Hubble Question...

"ypauls" wrote in message
news
The problem is that we can't afford everything we now have and can
eventually think of.
It's lots of fun to go to a party & have a great time as long as somebody
else pays for it.

NASA has its priorities wrong. We need to find a way to greatly reduce the
cost of launches. $10,000 per pound is too much! If we could get it down to
$100 per pound or less, every university in the country could have its own
space telescope if they wanted one. The question is, how do we make space
affordable? Why is it still so expensive after nearly 50 years of launches?

It is possible, are we willing to give up sending people into space? That
is where the multiplier of 100x shows up.


"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message
...

NASA has its priorities wrong. We need to find a way to greatly reduce
the
cost of launches. $10,000 per pound is too much! If we could get it down
to
$100 per pound or less, every university in the country could have its
own
space telescope if they wanted one. The question is, how do we make
space
affordable? Why is it still so expensive after nearly 50 years of
launches?

In rec.radio.amateur.space Bootstrap Bill wrote:

"ypauls" wrote in message
news
The problem is that we can't afford everything we now have and can
eventually think of.
It's lots of fun to go to a party & have a great time as long as somebody
else pays for it.

NASA has its priorities wrong. We need to find a way to greatly reduce the
cost of launches. $10,000 per pound is too much! If we could get it down to
$100 per pound or less, every university in the country could have its own
space telescope if they wanted one. The question is, how do we make space
affordable? Why is it still so expensive after nearly 50 years of launches?

How many reasons do you want?

A hundred fold decrease in cost is a HUGE decrease. For high tech gadgetry,
the typical decrease is typically about ten fold from initial model to
balls out mass production.

No major advances in basic propulsion science, i.e. no dilithium crystals,
impulse drive or anti-gravity engines nor is there likely to be. Chemical
rockets are going to be around a long time.

No economies of scale and highly unlikely space craft will ever be mass
produced like Toyotas.

Since it is so expensive, only governments can afford to do it, and we
all know how efficient government agencies of any type or nation are.

That's not to say costs can't be reduced, just that it is unrealistic
to expect a couple of orders of magnitude reductions.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove -spam-sux to reply.

It is possible, are we willing to give up sending people into space? That
is where the multiplier of 100x shows up.

Nonsequitur. The cost is about the same, where human life is riding the rocket
or not. Most rockets do *not* have anybody on them. If that were the issue,
there could be a supercheap cargo rocket alongside the expensive human carrier.
There's not and there never has been.

The cost is about the same, where human life is riding the rocket
or not. Most rockets do *not* have anybody on them. If that were the issue,
there could be a supercheap cargo rocket alongside the expensive human
carrier.
There's not and there never has been.


Oh no, the cost for manned safety increases the cost per pound exponentially.

Its the needed redundancy and triple checking everything thats already man
rated by exhaustive testing.

Loosing a unmanned now and then is no biggie because no one dies. Fix what
failed and try again.

To increase the safty margain from say 97% to 99.98% is BIG BUCKS Altghough I
dont know the exact figure and perhaps no one does because its likely just a
estimate.

Wonder what the delat heavy will cost for man rating?

Another possibly stupid question:

In the various movies about giant objects on a collision to earth, they have
often used Hubble to get more precise imaging to determine the nature of
object, where to plant the big bomb etc etc .

In real life, once an object of a possible collision course has been detected,
could/would Hubble be tasked to follow that object to provide the most
accurate information ? Or would ground based telescopes be more than
sufficient to get the job done ?

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message ...
"ypauls" wrote in message
news
The problem is that we can't afford everything we now have and can
eventually think of.
It's lots of fun to go to a party & have a great time as long as somebody
else pays for it.

NASA has its priorities wrong. We need to find a way to greatly reduce the
cost of launches. $10,000 per pound is too much! If we could get it down to
$100 per pound or less, every university in the country could have its own
space telescope if they wanted one. The question is, how do we make space
affordable? Why is it still so expensive after nearly 50 years of launches?


Oh, googling on sci.space.* + "CATS" might be interesting. As a
summary: it is unlikely to be NASA that gets the price down. Google
also on Space-X, XCOR, Pegasus, ....

/dps

In article , John Doe wrote:
In real life, once an object of a possible collision course has been detected,
could/would Hubble be tasked to follow that object to provide the most
accurate information ? Or would ground based telescopes be more than
sufficient to get the job done ?

If all you want to do is *track* it, ground-based telescopes would be
perfectly adequate for almost all cases. Hubble might be used for an
attempt to get an actual *image* of the thing, although it's hard to say
how useful that would be.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

wrote in message
...
A hundred fold decrease in cost is a HUGE decrease. For high tech
gadgetry,
the typical decrease is typically about ten fold from initial model to
balls out mass production.

Couldn't we get close to it with a fleet of fully reusable shuttles that can
be operated and serviced like todays commercial jets?

Electronics have had similar decreases. The first electronic calculators
were over $300. Just last week, I bought a very nice solar powered desktop
calculator with an oversized LCD for only $1!

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote:

Couldn't we get close to it with a fleet of fully reusable shuttles that can
be operated and serviced like todays commercial jets?

Thats an open question. It took a lot of years and experience to get
commercial jets to where they are today. Even so, there is still a
metric buttload of maintenance and support involved, it's just clumped
together at intervals rather than being between individual flights.

D.
--
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