Armstrong lauds another spaceman

Strangely enough, advances in technology may actually work *against*
manned space travel. See:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04y.html


quite true, and we could REALLY do things by reallocating most of the manned
space budget to unmanned operations. I say scrap the shuttle and perhaps ISS,
NOW.

Then reuse the 5 billion a year shuttle budget for unmanned probes...

IT TIME TO CUT OUR LOSSES AND GROUND THE SHUTTLE NOW!

On 14 Sep 2004 21:41:11 -0700, (Eric Moore)
wrote:

Strangely enough, advances in technology may actually work *against*
manned space travel. See:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04y.html

....Jeffrey Bell is, without question, a complete and utter ****wit,
deserving of nothing but ridicule and having his skull caved in with a
2x4 with at least three nails imbedded in the impact end. His
"opinions" are that of your typical tenured "do nothing but whine"
college "perfesser", who can't stand the fact that *they* can't go
into space, so they do everything they can to sway opinion against
-anyone- going in spite.

Bottom Line: He's as much a troll, deserving of derision and bodily
harm, as Bart Sibrel, and the sooner he gets the latter the better.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 12:22:43 -0500, (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
of money. This is fundamental, and will not change.

I wouldn't even say that, I think that the general public just over
estimate the amount of money spent on space today and as a result
don't think we should spend a lot more on it. Doesn't really help when
people start quoting 100 billion dollar price tags for ISS and
trillion dollar mars missions.

Kelly McDonald

Turning the general populace into space enthusiasts *will not happen*, and
plans 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
public enthusiasm is not required.

"Kelly McDonald kellymcdonald@" ;
wrote in message
...
I wouldn't even say that, I think that the general public just over
estimate the amount of money spent on space today and as a result
don't think we should spend a lot more on it. Doesn't really help when
people start quoting 100 billion dollar price tags for ISS and
trillion dollar mars missions.

While the public may overestimate the total amount of money spent by NASA
each year, when they read news articles that quote the total cost of the ISS
program, many feel that the total amount spent on ISS is a waste. This goes
for other programs as well (like the Genesis mission that cost hundreds of
millions of dollars to put a crater in the desert).

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

In sci.space.history Jeff Findley wrote:
"Kelly McDonald kellymcdonald@" ;
wrote in message
...
I wouldn't even say that, I think that the general public just over
estimate the amount of money spent on space today and as a result
don't think we should spend a lot more on it. Doesn't really help when
people start quoting 100 billion dollar price tags for ISS and
trillion dollar mars missions.

While the public may overestimate the total amount of money spent by NASA
each year, when they read news articles that quote the total cost of the ISS
program, many feel that the total amount spent on ISS is a waste. This goes
for other programs as well (like the Genesis mission that cost hundreds of
millions of dollars to put a crater in the desert).

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

Keep in mind that each of these people is thinking "What I could do with these
hundreds of millions of dollars", and conveniently forgetting that there are
(in the US, at least) some 280 million people thinking the same thing, and that
if the price tag were split among them, they would see a windfall of about $5,
wich won't even buy a pack of cigarettes, anymore...

And sorry about the email, Jeff. I hit the wrong key when replying. (Hagbard
hangs a "Kick Me" sign on his back...).

Hagbard

--
Only the madman understands the world.
It is because he understands that he is mad.

FnordNet - http://www.fnordnet.net

(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

[note follow-ups]

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.

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.

Alain Fournier

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
of advances not specifically directed at those things.

Paul

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