Armstrong lauds another spaceman

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Content preview: "Zdenek Jizba" wrote in message
... After Columbus
discovered America, most Spanish explorers were motivated by the
search of gold. If there were something extremely valuable in outer
space (I think there is) then space travel is only a question of
time. [...]

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In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:Turning the general populace into space enthusiasts *will not happen*, and
lans which assume that it will are pointless fantasies. The only way to
:get to (say) Mars is to lower the cost to the point that overwhelming
ublic enthusiasm is not required.

Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
cost of going there.

Not at all. The single technical change that would contribute most to
lowering the cost of a Mars expedition -- much cheaper launch to LEO -- is
desirable for a number of more immediate reasons.

The technical problems of a Mars expedition mostly would yield quite well
to a "kill it with mass and margins" strategy, heavily overbuilding the
equipment to avoid the fussy, time-consuming engineering needed to tightly
optimize it. The dominant item in the pricetag of a Mars expedition is
R&D, and buying more cheap launches would be rather less expensive than
buying more engineers.

Indeed, you can make a half-plausible argument that this is already true:
that even at today's launch prices, it makes sense to accept mass growth
to save engineering man-years.

Finally, the single change of any kind (not just technical) that would
reduce the cost of a Mars expedition most is *better management*. The
problems of doing such a mission today are utterly dominated by the
difficulty of doing anything *efficiently* within the NASA/JSC/MSFC
bureaucratic empire. There is plenty of incentive for fixing that, in
one way or another.

(Karpoff's study of the various 19th-century arctic expeditions is
notable: the single strongest predictor of success was private funding,
mostly because it meant unified, consistent leadership throughout.)
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
: have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
: cost of going there.
:
:Nonsense. Many many things have become affordable because
f advances not specifically directed at those things.

If you think it's nonsense, please tell us just what technologies you
think are sufficiently 'dual use' to Mars flights and something else
(and what that something else is) so as to drive down the costs of
Mars flights.

Otherwise, it would be you who is spouting nonsense, not me.

Note that if NASA figures are to be believed, it would cost MORE now
(in constant dollars) to put a couple men on the Moon than it cost us
the first time we did it.

Getting to LEO has become cheaper (although not as much cheaper as one
would expect) because LEO is a commercially viable place and because
we were putting stuff there for a long time.

I await your exposition on just what technologies you think will have
their costs driven down and why they will be driven down.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

In article Alain Fournier writes:

No. There isn't an overwhelming public support for suborbital flights.
Yet suborbital flights have recently become an existing business.
The same can happen for Mars travel. More likely, it will be the
suborbital flights business that will slowly evolve into a broader
space flight business.

I can't really see THAT happening. There just isn't growth potential
in suborbital flights, which never actually go anywhere and do not
require (or feature) the sort of technology that is needed to go places.
In fact, diverting money and interest to suborbital tourism will
probably *lessen* interest in "real" spaceflight...

Manned suborbital flights don't create profit that would feed relevant
subcontractors (besides some small-scale model airplane firms and their
peanut bag providers). They offer no possibilities of industrial
applications, whereas there are plenty in suborbital unmanned flight
and orbital flight. Sure, an eccentric billionaire may fund an expedition
to Mars, but that project will die with him or her, leaving Mars as
deserted as it is now.

Timo Saloniemi

Like all things important, we will do it when we are forced to, or
not at all. Man is a superficially rational animal.
jerry




"Fred J. McCall" wrote:

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

:In article ,
:Gene DiGennaro wrote:
:...If only the general public better understood Apollo's accomplishments...
:
:Wouldn't really make a lot of difference. The general public already
:thinks spaceflight is neat; they just don't think it's worth a whole lot
f money. This is fundamental, and will not change.
:
:Turning the general populace into space enthusiasts *will not happen*, and
lans which assume that it will are pointless fantasies. The only way to
:get to (say) Mars is to lower the cost to the point that overwhelming
ublic enthusiasm is not required.

Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
cost of going there.

It is, after all, always cheaper to not go than to go.

Personally, I hope you're wrong.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Nonsense. Many many things have become affordable because
f advances not specifically directed at those things.

If you think it's nonsense, please tell us just what technologies you
think are sufficiently 'dual use' to Mars flights and something else
(and what that something else is) so as to drive down the costs of
Mars flights.


New stronger materials (a dual use, airplanes and others), electronics
(dual use home computers and others), fuel cells (dual use cars and
others) etc.

That is not even mentioning more directly related dual uses such as
satellite launches and space stations.

Alain Fournier

Timo S Saloniemi wrote:

In article Alain Fournier writes:


No. There isn't an overwhelming public support for suborbital flights.
Yet suborbital flights have recently become an existing business.
The same can happen for Mars travel. More likely, it will be the
suborbital flights business that will slowly evolve into a broader
space flight business.


I can't really see THAT happening. There just isn't growth potential
in suborbital flights, which never actually go anywhere and do not
require (or feature) the sort of technology that is needed to go places.
In fact, diverting money and interest to suborbital tourism will
probably *lessen* interest in "real" spaceflight...

Manned suborbital flights are currently a private enterprise thing.
Manned orbital flights are currently a government thing. Private
businesses aren't diverting money away from governments, in fact
when suborbital flights will make a profit they will be paying
taxes to governments.

It is easier for businesses to start with suborbital than to go
directly to orbital, once a suborbital business is making profits
it is easier for them to get funding for an orbital business. If you
never did any manned rocket launching it is very difficult to get the
attention of investors for such a big project as a manned orbital
launching service.

Manned suborbital flights don't create profit that would feed relevant
subcontractors (besides some small-scale model airplane firms and their
peanut bag providers). They offer no possibilities of industrial
applications, whereas there are plenty in suborbital unmanned flight
and orbital flight.

Right. Manned suborbital flights aren't about building stuff it is
about joy rides. If suborbital flights become as big a business
as Disney World then you have a revenue stream big enough to
develop orbital, lunar and martian space tourism.

Alain Fournier

Fred J. McCall wrote:

:Nonsense. Many many things have become affordable because
f advances not specifically directed at those things.

If you think it's nonsense, please tell us just what technologies you
think are sufficiently 'dual use' to Mars flights and something else
(and what that something else is) so as to drive down the costs of
Mars flights.

Launch, electronics, manufacturing, propulsion, electrical energy
production, and so on and so on.

The technologies involved in a Mars mission would have to be completely
disconnected from the rest of the technosphere for Mars missions
not to be helped by advances elsewhere.

Paul

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in
:

Note that if NASA figures are to be believed, it would cost MORE now
(in constant dollars) to put a couple men on the Moon than it cost us
the first time we did it.

NASA's figures show no such thing.

--
JRF

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"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in
:
:
: Note that if NASA figures are to be believed, it would cost MORE now
: (in constant dollars) to put a couple men on the Moon than it cost us
: the first time we did it.
:
:NASA's figures show no such thing.

Then they revised the hell out of them, because that's certainly what
they showed the first time they were asked.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn