L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
+7
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
That's some prime real estate right there.
I wonder if we'd ever have any good reason to find a way to get an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit to study, or if such a thing is even safely possible with current technology.
I wonder if we'd ever have any good reason to find a way to get an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit to study, or if such a thing is even safely possible with current technology.
I wonder if we'd ever have any good reason to find a way to get an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit to study, or if such a thing is even safely possible with current technology.
It's one of the missions NASA's been rolling around, though for safety sake they're planning on parking it in lunar orbit, not Earth. The technology exists, the limiting factors being the huge fuel requirements and the difficulty of either working with or controlling the asteroid's rotation. Things we know how to do, just on a larger scale than we've ever attempted before. Losing a reaction wheel on most probes is a medium-level inconvenience, but on a mission like this could mean scrubbing the whole thing after putting nine or ten digits worth of fuel on an unrecoverable heliocentric orbit.
Hevach on
+2
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
The only thing worse for space exploration than another space race would be if Mars One really does launch, really does get to Mars, and then that reality show funding it tanks and our first feet on another planet die there because they lost to Big Bang Theory in sweeps week.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
Yeah, sadly this. The only way we will be competitive in space technology from a sovereign nation standpoint is if it becomes a defense issue. Nothing gets us to spend gobs of money on something like fear of attack. Hell, its part of what started the space race to begin with.
Russians launched sputnik and it was an instant tinfoil hat convention in America....the soviet spy satellite is beaming mind control waves!! LISTEN!!! "Beep....Beep...Beep..." You can HEAR IT!!
It will be exactly the same with the Chinese taking the lead. Ironically, it will be the Communists that focus on missions that net harvestable and profitable materials while were the ones throwing money at nationalistic photo ops. The reversal of ideologies is amazing sometimes.
Of course, once that happens, it will introduce militarization issues into a frontier that is already going to be hella more lawless than the wild west. You put millions into your asteroid miner and then a competing company launches a much cheaper kill vehicle into it.....who do you call? The U.N.? Do you pay protection money to a third party to have a kill vehicle to kill the opposing corporations kill vehicle? Or do you just have straight up racketeering and pay protection to each other to keep from sabotaging each others mines?
Introducing militaries that have a history of showboating and pissing contests is not going to improve this situation. At all.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
The only thing worse for space exploration than another space race would be if Mars One really does launch, really does get to Mars, and then that reality show funding it tanks and our first feet on another planet die there because they lost to Big Bang Theory in sweeps week.
nerds are fans of star trek and 2001; not radio telescopes and orbital pharma plants and suborbital planes.
like, what you are saying is true enough, but the point is that all the people around here breathless about "space exploration" aren't really looking for the things you're talking about.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
Yeah, sadly this. The only way we will be competitive in space technology from a sovereign nation standpoint is if it becomes a defense issue. Nothing gets us to spend gobs of money on something like fear of attack. Hell, its part of what started the space race to begin with.
Russians launched sputnik and it was an instant tinfoil hat convention in America....the soviet spy satellite is beaming mind control waves!! LISTEN!!! "Beep....Beep...Beep..." You can HEAR IT!!
It will be exactly the same with the Chinese taking the lead. Ironically, it will be the Communists that focus on missions that net harvestable and profitable materials while were the ones throwing money at nationalistic photo ops. The reversal of ideologies is amazing sometimes.
Of course, once that happens, it will introduce militarization issues into a frontier that is already going to be hella more lawless than the wild west. You put millions into your asteroid miner and then a competing company launches a much cheaper kill vehicle into it.....who do you call? The U.N.? Do you pay protection money to a third party to have a kill vehicle to kill the opposing corporations kill vehicle? Or do you just have straight up racketeering and pay protection to each other to keep from sabotaging each others mines?
Introducing militaries that have a history of showboating and pissing contests is not going to improve this situation. At all.
While it's true that the start of Russia's space program was kicked off with military ambitions they were quickly highjacked by the head of their space program (Sergei Korolev). He built a rocket capable of launching a nuke at the US, but this rocket was huge, difficult to transport, difficult to fuel and carried far more weight then necessary to deliver a nuke. Why? Because his actual plans were never to launch nukes, but to launch people in to space. He technically did what Stalin ordered but thankfully Nikita Khrushchev was in charge by then and quite liked science and technology and kept funding the program for Korolev.
Korolev had a very concrete set of goals and was very good at getting his projects funded by politicians and kept them from ballooning, and without his leadership and solid set of goals the program quickly died by wasting time and money on vanity projects like Buran.
edit: Also they need to hire Neil deGrasse Tyson as a full time head of marketing.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
The only thing worse for space exploration than another space race would be if Mars One really does launch, really does get to Mars, and then that reality show funding it tanks and our first feet on another planet die there because they lost to Big Bang Theory in sweeps week.
Rosetta actually snuck up on me personally--I paid way more attention to India's successful Mangalyaan mission (and to be fair, it made India one of the few countries to orbit Mars, and the first country to do it on the first try and on the cheap). It doesn't make Rosetta any less impressive, and the ESA is rightly proud of their success. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't mind the notion of China leading a century or so of space travel if that's how things play out. I can understand a lot of patriotic people hoping that's not the case, but I think that all but the most narrow-minded interested in space exploration would have to concede it's better than nothing. Of course, I'm only saying that from my own national perspective.
The failed Soviet moonshot directly gave us, aside from the hilarious-looking, explodey, never-to-be-manned N1 rocket, something every space explorer should be super grateful for--the Soyuz spacecraft, besides being the safest, is the only readily-available manned spaceflight option since the shuttle retirement. It was intended to act as the lunar orbiter. So that failed effort has given us something useful today. It's incredibly hard to predict the course of technology--the same way Soyuz was salvaged from the Soviet moonshot to become the current saving grace of manned space travel at present, had things turned out a little different, Energia could have become the super-heavy launch vehicle to answer the Saturn rockets that were retired to make budget room for the Space Shuttle--after it was divorced from the equally-insanely expensive, perhaps marginally safer Buran shuttle. Instead, we have neither. Likewise, when the Russian government announced they would not make future sales to ULA for the RD-180 engine that's used on the Atlas V so long as the engines were lifting military payloads, I thought this might be a chance for the United States to actually develop and manufacture the sort of high-powered liquid fuel engine that they'd need (and also for Roskosmos to remove itself from US dependency for liquid currency). A new American engine? Roskosmos less plagued by corruption and profit-seeking? I'd be happy with both personally.
I guess whether that happens, or not, remains to be seen.
Synthesis on
0
jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
This might be the first time in my life I'm even close to any sort of European 'patriotism'.
This might be the first time in my life I'm even close to any sort of European 'patriotism'.
Fun fact: the USSR's anthem until the Second World War was The Internationale.
Which is, you know, a French song. And it remained the theme of the Communist Party of the USSR up to the present--rather than the decided Russian-sounding Olympic anthem.
My hope is that we here in the US and see this, and with our "ego" issues, we actually put more funding towards NASA to do cool stuff like this.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
The only thing worse for space exploration than another space race would be if Mars One really does launch, really does get to Mars, and then that reality show funding it tanks and our first feet on another planet die there because they lost to Big Bang Theory in sweeps week.
I don't see how Mir is any more of a victory than the moon landings, especially since Mir too was not used for any great purpose either. Soviet probes were cool, especially their Venus missions, but NASA had their Mars missions and the hugely successful Voyager missions. Plenty of real science being done by both sides.
There are no set goals for a space race, or for space exploration in general. Groups will set their own goals, for their own reasons. So long as fairly abstract science is the reward, I think nationalistic pride will be a greater motivator for everyone involved.
+3
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Russia gets orbit in space.
America gets the moon.
Euros get a comet.
Will China colonize Mars?
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
Yeah the "Soviets won the space race!" argument is mostly contrariness, even if you're talking effective innovation instead of flag planting. The US didn't "[break] even on the Mars Scorecard" because it wasn't really behind in that way. The US was initially behind in terms of getting people satellites and people into orbit, but pretty clearly passed the Soviets within a decade. And by the end of the 70s, the Soviet Space program effectively didn't exist as the country began its death spiral.
Mariner 4 was the first to send pictures back from another planet, or fly close to Mars, 5+ years before the Russians. They were the first to orbit Mars, and successfully land on Mars (rather than crash land) and first to examine Phobos. The US was first to Venus with Mariner 2. Only to leave the solar system with the Voyagers. Only to go to Mercury. Only to land a manned mission on the moon (which the Soviets did put a priority on declassified documents have shown), even if they claimed they didn't).
The Soviets only won the space race for like 8 years in the late 50s-early 60s and were characterized by failures and deaths much more than successes. Revisionist history is interesting but that' doesn't mean its accurate.
Russia gets orbit in space.
America gets the moon.
Euros get a comet.
Will China colonize Mars?
If DeGrasse Tyson's predictions come to fruition, China will have the first taikonaut on another planet--and that young person has already been born quite recently.
So, keep your eyes out for any handsome cadets with an interest in space travel applying to the People's Liberation Army Air Force in the next 15 years or so!
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
Yeah the "Soviets won the space race!" argument is mostly contrariness, even if you're talking effective innovation instead of flag planting. The US didn't "[break] even on the Mars Scorecard" because it wasn't really behind in that way. The US was initially behind in terms of getting people satellites and people into orbit, but pretty clearly passed the Soviets within a decade. And by the end of the 70s, the Soviet Space program effectively didn't exist as the country began its death spiral.
Mariner 4 was the first to send pictures back from another planet, or fly close to Mars, 5+ years before the Russians. They were the first to orbit Mars, and successfully land on Mars (rather than crash land) and first to examine Phobos. The US was first to Venus with Mariner 2. Only to leave the solar system with the Voyagers. Only to go to Mercury. Only to land a manned mission on the moon (which the Soviets did put a priority on declassified documents have shown), even if they claimed they didn't).
The Soviets only won the space race for like 8 years in the late 50s-early 60s and were characterized by failures and deaths much more than successes. Revisionist history is interesting but that' doesn't mean its accurate.
Oh boy...speaking of revisionism and contrarianism--this right here? These are pretty substantial cases of both, quite frankly, considering you're endeavoring to call it out. Practically non-existent by the 1970s? You know today Americans, and everyone else, are using technology refined by that non-existent program in those particular years? That doesn't really seem to suggest it's utterly worthless and totally devoid of activity. Characterized more by death and disaster? Pointing to a tragic waste of labor life with the Nedelin disaster is perfectly valid for that--a ground disaster--but somehow overlooking that one space shuttle failure killed more astronauts than all cosmonaut deaths combined? Why isn't NASA in the 1980s, a period of many famous accomplishments that it still builds upon today, characterized by death and disaster? Should we ignore the deaths in Apollo 1 and only focus on Soyuz 11?
By all means, call out revisionism--but this a kettle calling a pot dangerous black, for a possibly quite contrarian purpose potentially. Personally, I wouldn't claim the USSR won the space race any more than they won the moon race (which they certainly endeavored to, as presented by the N1 and Korolev bureau) or the USA won the manned orbit race. But I have absolutely no problem saying the whole, "the Soviets didn't care about the safety of their space travelers, and any safety techniques they developed are purely incidental, so long as they reached their goals..." is a tired argument not really based in reality if you're making it. Like practically any national space program, they were limited by the financial means, technology available, and simply human margins for error--with those in consideration, safety was a paramount concern of theirs, even in circumstances where their judgment or predictions failed.
When seven astronauts died because multiple complaints from experts were willingly ignored, it's the hand of God, but when three cosmonauts are killed because of a conscious decision to push ahead in the face of severe concerns, that's systemic and human incompetence--this is the argument certain revisionists make, and it's not actually based on fact. If it were, among other things, the Soyuz's safety record wouldn't be what it was today. As for who won the "space race", apparently? Well, the Soviets had one (unmanned) shuttle launch, and the Americans more than a hundred. And right now, Americans have to use a Russian spacecraft every time they want to go into space, and will continue to do so for years to come. So set your goalposts, because that's what you're going to have to do.
Synthesis on
+1
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
The pissing contest about who really won the space race doesn't really have much to do with The Little Comet Lander That Could, folks.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I wonder if we'd ever have any good reason to find a way to get an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit to study, or if such a thing is even safely possible with current technology.
It's one of the missions NASA's been rolling around, though for safety sake they're planning on parking it in lunar orbit, not Earth. The technology exists, the limiting factors being the huge fuel requirements and the difficulty of either working with or controlling the asteroid's rotation. Things we know how to do, just on a larger scale than we've ever attempted before. Losing a reaction wheel on most probes is a medium-level inconvenience, but on a mission like this could mean scrubbing the whole thing after putting nine or ten digits worth of fuel on an unrecoverable heliocentric orbit.
Yep. Asteroid Retrieval Mission is one of the plans being kicked around for the new SLS rocket and related apparatus. Find a suitable asteroid, use an unmanned craft to move it into lunar orbit, then send Orion with a crew of four astronauts to rendezvous with it and check it out.
Basically, the problem is the same problem NASA's had since Apollo ended. With a little more funding they could maybe do one of the big three manned space missions (Asteroid Retrieval, Return To The Moon, or Get Your Ass To Mars) that they're kicking around. They certainly can't afford to pursue all three simultaneously, and the direction from on high changes every four or eight years, so they're in this weird indecision phase.
Later on 12 November, after analysing lander telemetry, the Lander Control Centre (in Cologne) and Philae Science, Operations and Navigation Centre (SONC, Toulouse) reported;
There were three touchdowns at 15:34, 17:25 and 17:32 UTC; in other words, the lander bounced
The firing of the harpoons did not occur
The primary battery is working properly
The mass memory is working fine (all data acquired until lander loss of signal at 17:59 UTC were transmitted to the orbiter)
Systems on board the lander recorded a rotation of the lander after the first touchdown. This is confirmed by ROMAP instrument data, which recorded a rotation around the Z-axis (vertical).
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Later on 12 November, after analysing lander telemetry, the Lander Control Centre (in Cologne) and Philae Science, Operations and Navigation Centre (SONC, Toulouse) reported;
There were three touchdowns at 15:34, 17:25 and 17:32 UTC; in other words, the lander bounced
The firing of the harpoons did not occur
The primary battery is working properly
The mass memory is working fine (all data acquired until lander loss of signal at 17:59 UTC were transmitted to the orbiter)
Systems on board the lander recorded a rotation of the lander after the first touchdown. This is confirmed by ROMAP instrument data, which recorded a rotation around the Z-axis (vertical).
Why, there are no terrible human actors on board that make you want to gouge your own eyes out.
I kid.
But not really. I seriously couldn't even make it past the part where the whatever it is actually showed up...
But on topic, I would hope this probe gives some new ideas about how to land on icy bodies because Europa definitely needs to get more exploration/attention. Water is the key to everything.
I don't think this will help a great deal for landing on Europa. The comet's small size, tiny gravity and elliptical orbit are what cause most of the inconveniences. If Philae can find out about the nature of the ice or other volatiles it might help a bit though. I think in general landing on our moon would be better practice for Europa.
I was thinking more along the lines of the harpoons dubious utility for success at tethering to ice, but yeah gravity would play a much more important role in a Europa, Titan, or Enceladus mission.
But considering Europas shifting surface drilling/securing to ice in little to no atmosphere is still important. Gravity helps alot until the flat surface youre on suddenly shifts 30 degrees. Then not so much. Unless the probe is spherical
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I wonder if we'd ever have any good reason to find a way to get an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit to study, or if such a thing is even safely possible with current technology.
Who cares, do it!
It's one of the missions NASA's been rolling around, though for safety sake they're planning on parking it in lunar orbit, not Earth. The technology exists, the limiting factors being the huge fuel requirements and the difficulty of either working with or controlling the asteroid's rotation. Things we know how to do, just on a larger scale than we've ever attempted before. Losing a reaction wheel on most probes is a medium-level inconvenience, but on a mission like this could mean scrubbing the whole thing after putting nine or ten digits worth of fuel on an unrecoverable heliocentric orbit.
It'll take a lot more then this to regain the interest, attention and monetary support of the general US population and government, sadly. Not to mention Congress still being an ineffectual waste of oxygen and the continued, unquestioned massive spending on the military at the expense of other areas like scientific research and space exploration.
But as long as stuff like this is happening, and continues to happen, and space continues to open up more, it'll come in it's time.
EDIT: Lol they changed it to 1900 UTC
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I think the only thing that could motivate the US to really up its space game is for China to start making big gains. They've already put a rover on the moon, put people in space and so forth. If China starts messing about with asteroids I wouldn't be surprised if the US followed suit.
The really sad thing is, if that's what it takes, in the end it'll be wasted. The thing people keep forgetting is that, despite the US throwing the parade, Russia WON the last space race. While the US was throwing safety and science under the bus for the sake of footprints and flags, Russia didn't even make a serious attempt at the moon, and instead laid the groundwork for orbital assembly, space stations, and modern unmanned probes and rovers. Skylab, thrown together out of leftover parts and never completed, was an afterthought, and the space shuttle came so much later and proved to be such a boondoggle that the US space program was effectively stagnant from Apollo until the 90's when they finally took the lead in unmanned interplanetary probes and broke even on the Mars Scorecard.
A space race with China could be the worst thing for NASA's long term good. It'll push them to a footprints and flags Mars landing accomplishing half the science Curiosity did at a fraction of the cost, and when they get home to find China instead built an orbital graphene factory and suborbital airliners because they were never playing the same game we were, we'll have lost again and NASA will stagnate for another generation.
The only thing worse for space exploration than another space race would be if Mars One really does launch, really does get to Mars, and then that reality show funding it tanks and our first feet on another planet die there because they lost to Big Bang Theory in sweeps week.
Yeah, sadly this. The only way we will be competitive in space technology from a sovereign nation standpoint is if it becomes a defense issue. Nothing gets us to spend gobs of money on something like fear of attack. Hell, its part of what started the space race to begin with.
Russians launched sputnik and it was an instant tinfoil hat convention in America....the soviet spy satellite is beaming mind control waves!! LISTEN!!! "Beep....Beep...Beep..." You can HEAR IT!!
It will be exactly the same with the Chinese taking the lead. Ironically, it will be the Communists that focus on missions that net harvestable and profitable materials while were the ones throwing money at nationalistic photo ops. The reversal of ideologies is amazing sometimes.
Of course, once that happens, it will introduce militarization issues into a frontier that is already going to be hella more lawless than the wild west. You put millions into your asteroid miner and then a competing company launches a much cheaper kill vehicle into it.....who do you call? The U.N.? Do you pay protection money to a third party to have a kill vehicle to kill the opposing corporations kill vehicle? Or do you just have straight up racketeering and pay protection to each other to keep from sabotaging each others mines?
Introducing militaries that have a history of showboating and pissing contests is not going to improve this situation. At all.
Gotta make sure they have linguists available to discuss the possible meaning of the alien message they found
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
nerds are fans of star trek and 2001; not radio telescopes and orbital pharma plants and suborbital planes.
like, what you are saying is true enough, but the point is that all the people around here breathless about "space exploration" aren't really looking for the things you're talking about.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
While it's true that the start of Russia's space program was kicked off with military ambitions they were quickly highjacked by the head of their space program (Sergei Korolev). He built a rocket capable of launching a nuke at the US, but this rocket was huge, difficult to transport, difficult to fuel and carried far more weight then necessary to deliver a nuke. Why? Because his actual plans were never to launch nukes, but to launch people in to space. He technically did what Stalin ordered but thankfully Nikita Khrushchev was in charge by then and quite liked science and technology and kept funding the program for Korolev.
Korolev had a very concrete set of goals and was very good at getting his projects funded by politicians and kept them from ballooning, and without his leadership and solid set of goals the program quickly died by wasting time and money on vanity projects like Buran.
edit: Also they need to hire Neil deGrasse Tyson as a full time head of marketing.
Rosetta actually snuck up on me personally--I paid way more attention to India's successful Mangalyaan mission (and to be fair, it made India one of the few countries to orbit Mars, and the first country to do it on the first try and on the cheap). It doesn't make Rosetta any less impressive, and the ESA is rightly proud of their success. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't mind the notion of China leading a century or so of space travel if that's how things play out. I can understand a lot of patriotic people hoping that's not the case, but I think that all but the most narrow-minded interested in space exploration would have to concede it's better than nothing. Of course, I'm only saying that from my own national perspective.
The failed Soviet moonshot directly gave us, aside from the hilarious-looking, explodey, never-to-be-manned N1 rocket, something every space explorer should be super grateful for--the Soyuz spacecraft, besides being the safest, is the only readily-available manned spaceflight option since the shuttle retirement. It was intended to act as the lunar orbiter. So that failed effort has given us something useful today. It's incredibly hard to predict the course of technology--the same way Soyuz was salvaged from the Soviet moonshot to become the current saving grace of manned space travel at present, had things turned out a little different, Energia could have become the super-heavy launch vehicle to answer the Saturn rockets that were retired to make budget room for the Space Shuttle--after it was divorced from the equally-insanely expensive, perhaps marginally safer Buran shuttle. Instead, we have neither. Likewise, when the Russian government announced they would not make future sales to ULA for the RD-180 engine that's used on the Atlas V so long as the engines were lifting military payloads, I thought this might be a chance for the United States to actually develop and manufacture the sort of high-powered liquid fuel engine that they'd need (and also for Roskosmos to remove itself from US dependency for liquid currency). A new American engine? Roskosmos less plagued by corruption and profit-seeking? I'd be happy with both personally.
I guess whether that happens, or not, remains to be seen.
Wait I mean
Fun fact: the USSR's anthem until the Second World War was The Internationale.
Which is, you know, a French song. And it remained the theme of the Communist Party of the USSR up to the present--rather than the decided Russian-sounding Olympic anthem.
Also, Ode to Joy (really, the whole 9th Symphony) was a popular classical piece in the USSR. Hugely popular in Japan as well.
EDIT: Also, I'm in love with the circa-1994 image transitions in the second video.
I don't see how Mir is any more of a victory than the moon landings, especially since Mir too was not used for any great purpose either. Soviet probes were cool, especially their Venus missions, but NASA had their Mars missions and the hugely successful Voyager missions. Plenty of real science being done by both sides.
There are no set goals for a space race, or for space exploration in general. Groups will set their own goals, for their own reasons. So long as fairly abstract science is the reward, I think nationalistic pride will be a greater motivator for everyone involved.
America gets the moon.
Euros get a comet.
Will China colonize Mars?
Yeah the "Soviets won the space race!" argument is mostly contrariness, even if you're talking effective innovation instead of flag planting. The US didn't "[break] even on the Mars Scorecard" because it wasn't really behind in that way. The US was initially behind in terms of getting people satellites and people into orbit, but pretty clearly passed the Soviets within a decade. And by the end of the 70s, the Soviet Space program effectively didn't exist as the country began its death spiral.
Mariner 4 was the first to send pictures back from another planet, or fly close to Mars, 5+ years before the Russians. They were the first to orbit Mars, and successfully land on Mars (rather than crash land) and first to examine Phobos. The US was first to Venus with Mariner 2. Only to leave the solar system with the Voyagers. Only to go to Mercury. Only to land a manned mission on the moon (which the Soviets did put a priority on declassified documents have shown), even if they claimed they didn't).
The Soviets only won the space race for like 8 years in the late 50s-early 60s and were characterized by failures and deaths much more than successes. Revisionist history is interesting but that' doesn't mean its accurate.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
If DeGrasse Tyson's predictions come to fruition, China will have the first taikonaut on another planet--and that young person has already been born quite recently.
So, keep your eyes out for any handsome cadets with an interest in space travel applying to the People's Liberation Army Air Force in the next 15 years or so!
Oh boy...speaking of revisionism and contrarianism--this right here? These are pretty substantial cases of both, quite frankly, considering you're endeavoring to call it out. Practically non-existent by the 1970s? You know today Americans, and everyone else, are using technology refined by that non-existent program in those particular years? That doesn't really seem to suggest it's utterly worthless and totally devoid of activity. Characterized more by death and disaster? Pointing to a tragic waste of labor life with the Nedelin disaster is perfectly valid for that--a ground disaster--but somehow overlooking that one space shuttle failure killed more astronauts than all cosmonaut deaths combined? Why isn't NASA in the 1980s, a period of many famous accomplishments that it still builds upon today, characterized by death and disaster? Should we ignore the deaths in Apollo 1 and only focus on Soyuz 11?
Thankfully, us nerds in the Kerbal Space Program thread already had this precise conversation.
By all means, call out revisionism--but this a kettle calling a pot dangerous black, for a possibly quite contrarian purpose potentially. Personally, I wouldn't claim the USSR won the space race any more than they won the moon race (which they certainly endeavored to, as presented by the N1 and Korolev bureau) or the USA won the manned orbit race. But I have absolutely no problem saying the whole, "the Soviets didn't care about the safety of their space travelers, and any safety techniques they developed are purely incidental, so long as they reached their goals..." is a tired argument not really based in reality if you're making it. Like practically any national space program, they were limited by the financial means, technology available, and simply human margins for error--with those in consideration, safety was a paramount concern of theirs, even in circumstances where their judgment or predictions failed.
When seven astronauts died because multiple complaints from experts were willingly ignored, it's the hand of God, but when three cosmonauts are killed because of a conscious decision to push ahead in the face of severe concerns, that's systemic and human incompetence--this is the argument certain revisionists make, and it's not actually based on fact. If it were, among other things, the Soyuz's safety record wouldn't be what it was today. As for who won the "space race", apparently? Well, the Soviets had one (unmanned) shuttle launch, and the Americans more than a hundred. And right now, Americans have to use a Russian spacecraft every time they want to go into space, and will continue to do so for years to come. So set your goalposts, because that's what you're going to have to do.
"We're gonna need more parachutes"
-Jeb Kerman
I thought all Jeb ever says is "wheeeee"
Yep. Asteroid Retrieval Mission is one of the plans being kicked around for the new SLS rocket and related apparatus. Find a suitable asteroid, use an unmanned craft to move it into lunar orbit, then send Orion with a crew of four astronauts to rendezvous with it and check it out.
Basically, the problem is the same problem NASA's had since Apollo ended. With a little more funding they could maybe do one of the big three manned space missions (Asteroid Retrieval, Return To The Moon, or Get Your Ass To Mars) that they're kicking around. They certainly can't afford to pursue all three simultaneously, and the direction from on high changes every four or eight years, so they're in this weird indecision phase.
TL:DR
it's a ballet lander
I immediately became very worried for the lander.
I kid.
But not really. I seriously couldn't even make it past the part where the whatever it is actually showed up...
But on topic, I would hope this probe gives some new ideas about how to land on icy bodies because Europa definitely needs to get more exploration/attention. Water is the key to everything.
But considering Europas shifting surface drilling/securing to ice in little to no atmosphere is still important. Gravity helps alot until the flat surface youre on suddenly shifts 30 degrees. Then not so much. Unless the probe is spherical
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
http://www.space.com/27737-comet-song-rosetta-spacecraft.html
I wonder what it tastes like now.
Silly Khavall, physicists couldn't give a shit about horses.
Sorry, Spherical cow