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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
wrote in message
news:10511972.771.1336142211792.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbmi19... On Friday, May 4, 2012 3:14:02 PM UTC+2, Alan Erskine wrote: People are going to continue to explore space; both by automated/remote-controlled vehicles and in person. We've pretty much explored this planet, and we just won't sit still. But how much money is spent on manned space missions vs unmanned missions? It would be interesting to know, and I believe the data would be strongly skewed in one direction. Yes, manned space is far more effective. But for certain missions, it's far more effective. If you're trying to study the effects of micro-G on the human body, you need a human. If you want to explore the Moon, well we retrieved FAR more moon rocks via Apollo than the Soviets did via their unmanned program. In addition, I think one can easily argue the QUALITY is far better. What the Mars rovers have done in years, could be done by a man in a day or two. Now, on the other hand, close in Jovian missions are probably always going to be done far better via unmanned craft because of the radiation levels involved. Also note that historically spending on unmanned missions loosely tracks manned missions. i.e. The more we spend on manned missions, the more we spend on unmanned. Stopping manned missions is very unlikely to free up tons of money for unmanned missions. It's more likely going to be spent elsewhere in the Federal budget. -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
In sci.space.station message
igpond.com, Sat, 5 May 2012 10:47:20, Alan Erskine posted: Automated spacecraft don't answer questions. When something simple goes wrong with them, they are useless. Imagine the Apollo Lunar Rover being automated, carrying scientific equipment instead of astronauts. Imagine the fender (dust guard) on one of the four tyres fell off and sprayed lunar soil all over the scientific equipment and that equipment overheated and failed. Now, imagine there are astronauts who could repair that damage, ensuring the success of the mission. That did happen to Apollo 17. Since (according to Wikipedia) it was an astronaut that broke it in the first place, your argument is not as convincing as was presumably intended. -- (c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME. Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms and links; Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc. No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News. |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
On 7/05/2012 4:23 AM, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In sci.space.station igpond.com, Sat, 5 May 2012 10:47:20, Alan Erskine posted: Automated spacecraft don't answer questions. When something simple goes wrong with them, they are useless. Imagine the Apollo Lunar Rover being automated, carrying scientific equipment instead of astronauts. Imagine the fender (dust guard) on one of the four tyres fell off and sprayed lunar soil all over the scientific equipment and that equipment overheated and failed. Now, imagine there are astronauts who could repair that damage, ensuring the success of the mission. That did happen to Apollo 17. Since (according to Wikipedia) it was an astronaut that broke it in the first place, your argument is not as convincing as was presumably intended. I'll counter that by saying that, regardless of why the damage occured, it was having people on-the-spot that fixed it. I also bring to your attention this document: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/LRV_Fender_Extensions.pdf about LRV fender extension problems and point to the A-15 LRV. The crew didn't notice any damage and probably didn't do it themselves. Also, the extensions from the A-17 LRV were returned to Earth for tests, so they must have been easily removeable. |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
"Dr J R Stockton" wrote in message . invalid... In sci.space.station message igpond.com, Sat, 5 May 2012 10:47:20, Alan Erskine posted: Automated spacecraft don't answer questions. When something simple goes wrong with them, they are useless. Imagine the Apollo Lunar Rover being automated, carrying scientific equipment instead of astronauts. Imagine the fender (dust guard) on one of the four tyres fell off and sprayed lunar soil all over the scientific equipment and that equipment overheated and failed. Now, imagine there are astronauts who could repair that damage, ensuring the success of the mission. That did happen to Apollo 17. Since (according to Wikipedia) it was an astronaut that broke it in the first place, your argument is not as convincing as was presumably intended. Not really. Consider: w/o humans present, you can't fix problems only work around them (generally). With humans present, yes, you may break things you wouldn't break otherwise, but now, you have the option of fixing them. So while the failures modes increase, the success modes greatly increase. Doesn't matter if in this case astronaut broke it or not. The point is, regardless of how it broke, w/o an astronaut it could not have been fixed. -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
On 5/5/2012 3:16 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
If you want to explore the Moon, well we retrieved FAR more moon rocks via Apollo than the Soviets did via their unmanned program. In addition, I think one can easily argue the QUALITY is far better. If you posit the technology available to use in 1960 yes no question. However were 50 years further down the road. Not only that but only studies have been done to suggest what *could* be done with Lunar robotics. A really intensive program to do tele-robotic study of the Moon is yet to be put forward. I think for a fraction of 60's dollars spent to do Apollo we could today get something really substantial off the ground. AND we would not have a 50 year drought of NO surface missions in the aftermath of the program. Just my 2 cents... Dave |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
In article , nospam@
127.0.0.1 says... On 5/5/2012 3:16 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote: If you want to explore the Moon, well we retrieved FAR more moon rocks via Apollo than the Soviets did via their unmanned program. In addition, I think one can easily argue the QUALITY is far better. If you posit the technology available to use in 1960 yes no question. However were 50 years further down the road. Not only that but only studies have been done to suggest what *could* be done with Lunar robotics. A really intensive program to do tele-robotic study of the Moon is yet to be put forward. I think for a fraction of 60's dollars spent to do Apollo we could today get something really substantial off the ground. AND we would not have a 50 year drought of NO surface missions in the aftermath of the program. Just my 2 cents... But there has been, and still is, *no* political will to fund such a thing. No Buck Rogers, no bucks. Jeff -- " Ares 1 is a prime example of the fact that NASA just can't get it up anymore... and when they can, it doesn't stay up long. " - tinker |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
... In article , nospam@ 127.0.0.1 says... On 5/5/2012 3:16 PM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote: If you want to explore the Moon, well we retrieved FAR more moon rocks via Apollo than the Soviets did via their unmanned program. In addition, I think one can easily argue the QUALITY is far better. If you posit the technology available to use in 1960 yes no question. However were 50 years further down the road. Not only that but only studies have been done to suggest what *could* be done with Lunar robotics. A really intensive program to do tele-robotic study of the Moon is yet to be put forward. I think for a fraction of 60's dollars spent to do Apollo we could today get something really substantial off the ground. AND we would not have a 50 year drought of NO surface missions in the aftermath of the program. Just my 2 cents... But there has been, and still is, *no* political will to fund such a thing. No Buck Rogers, no bucks. Jeff Further, even in 50 years, we haven't solved problems like speed of light delays. At the distance of the Moon it's marginally possible to operate a rover in near real-time. And to get the quality of a Mark I eyeball on the scene, you'd need a great deal of bandwidth. This takes mass and energy. Granted, that part may be a bit easier today than then, but probably not by much. For Mars, you simply can't do real-time "driving"/etc. At best you can do "look, move, wait, repeat". This greatly limits the speed at which a traverse can be made. (in fact this is a huge reason the MER rovers have gone only as far as they have.) The alternative is some sort of AI. the problem, despite the belief of many, AI still isn't as good as the human Mark I brain when it comes down to things like, "Oh that looks 'interesting'". Keep in mind the Apollo program, especially the later missions spent a good deal of time training the astronauts to be field geologists. They wanted trained people there to get as much science as possible. To the point that on the last mission, they swapped out the LM pilot with an actually trained field geologist in order to better enhance the science return. In reality, probably any future missions to Mars or other spots off-world will be much in the Apollo model. General observations by unmanned craft (with more advanced tech than we had in the 60s), think Orbiter and Ranger, followed by landers where applicable (think Surveyor) followed by gradually more advanced crewed missions. In fact, you'll notice that this is much the model that NASA is following when it comes to Mars. The DO hope for a sample return mission, but the date keeps getting pushed back and the total mass isn't really all that great. And what Jeff says is true. So many people are caught up in the original quote (I think Thomas Wolfe originated it in The Right Stuff, but he may have been quoting earlier folks), that folks never think of the reverse, but very much the reverse is true to. For many reasons, w/o Buck Rogers, it's often hard to get the bucks. (Most of the US Lunar program in the 60s simply would NOT have occurred if it was not for the Apollo landings). -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
On 8/05/2012 6:48 PM, Brian Gaff wrote:
Well as I said, I do not agree. The things to be done for planetary missions with people are great still. How many days has a human survived outside the Earths protective magnetic bubble? The kind of answers may well come if the moon was used for space station mark 2, but you will need a big rocket under the current technology to get it built I fancy. Maybe if we ever do understand mass and gravity, we can try some other ways. The issues just now are that energy is the limiting factor when going places, when you break it all down. Brian You don't need a big rocket at all. Project Horizon from the '50's/'60's would have used the Saturn II which had a paylod of up to 32 tonnes. The Falcon Heavy has about half the payload of the Saturn V and is much less expensive per kg to orbit. You just need a few more _smaller_ LVs and some brains on how to get things up to the Moon and also to use what's already there. |
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Is the ISS a giant waste of money?
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