In space, where will we be in 30 years?

Anyone want to speculate what we'll be doing in space in thirty years
time?

Bush's Mars plan: Abandoned.

An American return to the Moon: Either delayed due to deaths, or
totally scuttled by budget cutbacks.

Space stations: A Chinese station definitely, and possibly Russian
funded either by a coalition of non-American countries or tourist
dollars.

Planetary exploration: many more cheap robotic probes.

Military space presence: US the major player. Lots of tension
relating the Chinese military in space.

Space telescopes: Amateur and European funded scopes in orbit. US
funded scopes broken and abandoned.

Private: Small private launch industry, but still too expensive for
any major payloads. Amateurs launch small object into orbit, but
amateur rocketry subsequently banned in the U.S.

Europe: manned space program going well with limited space-based
research funded by private industry. Possible hookup with the
Russians and a Euro/Russian space station.

Far out possibilities:

Someone launches nanotech factories to the Moon and/or Mars and/or
asteroids and does away almost completely with the need of further
launches.

US destroys Chinese spy satellites over perceived threats.

U.S. civilian manned space program completely abandoned.

"Adrian B." wrote in message
om...

Typically, this dickhead's posting from google. They're as bad as deja.


--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

In article ,
(Adrian B.) wrote:

Anyone want to speculate what we'll be doing in space in thirty years
time?

Bush's Mars plan: Abandoned.

There is no "Bush's Mars plan." Where do people get this idea? It is a
plan for establishing a presence on the Moon. Mars was mentioned in
passing, lumped together with "and other destinations," clearly as a
bone thrown to the Mars fanatics.

Now, whether the Moon plan will actually happen or not is hard to say.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
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"Alan Erskine" wrote in message ...
"Adrian B." wrote in message
om...

Typically, this dickhead's posting from google. They're as bad as deja.

Oops, looks like I annoyed some cranky hick from Australia. Go back
to your beer and footy mate.

On Sun, 23 May 2004 21:02:01 -0500, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

There is no "Bush's Mars plan." Where do people get this idea? It is a
plan for establishing a presence on the Moon.

No, it's a plan for moving out into the solar system. The moon is
just a first step. Having "plans" for anything beyond that would be
fooish and hubristic, like Stalinist/Maoist "five-year plans."

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sun, 23 May 2004 21:02:01 -0500, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

There is no "Bush's Mars plan." Where do people get this idea? It is a
plan for establishing a presence on the Moon.

No, it's a plan for moving out into the solar system. The moon is
just a first step. Having "plans" for anything beyond that would be
fooish and hubristic, like Stalinist/Maoist "five-year plans."

Nah, there is no solid evidence of the Moon part being in any sense real.
Its just a lan do replace one expensive human space access method with a
different one with a different name.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004 15:55:54 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

There is no "Bush's Mars plan." Where do people get this idea? It is a
plan for establishing a presence on the Moon.

No, it's a plan for moving out into the solar system. The moon is
just a first step. Having "plans" for anything beyond that would be
fooish and hubristic, like Stalinist/Maoist "five-year plans."

Nah, there is no solid evidence of the Moon part being in any sense real.
Its just a lan do replace one expensive human space access method with a
different one with a different name.

While it certainly could turn out that way (and will if the disastrous
suggestion from the Aldridge Commission that heavy lift is an
"enabling" technology is taken seriously), there's nothing
intrinsically in the president's new policy that would preclude doing
it sensibly. I do agree that the CEV will do nothing to reduce the
costs of human access, and may in fact increase it.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote

There is no "Bush's Mars plan." Where do people get this idea? It is a
plan for establishing a presence on the Moon.

No, it's a plan for moving out into the solar system. The moon is
just a first step. Having "plans" for anything beyond that would be
foolish and hubristic, like Stalinist/Maoist "five-year plans."

This reminds me of my days in the bureaucracy, when various
management fads came and went with depressing and predictable
regularity. "Strategic planning" always seemed futile on time
scales beyond a few years, because the decorrelation time of
events is not more than a decade, give or take.

However, there was an associated concept called "strategic
directions" that seemed to me to be somewhat better. Basically
the idea was to develop a touchstone that would tell you in
which way to make decisions to achieve desired long-term results
when the inevitable surprises came along.

In the present context, I think Rand is right: the direction
is to move out into the solar system. The immediate plan is
to go to the moon as a way to develop methods to move in the
direction.