Quote from: Norm Hartnett on 08/18/2009 06:26 pmQuote from: Antares on 08/15/2009 02:30 amThen, calling LEO "exploration" is disingenuous to those supporting it both financially and by their sentiment.I can hardly let this go by unchallenged. To claim that either a Lunar outpost or a Mars mission is within our technical grasp is to ignore the lessons that the ISS is teaching us now. I am not clear on exactly how close to the life support edge the ISS is with it's current six man crew but there is not a lot of slack up there. Our current life support technology is in it's infancy and it is a hell of a lot safer and cheaper to develop this technology 200 miles away than it is 200,000 or 200,000,000 miles away. The same holds true for low gravity and radiation impacts to human physiognomy. In addition there is the question of logistics, we can barely maintain the ISS requirements, how then are we going to supply a Lunar outpost? So how is the ISS "teaching" us this "lesson"? In other words, what are they doing to probe the limits of life support, low (not zero) gravity, and other things as mentioned above? As I see it, a key benefit of manned exploration is that you actually find out what you need to survive. We don't have to guess based on weakly similar and unambitious projects like the ISS.For example, the ISS has tried as far as I can tell two water recycling systems and two oxygen generation systems (one from Russia and one from the US). Where's the in space R&D on useful life support systems for a Mars or Lunar mission?
Quote from: Antares on 08/15/2009 02:30 amThen, calling LEO "exploration" is disingenuous to those supporting it both financially and by their sentiment.I can hardly let this go by unchallenged. To claim that either a Lunar outpost or a Mars mission is within our technical grasp is to ignore the lessons that the ISS is teaching us now. I am not clear on exactly how close to the life support edge the ISS is with it's current six man crew but there is not a lot of slack up there. Our current life support technology is in it's infancy and it is a hell of a lot safer and cheaper to develop this technology 200 miles away than it is 200,000 or 200,000,000 miles away. The same holds true for low gravity and radiation impacts to human physiognomy. In addition there is the question of logistics, we can barely maintain the ISS requirements, how then are we going to supply a Lunar outpost?
Then, calling LEO "exploration" is disingenuous to those supporting it both financially and by their sentiment.
Quote from: William Barton on 08/17/2009 02:33 pmAnd, of course, bitumen is only one hypothetical commodity.A rather unconvincing one, given that there appear to be cheaper and simpler and more desirable paths to energy independence.
And, of course, bitumen is only one hypothetical commodity.
Quote from: khallow on 08/19/2009 01:50 amQuote from: Norm Hartnett on 08/18/2009 06:26 pmQuote from: Antares on 08/15/2009 02:30 amThen, calling LEO "exploration" is disingenuous to those supporting it both financially and by their sentiment.I can hardly let this go by unchallenged. To claim that either a Lunar outpost or a Mars mission is within our technical grasp is to ignore the lessons that the ISS is teaching us now. I am not clear on exactly how close to the life support edge the ISS is with it's current six man crew but there is not a lot of slack up there. Our current life support technology is in it's infancy and it is a hell of a lot safer and cheaper to develop this technology 200 miles away than it is 200,000 or 200,000,000 miles away. The same holds true for low gravity and radiation impacts to human physiognomy. In addition there is the question of logistics, we can barely maintain the ISS requirements, how then are we going to supply a Lunar outpost? So how is the ISS "teaching" us this "lesson"? In other words, what are they doing to probe the limits of life support, low (not zero) gravity, and other things as mentioned above? As I see it, a key benefit of manned exploration is that you actually find out what you need to survive. We don't have to guess based on weakly similar and unambitious projects like the ISS.For example, the ISS has tried as far as I can tell two water recycling systems and two oxygen generation systems (one from Russia and one from the US). Where's the in space R&D on useful life support systems for a Mars or Lunar mission?Well as you point out there are only two water/oxygen recycling systems up there, so far as I know the only two mankind has. Which one do you want to take to Mars? I have no idea how much R&D effort Russia is putting into their system but I am quite sure that the US system is very much a work in progress, I hope like hell they have sufficient funding to do continuing development although I wouldn't be surprised to find that CxP cut funding so that they could do something much more shortsighted.
We can guess that the amount of development and testing that was done on the US system must have been substantial and yet, once it was on orbit, it has not been all that reliable. The lesson I take from this is that you can spend a bunch in R&D and in testing but until you get it into orbit it is all just theory. Are you seriously suggesting we send our astronauts off for 180-360 days with a system that hasn't been tested in the environment that it will fly in? That is why a robust R&D effort in LEO is necessary to any manned exploration of either Mars or the Moon. Fortunately it looks like the extension to 2020 is a done deal, now, if we finally fund the R&D necessary on the station, exploration will look a lot more viable.
Now suppose it would cost $5 trillion dollars to do it but you could "earn" $3 trillion in revenue from shipping stuff back. No way that makes sense from an accountants POV but if you just want to do it because you want to do it, your total cost has been reduced by 60%.
It's easy to talk about all the technologies we'll need to develop to get to an extraordinary destination like Mars, but I think it's a bit foolish to say that we should develop these technologies before we plan flights to Mars. What reason in the absence of an impending flight to Mars will encourage the US or someone else to test appropriate (that is, intended for use in multi-year missions) life support systems in space? Competent plans for Mars missions already budget considerable time and money for such development. And until we actually have people flying in multi-year missions in space (something the ISS can't directly model), we can't know for sure what problems we'll see.
but I think it's a bit foolish to say that we should develop these technologies before we plan flights to Mars.
What reason in the absence of an impending flight to Mars will encourage the US or someone else to test appropriate ... life support systems in space?
Perhaps we shouldn't be designing hardware (2nd quote), but we should be developing the technologies (1st quote) so we know how to build the hardware when we need it.
...you cannot develop the technology without building hardware.
Neither. They aren't designed for a Mars expedition. That is my point. We aren't developing the hardware to go elsewhere.The thing is, as we can see, a magnificent testing environment in LEO, namely the ISS, doesn't mean that we get a robust R&D effort. My view is that the latter will only follow from a serious exploration effort that demands a robust R&D effort.
Now let's make something requiring near zero gravity that's so desirable the profits from sales are many orders of magnitude greater than the costs of getting all the tooling and manpower up there to make it. Something earth shattering like the microchip? Anyone care to speculate on this commodity?
Quote from: William Barton on 08/17/2009 02:33 pmFor some reason, no one wants to realize that a) the up-front cost of setting up a space fairing civilization will be paid back by the revving up of our economic engine, not by profits from the commoditiesThis is an assumption. If you want people to "realize" that it is correct, some supporting evidence beyond analogies to pre-industrial history would be in order. QuoteAnd, of course, bitumen is only one hypothetical commodity.A rather unconvincing one, given that there appear to be cheaper and simpler and more desirable paths to energy independence.
For some reason, no one wants to realize that a) the up-front cost of setting up a space fairing civilization will be paid back by the revving up of our economic engine, not by profits from the commodities
Chas, everything is in critical supply, if you can deliver at a far cheaper price than possible on Earth.QuoteNow let's make something requiring near zero gravity that's so desirable the profits from sales are many orders of magnitude greater than the costs of getting all the tooling and manpower up there to make it. Something earth shattering like the microchip? Anyone care to speculate on this commodity?There's nothing remotely close yet. Maybe space pixie dust works better than Terran pixie dust? At least things like gold, platinum, etc are worth something on Earth, if you can get it there for less than people are willing to pay for it.
Quote from: William Barton on 08/16/2009 10:43 pmI've talked about the historical nature of colonization in a few threads over time, partly because it's pretty clear most people here have a skewed and vaguely "manifest destiny" view of colonization that's mixed up with both the serendipitous creation of the United States, and with the "colonialism" (a largely unrelated phenomenon) that developed starting in the 18th century (partly as a consequence of the American revolution). Once you get away from those inapplicable notions, there are other, real historical colonization paradigms. These break down into two basic type: lebensraum colonization (e.g., the spread of the Polynesians across the Pacific), which is wholly inapplicapable to "space exploration," and mercantile colonization, which is how I firmly believe the human colonization of the Solar System will take place. The best known example of mercantile colonization is the Greek and Phonecian colonization of the Western Mediterranean and Black Sea littorals. While there was, especially for the Greeks, a political component to the creation of colonies (see "ostracism," from Greek ostrakon, meaning "potsherd"), the primary purpose of it was the creation of commercial emporia at overseas trade sites. Note that our word emporium (plural emporia) is borrowed from the Latin rendering of the Greek word emporion, and was the actual name of a Greek commerical colony named Emporion (founded in Spain in 575 BC, the Greek word means "market'). There's plenty of history on all of that. There's also a sublime non-European example of same: linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates merchant adventurers from a single village in what's now Indonesia colonized Madagascar more than 2,000 years ago. My guess (because they didn't leave any written records) is, a trade group discovered Madagascar (then uninhabited) by accident while on a trading expedition to the coast of east Africa, and figured they'd just found an ideal forward base.Gads, I love your recent spat of posts about the history of exploration and it's application to our current situation. Just yesterday I began researching the Age of Discovery (AKA The Age of Exploration) to see if there was any parallels to be drawn in the technological development of sailing ships during this period and our current space technology.Have you considered writing a book, or perhaps a series of articles? I was unaware of the Greek and Phoenician exploration/colony possibilities but I was considering the Asian Age of Exploration (China's Great Armada and etc) and the prehistoric trading colonies out of the middle east/western Asia. Have you considered how technology plays into the exploration capabilities as well as the colonization rational?
I've talked about the historical nature of colonization in a few threads over time, partly because it's pretty clear most people here have a skewed and vaguely "manifest destiny" view of colonization that's mixed up with both the serendipitous creation of the United States, and with the "colonialism" (a largely unrelated phenomenon) that developed starting in the 18th century (partly as a consequence of the American revolution). Once you get away from those inapplicable notions, there are other, real historical colonization paradigms. These break down into two basic type: lebensraum colonization (e.g., the spread of the Polynesians across the Pacific), which is wholly inapplicapable to "space exploration," and mercantile colonization, which is how I firmly believe the human colonization of the Solar System will take place. The best known example of mercantile colonization is the Greek and Phonecian colonization of the Western Mediterranean and Black Sea littorals. While there was, especially for the Greeks, a political component to the creation of colonies (see "ostracism," from Greek ostrakon, meaning "potsherd"), the primary purpose of it was the creation of commercial emporia at overseas trade sites. Note that our word emporium (plural emporia) is borrowed from the Latin rendering of the Greek word emporion, and was the actual name of a Greek commerical colony named Emporion (founded in Spain in 575 BC, the Greek word means "market'). There's plenty of history on all of that. There's also a sublime non-European example of same: linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates merchant adventurers from a single village in what's now Indonesia colonized Madagascar more than 2,000 years ago. My guess (because they didn't leave any written records) is, a trade group discovered Madagascar (then uninhabited) by accident while on a trading expedition to the coast of east Africa, and figured they'd just found an ideal forward base.
Project Apollo was a small scale investment, compared to its contemporaries, such as SAC and the Interstate system. Reagan's 600-ship Navy contributed to the economic recovery of the 1980s. Etc. For a spce-faring civilization infrastructure project, today's taxpayers would have to see themselves investing in jobs for their children and grandchildren.
"Appear to be" is the key here, and it is all very, very hypothetical.