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#61
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
In article TywVg.8$i84.2@trnddc01, David Spain wrote:
Of course, I don't expect that this fact will make the politics of launching a nuclear engine much easier. Oh it will happen. It's just that manned space exploration is passing away from the democracies that are too narcissistic to care. Nonsense. What we've seen so far (and what NASA is trying to return to) is just incidental dabbling. The days of real space exploration by free men still lie ahead, and in fact are getting pretty close. The cartoons are ending, and the curtain is about to go up on the main feature. If all this sounds bizarre and fantastic, you need to stop thinking in terms of the socialist dream -- spaceflight for the glory of the almighty state, the way NASA does it -- and start considering the sort of space exploration that free people might do for their own reasons. It's already possible to fly in space for any reason you think sufficient, if you've got the price of the ticket. It hasn't worked out quite the way we thought -- who would have *imagined* a world in which the only commercial spaceline requires you to learn Russian to get a seat assignment?!? -- and it's too damned expensive, but these nuisances will change soon, when real competition begins. NASA will never, ever put men on Mars. Their target date for it is receding more than a year per year. But the first footprints on Mars almost certainly will be those of free men. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#62
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
In article %%wVg.91$Gp4.61@trnddc08, David Spain wrote:
"I feel comfortable when we go through these kind of things," Brevard County emergency management chief Bob Lay said... I wonder how Mr. Lay would have felt had he gotten a different "assessment" from those without a vested interest in the mission and an anti-nuclear bias. The significant fact is that those people didn't bother showing up. Their numbers and importance have been vastly exaggerated, in the past, by a handful of noisy extremists. They are disappearing into footnotes in the history books. Prove to me that democratic governments have a good track record of opening frontiers. (I'm *not* talking about freely operating private enterprises). Why do we care about democratic governments, when freely operating private enterprises can do a much better job? -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#63
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
In article ,
Steve Hix wrote: Politics quite possibly *would* have stopped the use of nuclear engines, but they were stopped even earlier by the lack of a mission. It's more than nuclear-thermal engines that have been affected; any kind of nuclear power source in space gets kicked around. Wrong verb tense. They *used to* get kicked around. The nuclear power source for MSL has gone through without a murmur. The only remaining problem is the massive paperwork overheads imposed as a defence against now-nonexistent protests. It may be a little while before people get brave enough to start trimming those back. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#64
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
In article ,
Robert Kolker wrote: Yep, and much the best way to do that is to convert the sunlight to electricity in space, and beam it down as microwaves... For which we do not need a manned space program. For which we need men in space, for the same reason we generally use hands-on machinery to build hydroelectric dams: because in the real world, automation and remote control are not up to such complex jobs. If all you want to do is fly around and snap pictures from afar, robots do that fairly well. People who are optimistic about robots doing much more complex jobs in space in the near future typically have not done any real robotics. Our unmanned programs, by and large, have earned their keep. Not so, our manned programs. The only manned program to date which has tried to do something ambitious in space -- Apollo -- cost about ten times as much as its unmanned contemporaries did, and returned a hundred to a thousand times the results. If that's not earning its keep, what is? (The shuttle is a less happy example, but then, its main purpose was to keep a lot of people employed. It did that very well.) If you want a more modern example, it was big news a week or two ago, when the Opportunity rover reached the edge of Victoria crater. To do this, it has traveled *ten kilometers* in just about three years -- a stupendous accomplishment for a remotely-operated robot. The Apollo 15 crew traveled that far in their first day at Hadley Rille, i.e. about a factor of 1000 higher productivity. (Of course, Opportunity has done more in that time than just travel... but so did Scott and Irwin.) The MERs cost roughly a billion dollars; charge half of that to Opportunity, and we have a wash on productivity per dollar if the first manned Mars expedition costs less than five hundred billion. Even NASA could probably do it for a tenth of that, if the project wasn't managed by JSC. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#65
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
On Sat, 7 Oct 2006 06:38:37 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote: People who are optimistic about robots doing much more complex jobs in space in the near future typically have not done any real robotics. ....Take note, kids: Henry has just given us new .sig fodder! OM -- ]=====================================[ ] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [ ] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [ ] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [ ]=====================================[ |
#66
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
If you want a more modern example, it was big news a week or two ago, when
the Opportunity rover reached the edge of Victoria crater. To do this, it has traveled *ten kilometers* in just about three years -- a stupendous accomplishment for a remotely-operated robot. The Apollo 15 crew traveled that far in their first day at Hadley Rille, i.e. about a factor of 1000 higher productivity. (Of course, Opportunity has done more in that time than just travel... but so did Scott and Irwin.) The MERs cost roughly a billion dollars; charge half of that to Opportunity, and we have a wash on productivity per dollar if the first manned Mars expedition costs less than five hundred billion. Even NASA could probably do it for a tenth of that, if the project wasn't managed by JSC. Did our boys find water on the Moon? If not, they were wasting time and money with regard to building settlements or habitats on the Moon. No water, no colonies or habitats. Bob Kolker |
#67
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
Henry Spencer wrote:
Nonsense. What we've seen so far (and what NASA is trying to return to) is just incidental dabbling. The days of real space exploration by free men still lie ahead, and in fact are getting pretty close. The cartoons are ending, and the curtain is about to go up on the main feature. Yoda says: Do not your breath hold else purple turn you will. The tqx payers will not joyfully submit to being mugged for another Kennedyesque Space Circus and private firms will not fund foolishness. They are profit oriented. Bob Kolker |
#68
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
"Robert Kolker" wrote in message ... Did our boys find water on the Moon? 1. They weren't tasked to do that, because 2. they weren't sent to where the water was expected to be, because 3. the technology at the time wasn't considered reliable enough to do missions much beyond the lunar equator. They weren't expected to find water, so they didn't waste their time looking for it, since they weren't sent to scout for future colonies. *Now*, the technology is sufficiently advanced that it should be fairly safe to visit the lunar poles and farside. |
#69
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
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#70
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nuclear space engine - would it work ??
Henry Spencer wrote:
It hasn't worked out quite the way we thought -- who would have *imagined* a world in which the only commercial spaceline requires you to learn Russian to get a seat assignment?!? Consider the kinds of untempered-individualist-dominated, troubled, fragmented terrestial societies depicted is SF writing with pioneering commercial spaceflight - Heinlein for example. And then consider how much closer post-soviet Russia is to being such a society than the US has been at any point in the space age. Leading edge commercial spaceflight happens in a society where everything has a price; the question is if this (and related benefits) are justification for having to live in such a society. |
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