Author Topic: Predictions for 2017  (Read 31222 times)

Offline TakeOff

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #60 on: 10/09/2017 10:18 am »
By the end of December 2017:c. People lobbying to get an EML-1/2 spacestation (so Orion has a destination).
What a great prediction! You foresaw the Deep Space Gateway, the lobbying for which has really has to be taken seriously now.

It is the more impressive since the DSG is so totally meaningless and bad in every respect, that I couldn't believe it or even understand that it was a real proposal the first times I heard of it, I could never have made that thing up. No one has ever suggested a cis-Lunar space station as the first step to interplanetary HSF. But you seem to know the game. You realized that the Orion and SLS need to look useful and the DSG is perfect for that, so it was a political necessity already 5 years ago, although not much talked about in public until this year or last AFAIK. (Though, someone gave me hope by saying that it is a left over from the former administration and won't fly.)

A reusable lunar lander has to be garaged somewhere between missions. Putting a heat shield on a mass critical lunar lander is silly so it cannot return to Earth. The options are low lunar orbit (LLO), Lagrange point or LEO. The Orion has difficulties performing the Earth to LLO return trip but can reach the Lagrange points.

Delta-v Spacestation to lunar surface in km/s
SpacestationSingleReturn
LLO1.873.74
Lagrange2.825.64
LEO5.9311.86
Why use a reusable Lunar lander when not using a reusable Earth lander, although they are available already a decade or so before the DSG? And is a Lunar surface mission part of the DSG? How would that work given the costs of launching SLS and Orion to the DSG once a year? The crew can only stay there for a few weeks a year, right? So it cannot replace the ISS. This makes for three big HSF missions for NASA to finance simultaneously: ISS, DSG and a Lunar surface mission. That won't happen.


I thought you predicted the DSG because you're politically savvy.
« Last Edit: 10/09/2017 10:19 am by TakeOff »

Offline Phil Stooke

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #61 on: 10/09/2017 10:28 am »
" This makes for three big HSF missions for NASA to finance simultaneously: ISS, DSG and a Lunar surface mission."

ISS - gone!   Lunar Surface Mission - someone else's. 

Problem solved.

Offline Phil Stooke

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #62 on: 10/09/2017 10:35 am »
"Well... it's certainly not as silly as going all the way to Mars to operate rovers on the surface in real time from orbit - yes, this has been suggested, and the idea has been borrowed for the deep space gateway (which makes no sense at all)."

Apollo 10 - style rehearsal mission spends time at Mars doing that teleoperation, getting some valuable science without doing a human Mars landing on the first mission.  Next mission - go to the surface.  That's not silly, it makes very good sense.  Now do the same at the Moon as one step to human moon landings and as a rehearsal of what will happen at Mars.  It's sense all the way.  Much more sensible than going full up from ISS to human Mars landings in one step.  Now THAT's silly!

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #63 on: 10/09/2017 04:18 pm »
By the end of December 2017:c. People lobbying to get an EML-1/2 spacestation (so Orion has a destination).
What a great prediction! You foresaw the Deep Space Gateway, the lobbying for which has really has to be taken seriously now.

It is the more impressive since the DSG is so totally meaningless and bad in every respect, that I couldn't believe it or even understand that it was a real proposal the first times I heard of it, I could never have made that thing up. No one has ever suggested a cis-Lunar space station as the first step to interplanetary HSF. But you seem to know the game. You realized that the Orion and SLS need to look useful and the DSG is perfect for that, so it was a political necessity already 5 years ago, although not much talked about in public until this year or last AFAIK. (Though, someone gave me hope by saying that it is a left over from the former administration and won't fly.)

A reusable lunar lander has to be garaged somewhere between missions. Putting a heat shield on a mass critical lunar lander is silly so it cannot return to Earth. The options are low lunar orbit (LLO), Lagrange point or LEO. The Orion has difficulties performing the Earth to LLO return trip but can reach the Lagrange points.

Delta-v Spacestation to lunar surface in km/s
SpacestationSingleReturn
LLO1.873.74
Lagrange2.825.64
LEO5.9311.86
Why use a reusable Lunar lander when not using a reusable Earth lander, although they are available already a decade or so before the DSG? And is a Lunar surface mission part of the DSG? How would that work given the costs of launching SLS and Orion to the DSG once a year? The crew can only stay there for a few weeks a year, right? So it cannot replace the ISS. This makes for three big HSF missions for NASA to finance simultaneously: ISS, DSG and a Lunar surface mission. That won't happen.


I thought you predicted the DSG because you're politically savvy.

The Orion was originally to be reusable. The outer casing including the heat shield was going to be replaced each time. The stated reason for dropping reusability was insufficient flights.

The Dragon V2 capsule from SpaceX is designed to be reusable after returning from lunar orbit. The Falcon Heavy may be able to get a Dragon containing cargo to the DSG.

"Politics is the art of the possible" - Otto Von Bismarck.

What NASA can do is politically possible. Within the next 3 years Commercial Crew will have got NASA astronauts back to the ISS and Lunar CATALYST will have landed small robotic rovers on the Moon. Larger lunar landers are in development.

Reusable landers are heavier than expendable landers because the structure has to be thicker to survive the wear and tear. Maximum weight and development time were so critical Apollo spacecraft had to be expendable, high cost be dammed.

On seeing both lunar landers and astronauts the general public will want to know "When will the USA send men back to the Moon?".

Note: Sending a black woman on the third manned landing should make headlines around the world.

In Trump's second term there will be a private sector manned spacestation in Earth orbit. So the ISS will no longer be a prestige project. Manned Mars is too far in the future so if the politicians want to buy international glory something else is needed. NASA is proposing a spacestation in lunar orbit, the Deep Space Gateway (DSG).

As well as a staging post for manned trips to Mars the DSG can be used as a research station and to garage, repair and refuel the reusable lunar lander.

Getting the DSG's habitat module to lunar orbit is about the same cost as getting an expendable lander there. The transport costs of a DSG and a reusable lander are likely to be less than the cost of transporting say 10 expendable landers. NASA is under strong political pressure to watch the pennies these days.

Offline TakeOff

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #64 on: 10/09/2017 05:32 pm »
Note: Sending a black woman on the third manned landing should make headlines around the world.
Yeah, although it should be an everyday event. It's the little green men I want to see headlines about!

We'll see how this DSG thing works out. It is truly a(n unforeseen) 2017 thing now. I hope it is as good as you hope.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #65 on: 10/09/2017 07:02 pm »
"Well... it's certainly not as silly as going all the way to Mars to operate rovers on the surface in real time from orbit - yes, this has been suggested, and the idea has been borrowed for the deep space gateway (which makes no sense at all)."

Apollo 10 - style rehearsal mission spends time at Mars doing that teleoperation, getting some valuable science without doing a human Mars landing on the first mission.  Next mission - go to the surface.  That's not silly, it makes very good sense.  Now do the same at the Moon as one step to human moon landings and as a rehearsal of what will happen at Mars.  It's sense all the way.  Much more sensible than going full up from ISS to human Mars landings in one step.  Now THAT's silly!

Once again, operating robotics from lunar orbit is silly. Any investment into relevant technologies is counterproductive, as it inherently puts humans in space ( expensive ) in the loop, and creates poorly scalable systems.
Investments into space robotic systems that can decently deal with 2-second time lag from the moon are much better investments for future. Besides, we have plethora of commercial off the shelf telerobotic technology that works with similar latencies in various environments.
Anyone who cares about actually expanding our economic sphere to lunar surface should probably favor scalable, cost efficient technology investments
 
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline sanman

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #66 on: 10/10/2017 02:42 am »
Plus now AI is much more advanced than it used to be, and is in a much better position to meet the demands of semi-autonomy for time-delays in lunar operations.

Offline yokem55

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #67 on: 10/10/2017 05:24 am »
This thread is a kick to go back and read. I think it is interesting that no one predicted that SpaceX would both fail more (2 RUD's) and succeed more (17 booster recoveries, heading to 20 flights this year), nor that we would still be waiting for Falcon Heavy.

Offline omits

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #68 on: 10/14/2017 08:30 am »
Well, that was all very predictable! Now we need predictions for 2018!  ::)

Offline envy887

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #69 on: 10/14/2017 01:25 pm »
Well, that was all very predictable! Now we need predictions for 2018!  ::)

Well the 2017 predictions were from 2012. So we need 2018 predictions from 2013, not now.
« Last Edit: 10/14/2017 01:25 pm by envy887 »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #70 on: 10/14/2017 02:17 pm »
The 2022 predictions thread will be interesting...
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Offline Tass

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #71 on: 10/31/2017 09:07 am »
Wow, this is one of the most depressing threads I've seen in a while.

Wow, this is one of the most pointless threads I've seen in a while.

I'd go further, but I'd have to ban myself ;)

I disagree. Now five years later it is really interesting to see what people thought back then, and to compare it to what we know actually happened.

Offline allhumanbeings07

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #72 on: 11/01/2017 03:03 pm »
Plus now AI is much more advanced than it used to be, and is in a much better position to meet the demands of semi-autonomy for time-delays in lunar operations.

I would think that the point of teleoperation on the Moon, if we ever did so, would be as a brief proof-of-concept for an orbiting spaceship to do so as Mars (as has been suggested elsewhere), so the value of doing lunar teleoperation would be based on the percieved value of doing so elsewhere.

While AI and robotics have made significant improvements over the decades, and our probes are more capable than ever, the level of improvement is perhaps less than what one would expect. Rad-hardened space grade electronics are, have been, and will continue to be vastly less powerful than their Earth-based counterparts because space is hard, so advances in AI on Earth can't easily or quickly be applied to robotic probes. Moreover, and not intending to be dismissive, the capabilities and limitations of AI have always been consistently clouded by hype over the decades. We won't have HAL-guided rovers anytime soon, and so time delays will continue to put hard limits on what robots can accomplish. Even though improvements have happened and will continue to happen, these have largely incremental benefits.

One thing that I find particularly ironic in any discussion surrounding human spaceflight is the idea that the advance of technology inevitably means that there is ever less purpose to having humans in space as time goes on. Empirically, however, the exact opposite trend has happened historically. In the 1960's, astronauts were little more than overly-expensive guinea pigs whose presence needlessley complicated mission planning and was mostly for propaganda value. But as our technological capabilities have increased, we have made keeping humans alive in space much more easy than it once was and also found new ways to improve human productivity.

In short, robots are not the only thing that are getting cheaper and more productive in space. I'm not a fan of flags-and-footprints, but I don't think the cost-benefit analysis of humans vs. robots is so simple or static. Teleoperation might be a valuable part of a manned mission to Mars orbit that would be intermediate to manned landings, and thereby help to reduce the overall cost and maxmize the overall benefits. Using the Deep Space Gateway (which will be built anyways and will be looking for missions) and modifying a few under-construction lunar rovers to accept remote control (something which should have a miniscule price tag) might be a very cost-effective way of hashing out and improving the expected value of teleoperation on a future Mars mission.
I love Star Trek more than anyone, but we don't (and shouldn't) spend tens of billions of dollars on space programs for fun

Offline saliva_sweet

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #73 on: 11/02/2017 08:56 am »
This thread is the best.

This thread is a kick to go back and read. I think it is interesting that no one predicted that SpaceX would both fail more (2 RUD's) and succeed more (17 booster recoveries, heading to 20 flights this year), nor that we would still be waiting for Falcon Heavy.

Someone was pretty spot on about the Heavy :)



- Falcon Heavy, how many flights has it flown?

Nearing completion and perhaps will have a test flight in the next year or so... if things hold. 



Offline llanitedave

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #74 on: 11/06/2017 02:40 pm »
Two things at least that no one in this thread expected:


1.  The Spanish Inquisition.  (Nobody ever expects that)
2.  Landing F9 first stages.


Also, nobody envisioned that construction of a Texas Launch pad would be underway.
"I've just abducted an alien -- now what?"

Offline Ludus

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Re: Predictions for 2017
« Reply #75 on: 11/07/2017 03:29 am »
I predict that for Russian youth, Elon Musk will be a role model ranking ahead of Vladimir Putin and just behind Jesus Christ.

OK, I cheated.

http://www.newsweek.com/putin-beaten-jesus-elon-musk-and-parents-young-russians-top-role-model-702357

After Dragon 2 starts launching people around the moon, JC may be in trouble.
« Last Edit: 11/07/2017 03:37 am by Ludus »

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