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[Rant] Why I dislike Space Enthusiasts; Even though I arguably am one?
Topic Started: Jan 15 2012, 11:14 AM (3,281 Views)
Kamidio
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You'd think for a people obsessed with owning everything that the Brit's wouldn't been the first to space AND the moon.
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If you think of yourself as a space advocate, T. Neo, I'd like to see who the opposition are... :whatever:

I do not understand what you imply by an economic deus ex machina, but there is at least one area in which spatial technology is already quite profitable and can be expected to advance in the near future - satellites. 80 to 120 satellites are launched annually, yet the current cost for doing so ranges from $50 to $400 million dollars, and to this end any means of lowering the price tag would be most welcome. Any cheaper means of delivering satellites into space would in turn allow for easier cargo transport, and with sufficient cost decrease may eventually open the door on space exploration. If you really feel that technologies will not "magically" appear to make possible the impossible (wherein you confuse the impossible for the unfeasible), then I would not expect satellites to "magically" go obsolete, making space exploits the only means to progress in this field.

One such means is the orbital elevator, a fantastic scheme which could lower the costs of lifting an object from geosynchronous orbit from roughly $25000 to only a few dollars per kilo, and the Edwards cable seeding design only requires an advancement allowing mass production of carbon nanotube consisting the tether to be made possible (it is however vastly more expensive than other methods - $20 to $40 billion dollars compared to $6 and $12 billion, some say even less). Project owners would probably initially charge users prices not much different from before in order to refund the project (say four-fifths the cost rather than one-thousandth), but even this minor reduction should be enough to attract all potential customers given the numbers involved (meaning to say those who would be willing to pay for the higher prices for launch aboard rocketship or shuttle). Assuming the lowest numbers (80 satellites per year at a cost of $40 million each), $3.2 billion dollars could be recovered annually (not counting other cargoes or the savings for spaceflight missions -NASA claims that the space shuttle could be launched into geosynchronous orbit for a mere $17700) - admittedly not enough to pay for the most expensive schemes in reasonable timeframes, but quickly covering the costs of the less exorbitant, and the proposed Low Earth Orbit elevator could begin operation even before its completion (at which point it would gradually be extended to greater heights). Once accounted for prices would plummet to rates more similar to airlines, and eventual expansion into space would be made possible (say starting with orbital industries such as microgravity refineries, which could produce finer alloys seeing as mixed metals won't settle, with similar options available in medicine, following up with solar or microwave power plants unimpeded by our atmosphere).

In the meantime I'll be working on profitable schemes for asteroid mining (through a combination of orbital elevator and fusion thrusters I've almost got it). Resources in space may be disparate, but ever-increasing demand will lead to their usage, particularly given what lengths we'll go to on Earth for rare metals and oil (not that we'll find any of the latter off-world). Past a point they will be easier to tap there than here (I'd like to see you pull metal out of the Earth's mantle with the resources of its surface alone), and nations may even push ahead so as to circumvent political and economic control due to another's monopoly on select items (such as China's near monopoly on Rare Earth Metals, seeing as it owns 97% of current global production).

The greatest puzzle is the topic itself. There is nothing inspirational here, it is a clear invitation for venting or flame war given its denouncement of an opinion held by (clearly most) users attending this forum, and does not do the justice of providing an alternative. Why did you post this, T. Neo? You do not believe in the space future, which leads me to believe either that you feel mankind will not survive long enough to develop the technology to allow it (which is more a matter of personal opinion than science, leading to yet another unsolvable and likely destructive debate), or that we will be sated solely by what the Earth can provide for extremely extended periods of time. In that case I would like to know your views of mankind's future, seeing as thus far you have given no clues to it.
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He said he used to think of himself as a space advocate.
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I've never understood those people who think finding aliens will change humanity forever. People will just shrug, talk about it for a few days and then forget about it.


That's the feeling I tend to get too. I mean, landing on the Moon was a big deal for a long time... it was a big deal when it happened... it happened, +40 years later, and the actual fact that humans landed on the Moon, pretty much means nothing to modern society.

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But speaking of single stage spacecraft, Skylon looks rather promising. Of course being a British aerospace project, its budget will be slashed and nothing will ever come of it. Still, it might point others in the right direction.


Skylon fares better than other single stage spacecraft because it uses air-breathing propulsion up to around Mach 5 and 20 kilometers, and then switching to rocket propulsion. Since the airbreathing part of the flight requires less fuel (and no onboard oxygen), the vehicle needs to carry less propellant and is at a physical advantage to other SSTO concepts.

It is very interesting technologically... to operate the engines in airbreathing mode to Mach 5, the air is cooled (indirectly, using a helium loop) using the cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel. As for the price points, Reaction Engines doesn't have any track record with this kind of stuff, so it's kind of hard to say... they're making some really tall orders here, so there's obviously good reason to be skeptical.

Sadly Skylon has no budget yet, nobody has footed the 20 billion dollars (or pounds, I forget) that has been said would be required to develop the system. There has only been a small trickle of funding from ESA, and with political vested interests in place, one wonders if it'll ever go beyond that- after all, Arianespace doesn't want to disappear...

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If you think of yourself as a space advocate, T. Neo, I'd like to see who the opposition are...


I used to regard myself as a space advocate. I'm still a space enthusiast, just a disenfranchised one.

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I do not understand what you imply by an economic deus ex machina, but there is at least one area in which spatial technology is already quite profitable and can be expected to advance in the near future - satellites. 80 to 120 satellites are launched annually, yet the current cost for doing so ranges from $50 to $400 million dollars, and to this end any means of lowering the price tag would be most welcome. Any cheaper means of delivering satellites into space would in turn allow for easier cargo transport, and with sufficient cost decrease may eventually open the door on space exploration. If you really feel that technologies will not "magically" appear to make possible the impossible (wherein you confuse the impossible for the unfeasible), then I would not expect satellites to "magically" go obsolete, making space exploits the only means to progress in this field.


Where did you get the figure of 80 to 120 satellites a year? I could believe perhaps 80 satellites per year, based on what I've read for launch rates of Proton, Ariane and the EELVs... but I'm not really following sub-EELV class vehicles that much, or Chinese launches.

But you misunderstand the nature of the satellite launching business. A good sized GEO comsat can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If you take a $80 million launch price (that of Proton) and slash it to $50 or $30 million, it ain't gonna make a whole huge difference as to how many GEO comsats are launched.

Also, for the past several decades, the satellite launching business has pretty much done nothing but further the satellite launching business. It hasn't pressured reduction in launch costs (satellite people have gravitated towards vehicles with lower launch costs, but these are just ones that happen to be more heavily subsidised by the government, and/or be built by countries with lower labour rates), and it hasn't stimulated the "space future". So you pretty much can't expect it to.

Granted, there may be this pent up demand (Elon Musk seems to believe so), but obviously there are limits. Including demand for satellite services. There is only so much demand for communications satellites, for Earth monitoring satellites, for military satellites, etc.

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One such means is the orbital elevator, a fantastic scheme which could lower the costs of lifting an object from geosynchronous orbit from roughly $25000 to only a few dollars per kilo, and the Edwards cable seeding design only requires an advancement allowing mass production of carbon nanotube consisting the tether to be made possible (it is however vastly more expensive than other methods - $20 to $40 billion dollars compared to $6 and $12 billion, some say even less). Project owners would probably initially charge users prices not much different from before in order to refund the project (say four-fifths the cost rather than one-thousandth), but even this minor reduction should be enough to attract all potential customers given the numbers involved (meaning to say those who would be willing to pay for the higher prices for launch aboard rocketship or shuttle). Assuming the lowest numbers (80 satellites per year at a cost of $40 million each), $3.2 billion dollars could be recovered annually (not counting other cargoes or the savings for spaceflight missions -NASA claims that the space shuttle could be launched into geosynchronous orbit for a mere $17700) - admittedly not enough to pay for the most expensive schemes in reasonable timeframes, but quickly covering the costs of the less exorbitant, and the proposed Low Earth Orbit elevator could begin operation even before its completion (at which point it would gradually be extended to greater heights). Once accounted for prices would plummet to rates more similar to airlines, and eventual expansion into space would be made possible (say starting with orbital industries such as microgravity refineries, which could produce finer alloys seeing as mixed metals won't settle, with similar options available in medicine, following up with solar or microwave power plants unimpeded by our atmosphere).


Yeah, Arthur C. Clarke said we'd build a Space Elevator once everyone stopped laughing.

Everyone will start laughing again if we ever try to build a Space Elevator.

There are tons of problems. Starting with the fact that A, we can't mass produce CNTs, and B, even if we could it doesn't mean we could produce a bulk material with their strength.

Then of course you have the issues of actually constructing the elevator (multiple methods have been proposed, but it is probably easier said than done).

Then of course you have to shield the cable from atmospheric corrosion. Your payloads will also spend hours getting to their destination- hours in Earth's radiation belts. If you can design payloads to withstand this, then it will increase the cost of the payloads. It will also affect the cost of the climber cars.

If your climber cars are expendable as with some concepts, you'll have to pay for a new car each time.

You'll need to solve the problem of beaming electricty to the climber cars. You'll need to supply this electricity. Electricity may be cheap, but it's still not free. You also have to factor in the inefficiency of the power beaming system. The less efficient it is, the kWh (and kW) of power you will need. If your platform is based in the ocean (as is the case in some concepts) this will drive up the cost of electrical power.

Not all payloads are going to go to GEO. You have more trouble servicing LEO, Molniya, polar, sun synchronous orbits, etc.

You will probably need far more than $6-12 billion to develop a space elevator. Even more than $20-40 billion is imaginable, considering the difficulties that would need to be surmounted (if such an idea is at all feasible). Compare this to a similar double digit figure for Skylon, which requires some new technology development (for the engines, for example), but nothing seriously radical. You could even have lower R&D costs with a more conservative design (for example, one using expander cycle rocket engines, more conventional tankage, RCS, etc).

You will need to deal with harmonics in the cable, oscillations, etc.

Your cable will be eroded by micrometeoroids and orbital debris (primarily the latter), plus you risk collisions with nonfunctioning satellites, spent rocket stages, etc.

If feasible at all, the elevator concept is by no means guaranteed to reduce launch costs... and especially not guaranteed to enable the 'space future', asteroid mining, or any number of other things.

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In the meantime I'll be working on profitable schemes for asteroid mining (through a combination of orbital elevator and fusion thrusters I've almost got it). Resources in space may be disparate, but ever-increasing demand will lead to their usage, particularly given what lengths we'll go to on Earth for rare metals and oil (not that we'll find any of the latter off-world). Past a point they will be easier to tap there than here (I'd like to see you pull metal out of the Earth's mantle with the resources of its surface alone), and nations may even push ahead so as to circumvent political and economic control due to another's monopoly on select items (such as China's near monopoly on Rare Earth Metals, seeing as it owns 97% of current global production).


Suggestion #1; Cool sounding ideas (i.e. fusion thrusters) don't magically make a scheme profitable. It pays to look deeper into things.

Suggestion #2; Stay away from "fusion thrusters". I learnt this the hard way, when I created an idea for a fusion-propelled passenger vehicle, proudly presented it to the internet, and then learnt that it would fry itself. Proper fusion drives shouldn't have that problem, but even then, they have issues. It is probably cheaper to use solar electric propulsion. And we haven't even created breakeven fusion reactors yet... let alone rockets.

Suggestion #3; Since you claim your scheme for asteroid mining is profitable, please show me your numbers. I want to see! :)

Also, I meant it when I said Earth has more resources than you think. Look at the seafloor, for example. Mining that could be far cheaper than mining an asteroid, even if the concentration of minerals was lower.

And China isn't a boogeyman (I dislike the PRC myself, but they're mislead, not evil. And not comic book supervillains planning to dominate the world and subjugate Eagleland).

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The greatest puzzle is the topic itself. There is nothing inspirational here, it is a clear invitation for venting or flame war given its denouncement of an opinion held by (clearly most) users attending this forum, and does not do the justice of providing an alternative.


Of course there's nothing inspirational here. It's quite depressing. Why does anything have to be inspirational? :|

Also, I didn't really figure that most of the forum held such an opinion, but people here don't seem to hold it as religiously as I have seen people elsewhere do so... I guess it shows that people here are more open minded (or they simply don't care as much about the issue, which sadly equates to pretty much the same thing).

The alternative here is not flashy, it isn't grand, and I probably didn't make it clear enough in my rant. It's about regarding space simply as mediocre, and assessing beneficial activities and uses of it in an entirely objective manner, rather than clouding one's thoughts with a "man must conquer space soon!" mentality.

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leads me to believe either that you feel mankind will not survive long enough to develop the technology to allow it (which is more a matter of personal opinion than science, leading to yet another unsolvable and likely destructive debate), or that we will be sated solely by what the Earth can provide for extremely extended periods of time.


I am no proponent of human extinction, but I don't think technology development is the issue here (my opinion is that the technological ability to do so already exists, but that the impetus to develop it simply does not (or doesn't exist 'enough'). Even if it isn't universally applicable to some things, it is applicable to many others).

Also, you have more or less nailed it with the second one. The issue is that people don't by choice move from a rich environment (i.e. Earth) to a poor environment (i.e. pretty much anywhere else that we know of and a whole bunch of places we don't). Even if people eventually do end up mining asteroids or using energy sources from space, for example, that's no reason for colonisation- those tasks can be done pretty efficiently by automated systems.

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In that case I would like to know your views of mankind's future, seeing as thus far you have given no clues to it.


I have given no clues to it because I have no clue of it. I don't particularly have a particular view of the future of humanity, but there are a few things I think would be very bad or dangerous, and others that could be beneficial and helpful.

And some things that could quite frankly be useless.
Edited by T.Neo, Jan 16 2012, 06:47 PM.
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lamna
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I wouldn't worry about the Chinese rebels, the inevitability of space colonisation may be up for discussion, but the glorious victory of the Republic of China over the rebels and the reunification of China is not. The White Sun shall rise again over the middle kingdom.

That aside, T. Neo does not seem to hate it really, just the wildly optimistic proponents. Much as JohnFaa was with wolves before he went crazy.

I've learnt not to expect much from big engineering. We are supposed to get some super carriers in less than a decade, but they will probably be over budget, late and the fact they are conventionally power is going to cause a few problems given that oil prices are bound to sky-rocket while they are in service.

It's better to expect the worst with aerospace projects. Then you'll only ever be pleasantly suprised.
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So, T.Neo is saying it's possible but hates everyone who admits it with a burning passion?


Uuuhhhhhhhhhh...........
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GET OUT FLISCH.

BEFORE HALF THE TOPIC DEVOLVES INTO YOU AN T.NEO ARGUING AND TAKING UP HALF THE POSTS.
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While I agree that being too optimistic about this is annoying, I think that T. Neo is looking at the whole thing from a far too pessimistic standpoint. Also, he's forgetting the fact that it's a basic human drive to expand and explore- it's only a matter of time before people decide to take to space travel.

He's also forgetting that space travel is roughly equivalent to oceanic travel in earlier times. Despite the massive challenges and dangers involved, people would still blindly sail across the seas in hope of finding something they desired.
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I think that T. Neo is looking at the whole thing from a far too pessimistic standpoint.


But why is it pessimistic? That's my whole point. The only reason it's pessimistic is that it's taken as some sort of destiny.

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Also, he's forgetting the fact that it's a basic human drive to expand and explore- it's only a matter of time before people decide to take to space travel.


That's pretty much the same argument as "we will do it just for the sake of it" (which I didn't forget, but you did write it in a more compelling manner).

What is this drive? Is it even a real thing? Are you sure we're not just making it up?

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He's also forgetting that space travel is roughly equivalent to oceanic travel in earlier times. Despite the massive challenges and dangers involved, people would still blindly sail across the seas in hope of finding something they desired.


Who were these people? Columbus for example did not go sailing across the Atlantic for nothing, he wanted to find a new trade route to the indies (the Americas just happened to be in his way). After that, granted, there were explorers (but they were also not just aimless "let's go off in a random direction lulz" types). But the world in that era was so valuable, in a way space just isn't. We do that exploration with telescopes and unmanned probes, not with people on-site. And then it is just pretty much interesting trivia, not important to most people.

And is space travel really comparable to ocean travel? On a boat, you can breathe. You can eat stuff that comes out of the sea. You can eat stuff that comes off some island or continent you run into. It doesn't work that way in space. It's just so incredibly hostile.

Perhaps a good comparison, would be the cost of an oceangoing ship as a factor of some relevant figure for the time- i.e. national GDP, average wage, etc, to compare to an interplanetary exploration mission in the modern era.
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Jan 16 2012, 08:41 PM
What is this drive? Is it even a real thing? Are you sure we're not just making it up?
Its part of the curse of imagination.
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Look, there's one reason to colonize space and its just as valid and applicable now as it was back when we put people on the moon in '69. And that reason is Communists. If we don't colonize space, they will and then those horrible reds will use it to destroy democracy and free will!
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

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This man knows what he is saying. Parasky for president!

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I bet they are working with the moon nazis!
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