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/sci/ - Science & Math

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1013604 No.1013604 [Reply] [Original]

Hey /sci/ what's up with space travel? Space shuttles being retired soon and Project Constellation is supposed to take over. So is Obama supporting it? If he removes it from the budget, does that mean America is completely dead in the Space Race?

Also
>Constellation Program (abbreviated CxP)
lol CP

>> No.1013656
File: 402 KB, 2843x1312, NGC4676.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1013656

>> No.1013675

Constellation is a pointless overbudget waste of time that would have prevented NASA from doing any actual science for the next twenty years.

It's canceled and private companies get to make the next heavy lift vehicle instead of NASA.

You'd figure republicans would be in favor of this, but apparently they're all hypocrites. Who woulda thunk it?

>> No.1013695

>>1013675
Have there been any companies that have shown interest in buying into/replacing NASA?

Is Obama really looking to cancel NASA?

>> No.1013697

>>1013695
You're not a very good troll.

>> No.1013701

Not trying to troll, just don't know what questions to ask

>> No.1013713

Obama is not "canceling NASA"
There are no companies replacing NASA

It's like you're reading fox news or something.

>> No.1013718

>implying there's still a space race

>> No.1013719

Yes. Obama decided money was better spent on overseas wars, military bases, unmanned drone bombings, the war on drugs, giving money to failing companies and wall street.

>> No.1013723

>>1013719
Obama increased NASA's budget by 6 billion dollars. Stop being an ignorant fool.

>> No.1013729

I'll settle on a link that has pertinent information then, so as to not let this become shitstorm

>> No.1013746

>>1013723
1 billion.

>> No.1013750

>>1013723

Potential increase over several years, the immediate increase is only about a billion or so. If he doesn't get reelected, do you really think that increase path will continue? Do you really think his idea for a Mars mission will last past the next president's first chance to decide NASA's budget?

>> No.1013754

watch national geographic

the race is to the moon

>> No.1013760

>>1013754
The U.S. already won that one.

>> No.1013765

>>1013750
That's up to congress to decide.

It still doesn't change the fact that he's doing entirely the opposite of "canceling NASA"

And the Mars missions should be killed regardless, he's just offloaded them so the next sucker get stuck with the bad PR of canceling them.

There's nothing worth doing on Mars.

>> No.1013771

>>1013604
I think only A5 got canceled, the A1 is still alive

>> No.1013774

>>1013765
>There's nothing worth doing on Mars.

Perhaps. What do you think NASA should be focusing on doing right now?

>> No.1013779

>>1013774
bigger space stations

>> No.1013787

>>1013771
Actually I believe its the opposite. Bolden doesn't believe we should pursue multi segment SRB development (which is the whole point of A1). Obama did say we want a heavy lift vehicle bigger than what we have now though so Ares V may not be dead since it was stiull early in development. It would use already developed SRB tech for the boosters and focus on liquid propellants

>> No.1013796

>>1013774
Asteroids and interplanetary travel. A large observatory on the dark side of the moon would also be a good idea.

>>1013771
The whole Ares program is kaput, except for Orion.

>> No.1013798

>>1013787

Ok then they will use the heavy launcher, yes i think i got confused, the replacement of the A1 will be something based on the Delta series

>> No.1013807

>>1013779
How big?

>>1013796
Why interplanetary travel?

>> No.1013808

Has NASA actually finished anything it started in the past decade or two?

>> No.1013847

>>1013807
Because if we're going to expand into space we need to lay the groundwork, and that means infrastructure and transportation.

There's a lot of resources in space, and there's a lot of space in space. We should be focusing on interplanetary industries and colonies, not stupid PR stunts where we land a man someplace for a trillion dollars, collect a couple worthless rocks and then proceed to do nothing for the next 50 odd years.

>> No.1013853

>>1013808
I guess you haven't noticed the dozens of interplanetary probes NASA's been launching.

>> No.1013863

>>1013847
Do you think orbital colonies are feasible and worth the effort, or should we focus on expanding habitation to planets and moons?

>> No.1013876

>>1013847

There is no infrastructure to build. We have no idea what interplanetary travel will look like or what technology it will require. We could build a large mass driver on the moon and power it with Helium-3, and then it turns out some much better system of travel becomes much cheaper and we use that instead.

It's like building roads for vehicles that won't exist for a century. Fucking stupid.

>> No.1013882

>>1013853

A minuscule part of it's budget, what else is it doing?

>> No.1013908

ITT: "Everything NASA does is lame, boring and meaningless. They should do what I want them to do, like important stuff. You know?"

>> No.1013912

>>1013876
Soon as you mentioned Helium 3 I stopped reading.

You don't really know what you're talking about, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

>> No.1013923

>>1013882
Developing interplanetary travel and research missions. They're finally starting to do what they should've started doing 40 odd years ago.

>> No.1013930

>>1013863
Whether an orbital colony is feasible or not is something that NASA should be figuring out.

>> No.1013945
File: 70 KB, 800x492, launch loop.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1013945

What we need are mega structures. Dicking around with rockets isn't going to get us anywhere.

Of course, we're never going to be in a political situation where we can build them.

>> No.1013972

>>1013912

No actually it was a good example, and in the 80s a lot of people were saying we should do exactly that.

>> No.1013999

>>1013945
>2000km length for launch track alone
>80km above sea level

Sounds pricy.

>> No.1014016

>>1013972
Look, we don't even have fusion technology. Your idea of using Helium-3 [presumably mined from the moon] is pants on head retarded and a good for why I shouldn't even bother giving you the time of day; because you clearly have no idea what the hell you are talking about beyond regurgitating what mindless drivel you heard on CNN the other night.

>> No.1014022

>>1014016

Wow. You can't read. But don't worry, I can repeat the comment:

No actually it was a good example, and in the 80s a lot of people were saying we should do exactly that.

Oh my god everything in that sentence is 100% true oh my god.

>> No.1014033
File: 37 KB, 517x390, orbitalring.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1014033

>>1013999

Probably still cheaper than the rocket launches it would replace.

And it doesn't have to be that. There's all kinds of different proposed methods of getting to space cheaply, although the launch loop is my personal favorite.

I quite like this kind as well, but it needs a crapload of material already in orbit to work.

>> No.1014036

>>1013945
80km is about the height that meteors burn up in the atmosphere, this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with construction issues.

>> No.1014050

>>1014033

...and then the cable snaps, or one of the foundations on Earth has an issue, or any of a million other problems. Even a regular space elevator would have a fraction of the catastrophic problems that one could encounter.

>> No.1014053

>>1014033
Not to mention that we don't even know how to construct the materials it requires. Physics is a bitch.

>> No.1014055

>>1014033
>Probably still cheaper than the rocket launches it would replace.

Maybe cheaper in the long run, but not in up-front costs. You'd probably be looking at hundreds of billions, even trillions to construct any megastructure. When rocket launches themselves only cost hundreds of millions, it's hard to justify the immense cost. Especially to voters who are going to start dying of old age by the time it pays itself off.

>> No.1014070

>>1014055

Then ban anyone who probably won't be alive when it pays itself off from voting.

>> No.1014078

While Obama is giving them more money (SLIGHTLY), he is giving NASA, and our country no goal. This is the worst of his crimes IMO.

>> No.1014085

>>1014036

We've managed a space station 300km up, is 80 too high? I mean, we manage to send rockets through there on a regular basis.

>> No.1014089

>>1014070
Better yet, fuck voting entirely. Dictatorship, build whatever the hell you want to build.

>> No.1014096

>>1014085
Sending rockets through an area is not the same as building something in it.

>> No.1014112

>>1014055

hire mexicans

>> No.1014114

>>1014053

It doesn't require anything exotic to make it work. Just huge amounts of metal.

>> No.1014127

>>1014114

There are two space elevators in that picture, chief. Tell me exactly what substances you would use to build them, and how you would handle construction.

>> No.1014128

>>1014078
He gave NASA a very clear goal: Get some research missions out to the asteroids in the 2020's and get to Mars in the 2030's.

How much clearer do you want him to be? The man isn't a goddamn scientist, he's a lawyer.

>> No.1014130

>>1014096

So what's so deadly 80 km up that things can only briefly pass through it? I'm sure there's just as many lumps of rock flying past the ISS.

>> No.1014160

>>1014127

Metal. They aren't going out to geostationary. Having them just be a few hundred kilometers long is fine and materials we have currently can manage those distances. The entire point of the ring is to support the trains so that they can stay geostationary without being so far out.

>> No.1014166

>>1014130
That really wasn't the point at all. Constructing something 80km up is simply more difficult than flying a rocket through the atmosphere.

>> No.1014173

>>1014130
I sometimes honestly wonder if people are this stupid or if it's trolling.

>> No.1014181

>>1014050

What, are you going to give up in the face of a couple of engineering problems? I'm sure there was a million things that could have gone wrong with the Saturn V launches, but that didn't stop them.

>> No.1014183

>>1014160

Metal is not an element or a compound. What are you referring to? Iron? Steel? Aluminum? Titanium?

>> No.1014191

>>1014130

The ISS doesn't cost tens of trillions of dollars, does lots of useful things right now, and is not very large, is only going to be up there for a few decades, and if it got hit by something it would not come crashing down.

>> No.1014195

>>1014166

You don't build it in the air. You build it on the ground, and it raises itself up.

I do wonder if you have the foggiest idea of how it works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

>> No.1014197

>>1014181
It's not about giving up, it's about noticing the risks and evaluating the costs of failure. If a Saturn V blows up on the launchpad, that sucks. If a Saturn V twitches, loses control, and hits NYC, that sucks. If an orbital elevator falls on India, that is a fucking catastrophe.

>> No.1014202

>>1014181 What, are you going to give up in the face of a couple of engineering problems?

Give up on a mega structure like that? Yes, it's dumb, so I'm not going to do it.

>> No.1014218

>>1014183

I don't know. I'm not a structural engineer. Steel would probably do it. The idea is that you can build it at the hight you want, so you can make it as high as the cable allows, rather than making the cable strong enough to cope with the height.

>> No.1014237

>>1014197

If the ring breaks it's going to 'fall' into a higher orbit. The trains would fall to Earth, and they are mainly going to fall down, not sideways.

>> No.1014259

>>1014218
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Cable

>>1014237
And the elevator cables?

>> No.1014266

All this arguing about the exact workings of these huge things is pointless. The point is that if we want to go anywhere space wise, we can't just use dinky little rockets forever. We're not going to be able to colonize space by going there in 7 person bursts.

>> No.1014296

>>1014266

So?

Why the fuck would we want to colonize other worlds? When it's cheap, sure, not until then.

>> No.1014302

>>1014259

The point of the orbital ring is that it's not a space elevator. It doesn't need a cable 36,000 km long that can support it's entire weight, so you don't need to make it out of fancy materials that can support 36,000 km of cable. You can make it out of materials that can support just a few hundred kilometers of cable.

>> No.1014309

>>1014259

They fall down, along with the train.

>> No.1014431

>>1014128

Obama: "Yeah, let's go to an asteroid somewhere in this ten year time frame, not sure when. Mars? fuck... um, let's say 2030's or 2040's, whenever we get around to it"

That's not a clear goal. That's called pure, concentrated DUMBASS.