Where I mean is that requires a long term effort with lots of up front
spending to build the infrastructure for someone else to profit politically
two decades later probably isn't happening, which soaks to the same
scenario for all large scale procurements. Cancelation of Constellation
proved that when you have an administration with different priorities...
The Cold War allowed some of that to be subordinated to the clear red
menace in a way jihad largely hasn't (to the nature of asymmetrical
warfare), though the Abrams in particular proved to defy the conventional
tactical wisdom. Ask any Marine at the battle of Fallujah of the MBT was
obsolete. I have first hand accounts from tankers who were there how very
much in demand for their services.
Follow on missions then could have used chemical rockets for sustainment,
perhaps. Modern sub kiloton devices with clean secondaries to get to LEO
should alleviate fallout concerns.
For the same money & effort expended on Apollo, we could have crews of
dozens with payloads in the thousands of tons to get Mars & back without
worrying about the most efficient course.
Then there was the whole boomer phenomenon which only stoked the Soviet
paranoia and vice versa and could have been entirely avoided. Everyone
would have seen an Orion battleship or two parked at L1 and known exactly
what it was doing. In any event, it's a superior option to MAD as it could
intercept ICBM on boost as well as have a practical purpose for dealing
with near earth objects, as well as making every space station to date look
like toys while putting boots on Mars at the same time.
Whatever hindsight may be, we are faced with a nuclear arsenal a decade
passed its shelf life & the two projects could dovetail nicely. Invite
participation from the Russians & Chinese to mitigate militarization and
treaty concerns, maybe...
On Fri, Mar 6, 2015, 11:28 [Traveller_TNE] <
> wrote:
>
>
> Relative in general, but they're uniquely qualified to push stuff off
> terra firma into orbit. Once you get a whole pile of stuff there you can
> do all kinds of things.
>
> We've had the discussion before that Orion, for its technical potential,
> got tangled up in non-proliferation, non-militarization of space, etc.,
> and I don't think it stood a chance. And now, with 20010911 still tattooed
> to our eyelids (which I still think of as a low-tech version of Virus)
> it's even harder to see people lofting nukes into orbit for peaceful
> purposes.
>
> I'd like to see someone put a self-replicating machine up on the Moon that
> uses materials there to multiply itself, but it would have to have a
> broadcaster on it that would regularly break into terrestrial TV and radio
> programming and say, "Nyaah, nyaah, I've now built XX tons of ready-to use
> machine parts, but you can't get up here and catch me, you pussies."
>
>
>
> > I'm convinced chemical rockets is a relative waste of time with pathetic
> > thrust to weight. We should have done Orion instead of Apollo and could
> > have owned the entire inner solar system, instead of a transitory moon
> > hop.
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 6, 2015, 09:59 [Traveller_TNE] <
> > > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> In a message dated 3/6/2015 12:00:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> >> writes:
> >>
> >> It's amazing how many false economies we consistently fall for, whether
> >> it's JSF or the idea of a "reusable" box to carry things to orbit that
> >> weighs three or four times as much as its contents. When you realize how
> >> comparable Shuttle was to Saturn V, both about 1/2 billion $ per launch,
> >> 6.8 million pounds thrust vs. 7.5 million, and realize that S-V could
> >> put
> >> about 2.5 times as much mass into LEO (and for Shuttle only 1/4 of that
> >> was payload, 3/4 was "reusable" box) and twice as much to the Moon as
> >> Shuttle could to LEO, the false economies are appalling. If you figure
> >> 135
> >> shuttle launches times the waste mass of the orbiter itself, which was
> >> almost identical to the mass of Skylab, that's 135 Skylabs we could have
> >> put up, or almost 24 ISSs.
> >>
> >> That's because post-Apollo NASA was a Jobs-Program, not a Space Program.
> >> A lot of money (for the time) was thrown at beating the Soviets in the
> >> space race and key Congress-critters made sure they brought some of that
> >> money home. There was no national political need to push beyond the
> >> Moon
> >> since nobody was going to solve the technical difficulties of getting to
> >> Mars anytime soon. However, they weren't about to let that gravy train
> >> end... somehow I don't think the 'reusable39; efficiency argument was the
> >> primary reason NASA budgeting for the project was approved. Granted
> >> iirc
> >> it led to the Challenger disaster (the boosters had to be shipped by
> >> rail
> >> since they were made in a key C-critters district so O-rings were
> >> required
> >> since the boosters were too long).
> >>
> >> While China may push that space race button or some other black swan
> >> event
> >> occurs (making space projects a factor in voting), I'd put my bet that
> >> more
> >> and more of the heavy lifting will be seen on the private sector
> >> projects
> >> in the future. To make space development stick (beyond what we have) I
> >> think it has to have a direct profit motive beyond snapping up a
> >> government
> >> contract\subsidy. That just isn't going to happen in a government
> >> directed
> >> project... the political nature of the beast creates way too many
> >> economic
> >> mal-incentives. For historical example, the only transcontinental
> >> railroad
> >> not to go bankrupt was the only one not built using public subsidies
> >> (the
> >> Great Northern Railway...now merged into the BNSF Railway). All the
> >> other
> >> transcontinental railways (all major receivers of public funds) went
> >> belly-up.
> >>
> >> It may take a little longer, but I'd rather see profit motive and
> >> economic
> >> self-interest drive space development rather than the government good
> >> idea
> >> fairy getting involved. It's more likely to stick that way.
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>
spending to build the infrastructure for someone else to profit politically
two decades later probably isn't happening, which soaks to the same
scenario for all large scale procurements. Cancelation of Constellation
proved that when you have an administration with different priorities...
The Cold War allowed some of that to be subordinated to the clear red
menace in a way jihad largely hasn't (to the nature of asymmetrical
warfare), though the Abrams in particular proved to defy the conventional
tactical wisdom. Ask any Marine at the battle of Fallujah of the MBT was
obsolete. I have first hand accounts from tankers who were there how very
much in demand for their services.
Follow on missions then could have used chemical rockets for sustainment,
perhaps. Modern sub kiloton devices with clean secondaries to get to LEO
should alleviate fallout concerns.
For the same money & effort expended on Apollo, we could have crews of
dozens with payloads in the thousands of tons to get Mars & back without
worrying about the most efficient course.
Then there was the whole boomer phenomenon which only stoked the Soviet
paranoia and vice versa and could have been entirely avoided. Everyone
would have seen an Orion battleship or two parked at L1 and known exactly
what it was doing. In any event, it's a superior option to MAD as it could
intercept ICBM on boost as well as have a practical purpose for dealing
with near earth objects, as well as making every space station to date look
like toys while putting boots on Mars at the same time.
Whatever hindsight may be, we are faced with a nuclear arsenal a decade
passed its shelf life & the two projects could dovetail nicely. Invite
participation from the Russians & Chinese to mitigate militarization and
treaty concerns, maybe...
On Fri, Mar 6, 2015, 11:28 [Traveller_TNE] <
> wrote:
>
>
> Relative in general, but they're uniquely qualified to push stuff off
> terra firma into orbit. Once you get a whole pile of stuff there you can
> do all kinds of things.
>
> We've had the discussion before that Orion, for its technical potential,
> got tangled up in non-proliferation, non-militarization of space, etc.,
> and I don't think it stood a chance. And now, with 20010911 still tattooed
> to our eyelids (which I still think of as a low-tech version of Virus)
> it's even harder to see people lofting nukes into orbit for peaceful
> purposes.
>
> I'd like to see someone put a self-replicating machine up on the Moon that
> uses materials there to multiply itself, but it would have to have a
> broadcaster on it that would regularly break into terrestrial TV and radio
> programming and say, "Nyaah, nyaah, I've now built XX tons of ready-to use
> machine parts, but you can't get up here and catch me, you pussies."
>
>
>
> > I'm convinced chemical rockets is a relative waste of time with pathetic
> > thrust to weight. We should have done Orion instead of Apollo and could
> > have owned the entire inner solar system, instead of a transitory moon
> > hop.
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 6, 2015, 09:59 [Traveller_TNE] <
> > > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> In a message dated 3/6/2015 12:00:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> >> writes:
> >>
> >> It's amazing how many false economies we consistently fall for, whether
> >> it's JSF or the idea of a "reusable" box to carry things to orbit that
> >> weighs three or four times as much as its contents. When you realize how
> >> comparable Shuttle was to Saturn V, both about 1/2 billion $ per launch,
> >> 6.8 million pounds thrust vs. 7.5 million, and realize that S-V could
> >> put
> >> about 2.5 times as much mass into LEO (and for Shuttle only 1/4 of that
> >> was payload, 3/4 was "reusable" box) and twice as much to the Moon as
> >> Shuttle could to LEO, the false economies are appalling. If you figure
> >> 135
> >> shuttle launches times the waste mass of the orbiter itself, which was
> >> almost identical to the mass of Skylab, that's 135 Skylabs we could have
> >> put up, or almost 24 ISSs.
> >>
> >> That's because post-Apollo NASA was a Jobs-Program, not a Space Program.
> >> A lot of money (for the time) was thrown at beating the Soviets in the
> >> space race and key Congress-critters made sure they brought some of that
> >> money home. There was no national political need to push beyond the
> >> Moon
> >> since nobody was going to solve the technical difficulties of getting to
> >> Mars anytime soon. However, they weren't about to let that gravy train
> >> end... somehow I don't think the 'reusable39; efficiency argument was the
> >> primary reason NASA budgeting for the project was approved. Granted
> >> iirc
> >> it led to the Challenger disaster (the boosters had to be shipped by
> >> rail
> >> since they were made in a key C-critters district so O-rings were
> >> required
> >> since the boosters were too long).
> >>
> >> While China may push that space race button or some other black swan
> >> event
> >> occurs (making space projects a factor in voting), I'd put my bet that
> >> more
> >> and more of the heavy lifting will be seen on the private sector
> >> projects
> >> in the future. To make space development stick (beyond what we have) I
> >> think it has to have a direct profit motive beyond snapping up a
> >> government
> >> contract\subsidy. That just isn't going to happen in a government
> >> directed
> >> project... the political nature of the beast creates way too many
> >> economic
> >> mal-incentives. For historical example, the only transcontinental
> >> railroad
> >> not to go bankrupt was the only one not built using public subsidies
> >> (the
> >> Great Northern Railway...now merged into the BNSF Railway). All the
> >> other
> >> transcontinental railways (all major receivers of public funds) went
> >> belly-up.
> >>
> >> It may take a little longer, but I'd rather see profit motive and
> >> economic
> >> self-interest drive space development rather than the government good
> >> idea
> >> fairy getting involved. It's more likely to stick that way.
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>