Yeah I can see it. Two single moms driving mini-orbiters with her five screaming kids, while she is talking on the celly. With all that vast empty space they would run into each other and space junk would be raining down in my yard for years. I know it's 95 frickin degrees here today and I have no intention of picking up body parts, and RAP cds that make them think they are young and cool.

Besides, if you want to put somebody on the moon, let us put the moon bats up there. They would finally have a place where we will not be drilling for oil. Cause we all know that if there was oil there, Halliburton would have a 265,000 mile long pipeline.

Because of it's phallic qualities it would probably be named the William Jefferson Clinton Memorial pipeline.

This is government doing what it does best...wasting money. Let's let the fine peopele who make our high tech killing machines do the designing. I don't care what the effects of zero-gravity on potato chips are...I want big freakin lasers on the moon and I want them yesterday. Why haven't we been back to the moon? Because we never went in the first place. It's lies...all lies. Why are we wasting money on this crap when we've got terrorists to kill? /rant

I'm not sure this is even a resonable analogy. It's a lot harder to engineer or change something that does Mach25 than it is to improve a Vista Cruiser.

I can at least tell you why they haven't updated the computers. Modern computers won't work in space. They're too sensitive to the radiation they are exposed to outside of earth's atmosphere. The fastest processors currently available for any spaceborne system that will function reliably are around 150Mhz. This isn't because they're old, but because of all the safeguards that have to be put into electronics in a radiation environment. when you have a computer that does your job just fine for what you're doing in space, there is much less reason to "upgrade" it.

Who knows? With the rate of innovation the high-tech sector normally brings when working within a free market framework, we could all be going on vacation to the Moon in our flying cars before the next presidential election.

This won't happen. I'm not opposed to free market solutions and I think the technique used by spaceship one is a much safer, cheaper, and easier on to get people and stuff into space on a regular basis. It's still very expensive and they haven't had to deal with all the electronics problems that you encounter when you get into orbit or the re-entry issues.

The tech sector also improves based on profit motive. They make better cars, VCRs, DVD players, computers, and video games. That's a far cry from shooting people into space. Until there is a cheap enough way to get people in and out of space that someone could profit off of it, there won't be a lot of free market interest. Ask yourself why the concord doesn't make trips anymore.

I just don’t see commercialization of the space industry yet, not when airlines can’t even give me a bag of peanuts due to cost considerations. I just can’t see flying how ever long that would take living solely on half a pita, a slice of turkey and a little bottle of water. Then again, after a few hours smokers would be ready to stage a revolt and the preflight safety brief could get more interesting. Wonder if my seat cushion would still double as a flotation device?

The Saturn V rockets were retired not because they were obsolete but because NASA wanted to eliminate any competition to the Shuttle.

As I've said elsewhere, NASA will not be the agent that gives us a permanent foothold in space - having become a bureaucracy, the agency as a whole is only interested in perpetuating its existence. Private enterprise may be the vehicle that puts us in space on a permanent footing, but the obstacles (many put in place by NASA) are daunting.

The Shuttle is a 1970's-era kludge, but at the moment it's the only available vehicle. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you have to go to space with the vehicle you have, not the vehicle you want.

The "concord" began as a joint government project between the England and France over 40 years ago rather than a commercial agreement between companies. By the time the plane was built, it was hampered by the oil crisis (brought on by a lack of free market forces in the Middle East) and government overregulation (The U.S. Government didn't want to have fly-overs of the Concorde because of the potential of sonic booms).

The tech sector also improves based on profit motive. They make better cars, VCRs, DVD players, computers, and video games. That's a far cry from shooting people into space.

Twenty years ago, there were no such things as iPods, DVD player, hybrid cars, dual core computer processor, or photorealistic graphics in video games.

I am not so defeatist as to say "it can't be done." There is no physical impossibility in shielding sensitive new computer systems from the stress of space travel. It can be done and the free market and profit motive is the prime mover for this change.

Commercialize space now.

Scaled Composite's White Knight has replaced the massive retrofitted bombers that NASA used to use to test the x-30 (or whatever numbered x-plane).

They replaced a massive plane that needed 8 jet engines and a 10,000 foot runway with a plastic plane that uses a regular airstrip. And cost just 2 million (afaik) to build. End of story.

"The Saturn V rockets were retired not because they were obsolete but because NASA wanted to eliminate any competition to the Shuttle."

Not quite. It was actually a bunch of senators (Walter Mondale was one of them) that wanted the tooling destroyed to prevent money from being spent on a future mars mission.

Commercialization isn't going to happen anytime soon at the rate we're going. The best we can get with current rocket technology is still about $1300 per pound to orbit. And that's the price of private sector launch companies like SpaceX. Until scramjet technology and nuclear propulsion gets off the ground, don't expect to see a huge growth in the commercial space industry.

Besides, the space program isn't a waste of money. In fact, the space program is actually the only government program that actually generated money, with all the spinoff technologies that it created during Apollo. Of course, it's probably not generating much right now, in it's current state of mediocrity, but the development of the Shuttle's replacement, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, will probably change that.

As for Discovery, the debris didn't hit it so they'll be fine.

"I am not so defeatist as to say "it can't be done." There is no physical impossibility in shielding sensitive new computer systems from the stress of space travel. It can be done and the free market and profit motive is the prime mover for this change."

I think NASA would actually prefer the existing system for the Shuttle. Faster computers are not necessarily better. The more complex a computer becomes, the more likely it is to fail. The Shuttle is extremely complex already (which accounts for it's extremely high maintenance cost), and the engineers don't need a highly complex computer system to deal with.

"Scaled Composite's White Knight has replaced the massive retrofitted bombers that NASA used to use to test the x-30 (or whatever numbered x-plane).

They replaced a massive plane that needed 8 jet engines and a 10,000 foot runway with a plastic plane that uses a regular airstrip. And cost just 2 million (afaik) to build. End of story."

Actually, that massive plane was the B-52, which came straight from the Air force. If they were to develop a new plane specially designed for launching experimental planes, it would have cost them much more. Also, the White Knoght was designed to launch only one type of vehicle. The B-52 is capable of carrying a whole variety of aircraft, some of them being too heavy or too big for something like the White Knoght to carry.

Oops, I misspelled Knight twice.

Consider the safety angle from this side:
Yes, it's a 73 Crown Victoria, but it does have shoulder belts, and it's made of steel, not polymer. Too, the engine, brakes, tires, driveline, wiring and steering system are replaced every time it's pulled out of the garage.

More to the point, if you're driving the Crown Vic, and that cellphone-yammering moonbat in the Prius t-bones you because he thinks stop signs are 'like, so restrictive, dude',,,

you step out of the car, spray the remains of said moonbat off your car with a garden hose... and drive on.

... though, come to think on it,,, there aren't that many stop signs in geosynchronous orbit...

I never said that "it can't be done." I'm saying that the major technological hurdles are tough ones for commercial sector companies to jump if they don't see that they can make money off of it. As far as shielding, the air force, navy, nasa, and others have looked for a solution to this for more than 20 years. At some point someone will solve it, but it's not so easy as, "let's put shielding around it and we're fine." Anything dense enough to stop heavy ions from space (gamma rays) emits secondary particles itself that cause problems.

Real Scott, you completely missed the point. Consumer products are not even in the same league as the shuttle as far as sophistication and complexity. As far as the concord, what do you think the commercial motivation for orbital flights are? transportation. If the concord couldn't make money because of fuel costs, why in hell do you think a spaceship could?

The point is that certain technologies have to become cheap and available for there to be a boom in commercial space tech. At that point, capitalism will take hold and it will become cheaper and safter, etc. etc. You need to understand that commercialization doesn't solve problems that don't present themselves with a good risk/reward ratio.

In 1973, the Crown Vic would have actually been a Ford LTD. You really can't beat a traditional American land yacht. The only problem I have with them is the suspension. On the other hand, the 2003+ Crown Vic, Grand Marquis, and Town Car have better suspensions, retaining ride smoothness without that floaty feel.

I forgot to mention that the current Crown Vic uses the same platform as the 1979 Crown Vic. The old way of building cars, the body-on frame construction method that the Crown Vic uses, is actually more durable than the unibody contruction used in practically every car on the road. That's why Police cars and Taxis are Crown Vics.

Just because something was designed in the 1970s doesn't automatically mean that it is obsolete. The laws of physics are still the same back then as they are now. In fact, the hardware built back then may be tougher than hardware built today, as engineers, without the extensive amount of data and computing power we have today, had a tendency to over-engineer things.

Well what I want to know is:
If we can put a man on the moon why can't we PUT A MAN ON THE MOON?

What's all this talk about commercializing space? What part of near Earth space isn't already being commercialized?

Private manned orbit is just around the corner with Tier 2. What's left?

Sorry, but why would we want to install Microsoft software on any computer that performs complex life-or-death tasks? I can see it now...

"Shuttle Discovery, this is Mission Control. Are all systems ready for landing?"
"Roger, Mission Control. Main navigation computer reports all systems are go for...a fatal exception error has occured at 0x5645FA47B4CD. The system will now reboot. This error will be reported to Microsoft to improve system quality in the future."

You could not pay me enough to fly in that hunk of junk. I read a story where one of the people on board were bringing along a laptop as a "backup"!!

It's time for NASA to take the final curtain call.

Adios!!

Anty

Items built 30 years ago are better than items built using today's improved designs and materials? Commercialization and the free market won't help solve a problem? Keep using a 30 year-old car that already killed 14 people just because the mechanic replaced the belts and spark plugs?

I know were supposed to be "conservatives" but that doesn't mean we have to be stuck in the past.

Time and intelligence breeds innovation. Innovation improves materials and processes. Without the framework of the free market, intelligence, innovation, and improvements are greatly hindered because of the lack of competition.

NASA is a government monopoly akin to the public school system. You're all sounding like members of the teacher's union with this "it's not broken and therefore privatization won't solve anything" talk.

I don't disagree with privitization of the space program. What I'm saying is that there's not one else who would do it right now because there's no profit in it. You're talking a lot and not listening at all. You're simply repeating the same thing over and over again and sometimes in bold. We all think privitization is a great thing. It just isn't going to work in this sector yet. I can appreciate your enthusiasm, but you obviously aren't a scientist and don't understand the technical issues. If you did, you'd understand that no one wants to take this monopoly away from NASA. The absolute best you could do is take out bids for who wants to run the US space program. We're doing that with parts, designs, and systems already. I honestly don't think anyone would step up and volunteer.

You're all sounding like members of the teacher's union with this "it's not broken and therefore privatization won't solve anything" talk.

Yes, we're all liberals because we disagree with you.

No one has used this rationale. You're purposely misinterpreting what people are saying because you refuse to consider that you might be wrong. The point is (I'm putting it in bold because you've missed it a bunch of times already) there is no profit motive right now. When the technology is available and reasonably priced for private companies to do their own space exploration/transit, it will happen and you'll see big innovations. It is currently insanely expensive to put anything into orbit. You can't innovate away the laws of physics. The amount of energy needed to put something into orbit isn't going to change.

In addition if we "scrap" the shuttle as you suggest, what are we going to do until the CEV becomes available?

Step 1: collect underpants
Step 3: PROFIT!

"Saturn: a new kind of space program."

Yeah, I know, but no one had said it yet, so I took my opening. :o)

A point I'd like to Admiral_Zod's argument is that the private sector that we do have today (commercial launch systems, the satellite industry) probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the space program.

I'm not saying that privatization 'won't solve anything' but the funding and the long-term committment for many of the technologies needed to privatize space simply cannot come from the private sector alone. The private sector simply isn't willing to risk billions of dollars on something that will, at most, produce mediocre profits.

As for driving a 30-year old car... I'd feel safer in a Lincoln Town Car based on a 1979 platform than a Honda Civic. The Town Car is made out of steel, not plastic. Sometimes the improvement isn't in safety, but in cost and efficiency. "Better" materials aren't always stronger materials, sometimes they're three-quarters as strong but a lot cheaper.

One other thing. I'm a conservative, not a libertarian.

Not that there's anything wrong with libertarians though, but there are a few issues I disagree with them on.

I sugjest that you all read Desception Point by Dan Brown on the positives and negatives of privatization and commercialization of Space Travel. Personnaly I am against privatization. Do we really want 100s of comapnies launching god knows what into the night sky? I don't want to look up at the stars at night and see a huge advertisement telling me to drink coke.

So an asteroid the size of Rhode Island filled with millions of tons of every rare metal known to man will only produce "mediocre" profits?

The point is that any commercial endeavour will not have to re-invent the wheel when they set out into the Kuiper belt.

Off the shelf tech exsiste to make the initial investment small compared to the gain in profit from resource harvesting.

Anty

Finally, after all of the "I don't wanna sell out our government monopoly space program to the big corporations" and "I don't know why we ever stopped using muskets and horse-drawn carriages" comments, comes some small-government free market common sense from Anty.

Dan Brown is a bitter, crazy, self-aggrandizing muckadoo. He wouldn't have written his wacky conspiracy books if he weren't in the pocket of the International Monkey Cartel.

"So an asteroid the size of Rhode Island filled with millions of tons of every rare metal known to man will only produce "mediocre" profits?"

If asteroid or comet mining has the potential to make lots of money, don't you think someone would be doing it already?

You might make 10 billion from mining the asteroid, but you will probably spend 9.9 billion (maybe more) to do it with today's technology. Simply getting the equipment there would cost billions, not to mention the fact that you have to design a spacecraft that can get the stuff back, reenter the earth's atmosphere, and land safely with several tons of minerals and ore.

I've tried to design my own liquid fueled rocket engine with off the shelf parts. Turns out that most of the industrial valves on the didn't meet the specifications I needed, and the ones that did were too heavy for a flight-weight rocket engine.

Putting things in space can be done with off the shelf equipment. You just need solid fueled rockets to do that. Putting objects in orbit is a different story altogether. The weight constraints needed to build a rocket capable of reaching orbit (not to mention carrying a payload) alone are enough to require specially designed parts.

If it were that easy, we could have gone to the moon with off the shelf parts.

"Finally, after all of the "I don't wanna sell out our government monopoly space program to the big corporations" and "I don't know why we ever stopped using muskets and horse-drawn carriages" comments..."

If it weren't for the space program, we wouldn't have much of a commercial space industry. The space program is needed to develop the technology and know-how so that spaceflight may become more accessible to the commercial sector. Otherwise, no one would invest in space exploration.

In response to the horse-drawn carriages and muskets comments, most of the technological advances that were made in the 20th century came as a result of war. The government (gasp) funded the development of equipment that required the development of new technologies. The same can be said for the space program.

Also, I was pointing out the fact that the notion that 'newer things are always better' does not always apply. I'm not saying that older things are always better, but in some cases, things that are built today are not necessarily as robust because engineers try not overengineer things as much as they used to.

Death to NASA.

I'm not kidding.

NASA is not just any government monopoly. They actively resist any real expansion into space.

It's easier to control us if we're all on one planet.

And on a side note, to hell with Mars for the next fifty years. Let's colonize and develop the moon. Let's wait until there are slums and overcrowding up there before we start looking to Mars.

Off the shelf tech exsiste to make the initial investment small compared to the gain in profit from resource harvesting.

You are the world's biggest dumbass. You seriously need to stop talking out of your ass.

Putting things in space can be done with off the shelf equipment. You just need solid fueled rockets to do that. Putting objects in orbit is a different story altogether. The weight constraints needed to build a rocket capable of reaching orbit (not to mention carrying a payload) alone are enough to require specially designed parts.

This is exactly true and well put. You have to be going ~18,000 mph (25 times the speed of sound) to reach orbit. You can't buy "off the shelf parts" to do that. The mere statement to that effect is so ignorant it's laughable.

I like privitization when it can be feasibly done, but you're simply wrong if you think anyone is willing to take the financial risk of the R & D and parts cost in order to "mine stuff off asteroids." If there WAS incentive, companies would be doing it already. Our government isn't really holding anyone back from space exploration. It's not like the government wouldn't clear spaceship one to launch.

GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY ATTITUDE
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,163884,00.html

"NASA said Wednesday it is grounding future shuttle flights because foam debris that brought down Columbia is still a risk — and might have doomed Discovery if the big chunk of broken insulation had come off just a bit earlier and slammed into the spacecraft.

[NASA shuttle program manager Bill] Parsons refused to give up on the spacecraft that was designed in the 1970s.

'We think we can make this vehicle safe for the next flight,' he said, declining to judge the long-term impact on the manned space program. 'We will determine if it's safe to fly.'" (Emphasis added)

FREE MARKET/PRIVATIZATION ATTITUDE
http://www.space.com/news/050727_branson_rutan.html

"British entrepreneur Richard Branson has teamed up with aerospace designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company. The new firm will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft...

The Spaceship Company is jointly owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Scaled Composites of Mojave, California. Scaled will be contracted for research and development testing and certification of a 9-person SpaceShipTwo (SS2) design, and a White Knight Two (WK2) mothership to be called Eve. Rutan will head up the technical development team for the SS2/WK2 combination.

'We're taking the technology of [Ansari X Prize winning commercially designed spacecraft] SpaceShipOne and developing it into a usable commercial vehicle to give thousands of people the chance to experience the majesty of space,' said Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic—the space tourism venture that is a subsidiary of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group."

I really hope you don't think anything there contradicts what I've said.

"The point is there is no profit motive right now" (and let me condescendingly put this in bold for you) directly contradicts the fact that "British entrepreneur Richard Branson has teamed up with aerospace designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company. The new firm will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft..."

If there's no profit motive, there's no reason to build a fleet of commercial spacecraft.

Dr. Jerry Pournelle said that the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy begged NASA to replace Challenger with an up to date Shuttle using latest technology in 1985. The manger of the Shuttle Program personally begged the Administrator in a meeting he chaired. "Don't just build a copy of Challenger. Build a follow-on shuttle with the latest techology."

Instead, NASA waited a while before resuming flights, paid millions in your tax dollars for some replacement O-rings, ran their safety checks, and had seven more astronauts die on Columbia.

Privatization and free markets work; even in the cold vacuum of space.

Note that the spacecraft that are proposed by Branson and Rutan are suborbital spacecraft. The Shuttle is an orbital vehicle. There is a big difference. There is a profit motive for suborbital spacecraft because they're easier to engineer and can be built with off the shelf parts.

There is relatively little profit motive for orbital vehicles, because the cost to build them is much higher.

Take, for example, the Rotary Rocket company. They recieved $30 million from investors, but the satellite market was neither stable or large enough to justify any more money from investors. Rotary rocket went under, and it's assets were bought out by XCor Aerospace. The design brought forth by the Rotary Rocket company was quite innovative and had a lot of potential. The market, however, simply wasn't there.

A market can only exist once launch costs have been brought down. They will be brought down when better propulsion systems are developed and proven. Few investors are willing to spend the money, and even fewer will be willing to wait several years before seeing any return on their investment.

The Rotary Rocket Co, by the way, expected to lower launch costs to around $1000 per pound to orbit, a little less than SpaceX's two-stage rocket, so the argument can be made that the innovations made by the Rotary Rocket Co. wouldn't have reduced launch costs enough to really start a commercial orbital space industry.

First there's talk of the fact that there is no profit in space travel and there's no way to use off the shelf parts to build spacecraft but when evidence is shown to refute those ridiculous claims, everyone does a double-take and suddenly there IS a profit to space travel but only in certain situations that fit your rules, and then there IS a way to use off the shelf parts only if your rules apply to certain situations...

You guys lost this argument a long time ago but will keep posting to make sure you have the know-it-all last word.

How sad.

Tell me when I said there was absolutely no way space travel was going to make a profit. I've had one consistent position on space travel: The propulsion technology isn't advanced enough to affordably reach orbit. And orbit happens to be first thing you have to do to get anywhere else in space.

Also, I said that off the shelf parts work with suborbital spaceflight, but not with orbital vehicles. You keep ignoring the fact that there is a difference between orbital and suborbital spaceflight, and the fact that the former is much harder to achieve than the latter.

I didn't lose the argument, but you're trying to make it seem as if I lost it by putting words into my mouth. I do not make up these rules, the laws of physics do. If reaching orbit was that easy, tourists would be golfing on the moon today.

Look Scott, I have nothing against you personally, and I can see that this argument is going nowhere. We're each trying to force a concession out of each other here, and it doesn't look like anyone is going to give in anytime soon.

How about we simply agree to disagree on this issue. I like your work in the podcasts, so I really don't want to escalate this argument any further.

They will replace the paint over the foam to reduce or prevent the peeling problem. White paint used to cover the fuel tank and was removed to save weight. An elastomeric coating to strengthen the surface and prevent the air from peeling the foam in chunks is a simple fix and even if only on the half of the tank facing the orbiter and the top, it will be enough. Also replacing the ozone friendly foam with the good old ozone killing mix that actually sticks to the fuel tank and sticks together won't hurt either.

That will help keep the antique going till a new generation vehicle is in operation.

Maybe NASA's next major undertaking could be to find out how to do the things they do without wasting countless billions of taxpayer money.

Actually Mech, it would be better if they used the old freon-based foam. NASA switched to a different type of foam in 1997, the kind that they're using now, due to environmental concerns (and to be politically correct). This environmentally-friendly foam caused damage to tiles on the bottom of the Shuttle the first flight it was used.

It was politics that caused the Columbia accident, not an inherent flaw in the design itself.

they won't scrap the shuttle program anytime soon because they basically use the shuttle as a truck to haul crap into space. At present, they've got several pieces of the InternationalSpaceStation left to haul up.

..............I've got a question. Several countries are contributing their own pods to the space station, so what happens up there when two countries (who are involved in the space-station) go to war? do they just, like put up a sheet and tape a "No slant-eyes allowed." sign to it?

Justin, we are in agreement. The foam that worked for years should be used instead of the environmentally friendly stuff. And a nice slick coat of paint helps keep the tank from blowing chunks--I mean getting chunks blown off it. The most visible concern and has a very simple solution.