The anti NASA campaign

Not everyone is a billionaire but some people are. They
have millions to spend, and they can amuse themselves.

They make a "price". Just some millions thrown away,
who cares when you actually do not know what to do
with all that money?

They propose a billionaires tourism club, that will allow
them to use big planes to travel around in low earth
orbit.

You see?

Billionaires do not need the whole NASA bureacracy
to be able to travel to space.

Private enterprise.

NASA is a collective enterprise. It is a state funded
body. To travel into space you have to qualify and
you are trained to do it. There are blacks, women,
they are representative. And the astronauts,
they all did their best.

Why that?

Let's abolish it. The only requirement is that you pay
the ticket. Space is for billionaires only.

Of course, they say, they are doing it "for us". Eventually,
the price will automatically go down. They say to
everyone:

Mojave. We are building a commercial space port.

And many follow them. Of course. Money has many
followers. A whole "break-through" atmosphere is
diffused through the media, and people are prepared for
the inevitable:

We must close NASA.

After that, and after doing a few orbits,
the billionaires get bored with the stuff and close "the
spaceport" that was never more than some small
buildings in the desert anyway.

The state doesn't invest in NASA any more, the whole
is slowly phased out. All research centers are closed,
one at a time over a period of a few years.

Hubble is robotically directed to the pacific ocean,
and the astronomy budget eliminated. Commercial
companies do not need space telescopes.

Money is redirected to the production of power
point presentations about "The moon and beyond",
presentations that are much cheaper to make than
real spaceships. The last surviving spaceships are
flown until they explode in mid-air one after the other.

No funding for those. Those are *real* spaceships.
And *real* spaceships bring less profit that presentations
and consulting.

Space exploration fades from the horizon of the United States.

Is this bad? Is this good?

I do not know, but it looks increasingly likely.

jacob navia wrote:

Private enterprise.

Russian rocket engineers design the best launchers
and they have cheap labor as well. Americans cannot
compete with their launchers, but they can make the
best telemanipulators and cameras.

We must close NASA.
Is this bad? Is this good?

NASA cannot do anything well. Its purpose is to wave
flags in front of TV cameras. From my point of view
the main issue is cheap access to space. NASA should
not make any hardware, but rather maintain the
existing space infrastructure. Standard rocket
components (GPS, electronics, software, valves, etc.)
and the Kennedy Space Center should be available to
independent rocket makers. If all this private rocket
hardware is kept inside the Kennedy Space Center, it
cannot be used by terrorists.

In article ,
"jacob navia" wrote:

Not everyone is a billionaire but some people are. They
have millions to spend, and they can amuse themselves.

They make a "price". Just some millions thrown away,
who cares when you actually do not know what to do
with all that money?

I doubt many billionaires are all that cavalier about expenditures in
the millions -- if they were, they wouldn't be so rich.

They propose a billionaires tourism club, that will allow
them to use big planes to travel around in low earth
orbit.

Actually, they don't propose such things, for the most part -- if they
did, we'd have had space tourism a lot sooner.

However, there are lots of people (most of them *not* billionaires) who
are very excited about how space tourism can be the "killer app" that
jump-starts space development, and eventually opens the frontier for
everyone. I'm one of those people.

Billionaires do not need the whole NASA bureacracy
to be able to travel to space.

True. In fact, nobody needs the whole NASA bureaucracy to travel to
space, except for a handful of government employees.

NASA is a collective enterprise. It is a state funded
body. To travel into space you have to qualify and
you are trained to do it.

And you have to be well-behaved, do what you're told, and get lucky.
Then you might get to go to space once or twice in your career.

Let's abolish it. The only requirement is that you pay
the ticket.

Sounds good to me. That's all that's required to travel on a plane, or
on a boat; why should space be different?

Space is for billionaires only.

Well this is demonstrable nonsense. Even a week on ISS only costs $20M,
which non-billionaires could afford (ordinary multi-millionaires will
do, or even less rich people who get some sort of sponsorship).

Of course, they say, they are doing it "for us". Eventually,
the price will automatically go down.

Of course it will. (Whether they're doing it "for us" or "for them" is
irrelevant.)

Mojave. We are building a commercial space port.

True. The world's first spaceport with a bar & grille, too! That's
more significant than it sounds, and is a very good sign.

And many follow them. Of course. Money has many
followers.

Money has nothing to do with it. I'm excited about space tourism
because it's going to finally open up the frontier for regular people
like me. Whether the people behind it (e.g. Peter Diamandis) is rich or
not, I don't know and don't care.

A whole "break-through" atmosphere is
diffused through the media, and people are prepared for
the inevitable:

We must close NASA.

What nonsense. Please show me a single suggestion anywhere in the
media, or on public forums for that matter (apart from your own post),
that we should close NASA.

We just think NASA should get out of the way, and even help if it can.

After that, and after doing a few orbits,
the billionaires get bored with the stuff and close "the
spaceport" that was never more than some small
buildings in the desert anyway.

Nope. Competition among launch companies will drive the costs down and
the experience (e.g., time in space) up. As costs come down, more and
more people are able & willing to pay, which means a growing customer
base, which encourages more competition, driving prices down further.

The state doesn't invest in NASA any more, the whole
is slowly phased out. All research centers are closed,
one at a time over a period of a few years.

We could certainly stand to close a few of them, but it's highly
unlikely that we'll ever close all of them. However, NASA is no longer
the only way that Americans (and folks of some other nationalities) get
into space, and that is a very good thing.

Hubble is robotically directed to the pacific ocean,
and the astronomy budget eliminated. Commercial
companies do not need space telescopes.

Yadda yadda, remaining nonsense snipped. You're describing events that
simply will not happen. If you and I were both betting men, I could
make a nice profit off of you.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

"Joe Strout" a écrit dans le message de
...
In article ,
"jacob navia" wrote:

We must close NASA.

What nonsense. Please show me a single suggestion anywhere in the
media, or on public forums for that matter (apart from your own post),
that we should close NASA.

There are several people here that have voiced (not so openly)
this view. And "The Economist" has brought an article saying
exactly that.

In this newsgroup, a pointer to a web page proposing exactly
that was posted some weeks ago.

Hubble is being shut down, and the robotic hardware that
is being planned isn't for repair but to bring it down safely.

The budget of spaceship construction remains at just enough
to do emergency maintenance. No new spaceships are
in sight.

The ISS will be abandoned by the U.S. It is running exclusively
on the russian effort now anyway.

But there is a deeper disagreement between you and I.

I am interested in space exploration, not in tourism for
the happy few.

jacob navia wrote:

Hubble is being shut down, and the robotic hardware that
is being planned isn't for repair but to bring it down safely.

So you are just another ignorant pontificating on
sci.space.policy? The $300 million Dextre telerobot
would be an overkill for such a simple task.

"Andrew Nowicki" a écrit dans le message de
...

NASA cannot do anything well. Its purpose is to wave
flags in front of TV cameras.

Cassini arrives at Saturn this month. After 7 years of
journey, the spacecraft arrives without any problem.

The Mars rovers go on roaming the marsian landscape,
the Hubble space telescope is still working and giving
us an unprecedented view of the cosmos. Not to speak of
the Spitzer scope, Chandra, and the others.

Can't do anything well?

Within the tight budget constraints that destroyed
so many projects, NASA employees have delivered
an astounding series of very well done projects.

From my point of view
the main issue is cheap access to space.

The problem with this, is that space is completely new.
It is not like the oceans we have conquered before, and
it is not like the atmosphere that we conquered in the
last century. Space is much more difficult because it is
completely alien.

We need to recreate a planetary environment in vacuum and this
is surely not evident at all.

It will be eventually done of course. End of this
century most of the construction industry will live
in vacuum. We will build cities, homes, and grow
crops in there. Genetically modified plants will provide
food and recycling of waste. Huge farms of artificial
plants will grow crops to feed the growing space
population in the suburbs of the earth.

It will just take a century.

jacob navia wrote:

Cassini arrives at Saturn this month. After 7 years of
journey, the spacecraft arrives without any problem.

The Mars rovers go on roaming the marsian landscape,
the Hubble space telescope is still working and giving
us an unprecedented view of the cosmos. Not to speak of
the Spitzer scope, Chandra, and the others.

Can't do anything well?

Within the tight budget constraints that destroyed
so many projects, NASA employees have delivered
an astounding series of very well done projects.

I do not follow everything that NASA does, but
the Mars rovers could have better design. They
do not need batteries (which do last long), but
they do need some means to remove dust from their
solar cells and cameras. Have you seen the ultra
thin solar calculators -- they have no batteries.
To be exact, the Mars rovers would benefit from
a small battery to keep their clock running --
such batteries are standard parts of PC computers
and they lasts about 5 years. Big rechargeable
batteries do not make sense because they do not
last long enough.

NASA probes and satellites are neither modular
nor compatible with telemanipulators.

AN From my point of view the main issue is cheap
AN access to space.

The problem with this, is that space is completely new.
It is not like the oceans we have conquered before, and
it is not like the atmosphere that we conquered in the
last century. Space is much more difficult because it is
completely alien.

The problem is that nobody cares enough about cheap
access to space to understand its technology. In 1968
an Aerospace Corporation engineer Arthur Schnitt
and an Air Force colonel Floyd Kniss tried to replace
the complex rocket launchers with the so called
'big dumb boosters.' The initial experiments were very
promising, but when the big shots learned about it,
the program was terminated and both guys were silenced.

I have been trying to start a serious debate but I
am failing. Space cadets have the attention span of
poultry. Some rocket engineers know how to make simple,
reusable rocket launchers, but they prefer to make
expensive throwaways. A few scientists chase far-fetched
dreams... Reusable, pressure-fed rockets are just the
first small step in the right direction. You can learn
the rest from my space book:
http://www.islandone.org/LEOBiblio/

We need to recreate a planetary environment in vacuum
and this is surely not evident at all.

It will be eventually done of course. End of this
century most of the construction industry will live
in vacuum. We will build cities, homes, and grow
crops in there. Genetically modified plants will provide
food and recycling of waste. Huge farms of artificial
plants will grow crops to feed the growing space
population in the suburbs of the earth.

It will just take a century.

Our technology may destroy human population of the
Earth before we colonize outer space. Fermi Paradox
suggests that all civilizations become extinct before
they colonize outer space.

Andrew Nowicki wrote:
jacob navia wrote:

Private enterprise.

Russian rocket engineers design the best launchers
and they have cheap labor as well. Americans cannot
compete with their launchers, but they can make the
best telemanipulators and cameras.

Which is why Arianespace is the leading commercial launcher, right?


We must close NASA.
Is this bad? Is this good?

NASA cannot do anything well. Its purpose is to wave

This is not really true.

flags in front of TV cameras. From my point of view
the main issue is cheap access to space. NASA should
not make any hardware, but rather maintain the
existing space infrastructure. Standard rocket
components (GPS, electronics, software, valves, etc.)
and the Kennedy Space Center should be available to
independent rocket makers. If all this private rocket
hardware is kept inside the Kennedy Space Center, it
cannot be used by terrorists.

Well, thsi would be government sponsorship of private
rocket makers and i'm not sure why you think this would
lead to good results.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In article ,
"jacob navia" wrote:

I am interested in space exploration, not in tourism for
the happy few.

If you had both an interest in space exploration, and an understanding
of economics, then you would be as excited about space tourism as I am.
Tourism is the "killer app" that is going to make space travel cheap and
commonplace, and enable far more exploration in 10 or 20 years than has
been done in the last 30.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

Joe Strout wrote:
In article ,
"jacob navia" wrote:

I am interested in space exploration, not in tourism for
the happy few.

Or automobiles for the happy few, or telephones for
the happy few, or computers for the happy few. This
is the way these things work. The new adopters spend
lots of money and that ties directly to profit and
attracts investment capital. Those funds then can
be used to develop new designs and products with
superior features and lower per-unit costs. The
necessary key is having a self-sustaining private
industry. Once that is going the only bounds are
the laws of physics, and the laws of physics allow
for quite cheap space flights indeed. In my lifetime,
and I'm not that old, the "cost" of a space flight
have dropped first from "structure your life toward
becoming an astronaut at all costs and get extremely
lucky besides" to $20 million a flight. And now
they're dropping by a couple orders of magnitude.

This, my friends, is progress.


If you had both an interest in space exploration, and an understanding
of economics, then you would be as excited about space tourism as I am.
Tourism is the "killer app" that is going to make space travel cheap and
commonplace, and enable far more exploration in 10 or 20 years than has
been done in the last 30.

Exactly. As I keep telling people, manned rocketry
and orbital rocketry are fully 6 decades old, manned
orbital rocketry 4 decades. This stuff is old hat.
We just need to do it right and be able to structure
it so that it can make a profit via private
enterprise and it'll explode like nobody's business.