Future of space science

[nudger1964]

So,
Would like to get some conversation going about the direction of future space flight"¦both comments on what is actually on the horizon and where you think it should be going.
What actually are Nasa objectives for the next 20 years, what do you think they should be.
Same can be asked for India and China, as well as ESA.

Is manned space flight more worthy than robotic?

So far as a I can make out, NASA has a program in statute to establish a moon base. Although there are no time tables and due to budget constraints this is being ignored politically as much as possible. The current administration has announced an asteroid mission which it knows is so far in the future it wont ever have to spend a dime on it. NASA is currently developing the next generation of space launch systems.

This seems to relate mostly to manned flight. What of Robotic exploration?
There seemed to be a lot of very interesting missions that are still in progress. The next Mars rover, the JW space telescope (I know its been dropped, but that's just normal, it will probably still happen sooner or later)
Is there a distinct separation in funding between space science, and manned space flight? I don't quite understand the politics, being a foreigner.

So, it's a general question about views on where we are, and where we should be, and keeping it real in the financial climate, how we should prioritise.

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

You left out something I see as very important here. You left out commercial space flight. There are companies out there which are currently researching space flight with decreased costs compared to government space programs. Space flight funded by government is going to go very slow in the near future. The economy isn't doing great and organizations like NASA are getting less money as you already mentioned.

There is also the change in political climate. Politicians aren't interested in long term investments anymore because they won't win the election and they will be turned back after a new leader of that country is chosen. It is great that a president funds a space program but if a new president is chosen, then the funds will be diverted. My hope for space research these days either lie with governments such as Russia and China, maybe ESA, and privately funded space programs. My hopes for NASA has dwindled a lot.

 

[nudger1964]

commercial space flight may well make space tourism and satelite launch more cost effective, but will it do anything for science? Im not being dismissive- i genuinely just unsure what it will do to advance our understanding. For me, that is the only purpose of space flight.
perhaps state grants to private organisations may be the way to go. is that happening?
im British, we dont have much history in space flight.
I do remember Beagle2 with great affection. That was a hell of an effort, but in reality had little chance of succss.
Nasa will remain vital for interplanetary science because it is they who have the expertise at getting to the destination in one piece. Its the last mile that matters, and Nasa can rightfully claim to be the authority on that.
The Nasa budget isnt that small, but i agree the most effective way forward will be for co-operation with commerce. But, is that going to happen, can it ever happen.
edit: i know in reality it does happen, but i think in way too limited a way than we would like.

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

Never underestimate a rich guy with too much time on his hands. I thought that there were people willing to do space research with their money for the sake of research.

 

[Visaki]

Never underestimate a rich guy with too much time on his hands. I thought that there were people willing to do space research with their money for the sake of research.

Didn't one of those just find the rocket engines from Apollo 11 beneath some 3 km of water? I bet when we start to get real (orbital) commercial space trips some of the hyperrich will start using their money for research in space.

 

[WarK]

Never underestimate a rich guy with too much time on his hands. I thought that there were people willing to do space research with their money for the sake of research.

Didn't one of those just find the rocket engines from Apollo 11 beneath some 3 km of water? I bet when we start to get real (orbital) commercial space trips some of the hyperrich will start using their money for research in space.

yeah, Carmack from id software was building a spaceship(?) and there's Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. Also, James Cameron went to the Mariana Trench.

 

[nudger1964]

The commercialisation of space for the foreseeable future will just do the easy stuff (relative term)
There is no doubt the difficult stuff will still be down to national bodies (or perhaps international in the case of ESA)
Nasa has I think this year approx $17 billion. ESA in the range of $5 billion. The only good news there for europeans is that at least ESA is on an upward trend, and likely to continue growing for a while at least.
China, who the hell knows because there isnt the divide between civilian and military as there is in the west. But then, how much does the US military spend on space? add a couple of billion perhaps? who knows.
So yes, while already the commercial budget exceeds governmental, it is so diluted across areas we don't really even think of as "space", like telecommunications, tv and so forth, its very misleading to use dollar investment to where knowledge progress may come.
There are some interesting proposals for commercialisation of space that could be said to be innovative, like solar power stations, but its not like there is actually much in the way of hard cash being spent on it"¦.rather its used to attract capital investors into the private space sector.

I don't think the problem with Nasa is so much dollars, but direction.
If I were to take a guess right now, I would say China may well get man on Mars first.
While they will probably throw more money at it, they need to. They have nothing like the knowledge base that the US has, they will make lots and lots of mistakes that Nasa could tell them about now"¦but they cant tell them because they would be breaking the law. A shame, but understandable. BTW, that applies to any foreign national or private body, not just the likes of china. It would be great to think there could be real collaberation bewteen ESA and NASA, but with things as they stand that is impossible...you americans would need to talk to your law makers if you think that should change. While there is good reason for it, most in the industry say it needs to be re-evaluated as to where the line should be drawn.
If the USA wanted to go to Mars, they could get there first, even on a budget of 17 billion a year"¦.if that was their concentrated objective.
I must say though, I am not suggesting that should be their objective .. im more interested in concentrating on getting instuments into space and on other planets rather than men.
But then im not american, so i can just say follow the science. If i were American, and my taxes were funding NASA, id be far more inclined to say, go to Mars.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Well, all I know is the US won't develop shit unless they get the same kind of motivation they got from the Cold War - beating the russians. And that's hard shit dude.

 

[nudger1964]

hubble was the US,
Kepler was the US,
the james web space telescope is the US
the Mars rovers were the US
Mars Science Laboratory is the US.... about half way there as i type.


these are all great things (especially what Hubble has done for all of us)
It is however, i think fair to say they have wasted a hell of a lot of money on not very much.

But i guess that why i was asking what people thought we should be doing-
Nasa can go to Mars on its current budget- its difficult, but theres no technical reason it couldnt with existing technology. But that would require dedicating resorces that would prevent other science. And going to Mars (manned) is more inspirational motives than anything else ....not that there isnt good science to be done, but it may be harder to justify it purely for the science

 

[CreativeCrook]

Didn't Obama reduce the budget for NASA's space exploration activities? I read they are on the verge of pulling out from Europe's Mars trip.

What I despise is, because of our pathetic agreement of owning by discovery, space exploration in the future can only turn into galactic warfare. What if US creates a moonbase and Russia want that same moonbase? What happens when we create weapons with the ability to disintegrate planets? Can we settle on another planet before we destroy Earth if we continue to focus most of our efforts on war?

I'm jumping way ahead, I know. What can I say, I've a head full of sci-fi

 

[nudger1964]

im not familiar with the wording of the treaty, but its pretty much along the lines of you dont own any off world territory, but you can place a stake in the ground and build where you like. You will own the building, but not the land.
In reality it will be dealing with each eventuality as it arises.
The moon is fair game for anyone who wants to take it on. Mars will be the same just so long as no life is found there.
The real concern about conflict in space is less about the powers on earth fighting each other in space, but the eventual clamber for independence from colonies from Earth.
It does sound like sc-fi, but actually people are thinkng about protocols and framework constitutions for colonies already....for just that reason


the budget for nasa is a bit complicated. Obama has not slashed it by any means... but all he can do is request a sum that congress then are asked to approve. It is congress that decides how much they actually get.
The budget hasnt noticably fallen, but the problem for nasa is that with each new president, they are given a new "direction". They may have spent 10s of billions in the previous presidents direction only to have to focus on something else.
Its not a very productive way to proceed, but hey, they got to the moon.
They have pulled out of the ESA mission already. Thats not because they have less funding, but more they have too many over budget programs already. The ESA mission may well still happen though...the Russians seem quite keen to play on that one. Im not surprised they are keen... its interesting to note that the proposed ESA mission will be the first mission since Viking that has equipment on that could actually detect life. While i think NASAs approach to Mars is entirely sensible and mature, if the russians came in under their noses and lucked into the mission that found life...well, the americans would not be happy bunnies

 

[CreativeCrook]

im not familiar with the wording of the treaty, but its pretty much along the lines of you dont own any off world territory, but you can place a stake in the ground and build where you like. You will own the building, but not the land.
In reality it will be dealing with each eventuality as it arises.
The moon is fair game for anyone who wants to take it on. Mars will be the same just so long as no life is found there.
The real concern about conflict in space is less about the powers on earth fighting each other in space, but the eventual clamber for independence from colonies from Earth.
It does sound like sc-fi, but actually people are thinkng about protocols and framework constitutions for colonies already....for just that reason


the budget for nasa is a bit complicated. Obama has not slashed it by any means... but all he can do is request a sum that congress then are asked to approve. It is congress that decides how much they actually get.
The budget hasnt noticably fallen, but the problem for nasa is that with each new president, they are given a new "direction". They may have spent 10s of billions in the previous presidents direction only to have to focus on something else.
Its not a very productive way to proceed, but hey, they got to the moon.
They have pulled out of the ESA mission already. Thats not because they have less funding, but more they have too many over budget programs already. The ESA mission may well still happen though...the Russians seem quite keen to play on that one. Im not surprised they are keen... its interesting to note that the proposed ESA mission will be the first mission since Viking that has equipment on that could actually detect life. While i think NASAs approach to Mars is entirely sensible and mature, if the russians came in under their noses and lucked into the mission that found life...well, the americans would not be happy bunnies

Excellent post! Interesting stuff. Thanks for that.

 

[Unwardil]

My own personal opinion here on the direction space flight should be headed (and it is, a little bit, doing this... finally)

Trying to find life on other planets is dandy and all, that would be neat in the same way that climbing Everest would be neat to do some day or sky diving or any number of things of that nature. It would be a feather in humanity's collective cap, like the moon landing was and that's an important metric of general progress. Something to put on a historical timeline as a relevant marker in something or other. Man discover's fire, man creates first mechanical vagina, man discovers life on mars, etc.

But there's a big marker that hasn't come yet that frankly astonishes me.

'Man establishes first extraterrestrial colony'.

Why has this not happened yet?! When the Europeans discovered the new world what was one of their first orders of business? It was to get some people over there and start strip mining the crap out of it for anything they could find that was valuable. Obviously there was a whole lot of shit and corruption that went along with that, but it was through this process that rapid RAPID progress in all fields really began to get rolling. The industrial revolution would probably never have happened without European over seas colonizations and damnit I want a cyberpunk revolution! I feel like I'm entitled. Yeah, you could argue that's already happened what with the interwebs and all, and that's cool, but I feel it's not complete without space colonies.

There are a lot of practical reasons that I've stated before as to why this is desirable on many levels, entrepreneurs in space markets are going to be facing a completely open field with no competition whatsoever, splitting humanity off from this death ball we call a planet is good for the long term survival of humanity as a whole and, as far as anyone can tell, the only civilization in the history of anything. Life is very probably not unique in the universe but civilization is probably a much rarer thing still, I happen to think it's worth preserving in the face of a universe that seems designed to destroy it at every turn. (Meteors, super volcanoes, random solar instability, global warming, you name the hazard that could kill us and it's out there)

So there's those reasons but mostly, it'd just be fuckin' sweet to live on the moon. I want my moon condo damnit!

 

[nudger1964]

, splitting humanity off from this death ball we call a planet is good for the long term survival of humanity as a whole and, as far as anyone can tell, the only civilization in the history of anything. Life is very probably not unique in the universe but civilization is probably a much rarer thing still, I happen to think it's worth preserving in the face of a universe that seems designed to destroy it at every turn. (Meteors, super volcanoes, random solar instability, global warming, you name the hazard that could kill us and it's out there)

!

on friday 13th april 2029, an asteroid named Apophis is going to pass so close as it will pass between the Earth and our geo sync satelites.
that may focus the mind somewhat