the drive to explore

In sci.space.policy Anthony Frost wrote:
In message
Samuel Penn wrote:

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

When is SS2 going up?

When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

I hadn't heard about that. Got any more information?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4506133.stm covers it.

It has really been covered a lot wider that just bbc (or uk media)
and not by media from any one political leaning either. The ony
suprising part really is that anybody is suprised at the result.


Anthony


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Samuel Penn wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

Matt Giwer wrote:

I should not be so light-handed with the sarcasm. Why did he not
simply question the thousands of French who had explored simply
because it was their natural urge to explore?

Because of their fur trapping business, the French "Voyageurs" tended
to confine their explorations to the areas on either sides of rivers;

I know that but my erstwhile correspondant is claiming there is a natural
urge to explore independent of any financial gain. I point out that is a
myth as all examples have been for financial gain.

Lots of people explore just because they want to - it's generally known
as 'going on holiday'. People who do round the world walks, backpack
through the Amazon and that sort of thing. Many of them actually pay to
do this, rather than seeing it as a means to financial gain.

When one assumes the conclusion it is trivial to arrive at it.

The places you suggest are hardly exploration as what is there is already known.

'Big' explorations often require a lot of preparation, time and resources.
This requires money, so needs financial backing. The question isn't so
much whether an expedition had a financial reason, but whether the
financial reason was thought up after someone realised that they needed
funding if they were to spend two years exploring uncharted territory.

Most (all?) of the companies currently trying to get into space have a
financial plan (normally to do with space tourism) - but is this because
it was the only way to get VC people interested in funding them?

I'd be surprised if someone was looking for a way to make money, and
decided that building a space tourism business was the best way of
doing it. More likely they wanted to build a spaceship, and space
tourism was the best plan they could come up with to fund it.

Virgin Galactic aims to make money from Rutan's designs, but Branson
probably got involved as much because he wanted to go into space as
because he needed a bit more cash.

The buzz phrase 'exploration of space' has been around for so long it isn't questioned. In the old
days would could be first in a category to explore an island or even a continent. The only category
of interest to this discussion is European. Obviously at one time the first indian arrivals did but
we have no records. Exploring the moon or Mars has a meaning in this sense. Exploring the ocean is a
search for land undiscovered by a category, again European.

Exploring space will confirm it is a whole lot of nothing if that needs confirmation.

So do you know of any private projects to explore the moon? Mars?

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Matt Giwer wrote:

The places you suggest are hardly exploration as what is there
is already known.

It isn't known to the people putting forth the effort to go explore it.

Exploring space will confirm it is a whole lot of nothing if
that needs confirmation.

It's a whole lot of nothing, punctuated by relatively small bits of
non-nothing stuff -- which are still relatively large by everyday scales.
The planets and asteroids and comets are found in what we Earthlings refer
to as "space". [So are stars, but physically visiting their neighborhoods
is not near-term in any exploration plans I'm aware of.]

So do you know of any private projects to explore the moon? Mars?

Artemis, for one.

Alan Anderson wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:

The places you suggest are hardly exploration as what is there is already known.

It isn't known to the people putting forth the effort to go explore it.

You are not following the thread. People explore a new Mall but out of curiosity not anything like
the exploration which is the subject of this thread.

Exploring space will confirm it is a whole lot of nothing if that needs confirmation.

It's a whole lot of nothing, punctuated by relatively small bits of
non-nothing stuff -- which are still relatively large by everyday scales.
The planets and asteroids and comets are found in what we Earthlings refer
to as "space". [So are stars, but physically visiting their neighborhoods
is not near-term in any exploration plans I'm aware of.]

Which is what I said. It is the things not the space which is for exploring.

So do you know of any private projects to explore the moon? Mars?

Artemis, for one.

Artemis what?

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That all but a handful of documents were destroyed
That those which survived were in code words
That there was no physical evidence of WWII
That there were only stories claiming WWII happened
That it took a court to establish WWII happened
You're damned right I would be skeptical.
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Matt Giwer wrote:

So do you know of any private projects to explore the moon? Mars?

Artemis, for one.

Artemis what?

The Artemis Society International, running The Artemis Project.

http://www.asi.org/

Anthony Frost ) wrote:
: In message
: (Eric Chomko) wrote:

: Jordan ) wrote:
: : Stewart said:

: : In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not the
: : government sector.
:
: : Some _is_ coming from the private sector, now. Note the case of Space
: : Ship One.
:
: When is SS2 going up?

: When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
: Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
: corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

Funny that never seemed to be a problem for SS1. In fact, that government
asked for SS1 to be put into the National Air and Space Museum.

I think SS2 isn't up because Branson would rather do reality TV than
pioneer coomercial spaceflight.

Eric

: Anthony

"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...
Funny that never seemed to be a problem for SS1. In fact, that government
asked for SS1 to be put into the National Air and Space Museum.

I think SS2 isn't up because Branson would rather do reality TV than
pioneer coomercial spaceflight.

I think that it's more likely that he's funding SS2 at a reasonable level,
so that progress will take some time. The US certainly put a man on the
moon before the 60's was over, but it did so as a "waste anything but time"
philosophy. It necessarily cost quite a bit of money to solve the problem
under that time constraint. It also led to an unsustainable (expensive)
launch vehicle that lost its funding. Not exactly the type of funding
profile you want if your goal is to make a profit.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

In article , Eric Chomko says...

Anthony Frost ) wrote:
: In message
: (Eric Chomko) wrote:

: Jordan ) wrote:
: : Stewart said:

: : In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not the
: : government sector.
:
: : Some _is_ coming from the private sector, now. Note the case of Space
: : Ship One.
:
: When is SS2 going up?

: When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
: Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
: corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

Funny that never seemed to be a problem for SS1. In fact, that government
asked for SS1 to be put into the National Air and Space Museum.


Which both operated by and located in the United States of America. If,
hypothetically, it were to be displayed in the British Museum, which like
Richard Branson is affiliated with the United Kingdom, it *would* be a
problem.

That would constitute the export of an air-launched intermediate-range
ballistic missile to a foreign power, and the United States has strict
rules about that sort of thing. Even exporting design information about
such systems, e.g. letting Richard Branson look at the plans for the
rocket ships he is buying, is restricted. Space Ship One may be a poor
excuse for a missile, but it's close enough to trigger the rules until
the lawyers say otherwise.

It is *possible* to export such "weapons" to countries like the UK. Note,
for example, the Trident missiles sitting in the tubes of the Royal Navy's
SSBN fleet. Unambiguously weapons of great lethality, even if we do at
least pretend we didn't sell the Brits warhead blueprints to go with the
missiles. But it takes a fair amount of paperwork, especially if the sale
is between private parties rather than governments.

The extent to which the rules ought to be changed to facilitate legitimate
international commerce, is under debate. But it *is* going to be a matter
of changing the rules, not wholly eliminating them, because vehicles like
SS1 are not wholly unsuitable for use as weapons against the United States
and its allies.


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John Schilling wrote:
snippage
The extent to which the rules ought to be changed to facilitate legitimate
international commerce, is under debate. But it *is* going to be a matter
of changing the rules, not wholly eliminating them, because vehicles like
SS1 are not wholly unsuitable for use as weapons against the United States
and its allies.

This is one of the issues in which I see a necessary linkage between
the development of privately owned spacecraft and the development of
ballistic missile defense systems. In a world in which plenty of
strategic defenses exist, the conversion of privately owned spacecraft
to weapons is a soluble problem, since privately owned spacecraft would
probably not be optimized for carrying penetration aids. In a world in
which no or very few strategic defenses, it is quite possible that
national security concerns will greatly delay the spread of private
space travel, because in such a world it would be very difficult to
intercept a private spacecraft in terrorist hands, possibly carrying a
WMD cargo.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...
This is one of the issues in which I see a necessary linkage between
the development of privately owned spacecraft and the development of
ballistic missile defense systems. In a world in which plenty of
strategic defenses exist, the conversion of privately owned spacecraft
to weapons is a soluble problem, since privately owned spacecraft would
probably not be optimized for carrying penetration aids.

OK, I don't *think* you're taloing about a spaceship full of Viagra...