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US Space program. Whats next?

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  • breakingcontact

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    I know the shuttle program wasn't supposed to last forever, but whats next?

    We have been riding with the Russians but that may end soon.

    Is private sector going to be able to do more than low Earth orbit?

    I think I read that the Apollo program cost up to 5% of GDP people year. Imagine if we spent that now.
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    Sapper740

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    Sucking up to the French I suppose unless Obama's ridiculous directive to promote Moslem participation in space pays off any time soon.
     

    Younggun

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    I would love to see the space program put back in full swing.

    That said, spending is so out of control I doubt we will do anything worth mentioning any time soon and suspect we will fall WAY behind in space exploration. It wasn't too long ago we were talking about a permanent station on the moon, now we don't even have our own car.
     

    shortround

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    The only reason Government was in the Space Business in the first place was because of the NAZI V-1/2 Rockets and the Soviet era "Missile Gap."

    Leave space exploration up to private enterprise and it will bloom as passed on costs drop exponentially.
     

    Younggun

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    Possibly, but for the really cool stuff, where the profit is in knowledge and not monetary gain, I'm not sure how far private enterprise will go.


    I'm not so sure any companies would have funded landing a river on mars, or the voyager probes. International space station probably wouldn't exist either. But I could be wrong and hope I am.
     

    PhulesAu

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    Well I can say they are working on it, NASA that is. But if you could hear the stories, it's amazing we ever got this far...... :facepalm::confused::roflfunny::beat::crash:
     

    TheDan

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    Possibly, but for the really cool stuff, where the profit is in knowledge and not monetary gain, I'm not sure how far private enterprise will go.

    I'm not so sure any companies would have funded landing a river on mars, or the voyager probes. International space station probably wouldn't exist either. But I could be wrong and hope I am.
    Pretty much all scientific revelations in the past have been made by people who didn't do it for the money. Most were independently wealthy or born to old money. There's going to be someone that will do it just because they can. There is some profit to be made from space, tho. If someone could figure out how to mine asteroids it could be amazingly profitable.

    Even if we decide as a society that we want to allocate tax money to space exploration, it would be more efficient to outsource it. Take bids and hold companies accountable to their contracts. Unfortunately the government tends to cock up the outsourcing nearly as much as they do insourcing :p
     

    TheDan

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    Familiar with the Orion project anyone?
    lol, yeah... Neat I idea, but I dunno... Doesn't seem practical. The pusher plate needs to be extremely massive. Plus it's not as simple as just re-using nuclear bombs that are being decommissioned. They have to be made into a shaped charge. It might be feasible for unmanned missions to just deliver heavy equipment into space. I think a thunderwell might be more practical, but I'm not a rocket surgeon.
     

    Younggun

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    Pretty much all scientific revelations in the past have been made by people who didn't do it for the money. Most were independently wealthy or born to old money. There's going to be someone that will do it just because they can. There is some profit to be made from space, tho. If someone could figure out how to mine asteroids it could be amazingly profitable.

    Even if we decide as a society that we want to allocate tax money to space exploration, it would be more efficient to outsource it. Take bids and hold companies accountable to their contracts. Unfortunately the government tends to cock up the outsourcing nearly as much as they do insourcing :p

    That's true, but many weren't nearly as expensive as getting in to space.

    I don't see how we could even consider some of our past endeavors with the current debt and deficit, and space was always about competition, just got lucky with the science stuff fitting.

    I don't see SpaceX doing anything with mars anytime soon, or any other company. Mining asteroids could make money, but only after places like spaceX find a cheap enough way to get off this rock. Then there are tons of other challenges. But hey, we went to the moon flying a ship run with the computing power of a dollar store calculator.

    The cool thing about NASA was, set a goal, and spend billions to make it happen. Profit wasn't part of the equation so it wasn't a matter of monetary return on investment.

    True, some will spend the money because they have it and want to see it happen, but I don't see a moon base being built anytime soon.

    As far as .gov waste, yeah, it sucks. They contract 99% of the work to private sectors and it still sucks.


    The kid in me just hates to see this stuff going away. And it just doesn't have enough profit potential at this point to get any private sector support other than launching satellites.
     

    TheDan

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    That is the thing. If a company were to haul a satellite up they could recoup some of the cost of the flight.
    The payload capacity just isn't there. Not with conventional rockets anyways. You can send a satellite up, or a manned mission, but not both. I still think it's nuts that we have been paying the Russians hundreds of millions for rides. Can't a private company do better with that money?

    As for the broader question of "what's next", manned missions are a thing of the past. At least in our lifetimes. We live in a remote control world, and as automation and robotics gets better so do our tools for space exploration. There's a lot of hype about Titan. Landing a boat on one of Titan's methane lakes is probably a wet dream of many nerds. What would be more interesting to me would be sending a probe to Europa. One that could drill through the crust to sample the liquid water. These things are easy to say, but making landfall on a gas giant's moon would make the Mars rover look like easy sauce.
     

    AcidFlashGordon

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    The future's going to be companies like SpaceX. I honestly have little faith that NASA will ever put another human into space.

    SpaceX has been successful in supplying the ISS and I think they're going to be the private sector group that hits the jackpot in putting people back in space. Branson's Virgin Galactic has made some noises about it but I don't think they're going to be the "space" company that gets us back into the space business, unlike SpaceX which has a much better chance...and record.
     

    Younggun

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    Virgin galactic is more in line with faster travel from point to point on this planet than others I believe. More flying extremely high and fast in the atmosphere that space. Or orbit tourism.
     

    dennisz

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    As far as a shuttle replacement, I have 3 customers that are working on that issue, Space-X with the Dragon capsule, it is designed to carry both supplies and astronauts in a later version. Then we have Sierra-Nevada with their Dream Chaser that looks like a mini space shuttle and lands much the same, then there is the big dog in the competition, Boeing with their "space capsule" looks very much like an old Apollo capsule.
    Nasa is going to pick 2 of the 3 to provide service the ISS, that's in case one of the systems goes tits up and has a failure, they will still have a backup plan.

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