Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Space Exploration in the 21st Century
 
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You have heard about planetary resources and the first commercial flight
to the ISS by the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX. Is this a new step forward into commercial space exploration? Or a step back into the orbit? The first man landed on the moon already 40 years ago. I am just reading 'Carrying the Fire' from Michael Collins, an impressive book about a tremendous achivement in an exciting time. Although nobody has repeated this success in the last 4 decades, space exploration of the solar system with robots and rovers will certainly continue. Human space exploration is much more difficult, and I am not sure if it is the right path. Space veterans like Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are of course supporters of manned space flight. What do you think? There is something profoundly affecting about these spacecrafts, spaceships and the other technical marvels from rocket science. Do we need humans to control them? -J. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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It depends on what your implicit and explicit goals are.
If you start from 'efficiently find out cool stuff' or 'more knowledge is good' you get one kind of answer. If you start from 'ask better questions and inform theory and understanding' you get another kind of answer. If you start from 'get better at making really complex things' you get another kind of answer. If you start from 'protect the planet' you get another kind of answer. If you start from 'make epic quantities of money' you get another kind of answer. If you start from 'inspire more kids to go into science' you get another kind of answer. If you start from 'extend the range of human experience by exploring strange new worlds' you get another kind of answer. So, what do you wanna do? C. On 5/28/12 12:09 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > You have heard about planetary resources and the first commercial > flight to the ISS by the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX. Is this a new > step forward into commercial space exploration? Or a step back into > the orbit? The first man landed on the moon already 40 years ago. I am > just reading 'Carrying the Fire' from Michael Collins, an impressive > book about a tremendous achivement in an exciting time. Although > nobody has repeated this success in the last 4 decades, space > exploration of the solar system with robots and rovers will certainly > continue. Human space exploration is much more difficult, and I am not > sure if it is the right path. Space veterans like Armstrong, Aldrin > and Collins are of course supporters of manned space flight. What do > you think? There is something profoundly affecting about these > spacecrafts, spaceships and the other technical marvels from rocket > science. Do we need humans to control them? > > -J. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Administrator
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-5
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
You have heard about planetary resources and the first commercial flight to the ISS by the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX. Is this a new step forward into commercial space exploration? Or a step back into the orbit? The first man landed on the moon already 40 years ago. I am just reading 'Carrying the Fire' from Michael Collins, an impressive book about a tremendous achivement in an exciting time. Although nobody has repeated this success in the last 4 decades, space exploration of the solar system with robots and rovers will certainly continue. Human space exploration is much more difficult, and I am not sure if it is the right path. Space veterans like Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are of course supporters of manned space flight. What do you think? There is something profoundly affecting about these spacecrafts, spaceships and the other technical marvels from rocket science. Do we need humans to control them? I like the NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) approach
It defines phases and capabilities with both maned and un-maned missions. The recent SpaceX mission was COTS 2
.. just one of many COTS objectives, for example The COTS missions look like:
As wonderful as exploring the solar system and beyond has been, I like the new "practical" approach the new commercial ventures are taking. Mining the moon and asteroids and using them on in-orbit or L5 to start living in and constructing in space.
I think ultimately this will get us on Mars and on the next star soonest. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Not seeing much of a pure commercial story for BEO. COTS isn't
aimed at that. So right now BEO (fuel depot at L2, manned asteroid
visits, Mars) is Orion/SLS-centric and conjecture over beer. My
feeling is that COTS is there to guarantee that we have the
industrial base to get to LEO whenever we want to and to free up
NASA to concentrate on more deep-space (manned and unmanned) stuff.
I will be happy to stand corrected.
Carl On 5/28/12 2:24 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Administrator
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This BEO?
I think we agree: let COTS take care of the current stuff now that the shuttle is no more, and let BEO projects be NASA's goal.
-- Owen
On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Carl Tollander <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Yeah, that kind of BEO.
Or This: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/03/nasa-exploration-roadmap-evaluation-crewed-missions-asteroids/ I personally might prefer a bit more elbow room, but hey, one could always go hang out in the SEV or the Orion between jaunts. Folks like Bigelow could say they could do that, and there would be prettier pictures, but they don't have the chops. Yet. Granted that they will do other cool things on the way to getting those chops, but not yet. SpaceX got some cheeze to the space station, and they should be proud of that, but a demo is not yet an operational program. Carl On 5/28/12 9:11 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: This BEO? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Space Exploration in the 21st Century
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Interesting. The Deep Space Habitat (DSH) for Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) exploration seems to be made of ISS parts and modules. Carl, have you been working for NASA or a NASA contractor? You seem to have a deeper knowledge of the topic? Practical approaches are always good. It is important to keep space on the radar now that all Space Shuttles are retired. One reason is that we recognize how fragile the earth really is only if we look at it from space. From a scientific perspective, unmanned spacecrafts like the new Curiosity rover on Mars are probably the best way to explore new worlds and to find out new things. They are probably not the best tool to make epic quantities of money. Mining the moon and the asteroids becomes feasible if the resources on earth are nearly exploited and used up. There is no oil in space, though, since it has organic origins. What would Buzz say ( the real Buzz, see https://twitter.com/#!/therealbuzz ) ? Now on to Mars, probably. -J. Am 29.05.2012 05:16, schrieb Carl Tollander: Yeah, that kind of BEO. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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