Space: What low expectations we have

[Turbinator]

There is an excellent article I found on the sad state of humans in space today. A really good read.


If you have watched 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, we see a PanAm "Orion" shuttle docking with an Earth-orbital space station which has a Hilton hotel, complete with a Howard Johnson's restaurant. That was the prediction of how 2001 would be like when the film was produced in 1968. Today, we have a partially-completed ISS space station, but no hotels or restaurants. The history-making SpaceShipOne has started the effort to develop space tourism. There are still no manned moon bases. [...]

Full Article (and pics): http://blog.case.edu/james.chang/2006/09/01/space_what_low_expectations_we_have

 

[Ark]

It is indeed quite sad that we've given up on truly new ideas. My personal feeling is that NASA's version of the military-industrial complex is too entrenched in their ways and too preoccupied with defending their territory to allow anything to to undercut their monopoly on spaceflight. $500/lb launch costs are NOT in the best interest of the people that make their money building $20m single-use engines.

We had numerous opportunities to build smaller, more economical and cheap spaceplanes. Even recently, with the retirement of the Shuttles, we had an opportunity to reuse existing tech to achieve much cheaper launch rates in a much shorter amount of time. But no, the decision was made to abandon all that in favor of another flashy piece of tech that has to be designed and built almost completely from scratch in what has to be the single most expensive way they could possibly come up with.

NASA has become an organization of fat old men fighting tooth and nail to keep things the way they are while Congress sits by and lets their budgets dwindle because they aren't delivering anything they can show to their constituencies as being worth the cost. Now they don't even blink when they say it'll take longer to get back to the moon than it did in the 1960s when we didn't have a clue how to do it.

I'm still fairly sure that I'll see people walking the moon again in my lifetime. Unfortunately it's looking more and more likely that they'll be flying a Russian or Chinese flag and I'll be hearing their iconic first words through a translator.

Or, worse, their flag and spacecraft will be plastered with Coke logos.

Where can I buy SpaceX stock?

EDIT: I do hate to rip on NASA so mercilessly, but they've fallen very far from the "future of humanity" idealism of Apollo. Even if most of that idealism was motivated by the red scare.

 

[Urwumpe]

Of course the vision of an artist is more important then the work of thousands of engineers. Clarke and Kubrick had the lucky situation that they don't need to do engineering, their spacecraft worked by pure Hollywood magic. The whole show did not even have a single thought about "can it fail" - real spacecraft do fail, if you don't do proper engineering, and they can still fail if you do.

I don't think that the rant in the blog or the posts here are justified at all. It is just the laziest kind of stuff. Of course the Shuttle is not optimal. But why is that so? What people always forget in their sci.-fi insanity is the real achievement of the "oh so expensive shuttle" - NASA has higher launch rates than during Apollo and finances more missions aside of the manned spacecraft, despite having only one tenth of the budget. I can't tell what would have been possible with the Apollo era budgets in the past 40 years, but I am sure that the many compromises that made the shuttle flawed would never have appeared. NASA could have build the shuttle without the Airforce money. There would not have been an ISS. NASA wouldn't have left the moon for 50 years.

Honestly: If it would be a easy no risk market to go into space, everybody would do just that. Without NASA using a part of their money for offering transport contracts, building a launcher wouldn't be attractive to any company.

And NASAs idealism ... what a great joke. NASAs only idealism at that time was "Get the job done as good as possible".

 

[T.Neo]

Of course the vision of an artist is more important then the work of thousands of engineers.

It is indeed far more important; it inspires thousands of children to grow to be those engineers.

Clarke and Kubrick had the lucky situation that they don't need to do engineering, their spacecraft worked by pure Hollywood magic.

No, they had the lucky situation that they didn't need to do politics.

Politics is the issue when it comes to spaceflight, not engineering.

 

[Andy44]

Urwumpe is right. People see a movie in which all sorts of really expensive cool space stuff is shown and then they get all pouty and angry because it doesn't come true for real. And they all expect someone else to pay for it.

It's like those idiots on the news who are feeling suicidal because the fake planet in Avatar isn't a real place and they can't really go there.

 

[T.Neo]

People see a movie in which all sorts of really expensive cool space stuff is shown and then they get all pouty and angry because it doesn't come true for real.

Too true, but spaceflight still isn't being done to it's full potential.

I found the portrayal of spaceflight in 2001 very realistic for the 1960s...

And they all expect someone else to pay for it.

They must be idiots, then.

Your tax dollars pay for the space program, whether it's expensive or not. The impact on individual taxpayers that the space program makes is actually very small.

It's like those idiots on the news who are feeling suicidal because the fake planet in Avatar isn't a real place and they can't really go there.

This is news to me. Got a citation? :lol:

We can't even visit real planets anyway, btw. Even when our level of technology allows us to do so.

 

[willy88]

This is news to me. Got a citation? :lol:

We can't even visit real planets anyway, btw. Even when our level of technology allows us to do so.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

I personally think that District 9 should be considered more depressing than Avatar, consider that it's based on real events.

 

[fredericva]

This is news to me. Got a citation? :lol:

Try this: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html

 

[T.Neo]

Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible

:rofl:

Sounds like one big marketing ploy to me...

I personally think that District 9 should be considered more depressing than Avatar, consider that it's based on real events.

Indeed. And I have to live those real events...

It isn't fun, or funny.

 

[Ghostrider]

That's nothing. Remember when we found out Earth was a nuked-out wasteland and had been inhabited by Cylons? That was depressing. Made everybody go emo.

 

[fredericva]

:rofl:

Sounds like one big marketing ploy to me...

Sure sounds like it, though there might be some truth to that article.

If there's already a psychological emptyness in your life, I can imagine a movie as stimulating as Avatar may certainly fill some of that void. To realize none of it is real might be hard for some people.

...but suicidal thoughts after a movie? :blink:


More on topic: where is my flying car?

 

[T.Neo]

If there's already a psychological emptyness in your life, I can imagine a movie as stimulating as Avatar may certainly fill some of that void. To realize none of it is real might be hard for some people.

Indeed. From reading through that thread (and yes I DID read part of it- I don't reccomend it ) it seems that most of those people have psychological instabilities and are the usual "eco-nutters", so I can see why Avatar struck a chord with them.

More on topic: where is my flying car?

Why not use your land car? Works five times better at half the price.

Now as for the holiday on Mars I want to take- a billion-dollar nearly-out-of-service LEO-only space shuttle isn't going to get me there...

 

[Ghostrider]

Now as for the holiday on Mars I want to take- a billion-dollar nearly-out-of-service LEO-only space shuttle isn't going to get me there...

Memory implants are cheaper. Have you heard about ReKall? They can remember it for you wholesale.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

PanAm "Orion" shuttle docking with an Earth-orbital space station....

...and here's PanAm today, Kubrik being a bit off the mark I think...

http://www.panamacademy.com/

That was the prediction of how 2001 would be like when the film was produced in 1968....

However, talking of predictions, I read this book in 1984....

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

...so you can imagine my first comments when Skype came along.

 

[Ark]

Memory implants are cheaper. Have you heard about ReKall? They can remember it for you wholesale.

Mutants not included.

 

[T.Neo]

Sounds fun.

 

[ikrase]

I for my part would be willing to spend plenty of tax on space. But we don't have to. Clearly the military budget should be at least somewhat smaller?

I say we need a crash program solely for cost of space lift.

 

[Urwumpe]

if the military budget of the USA would be only as large as the military budgets of the three biggest other military budgets in the world, it would already be a big achievement... currently it is bigger than the ten next biggest military budgets together.

And look what you achieved with it in the past 50 years...The UK won against Argentina for a fraction of the money the USA need still for pacifying Iraq...

 

[RisingFury]

This article sucked big time. A full page of whining and *****ing.

---------- Post added at 04:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:44 PM ----------

I found the portrayal of spaceflight in 2001 very realistic for the 1960s...

In my experience, predictions tend to go horribly wrong:

 

[Quick_Nick]

Alright, no one has pointed it out yet, so I will.
That picture of the 'future of computers' is fake. It's an old picture from a submarine with an added caption. I actually first saw that pointed out in an Orbiter forum thread a loooong time ago.