[HN Gopher] Splashdown NASA's Orion Returns to Earth After Histo...
___________________________________________________________________
Splashdown NASA's Orion Returns to Earth After Historic Moon
Mission
Author : zdw
Score : 253 points
Date : 2022-12-12 03:27 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasa.gov)
| sphinxster wrote:
| Images and videos from the mission:
|
| https://images.nasa.gov/search-results?q=artemis%20resource%...
| hoseja wrote:
| Why do they keep calling it "historic". There's noting historic
| about it.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| It's the first human-capable spacecraft to leave near-Earth
| orbit in half a century.
|
| That's historic in my book.
| _joel wrote:
| It's gone further from Earth than any other human capable
| vehicle.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It was historic when it was done the first time. Doing it
| again after taking a break is not historic.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't know of any other non-Military program that had cost
| $93,000,000,000 dollars. Surely that's a significant historic
| first.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| The US social security program cost more than 7 times that
| much, only for last year.
|
| If you can't think of any others, I suspect you need to
| adjust your own perspective.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I had no idea.
|
| If that is the case, then why do people argue that we
| shouldn't be going to the moon until all humans on Earth
| are fed and have homes? Over the past ten years the cost of
| an Artemis mission was 1/70 the cost of social security -
| and that price will go down every mission as the R&D phase
| is done. Would an additional 1.4% funding to social
| programs really solve hunger and homelessness?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Social Security is a public pension system, and is
| necessarily huge since it serves hundreds of millions of
| people. It's often excluded from budgetary analyses
| because it tends to throw everything out-of-whack, and
| the money that flows into it is separate from ordinary
| taxes, so isn't available for the general funds anyway--
| the way it's set up, Congress can't simply redirect
| Social Security spending to other purposes through
| anything like the ordinary budget process, they'd have to
| modify Social Security itself first, then probably
| weather a torrent of lawsuits.
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Well, this is paying for those NASA and big contractors
| to have a home and food, so there.
| eesmith wrote:
| It's definitely in rarefied territory, but that alone does
| not make it a significant historic first.
|
| The US Interstate Highway System cost $535 billion in 2020
| dollars, according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System .
|
| The Apollo project cost $165 billion in 2021 dollars,
| according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program .
| Maken wrote:
| The Northeast Corridor high speed retrack is planned to
| exceed $100 billion. Records are made to be broken.
| esskay wrote:
| Whilst its fantastic (and to be honest a little surprising) that
| the mission went without any major issues (and the staff at NASA
| are obviously to be commended for their efforts), the whole
| project still feels like 'the wrong solution to the problem'.
|
| I get it, SLS was started years ago before commercial space
| became so successful...but it should've adapted as needed. We're
| now stuck with a poorly planned mission that's going to cost
| obscene amounts of money - some of the same reasons they canned
| Apollo.
|
| I just hope that SpaceX (and others - we need multiple operators)
| can get this right on their own and force NASA to accept that
| 'old space' is not the way to be doing things anymore. If we want
| this to last and not be a 2-3 year run of launches followed by
| another 50 years of NASA stagnation they'll need to adapt and
| stop allowing themselves to get bent over by the likes of Boeing
| and Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, etc.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Point the finger at congress, not NASA. Orion itself appears to
| be a pretty good craft. The SLS being a boondoggle is of course
| true, but it's something most engineers inside NASA accept to
| some degree (that was my experience). It is definitely a shame
| that the agency's budget is so hamstrung by the development and
| procurement costs of SLS. Nobody will be happier than NASA when
| spacex eats ULA'S lunch and can provide them cheap lunar
| access.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| If after spending ~$25 billion it would be less than a
| "pretty good craft" then well. I don't know what to say.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)#Funding_his.
| ..
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK's HS2 rail system will likely cost more than PS42bn
| to join London and Birmingham (with a bit of an extension
| to Crewe.)
|
| $25bn for a working moon shot is pretty good value in
| comparison.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But you can go more than _once_ to and fro London and
| Birmingham.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Optimistic given the ongoing rail strikes.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I visited the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
| semi-recently, for the first time since I was a very little
| kid.
|
| It was disappointing all around--lots of stuff broken, outdoor
| exhibits clearly deteriorating, nickel-and-diming for every
| activity after a not-cheap entry fee, a ton of floor space
| dedicated to a visually (at least) hideous display that looked
| like someone took all the material from an aerospace defense
| contractor trade show and dumped it haphazardly about the
| place, their collection of space travel artifacts generally
| being unimpressive aside from the obviously-amazing turned-on-
| its-side-and-broken-apart Saturn V (if you could pay half the
| entry fee to _just_ see that, it 'd be the superior bang-for-
| the-buck experience by a long shot)--but the goofiest bit about
| it was that 100% of its depiction of the future of space
| flight, which was pushed on little displays and such scattered
| about the place, was dedicated to the obsolete money-pit SLS.
| Contributed to the feeling that the whole facility was paid-
| entry advertising for the aerospace-defense industry (I assume
| the SLS has been a reliable source of fat contracts for the
| usual suspects).
| macintux wrote:
| Discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945370
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Historic is mostly the price tag. Everything else has been done
| before.
|
| Looking forward to a reusable launch system flying around the
| moon for cheaper than currently launching to LEO. That will be
| historic.
| uncertainquark wrote:
| Now that Orion has returned safely to Earth, it feels so amazing
| to talk about Artemis I as the past! If its help in returning
| humans to our Moon deeply moved you too, you can follow the
| pieces of its progress via my one-of-a-kind, technical newsletter
| called Moon Monday: https://blog.jatan.space/s/moon-monday
|
| It also covers global lunar exploration, science and commercial
| developments to show that our return to the Moon this is truly a
| worldwide trend and how valuable each vertical is.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| It feels weird seeing boondoggles like the Senate Launch System
| actually deliver. On the one hand it's exciting because we're
| actually really possibly maybe finally going back to the moon. On
| the other hand, it is at the price of, minimum,
| $1,000,000,000/launch. A successful launch doesn't actually
| change the reality that it was and still is largely politically
| viable only as a jobs/pork program.
|
| I wonder if people felt this way about Apollo? In hindsight it
| feels worthwhile. But the big difference between Artemis and
| Apollo is that Artemis is coming after Commercial Crew/SpaceX has
| proven a different business/engineering model.
|
| I've been waiting for this since I was in the fifth grade, so I
| should be happy. But then, I was promised a path to Mars with
| boots on the Moon two years ago.
| eesmith wrote:
| > I wonder if people felt this way about Apollo?
|
| Yes.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...
|
| ] For example, many people believe that Project Apollo was
| popular, probably because it garnered significant media
| attention, but the polls do not support a contention that
| Americans embraced the lunar landing mission. Consistently
| throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe
| Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a
| poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July
| 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of
| Americans believed that the government was spending too much on
| space, indicative of a lack of commitment to the spaceflight
| agenda. These data do not support a contention that most people
| approved of Apollo and thought it important to explore space.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| My family has copy of Mr. President[1], a 1967 game that
| simulates a US presidential election in fairly detailed
| fashion. As part of the game, the Presidential and Vice-
| Presidential candidates will have positions on a number of
| controversial issues, one of which is Space exploration,
| right up there with things like entitlement programs and
| Vietnam.
|
| As a kid in the 80s, most of the issues made sense as "yeah,
| people still debate this", but seeing space exploration there
| as a big, controversial thing while living through the heyday
| of the pre-Challenger shuttle program always gave me this
| strong sense of cognitive dissonance.
|
| 1. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/476/mr-president
| squarefoot wrote:
| Space missions are not worth their cost only if one thinks
| about them as tight closed black boxes that don't produce any
| advancements in their own and other fields.
| eesmith wrote:
| If I hear the spinoff argument one more time, I'm going to
| gag. That's all a Panglossian argument that there was no
| other better way to have spent the money.
|
| In any case, several of Etzioni's arguments were clearly
| NOT thinking about tight closed black boxes. Here are
| three:
|
| > It would not be in the national interest to exploit space
| science at the cost of weakening our efforts in other
| scientific endeavors. ...
|
| > We would fall behind in other sciences because of our
| dedication to putting men on the moon. ...
|
| > the space race is used as an escape, by focusing on the
| moon we delay facing ourselves
|
| The quote from the LA Sentinel flips your black box
| argument around, pointing out the benefits come with a
| people cost:
|
| > .. argued against Apollo in no uncertain terms, saying,
| "It would appear that the fathers of our nation would allow
| a few thousand hungry people to die for the lack of a few
| thousand dollars while they would contaminate the moon and
| its sterility for the sake of 'progress' and spend billions
| of dollars in the process, while people are hungry, ill-
| clothed, poorly educated (if at all)."
|
| The linked-to M.A. thesis has more direct quotes, like
| protestors who want some of the money diverted from the
| space program to feed some tens of thousands of people who
| don't have adequate food, nor comfortable homes from which
| to watch the Moon landing.
|
| These are issues we still delay facing.
| philistine wrote:
| Having TV blasted from space, GPS to know to turn at this
| intersection, and pictures of every roof on the planet is
| useful. None of those technologies could have happened if
| we didn't send people in tin cans first.
|
| The moon is an interesting destination for its Helium-3. We
| will run out at some point on Earth (Helium literally
| floats away), and going to the Moon for this resource could
| very well be our first extra-terrestrial mining operation.
| bnralt wrote:
| > Having TV blasted from space, GPS to know to turn at
| this intersection, and pictures of every roof on the
| planet is useful. None of those technologies could have
| happened if we didn't send people in tin cans first.
|
| The first geopositioning satellite[1], first satellite
| that broadcast of a human voice from space[2], and the
| first photos taken from orbit[3] all predate the first
| human in space[4].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite) [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORE_(satellite) [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_6 [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1
| eesmith wrote:
| How do you make your conclusion?
|
| Telstar 1 started blasting TV from space in 1962.
|
| I don't know how that required Gargarin or Shepard to be
| in their tin cans first.
|
| Also, we sent up SCORE in 1958, and famously Arthur C.
| Clarke wrote about using satellites for
| telecommunications in 1945.
|
| TIROS, the US's first weather satellite, preceded
| Gargarin.
|
| KH-1, the US's first spy satellite, meant for
| photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union, was even
| earlier.
|
| These certainly didn't require humans in tin cans first.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Lunar mining of 3He is a huge canard. It likely requires
| more energy to extract it from regolith than it returns
| from fusion (10 ppb is not much!)
|
| 3He can be made by DD fusion (which either produces 3He,
| or produces T which can be allowed to decay to 3He;
| neutrons from DD fusion can also be used to make tritium
| which can also be allowed to decay to 3He.) This is
| Helion's plan, with the system operated in a mode that
| suppresses DT fusion.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| See https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/Jupiter_Energy_Fleet
| from the late 1970s; people have been thinking about this
| problem for a _long_ time. This SF TV series cheated with
| a new physics which allowed compact nuclear fusion
| reactors minus the ability to do anything with neutrons.
| We still don 't have a good path to them for basic
| electrical power generation, seeing as how much we're
| still struggling with theoretical break even DT fusion,
| with the LLNL experiment per something I just read not
| counting the power input into the lasers.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I don't look at fictional sources for evidence about
| reality.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| So fiction showing people were thinking about X at such
| and so a time not evidence people were thinking about X
| at such and so a time???
|
| All the "get to the moon" or beyond SF, which per Robert
| Heinlein was an explicit goal of his juveniles, to teach
| the attitudes and what you needed to learn to to get into
| space, which he was later told actually worked for a
| number of Apollo project people was ... what??
|
| Can't make fusion reactors that interesting and the SF
| series never tried except when they didn't get a chance
| to shut down properly and went boom (actually a very
| beginning plot point), but I'm glad for all the fiction
| creators who inspired me into a STEM career when I was
| young.
| eesmith wrote:
| I believe pfdietz's point is there's no need to go to the
| Moon (or Jupiter?!) to extract 3He when sufficient 3He
| can be generated on Earth, at lower cost, and be energy
| positive.
|
| Your digression seems irrelevant to that point.
|
| We didn't use Heinlein stories as a source of evidence
| about reality. We didn't use thorium rockets to get to
| the Moon. Nor did we develop monoatomic hydrogen
| ("Single-H") fuel.
|
| Similarly, we don't use Gundam stories.
|
| Also, Project Daedalus' proposal to mine the Jupiter
| atmosphere for 3He for fusion predates the first Gundam
| episode, and is likely what influenced the series.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus .
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| The big thing that's missing from this discussion is the
| primary reason for the US manned space mission program and it's
| ultimate goal per JFK in 1961, 4 months into his presidency, of
| "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and
| returning him safely to the Earth."
|
| The previous president Eisenhower allowed the Soviets to get
| ahead of us starting with Sputnik to avoid them whining forever
| about overflights of others' territory. To the point Wernher
| von Braun's team had to put ballast in their rocket payloads to
| make sure they wouldn't "accidentally" put something into
| orbit.
|
| This resulted a _massive_ shock in the US which you can see in
| for example a whole bunch of science education programs spawned
| after Sputnik, and to the rest of the world put into doubt our
| technological superiority. After the Soviets were the first to
| put a man in orbit a month before JFK 's speech and a few weeks
| before our first manned suborbital fight, the next spectacle
| was obviously a manned moon mission. Which we had a chance to
| beat them at although back in 1961 that was no sure thing.
|
| This would also fit in with the JFK campaign's fictitious
| "missile gap" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
| ISL wrote:
| People definitely protested the Apollo program.
|
| The primary objections of which I am aware focused on Apollo's
| prioritization above addressing poverty:
|
| https://www.ajc.com/news/why-civil-rights-activists-proteste...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_on_the_Moon
| robomartin wrote:
| > I was promised a path to Mars with boots on the Moon two
| years ago.
|
| We did some work on a camera system for the Artemis project. It
| will hopefully make it to the moon's surface by the third
| mission. Also worked on spacecraft going to the ISS.
|
| I don't think people --including most engineers-- have a good
| grasp of just how difficult it is to make anything going to
| space, much less anything that involves people.
|
| The simplest statement I can make is:
|
| Everything is trying to kill you and your hardware 100% of the
| time.
|
| Leave the protection of the magnetosphere and things get much
| worse.
|
| Designing safe and reliable systems to go to the Moon or Mars
| is complex and hard to nail down to a schedule. This isn't like
| a software startup where you can deliver half a product and
| iterate (or even execute a full pivot) over time. You have to
| get it right or things fail in spectacular ways and people die.
|
| Imagine having to deliver your Social Media, online commerce or
| SaaS product with a full 100% working set of required features,
| non-trivial failure tolerance and uptime guarantee, or (to be
| dramatic) your entire family dies. A bit out there? Not so
| sure.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| "Everything is trying to kill you and your hardware 100% of
| the time.
|
| I was appalled when I learned about LEO atomic oxygen.
|
| "Leave the protection of the magnetosphere and things get
| much worse."
|
| Anything in the Orion to deal with the latter for the not rad
| hard humans? Or is this another Apollo Program timed with the
| solar cycle (which due to delays cut the latter short)?
| robomartin wrote:
| > Anything in the Orion to deal with the latter for the not
| rad hard humans?
|
| Well, GCR's (Galactic Cosmic Rays) will go through just-
| about anything. I think I remember an experiment that
| measured penetration in water to over half a mile (800
| meters). As such, all you can do is manage exposure...you
| are not going to stop them. On the moon one of the ideas is
| to pile-up regolith (moon dirt) to create better
| protection. Without that you would need to transport more
| material out there than might be possible.
|
| I am not aware of what long-term plans might look like
| today. I guess is that the ideal habitat will likely take
| the form of repurposing the rocket to become living
| quarters and bury it under as much regolith as it might be
| able to support. Of course, that implies suitable
| construction equipment to be available. I doubt astronauts
| are going to shovel the stuff at that scale.
|
| In terms of electronics, you try to keep things powered
| down to the extent possible. Circuits can self-destruct
| very quickly if powered-up. An unpowered circuit is less
| likely to suffer the same kind of damage.
|
| Beyond that, critical systems are typically designed to a
| fault-tolerance (FT) level. A single fault tolerant system
| can have one failure and still operate within mission
| parameters. You could have 2FT systems that will run after
| two failure. Because mass is important in going to space,
| FT doesn't necessarily fully duplicate a system (for
| example, triplicate copies of a system to be able to
| survive two failures). These days deeper analysis is
| possible and enhanced fault tolerance can be applied to
| selected functional units. At the end of the day, the most
| important thing is to test, test, test.
|
| NASA has a lot of publicly-available resources about this
| and more. Chapter 3 of this one has an overview of
| protection from space radiation:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sf_rad
| i...
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| Thanks for the general info ... have we found any caves
| on or in the moon?? And the reference, just skimmed it
| but it appears to be written at a high and thorough
| level.
|
| But I wasn't clear about my real question: is there a
| shield planned for the Orion spacecraft to keep
| astronauts alive during a sufficiently bad solar event on
| a trip to or from the moon? As I recall the lunar
| orbiting space station was going to be unmanned but I was
| wrong or they've changed their minds:
| https://www.nasa.gov/gateway So they've got to be
| thinking about this problem, and as the reference notes
| we'll need for example adequate space weather
| surveillance which I note we've been emplacing as of
| late.
|
| I've never checked it out like running the numbers but
| I've heard for a long time Apollo was timed for a low
| part of the solar cycle and one reason Nixon cut it short
| was because delays put those canceled missions into the
| active part of the cycle.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _boondoggles_
|
| You should know that using words like that taints the rest of
| your comment. While you are welcome to your opinion, and
| expressing it is perfectly fine, you should be aware that other
| people may not take the remainder of what you write seriously.
|
| _$1,000,000,000 /launch_
|
| A microwave oven used to cost more than a car.
|
| We learn, we innovate, we iterate, and eventually the cost
| comes down. But we have to start somewhere.
| kube-system wrote:
| > A successful launch doesn't actually change the reality that
| it was and still is largely politically viable only as a
| jobs/pork program.
|
| This is sometimes seen as wasteful, on the surface, but there
| are very real benefits to doing things like this, even when it
| is much more expensive than alternatives:
|
| 1. having alternatives to other commercial ventures, which are
| subject to their own financial viability
|
| 2. having backup launch capability
|
| 3. maintaining more relevant talent in the US
|
| 4. maintaining institutional knowledge of cutting edge
| aerospace tech
|
| 5. maintaining aerospace industrial capability in the US
|
| These are all generally good for furthering science and
| technology, and our economy, but it is critical in times of war
| (and as a deterrent to war)
|
| The romantic nature of space is definitely the best way to sell
| these programs, but there are much more pragmatic reasons to be
| doing them.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| For 3, and 4, I may be wrong, but my understanding is that
| the SLS is just continuing (and, with future engines, re-
| producing) the space-shuttle tech package. Which is, well,
| certainly not cutting edge, and not particularly relevant to
| anything else anyone is doing in the space-launch sphere.
|
| Now, just because no one else is doing it doesn't mean it's
| automatically bad, but it's a launch technology suite that
| was selected against for good reason in the post-shuttle era.
| The (eventual) launch of Artemis I made clear, for example,
| that cryogenic hydrogen is a really problem-prone PITA to
| work with.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you're working with decades-long development timelines,
| it isn't the worst idea to use a modernized version of
| proven technology.
|
| Let SpaceX et al. take the technology risk, and support
| them via contracts.
|
| But it's an improvement on the prior approach to instead
| put space eggs in two baskets: {lower risk, conservative
| technology choices} + {higher risk, cutting edge technology
| choices}
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| But no one questions why we are working with decades long
| development timelines. Even Apollo was conceived in 1960
| and landed in 1969, under one decade let alone multiple
| decades. SpaceX went from 0 launches to orbit in a
| decade, then from 0 reusable to world first in a decade
| and now looks like they are gunning for Mars within a
| decade.
|
| I agree with the other poster that the only thing that
| will light a fire under the US' butt is having a peer
| country clown them in a space milestone. I don't like the
| CCP and I abhor their practices but I do root for their
| space program since seeing that bright red commie flag on
| the moon is the only egg big enough to cover all the
| faces necessary in the usgov in order to actually get
| something done.
|
| I also really hope that India gets in the game in a
| serious way so we can have even more competition, an
| India-China space race would be fun to watch and would
| have the US scrambling to catch up.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The F-1 engine was developed in response to a mid-50s
| requirement, and itself borrowed heavily from 40s Nazi
| technology.
|
| It does seem historically accurate to say that
| governments don't successfully complete state-of-the-art
| mega-projects absent war or an existential treat.
|
| I expect those are the only things powerful enough to cut
| through the bureaucratic resistance to progress.
| pohl wrote:
| > Let SpaceX et al. take the technology risk
|
| ...but who would have guessed that one of the
| externalities of this approach would be an oligarch going
| full QAnon off the rails with a social network he bought
| as hobby bullhorn. I think I'd rather just pay my taxes
| and fund a civilian space agency and still have a more
| sane information environment.
| szundi wrote:
| Whatever he turns out to be, this tech is going to be
| there in the head of those people working at SpaceX.
| Should it go bankrupt later, other investors will hire
| them and they go forward.
|
| Musk is ... unique. Let's say. But he is very good at
| organizing companies for a relentless push for the
| results.
| pohl wrote:
| Treating employees as burnable resources isn't very good
| business, though. He's "good at" long-term dysfunction
| for short-term gain. Through that lens, I wouldn't be
| surprised if he decided to juice Twitter's MAU metrics by
| turning the place into a trainwreck.
| glompers wrote:
| We tend to think of risk management and secondarily the
| cost horizon of [re]building eroded technical competence,
| in the West, but hn commenter User23 also makes a point
| that is incredibly important and less often mentioned:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33939692
|
| > " 'Indeed, besides the Catholic Church, the Lutheran
| Church, and the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of
| Man, every organization [of 60+] in the western world
| that's been continuously operating since 1530 is a
| university.'
|
| -- https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD
| 11xx/E...
|
| I believe this is why it's critically important that
| universities remain focused on their timeless mission
| rather than chasing secular fads. The Buxton index,
| described in the [link], is an incredibly important
| concept."
|
| It's natural that we would think technology startups
| compelling due to the way they succeed with difficulty
| and risk management competence. But if their Buxton index
| of planning horizon is limited by their runway, and a
| decade is considered an Uber-long horizon, how futuristic
| and exceptional are we ultimately talking? I agree with
| the parent commenter that the eggs in two baskets serve
| separately appropriate purposes.
| Veedrac wrote:
| These are common but post-hoc justifications. Government
| launch monopolies have suppressed a lot of competition in the
| market, that would exist in plenty if the money was fairly
| spent.
|
| A particularly salient example in light of Russia's war is
| that Congress repeatedly underfunded the Commercial Crew
| Program in favor of over-funding SLS, while we were trying to
| wean off Russian dependence.
|
| But this is far from the only case. We could have had
| redundancy in Artemis by designing for commercial lift; half
| the money split between three providers would have given a
| lot more lift and a lot better cadence than SLS. We could
| seek out redundancy for SLS _now_ , by buying rockets Artemis
| already requires, modified for SLS' flight profile, and
| spending a tiny fraction on, say, ULA and Blue's rockets.
|
| We would have more backup launch capabilities, and more
| relevant talent, and more institutional knowledge, if we just
| invested the money in open-market demand for products, rather
| than supporting and endorsing monopoly-making. Was Congress
| more up in arms over Starship HLS, or ULA EELV? Think what it
| says to the market when a government is more willing to give
| money to a company for forming a monopoly and to penalize
| them for flying commercial payloads, than in purchase of a
| product.
|
| The motivations for these programs aren't actually grounded
| in the betterment of the industry, nor of the US' launch
| capabilities in general. There is no way ~$100B on SLS/Orion
| is a sane allocation of money for that.
| kube-system wrote:
| They're not post-hoc at all, military power was the entire
| reason world powers went to space to begin with, not
| science.
|
| And private aerospace has highly monopolized themselves --
| there's a reason there's so many hyphenated company names
| in this space. Consolidation is the natural evolution of
| large private companies in industries with high barriers to
| entry. The only mechanism we have to counter that _is_
| public spending that intentionally props up smaller
| players. SpaceX would already be out of business if it
| weren 't for the US government swooping in to save the day.
| They didn't have a viable commercial business until later.
| altacc wrote:
| I'd add that whilst people generally have a low trust in
| governments, I personally have zero trust in corporations and
| the idea of access to space being solely the preserve of
| commercial entities is an uncomfortable one. Historically
| both governments and companies have acted for self interest
| and detrimentally to everyone else but governments still have
| more accountability than corporations, which are beholden to
| a profit seeking board. Governments do things that are not
| profitable but advance society, for profit entities don't.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Governments do things that are not profitable but advance
| society, for profit entities don't.
|
| The simplest way to understand if society wants something
| is if it will pay for it.
|
| > the idea of access to space being solely the preserve of
| commercial entities is an uncomfortable one
|
| It shouldn't be. Until SpaceX, the only way to the ISS was
| a Russian-controlled system. Would you prefer that to
| SpaceX today? Or is it better to have companies - that are
| regulated - follow money rather than the whims of whomever
| is currently in charge?
| gbear605 wrote:
| > The simplest way to understand if society wants
| something is if it will pay for it.
|
| That's society's preferences weighted by how good each
| person is at making money, but it doesn't represent
| society as a whole. If a person is disabled or uneducated
| and can't hold a job, that person should still get an
| equal say in society's preferences even though they have
| no money with which to express their preferences.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > should still get an equal say in society's preferences
| even though they have no money with which to express
| their preferences
|
| They don't get that through the government. A mostly
| binary choice comprising of what two sides promise to do
| on a thousand issues? How is that anything close to the
| perfect accessible system you're positing?
| ogre_magi wrote:
| >that person should still get an equal say in society's
| preferences
|
| why?
| 13of40 wrote:
| I know it's an archaic sentiment, but something about
| everyone being created equal...
| jkeddo wrote:
| Is it really equality to perfectly equalize decision-
| making while completely slanting the resulting the
| burden-taking?
|
| I realize how dangerous/potentially harmful a "taxpayer
| contribution === influence" is. But I think it doesn't
| have to be a binary. Perhaps a "three house" style system
| would be an improvement for representative democracy
| here:
|
| One house for representatives of each state One house for
| representatives of vote by population One house for
| representatives of taxpayers by net tax burden carried
| MontagFTB wrote:
| Because they are people at risk of being marginalized or
| abused. It doesn't mean their preferences become law, but
| they should have a voice.
| alpos wrote:
| In case you were looking for the literal answer, it is
| because a society is the aggregate of every individual in
| it. It follows that a society's preferences are defined
| by the aggregate of the preferences of each individual in
| it.
|
| Therefore if one wants to know what the society's
| preferences are, that data must be collected in such a
| way the each individual's preferences are included in the
| data set.
|
| We might still apply a weighting function at aggregation
| time, depending on why we're looking at society's
| preferences in that instance. There are certain group's
| of opinions that we don't value as much for answers to
| some questions, but we should like to be deliberate about
| those choices instead of applying an implicit weighting
| function during collection.
| adventured wrote:
| I worked at a chain retail store once upon a time. There
| was a self-proclaimed nazi (he was proud of it of course)
| that came in daily and stole a lot of merchandise.
| Company policy was to do nothing, essentially.
|
| The nazi also had a criminal record for raping a young
| boy.
|
| The parent put it this way:
|
| > If a person is disabled or uneducated and can't hold a
| job, that person should still get an equal say in
| society's preferences even though they have no money with
| which to express their preferences
|
| Morally and rationally the nazi child rapist should not
| have equal say in society's preferences. Any society -
| any culture - that is stupid enough to place that
| person's preferences at a level of equality, deserves and
| will have earned its inevitable collapse. And there are
| far worse monsters roaming about than the nazi child
| rapist. While my specific example is an outlier (on
| purpose), the premise is far more expansive in principle.
|
| It's also why a Constitutional Republic is vastly
| superior to actual Democracy.
| alpos wrote:
| Collection of data is not equivalent to a judgement on
| the value of the results.
|
| For example, when considering questions of crime and
| punishment / deterrence we probably wouldn't value the
| preferences of say, psychopathic murderers, on the same
| level as those of the families of their victims. That
| would be silly.
|
| However, it would still be good to collect their
| preferences on conditions within the prison system and
| host of other topics. And we might still intentionally
| devalue those preferences too, but that would be a
| deliberate choice of values as society.
|
| When we fail to collect the data effectively in the first
| place, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to
| determine what we value and what we don't. So we're still
| going to want to know these things, that way we don't
| just discover later that we were ignoring a big thing
| that, turns out, we would have liked to value once we
| knew about it.
|
| In your particular example, add in the one stipulation
| that both the Nazi and the family of his victims don't
| have much discretionary income to spend and yet they live
| in a world where society's preferences are collected
| primarily or singularly by way of observing what people
| spend money on. In that scenario, all of those people's
| preferences share the equal status of being completely
| ignored. That seems unfair to victims as well.
|
| Modify the scenario a little differently and say the Nazi
| is very wealthy while the victims are poor. So then
| because of the data collection method alone, as a
| society, we would then be elevating the Nazi's
| preferences to 100% greater value than the victims.
|
| That outcome seems vastly contrary to what we would
| actually value if we just fairly and accurately collected
| the data first and then applied our judgements about what
| should be valued.
|
| Further notice that in just asking the questions, we can
| also easily discover at the macro level that this guy is
| a Nazi, after all, given the chance, he'll tell us so.
| This means deliberately ignoring his preferences is easy
| at time of aggregation and now we can do that on purpose,
| because as a society, we don't value the opinions of
| Nazis when it comes to questions of how to run things in
| a democracy.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _why?_
|
| Because as a society, we decided long ago that everyone
| should be treated as equally as possible.
|
| We don't throw people into the garbage dump because
| they're not as good at certain things as others.
|
| We've encoded this into our laws, our norms, our
| education, and our society as a whole. We've even fought
| world wars because of it.
|
| That you could even ask the question makes me think that
| you're just being provocative.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| "Because as a society, we decided long ago that everyone
| should be treated as equally as possible."
|
| That we have a progressive instead of flat personal tax
| _rate_ system shows this is a pretty lie.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _the idea of access to space being solely the preserve of
| commercial entities is an uncomfortable one._
|
| To be fair, everything else has been like this. The first
| railways were government funded, the first airlines (in
| most places), this is quite typical.
|
| Then as things mature, as there can be a profit-motive,
| government tends to get out of the lime-light, and private
| orgs take over.
|
| Space-X, as an example, is just that. And space travel is
| about to become mundane, common, normal. Just like air
| travel in the early 50s.
|
| And this doesn't mean the government has zero power here.
| It can take over companies in time of war/national
| emergency, it can compel for national need.
|
| Again, what we need to do... is realise that space travel
| is becoming like air travel. And I for one, would be
| horrified if all control to air travel was through
| governments only.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Well, there were certainly cases where companies
| pioneered something and government took over later - like
| railways in Austria-Hungary. The conservative government
| in Vienna did not thin these newfangled trains could ever
| make money, but handed out permits to private companies
| anyway. Then when it saw how bloody lucrative it is, it
| nationalized those companies afterwards.
|
| And there are other examples, such as the East India
| Company having its own army, navy and effectively ruling
| a big part of India at a time.
| hobs wrote:
| There's no way that's happening.
|
| Air travel is one of the safest modes of mechanized
| transportation in the world, space launches would be
| among the least and probably wont change much in their
| overall reliability.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _wont change much in their overall reliability._
|
| This is a very, very strange assertion.
|
| Airflight was incredibly dangerous 100 years ago. Yet now
| you claim it is one of the safest, thereby validating
| that technological improvements, and design improvements,
| can change safety.
|
| Then you say, effectively "things won't improve" for
| "this other tech over here".
|
| Which is it?!
|
| My point in all of this is, while space travel was a
| _monumental_ achievement 60+ years ago, it 's simply not
| that big of a deal now. Endless commercial corporations
| now engage in the act, for profit, because there _is_
| profit, and because it is _so_ commonplace.
|
| And this trend will only increase, eventually leading to
| people actually being station in space (eg, the moon,
| larger commercial structures, mining, etc). This will
| lead to more trips, and for people visiting said
| structures for business, and on and on.
|
| Just as with planes, this will become safer, more common,
| more regulated, more... normal.
|
| What part of this iterative process do you believe will
| block launches from being more safe? NOTE: don't use
| today's technology as a blocker, please.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Governments hire corporations. Czech, mate.
| touch_abs wrote:
| Im not sure you actually achieve any of this with the SLS,
| and NASA in general. 1 and 2 are irrelevant if the cost is
| too high for anything that isnt a political stunt, to be a
| real alternative it needs to be something that a commercial
| payload might plausibly choose. 3 and 4, are compromised by
| the political nature of NASA spending, I dont believe the
| current institution is capable of innovation. The talent of
| the people is uncertain, not due to the individuals, but the
| way work can become visible (also the hiring, promotion, and
| leadership determination is based on politics not merit)
| Apart from long range experiments, nasa is really the cutting
| edge at the moment. 5 is just another way tax money
| evaporates.
| yazantapuz wrote:
| > I dont believe the current institution is capable of
| innovation
|
| But leaving aside the SLS, there are missions like the mars
| rovers and the james webb telescope, that I think show
| innovation and scientific success (but I do not live on the
| us, so i have an incomplete view).
| skissane wrote:
| > 1. having alternatives to other commercial ventures, which
| are subject to their own financial viability
|
| SpaceX suddenly going out of business (as in a Chapter 7
| bankruptcy) seems rather unlikely. The same is true of ULA,
| Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. Absolute worse case scenario
| would be Chapter 11, in which the business continues to
| operate under new ownership, and the current owners lose
| everything - but even that doesn't seem that likely. Anyway,
| the chapter 11 scenario is still a risk with the cost-plus
| procurement SLS model - Boeing (or Aerojet Rocketdyne, or
| Lockheed Martin) going through chapter 11 might not have
| doomed SLS/Orion, but it likely would have caused delays. In
| fact, it is open to doubt whether SLS/Orion-style cost-plus
| contracting has any real advantage over commercial from a
| bankruptcy risk perspective, for two competing commercial
| providers must have less bankruptcy risk than a single non-
| commercial government contractor
|
| > 2. having backup launch capability
|
| Multiple commercial providers, like they've pursued for
| commercial cargo and crew to ISS, and are still planning to
| pursue for Artemis HLS, would meet that just as well as an
| SLS-style program could. Given they likely could have
| afforded at least two commercial systems for the cost of
| SLS+Orion, it seems this actually gives _worse_ backup than
| commercial does.
|
| > 3. maintaining more relevant talent in the US
|
| This doesn't seem relevant, given that the most likely firms
| to have provided NASA with a commercial SLS alternative -
| SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Sierra
| Nevada, etc - are all US firms anyway. In fact, IIRC, the
| NASA procurement documents for commercial crew and cargo, and
| Artemis HLS, all said only US firms could respond. ITAR makes
| it a lot harder for US space firms to offshore jobs than most
| other industries.
|
| > 4. maintaining institutional knowledge of cutting edge
| aerospace tech
|
| While it is true that NASA doesn't own the engineering for
| the commercial programs, in the way they own SLS engineering,
| NASA engineers are still heavily involved in the commercial
| programs, for review/advice/consulting/sign-off/etc. This
| factor is the most plausible of all those you've mentioned,
| but it is unclear if having somewhat deeper engineering
| expertise among NASA employees (as opposed to US private
| sector space firms) is important enough to justify a
| procurement approach which costs billions over and above its
| commercial alternative
|
| > 5. maintaining aerospace industrial capability in the US
|
| This doesn't seem relevant for the same reasons as (3)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _SpaceX suddenly going out of business (as in a Chapter 7
| bankruptcy) seems rather unlikely. The same is true of ULA,
| Boeing, Lockheed Martin_
|
| SpaceX is not critical to national security, and it--many
| times--came close to bankruptcy in its adolescence of the
| early 2010s. Aerospace, in the past, saw massive recessions
| where companies larger than SpaceX went poof. This will
| almost certainly happen again, once we're done tooling up
| for China.
| areoform wrote:
| It didn't use to be. But as soon as they started
| launching national security payloads on the Falcon Heavy
| and the Delta IV Heavy retired, they became the only
| heavy-lift launch vehicle on the market capable of taking
| up national security payloads. Until Vulcan/Centaur
| enters the game.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Sure there are these benefits, but the real question is what
| would be the benefits of some alternative way to spend the
| money, and how does that compare? What if we made STEM
| degrees tuition free across the country? Surely that would
| result in a larger talent pool than simply paying NASA
| engineers to dig holes and then fill them up with rocket
| parts.
| zardo wrote:
| > This is sometimes seen as wasteful, on the surface, but
| there are very real benefits to doing things like this, even
| when it is much more expensive than alternatives:
|
| Those benefits are from having government rocket program, not
| from having one where politicians micromanage the rocket
| design to the extent of dictating the choice of engine.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > 1. having alternatives to other commercial ventures, which
| are subject to their own financial viability
|
| Alternatives to what? Commercial manned capsule ventures
| already have alternatives. Specifically, the only US manned
| capsule today, Dragon, has alternative capabilities being
| developed by SpaceX itself in the form of Starship, and
| Boeing has a capsule that keeps failing milestones but is
| being developed. If you are referring to the rocket, then the
| SLS is not compatible with any other rocket in use for any
| purpose, due to the SRBs. All commercial payloads are
| designed with smoother liquid-only rockets in mind -
| designing for an SRB launch adds considerable weight to the
| birds. > 2. having backup launch capability
|
| Backup to what? What can the SLS launch that would go on
| another rocket? > 3. maintaining more
| relevant talent in the US
|
| This is true. > 4. maintaining institutional
| knowledge of cutting edge aerospace tech
|
| The SLS is not cutting edge. It's refactoring 1970's
| technologies. The Orion capsule might be considered modern,
| but again it's not cutting edge in any sense of the term.
| > 5. maintaining aerospace industrial capability in the US
|
| Since the CRS program has been underway, this has not been in
| danger.
| themgt wrote:
| China just built a new space station by itself in about 18
| months. A lot of these rationalizations for going the slow
| bloated pork route are going to evaporate as it becomes
| clearer we have a great power peer competitor. Hopefully it
| doesn't take a CCP flag flying on the Moon and people getting
| arrested for criticizing Xi Jinping Thought on Mars for the
| USA to finally get off its ass and realize being arrogantly
| wasteful and inefficient isn't actually a "deterrent to war"
| against a competent adversary.
| adventured wrote:
| We have no idea how long it took the Chinese Government to
| build their new space station. They lie about practically
| everything and the record is largely opaque with everything
| they do. If it took them ten years to bring it to fruition,
| they certainly would lie about it and pretend otherwise.
| malfist wrote:
| To be fair, their space station is 3 modules and about the
| size of mir. It is significantly smaller than the ISS.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| pfdietz wrote:
| The ISS showed large space vehicles can be assembled from
| small modules that could be launched on the Space
| Shuttle.
|
| This is the major accomplishment of the ISS program. So
| what does NASA do? Decide (or be told to decide), "oh no,
| we need a launcher that can lift much bigger things,
| because OF COURSE we can't put smaller modules together
| in space."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> which are subject to their own financial viability_
|
| Or are run by folks with sleep deprivation issues...
| joshvm wrote:
| On 4, SLS is also a strategic partnership with ESA and other
| external agencies. ESA is supplying the service module for
| example.
| dools wrote:
| Whatever we can do, we can afford.
|
| Why are you concerned about commercial viability of a public
| good?
| Aloha wrote:
| Each Apollo launch cost on the order of 3 billion dollars
| inflation adjusted, 1 billion seems like a bargain.
| Tepix wrote:
| It will be much, much higher if you take into account the
| entire programy
| Aloha wrote:
| Yeah, I was comparing vehicle cost to vehicle cost, So
| yeah, Apollo was much higher, because of the costs to
| operate the tracking network, etc - which isnt rolled into
| this new program today.
| lizknope wrote:
| > I wonder if people felt this way about Apollo? In hindsight
| it feels worthwhile. But the big difference between Artemis and
| Apollo is that Artemis is coming after Commercial Crew/SpaceX
| has proven a different business/engineering model.
|
| The public started to lose interest in Apollo after a couple of
| years. There was supposed to be an Apollo 18, 19, and 20. They
| were cancelled. One of them turned into Skylab. The others are
| in museums. You can walk under a Saturn V in Florida and see
| the other in Houston.
| risyachka wrote:
| With mindset like this, Apollo would never have happened.
| iso1631 wrote:
| And what would have been lost?
| Maken wrote:
| Several hundred kilograms of lunar rocks.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Lunar samples could have been returned by unmanned
| vehicles at a fraction of the cost of Apollo. The
| Russians did just that! Maybe not hundreds of kilograms,
| but enough to get the major science results (moon is
| evolved not primitive, oxygen isotopes, volatile
| depletion, europium anomaly). Unmanned vehicles could
| even have reached the polar regions, which Apollo never
| could do.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| There are a lot of technologies that advanced tremendously
| due to developing things the Apollo Program needed: https:/
| /www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/80660main_ApolloFS....
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Is it fair to categorise Space-X as "the winner of the
| competition designed by NASA to find a way to build rockets
| without having Senators interfere?"
|
| As in, SpaceX hired the engineers from NASA, got paid by NASA
| and basically built the rockets that were in fetal at NASA?
|
| I am not saying nothing innovative happened, I am asking is the
| difference taking the same engineers out of NASA or is there
| something else?
| mayama wrote:
| What about lockheed martin, boeing and blue origin then. They
| also recruit from the same pool of engineers. LM/ULA gets
| paid even better with their cost+ contracts. LM/ULA even
| after getting paid handsomely are way behind in terms of
| cost/kg or human launchers.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| That's fair - but I suspect the same bureaucracy exists in
| Lockheed et al, as do the incentives to please senators /
| government that feed the next round of spending.
|
| The simple answer is to prevent small numbers of people
| having outsize influence on massive spending. So for
| example, billionaires...
|
| This is a thing I have been noodling on for ages but have
| no answers other than "you need a clear mission and people
| at the top focused on that mission even if they are not
| clear their retirement packages are secure"
|
| (or maybe their retirement packages were secure some way in
| ...)
| failuser wrote:
| I might be harsh, but Musk has gone off the rails and is
| getting less and less reliable option for space launches every
| day.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Shotwell runs SpaceX, according to NASA chief:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/spacex-
| leader...
|
| Based on Musk's recent antics, pretty sure a VP runs Tesla
| too.
| ralfd wrote:
| Four days ago:
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1600964083913588736
|
| > I continue to oversee both Tesla & SpaceX, but the teams
| there are so good that often little is needed from me
| mhh__ wrote:
| The good news is that he doesn't (there no way he'd have
| time) run Tesla and SpaceX day-to-day other than at a very
| high level
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Why? Seems like the Falcon 9 team has gone from strength to
| strength.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be the case. SpaceX is killing it.
| piokoch wrote:
| Why? Because he bought Twitter and said that he does not like
| censorship?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Emphasis on _said_ versus acts like
| paparush wrote:
| Because Twitter is a huge distraction as apparently Musk
| has made himself moderator in chief.
|
| Besides Tom Mueller actually makes the rockets go brrrrrr.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Honestly, SpaceX has been delivering results steadily and
| with seemingly no change in rate or quality since he was
| distracted by Twitter. The recent news [1] that he isn't
| doing the lead engineering at Starbase means this likely
| won't be felt there either.
|
| I suppose it really boils down to whether the organization
| was succeeding _because_ of him or _in spite_ of him. Maybe
| he was necessary to get it where it is and can step back and
| have the company continue to perform well.
|
| [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/spacex-shakes-up-
| starbase-le...
| jedberg wrote:
| I think the concern is not their output but the fact that
| Musk could one day just decide he will no longer provide
| rockets when $political_party is in power.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > getting less and less reliable option for space launches
|
| By what metric, other than "I hate Musk so I slander his
| enterprises"?
| docdendrite wrote:
| Yes, many did feel that way and you can hear this for yourself
| in a small part of the documentary "Summer of Soul" by
| Questlove. In the film they show archival footage shot at the
| Harlem Culture Festival on the day of the Apollo 11 landing.
| The interviewees are resoundly unimpressed with the
| achievement. They cite the expense of the program, especially
| in lieu of the lacking services and dire maintenance of Harlem,
| NYC as a key reason for their lack of support.
| johnny22 wrote:
| i think of "Whitey on the moon"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
| manigandham wrote:
| Here's a classic letter by Ernst Stuhlinger to Sister Mary
| Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of
| Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space
| exploration:
|
| _" Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa"_ -
| https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-
| space-...
| bnralt wrote:
| It seems telling that the most concrete example he gives
| for the value of human space flight is the usefulness of
| unmanned satellites.
|
| Simplistically it's true that whenever you spend money on
| some effort there's going to be some benefit. Paying NASA
| scientists to dig ditches would have some benefit in
| stimulating the economy, even if it doesn't offset the
| costs (material and opportunity). Would it be the best use
| of resources, however?
|
| Whenever I go down the rabbit hole of "spinoff
| technologies," I find a lot of it to be a gish gallop of
| stuff, much of which is overstated. There's a reason why
| you hear NASA talking up pioneering research done on
| Alzheimer's at the international space station, but you
| don't read Alzheimer's researchers talking about
| breakthroughs coming from the ISS.
|
| Still, there are a lot of important technology that NASA
| has been involved with. But when you look into most of it,
| the connection to human spaceflight is tangential at best,
| and often completely non-existent (NASA does a lot of stuff
| outside of human spaceflight).
|
| The kernel of the argument is accurate - scientific
| research can be important even if it doesn't provide
| immediate dividends. But too often people misuse that to
| argue that no amount of money is poorly spent. It's
| precisely because scientific research is important that we
| need to carefully consider the return on different
| projects, and make sure that the funds that are being
| allocated are well spent.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Honestly I think all the side-effect technologies are
| just marketing. The true goal of space exploration is and
| should be to turn us into an interplanetary and
| eventually interstellar species. Yes we don't have the
| tech to do all of that just yet, and maybe some new
| physics is required, but just as Cathedrals were
| intentionally built over centuries we should
| intentionally build out the capability to the best of our
| abilities. Not only is it essential to our long-term
| survival as a species, it would provide a cultural
| release valve just like the old frontier, only this time
| no natives to worry about.
| bnralt wrote:
| I highly doubt much if any of the space exploration now
| is going to have a significant impact on humans being an
| interplanetary or interstellar species. A good analog
| might be the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. It was
| interesting, but it Amundsen's expedition never left we'd
| be in the exact same place we are now when it comes to
| exploring Antarctica.
|
| If 200 years ago a country had decided to keep a
| settlement going at the top of Mount Everest in the name
| of progress, it wouldn't have been any benefit to the
| modern efforts to keep people in the ISS. Likewise, I
| don't expect the ISS to have any noticeable impact on
| efforts to have people live on other planets.
|
| Keep in mind, this doesn't mean we won't make progress. A
| lot of people are excited about what SpaceX has been
| doing, and until very recently they've been entirely
| involved in non-human cargo. There are a lot of reasons
| to send things into space, which is why we send up a lot
| of stuff. There's just not many reasons to send people up
| at the moment, other than to be able to say we're sending
| people up.
| scottLobster wrote:
| We have to start somewhere, and private industry isn't
| going to start it because, as you point out, there's not
| many reasons to do it at the moment. The ISS is allowing
| us to experiment with living in orbit for extended
| periods. We certainly have to master those relatively
| simple conditions before attempting to survive a manned
| trip to Mars or living on the Moon.
|
| Also SpaceX wouldn't exist without the ISS. It's NASA
| contracts for resupplying the ISS that kept it alive in
| the early days. Which just goes to prove the model:
| Government invests in "useless" project that allows
| private industry the toe-hold of capital needed to
| kickstart a new technology.
|
| To your Antarctic exploration analogy, I'd say the ISS is
| more equivalent to McMurdo station than the Amundsen
| expedition
| recuter wrote:
| Additional food for thought about another sister:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa#Re
| l...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181012074427/http://www.slate
| ....
| clarionbell wrote:
| This quote is particularly interesting:
|
| In 2012, William Doino Jr, wrote that "The remarkable
| thing about Hell's Angel is that it purports to defend
| the poor against Mother Teresa's supposed exploitation of
| them, while never actually interviewing any on screen.
| Not a single person cared for by the Missionaries speaks
| on camera. Was this because they had a far higher opinion
| of Blessed Teresa than Hitchens would permit in his film?
| Avoiding the people at the heart of Teresa's ministry,
| Hitchens posed for the camera and let roll a series of ad
| hominem attacks and unsubstantiated accusations, as
| uninformed as they were cruel."
| stareatgoats wrote:
| I afraid we stray from the topic, but yes, i'm not either
| one for Hitchen's obvious ideology-based vendetta against
| Catholicism in general and Mother Teresa in particular.
| Having witnessed first hand the Sisters of Mercy at work
| in rural Africa where no-one except these proselytes of
| Mother Teresa thought it worthwhile to take in orphans,
| lepers, old people without relatives and give them food,
| shelter, life in fact. Not an atheist in sight.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| It's laughable that Mother Teresa's critics try to
| disparage her by contrasting the care of her organization
| vs. that of a western hospital. The reality of the
| situation was that you either passed away in a soft bed
| with someone by your side or alone on the side of the
| curb. I know which one I would prefer
| Wuzado wrote:
| Relevance?
| recuter wrote:
| And what does Ja Rule think of all this?
|
| Edit: Questlove is a DJ.
|
| Origin of my question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-
| ddYhXAZc
| BucketsMcG wrote:
| Questlove does a lot of things, and invariably does them
| very well. But it's not about what _he_ thinks.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty
| billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon?
|
| Tom Lehrer
| mcdonje wrote:
| Money spent on NASA is not a boondoggle. Much of the money goes
| to paying talented scientists and engineers well. Their R&D is
| vital to our economy.
|
| You may be interested in this: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| If all talented scientists and engineers do is work on
| boondoggles, maybe it is not so vital to pay them?
| mcdonje wrote:
| Who is the boondoggle decider?
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| I'm just saying, you can't say "It's not a boondoggle
| because a lot of talented engineers got paid!" That's
| not, a priori, a good thing.
| dantheman wrote:
| Building a rocket that is hard to launch and costs a fortune
| is a boondoggle. Talented scientists and engineers can waste
| their time building the wrong thing.
| mcdonje wrote:
| What other current rocket system matches the specs of the
| SLS, or has the same goals? The only thing comparable is
| Starship, which isn't ready yet.
|
| There are legitimate complaints to be made about things
| like cost plus accounting, but the project itself isn't a
| boondoggle. Like, the people who greenlit it aren't idiots.
|
| If you want to complain about boondoggles, look at the
| military.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| Much of it goes to enrich contractors. Lockheed Martin as a
| usual suspect here, for example.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I had a hard time being interested in this because of how it
| mostly just represents the corrupt and unchecked priorities of
| the US government. Some of the pictures were pretty, but in the
| end it's still a massive waste of money and NASA constantly talks
| about "a sustainable presence on the Moon" with Orion as if
| they're praying that saying it often enough will make it true.
|
| There is no path to a sustainable presence anywhere which
| involves Orion flying, especially if it's flying on SLS.
| api wrote:
| It's a sustainable source of Federal tech job program subsidies
| for the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas.
|
| Even Arianespace in France is talking about reusable cores now,
| but I assume for them there's less political pressure to run
| the ESA as a jobs program.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think there's plenty of pressure to run the ESA as a jobs
| program as well, it's just that they're forced to channel it
| into a slightly more productive direction due to
| wanting/needing the commercial launch business.
|
| NASA/Congress could have achieved the same jobs program
| effect by pushing the same money towards a reusable rocket
| and an appropriately larger number of missions. Although
| perhaps that wouldn't have been as good for Alabama etc (it's
| a massive shame that they didn't take the SLS money to
| improve Alabama's ability to handle higher tech space stuff).
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > Even Arianespace in France is talking about reusable cores
| now, but I assume for them there's less political pressure to
| run the ESA as a jobs program.
|
| Honest question: why would you assume that?
| jeffal wrote:
| With Musk falling off his rocker lately, maintaining an alternate
| launch system may have been a wise decision.
| bilekas wrote:
| Feels like this doesn't get enough credit. Which is either a
| product of the algorithm, or a failure of humanity. Or both.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Makes me feel sick knowing we're going to keep blowing money on
| this. We've made so little progress in the last 30 years while
| dumping billions into unsustainable launch systems. Everyone
| thinks space can't be don't without NASA. The reality is their
| monopoly and deep government pockets have held back any real
| progress.
|
| It's just like healthcare and education - government money turns
| these systems into jobs programs with inflated costs and slow
| progress.
| yoavm wrote:
| Yeah, because countries without state education system and
| state healthcare system are doing so great! /s
| [deleted]
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| The free market would sort all of this out, stop the handouts
| and let corporations take the lead on humanity's progress I
| say.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Sarcasm seems to be an unappreciated art these days I guess..
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Relax, NASA has little effect on the rest of the world's space
| programs. I hope you're not thinking 'space can't be done
| without USA'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_space_agenc...
| bottlepalm wrote:
| The rest of the world is in the same situation. Government
| subsidized, unable to innovate without someone else proving
| it out first. And even then they still fall back on the
| minimum set of tech.
| ketzo wrote:
| > it's just like healthcare and education
|
| So... it's ostensibly "public" while actually victim to massive
| regulatory capture?
|
| Wild to pick the two things that essentially every other
| developed country
|
| 1) runs through their government
|
| 2) does _way_ better than the U.S.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Regulatory capture is government's fault.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Every other developed country is not way better than the US
| at healthcare. Cost in the US are high but there is also
| quality and availability, which the US ranks very high in.
|
| Just as an anecdote, I had to go to an ENT in the US. I was
| discouraged that it took 12 days. Meanwhile I learned that a
| friend in the UK had to wait 4 months. Imagine being in pain
| and misery for weeks with no solution and being told you have
| to wait 4 months before someone can evaluate you.
|
| I'll take 12 days and a $40 copays 10/10 times.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| You're falling for the availability heuristic. I work at a
| healthcare software company that specializes in finding
| people services (a.k.a. referrals), and the wait times for
| our "have-nots" are much longer than four months. There are
| so many events and disabilities in America that can lead to
| you just never getting care at all. Most of our population
| is under-served.
|
| Now, the UK is especially bad but their system is receiving
| a national gutting at the moment.
| elil17 wrote:
| Healthcare wait times vary a lot country to country:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/health-
| ca...
|
| 27% of cases take one month or longer to get to a
| specialist in the US. Compare that to 61% Norway and Canada
| and 0% in Spain and Chile, all of which are single payer
| systems. That figure is at 25% in Germany and The
| Netherlands, which are both mandatory multi-payer systems
| (a mix of private and public insurance with much stricter
| limits on out of pocket costs compared to the US). It's not
| obvious that single payer systems lead to universally
| better or worse wait times.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| A very great deal depends on urgency. Here in the US when
| it was erroneously through I might have cancer I was in
| the specialist's office in less then 24 hours. Granted,
| that was a "Oh, we're not going to be too busy tomorrow
| morning, come in and we'll make room for you" partial
| special case. Other times I've waited a lot longer for a
| specialist's appointment, but those absolutely weren't
| high urgency situations.
| elil17 wrote:
| I was in exactly the same situation last week. A risk of
| a serious illness was identified and all of a sudden the
| red carpet was rolled out - next day appointments for
| procedures that typically take at least weeks to get
| scheduled. Now that they've ruled out everything really
| nasty (thank goodness) it's back to waiting a week for my
| doctor to reply to my messages.
| azernik wrote:
| Moving to Israel I knew prescription meds were way cheaper
| than in the US.
|
| What surprised me was that in the US, non-prescription meds
| are FAR cheaper. THe joys of having an actual free market as
| opposed to the captured and unwieldy hybrid that is US
| insurance.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What's really funny is that there are some meds (Flonase in
| this example) That can be purchased OTC, or prescribed and
| picked up at a pharmacy through your insurance.
|
| They cost nearly the same, whether your insurance is
| "negotiating a rate and covering a large portion and you
| pay the remainder", or if you just buy a box of 120 sprays
| off the shelf, from a generic manufacturer.
|
| American insurance industry is a giant, systemic fraud. It
| pretends to save you money by creating entirely fake high
| prices that they """negotiate""" down to a still stupid
| price that you are contractually obligated to pay a portion
| of. How much money actually changed hands between all
| parties? Oh they can't tell you that.
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