell of any planned human missions to Mars and of any discussions (let alone planning) of terraforming Mars.

I'm just confused why it's taking so long to go back to the Moon. 2020 is their projected date? I mean, that's super for me because I'll be out of grad school with a Ph.D. and begging NASA to let me be an astronaut, but if we did it in 1969 (and no arguments here, we did), what's taking so long to go back?

Money. NASA received 10% of the federal budget in the 1960s. Today, it receives 0.6% of the federal budget. With the recent financial collapse, NASA's share is bound to shrink even further. You do the math.

At this point in time manned space travel is a waste of valuable resources. Until we have the capability of launching and recovering spacecraft with 100% success rates why should we put a man at risk?

That argument is ludicrous. There is no such thing as a 100% success rate in any worthwhile endeavor. Until we have the capability to drive to work with 100% success rates, why should we put ourselves at risk going to work?

Some risks are worth taking. Most decision makers in this country are still of the opinion that putting people into space with a very good but not perfect success rate is one of them.

There is much that can be done robotically, we need to continue exploration, while developing reliable rocketry and systems.

There is little reason to do things robotically in space if we do not intend to put people into space. If the goal is to get the most bang for the buck out of the government's science expenditures, spending money on space science is a losing proposition. The scientific returns from robotic space exploration are tiny compared to the costs.

One country has made the decision to ban any government-funded participation in human spaceflight activities. The ban was instigated by anti-human spaceflight space scientists. Soon after the ban, that country's unmanned space budget dwindled, and dwindled, and dwindled. Today, Great Britain's space budget is a paltry $350 million per year, most of which is shipped out of the country to ESA. There are very, very few space scientists left in Great Britain.

 

[Astronuc]

Good points. It's funny you mention NASA and reactors because I read this just yesterday...

NASA Eyes Nuclear Power for Moon Base

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080917-tw-fission-moon.html

There's a meeting planned for early next year and conference a few months later.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nuclear2009/

http://anst.ans.org/NETS2009/About.htm

Nuclear is the bottom of NASA's priority list.

 

[Redbelly98]

Yeah, but we did it. And now we want to go back again and we are taking 2 decades to do it.

Time scales are relative. On average, it's 10's of millions of years between catastrophic asteroid impacts, or longer.

2 decades is pretty quick, in comparison.