RadioBanter - BTW Stevie were watch the news lately about NASA

K4YZ wrote:
wrote:
K4YZ wrote:
wrote:
K4YZ wrote:

I MEAN that my biggest disappointment is that we don't have a
manned mission on Mars yet.

I'm disappointed, too.

When I was a kid I saw the Kubrick classic "2001" in the movie theater.
Back then they thought we'd have permanent bases (plural) on the Moon
by 2001. Also commercial orbiting space stations (hotel accomodations
by Howard Johnson?) and the first manned trip to *Jupiter*.

Plus true artificial intelligence.

Yes, I know it would be dangerous.

Yes, I know it would be expensive.

Yes, I know there are thousands of technological hurdles to
overcome. "T'aint nuttin' new"

The difference is the magnitude of those problems to be overcome.

Going to Mars is at least 100 times more difficult than going to the
moon. Mars never gets closer than 30 million miles - more
than 100
times farther away than the moon. A Mars mission would be
years long
rather than a week or two. Martian gravity and atmosphere
make the
problems even worse.

Yep...But...

It's been over 30 years since we've walked on the moon. We got
there in a bit over 9 years from President Kennedy's
challenge to do
so.

Yep. Think about *why* the USA was able to do it.

I know why, Jim...Money and govenmental subsidies witha bit of
technological application.

More than "a bit".

The big thing was that NASA essentially had a blank check to get to the
moon. The numbers don't sound that high today until you realize they
were 1960s dollars that were worth 5 to 10 2005 dollars.

And if it took 9 years to get to the moon, and Mars is 100 times
harder, that works out to 900 years!

You're being facetious.

Only partly. It takes months just to get to Mars.

We've squandered those intervening years on LEO manned
missions.

I'd hardly say they were "squandered". Other things took precedence.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh....TIVO and HBO.

Wars. Economic troubles. Energy crises. Major industries in big
trouble. Foreign competition.

Astronomers and scientists knew then when Mars would be in an
Earth-Mars-Earth (In this thread if I refer to EME, this is
what I
mean...Not EME as in "moonbounce")-transit favorable trajectory.

And they know all the problems. One of them is that with any known
practical rocket technology, a mission to Mars will take *years*. With
no hope of rescue from Earth if anything serious goes wrong.

I discussed that below.

Also...there was no hope of rescue when Cloumbus shoved off...So
again, what's new?

Columbus took three ships for that very reason. And he lost one. The
other two rescued the crew of the third.

There have been hundreds of plans put forth using AVAILABLE
technology and resources to get there...All we had to do was
pick one and get started.

The plans are only basic outlines. They require lots of
development to
become reality.

Uh huh. And what did I say?

Pick one and get busy.

And pay for it how?

Just ONE plan that seemed practical enough (or at least made the
most sense) to me was one to send the necessary resources for
life
support in a series of UN-manned "pre-missions" while the
manned vessel
was prepared in Earth orbit.

Of course. The first missions would be one-way supply ships that would
orbit Mars for years, waiting for people to show up. They could go at
very slow speeds to maximize the usable payload.

Resources would be pre-positioned both on
Mars and along the way.

Pre-positioning "along the way" isn't practical. The only
really
practical place to put a supply cache is in Martian orbit.

Placing a satellite into a known, predictable orbit isn't
practical?

Since when?

Steve, your ignorance of orbital mechanics is showing.

You can't preposition a supply ship "on the way" to Mars and at the
same time have it match the manned ship in speed and direction. Yet the
two ships need to have near-identical speed and direction to hook up.

Now consider how much payload would have to be sent ahead.
We're
talking *tons* of supplies and equipment, all of which would
have to be
still usable after *years* in space. Sure it can be done,
but it's not
easy, fast or inexpensive.

There's not one word from me saying it is. However water
doesn't
decay into anything else, and we have pretty reliable
technologies when
it comes to preserving our foodstuffs. An we've already proven we can
work in space to "fix stuff".

Let's talk about water for an example....

If a leak develops, the water will boil away into the vacuum of space.

If the temperature control isn't right, the water will freeze, expand
and burst the tank that holds it unless the tank is designed for
freezing.

If the water is allowed to freeze, a lot of energy will be needed to
melt it when it's needed.

All those problems can be overcome, of course. But when you're talking
about sending tons of supplies at costs of well over $25,000 per pound,
it gets expensive quick.

If it costs $100-200 billion or more to go to the moon, what would Mars cost?

Who cares?

Those of us who have to pay the bills!

I've already shown where those "investments" come home.

No, you haven't. Most of the technology needed for space doesn't
translate to earthbound uses well. btw, Tang and Teflon existed before
Project Mercury.

The PRESENT Space program has already generated TRILLIONS of
dollars in new technology and incentives since July, 1969..

Like what?

Start off with the PC, iPod, new textiles, and communications
technologies.

The PC did not come from the space program. It came from Xerox's Palo
Alto Research Center, circa 1971.

The iPod, neat as it is, hardly justifies the existence of NASA.

The textiles and communications technologies were extensions of
existing methods. The geosynchronous communications satellite was
proposed in the late 1940s. Frequency hopping spread spectrum was
coinvented by movie star Hedy Lamarr. Much of the deep-space
communications technology was originally developed for radio astronomy
or radar.

The best technologies to come from the space program are the abilities
to look at the earth from space, to see weather and other conditions.
Satellites are how come the Soviets couldn't keep Chernobyl a secret.

But those are unmanned.

And can you guarantee that the money would not have been
better
spent on direct problem solving?

Can you show me where direct problem solving is doing as well?

Oh yes!

The British just announced a vaccine against cervical cancer. No space
program involvement.

Advances in PC technology, and the internet, have almost all been made
by commercial companies feeding the earthbound market.

The greatest revolution in communications technology in the past decade
or two is fiber optics. Nothing to do with space, everything to do with
Dow Corning.

Everyone is hoo-yah'ing over the Rutan/X-Prize flights and
ballyhooing the emerging commercial space market, but while
admirable,
they are ony re-inventing the wheel.

At a tiny fraction of the price.

Imagine
where we COULD have been...?!?!

Do you remember the 1970s? I do.

Uh huh...And I didn't have a PC or iPod then.

Yet we got along without them.

And they didn't come from NASA.

All through the 1950s and 1960s, "aerospace" was the big deal.
Incredible resources were poured into the space programs and "defense".
We were told our future would be like that shown on "The Jetsons".

But when the supply of cheap oil disappeared in the early 1970s, we
found ourselves unable to produce a decent "economy" car. "Aerospace"
didn't help the folks in the gas lines.

Was it supposed to?

Isn't it obvious that we should have been focusing on that problem
sooner?

Where are the claims? Who said that?

Meanwhile the Japanese and Europeans already had lots of good economy
cars. It's taken the US auto industry decades to catch up.

Japanese and Europeans were used to living on streets narrow
enough to tll what the guy next door had for breakfast without parting
the shades.

Many American cities are no less crowded. The Europeans have a long
history of making big as well as small cars.

Americans were use to having "the wide open
spaces" and cheap gas.

Both of which turned out to be myths.

So...where was the incentive to make itty-bitty gas sippers? That
wasn't what the American market wanted.

The American car industry focused on the sizzle rather than the steak.
They invested heavily in styling and big engines and practically
ignored safety, pollution and fuel efficiency.

Long before the fuel crises of the early 1970s, VW had made big inroads
into the US market with small efficient reliable cars. So there *was* a
market - Detroit just ignored it.

Even now more and more SUV's
are rolling off the lines...even Honda and Suzuki have gotten
on the band wagon.

Most SUVs never leave the pavement. Most are all about style and image,
not transportation.

Why?

Now we're set to repeat that history.

Probably. And Americans STILL can't be told to start spending
money on trains and subways.

Sure they can. All it takes is leadership and longterm vision.

Maybe we would have had our CURRENT level of technology 15 or 20
years ago?

How? And current level of which technology?

Now you're treating me like an idiot, Jim.

How?

We're surrounded by technologies ranging from ancient to brand new.

Just think...If we'd pared only $10B from each YEAR'S defense
budget since 1970, we'd have "only" spent $360B now, which is
about 1
1/2 years military budget over THIRTY-SIX years...And wudda had an
American flag and American footprints on TWO astronomical
bodies by
now.

Imagine if that money had gone into energy independence
instead.

But wait! You've previously suggested such is the realm of the
commercial entities.

I'm saying they should be helped out by government. By such things as
tax credits and support for research.

Imagine if there were a NASA-like program set up to develop a commuter
car for the 21st century. Would have to exceed all current safety and
pollution requirements, seat at least two adults 6' 4"/250 pounds or
less, cost less than $20,000 MSRP
and get better than 100 MPG.

How long do you think it would take to solve those problems?

So why aren't THEY doing it?

They are - slowly. Because they have to do it out of their own pocket.

My old VW Rabbit Diesel got more than 40 mpg *city*. Using 1970s
technology. Fun to drive, easy to work on, lasted me 17 years. The
newer VW diesels are turbocharged and even better.

If we're going to have a tit-for-tat about the bottom-line
practicality of going, Jim, I'm not up for it.

I am. That's what engineering is all about - dealing with
*real* problems.

Obviously not in this case (travel to Mars).

Part of engineering is economics. And correctly identifying the real
problems.

It's easy to blue-sky what coulda-woulda-shoulda been done.
It's a lot
tougher to actually do the things.

No kidding?

Seems to me that a certain, since deceased, President of the
United States said we were going to to the moon not because it was
easy, but because it WAS hard.

He was saving face politically.

If you don't want to take a long
serious look at just how difficult and expensive a manned
Mars trip
would be, please don't lecture us about what
should have been done.

Jim, you're wanting to explain away why we languished for 36 years
on what would have been the feat of TWO millenium...OK...But the FACTS
are we did absolutely NOTHING to facilitate this mission.

Sure we did.

The main reason given for the Shuttle was that it was supposed to
*reduce* the cost of getting payloads to orbit. I recall clearly the
"space truck" sales pitch.

The idea was that subassemblies could be put in the shuttle cargo bay,
delivered to orbit, and assembled by the shuttle crew. Huge ships
capable of long-duration missions to the moon and Mars would be built
in orbit, tested and fueled, all by a fleet of Shuttles that could be
quickly (few weeks at most) turned around on Earth. The ships assembled
in orbit would be true spacecraft, not needing to deal with gravity or
atmospheres.

A grand idea, and it looked practical 30 years ago. But things didn't
work out that way.

Nothing.

No, plenty was done. Do you recall Viking and Voyager and all the
others? They were needed to gather data. Mars is a tougher environment
than the Moon in some ways.

Anyone can
"successfully" argue that it's going to "cost" time, money and
resources to go. Even lives. But EVERY expedition of
exploration in
man's time has cost money up front and lives along the way.

Of course. And some times it was worth it. Other times it wasn't.

So...Which ones were worth it, and on the UNsuccessful ones, do
you think the participants thought that thier lives were worth it?

Remember when Challenger blew up on launch? NASA was under pressure
from the White House to get that teacher into space.
They probably would have had a successful mission if they'd waited a
few days for warmer weather. But they yielded to
management overriding engineering.

The REAL
bottom line is that we could have done this a LONG time ago if we'd only said "Let's Do It."

But "we" didn't, because "we" didn't think it was worth the
costs.

"We" didn't do it becasue we had just come out of Viet Nam and
already landed 12 men on the moon...thier attention span was
short and
ready to move on.

The big reason was the Rooskies. They'd beaten the US into space with
Sputnik and Gagarin's flight. Look in the history books - all the early
space firsts were by the USSR. First artificial satellite - first
animal in space - first man in space - first woman in space - first
space walk - first mission to the moon - first pictures of the far side
of the moon - first multiple simultaneous manned missions - the list
goes on and on.

JFK knew that he needed something that was far enough off, yet doable,
to have a truly American first. Von Braun and his Germans had been
designing big rockets for years - on paper. The moon was the obvious
choice.

And it was a crash program. Once JFK was gone, it became a sort of
monument to his memory, as if we couldn't let him down.

btw, did you know that the Russians sent an unmanned mission to the
Moon that took rock samples and returned with them?

So...If we're to accept your apparent suggestion that
short-sightedness is an excuse for not pursuing research and
exploration, let's just go ahead and kill the ENTIRE space program,
Jim...I mean, afterall, MOST folks shrug thier shoulders and dismiss it
as science fiction...UNTIL you start pointing out the in-their-face
examples of what seemingly non-porductive research does to better thier
daily lives.

I say that we need a sensible space program *and* sensible policies and
programs here on earth. Long term, well-thought-out and well-run
programs to do what needs to be done.

And I think "we" made the right decision.

I don't.

I thinnk that it's humiliating to have had it at our discretion to
do this thing and have not done it.

If you can pay for it with discretionary funds, great!

It's like Jonas Salk looking
through his microscope, then saying, whelp, that was fun...

His vaccine came before the space program...

Back to NASA...The technologies in my chosen profession
alone that
have benefitted from the Space Program are phenominal. I think if we
pulled the rug out from under it any time soon, the "trickle down"
effect in lost of impetus in technology development would be rapid and
deep felt.

Can you guarantee that those advances would not have
happened if the
money had been spent on research in the fields
directly affected? IOW,
why not simply go after a problem directly?

In industrialized society's history, major technological
advancements have MOSTLY followed (1) war, (2) captialist investment for profit (3) government subsidy to do research in that field (usually the impetus of, again, war).
There are certainly exceptions to the rule, radio being one of them.
"Radio" was not developed by governmental subsidy, nor was it the
product of an 18th century "Motorola" but was the "product" of private
inventors.

BINGO!

Thank-you for agreeing with me.

The same was mostly true of computers. Oh yes, the first real computer,
ENIAC, was built for the Army to compute artillery aiming tables. But
it was built on the work of earlier machines like the Atasinoff-Berry
Computer. And only one ENIAC was ever built. Its successors came from
private industry, for commercial purposes.

Uh huh...and had the government NOT poured millions of dollars
into this, providing untold collateral research opportunities, how much
longer until commercial systems filled in the holes?

A few years at most. ENIAC wasn't the only early computer, just the
first. Bell Labs was working along similar lines with relay computers.

btw, the transistor was developed by Bell Labs. Without ENIAC, the
first electronic digital computers may have been made by Bell - and
transistorized.

As a matter of fact, considering the times, if you take away the
military and space programs, what WAS the incentive for such
computing systems?

Plenty:

1) The telephone system. (The transistor was actually meant to be a
switch, not an amplifier, to route telephone calls better than a relay)

2) Large companies handling lots of data, like insurance companies and
the stock exchange.

3) Industrial manufacturing control and inventory management.

4) Industrial research and simulation.

Lots more.

btw, ENIAC wasn't all that big a project, dollar-wise. IIRC it cost
about as much as a couple of B-29s or maybe a small destroyer.

No, I can't guarantee that those advances would not have
occured...but WHEN would they have occured?

Nobody knows.

Certainly NOT in the time
frame that they have.

Why not?

Because they haven't yet, and even Associate degree sociology
programs show the direct link between the advancement of
technology and warfare.

So we have to kill each other to advance technology?

There was a parallel rise during the "space race".

Only because there was lots of investment, and a clear direction.
That's the key factor.

We don't need wars or a space program to advance technology. Just a
reasonable amount of resources dedicated and a clear direction.

The fact is that we've avoided making serious longterm plans to solve
some basic technological problems in the USA. That avoidance has cost
us dearly, and will cost us more, until we
tackle the problems head-on rather than expecting some silver bullet to
do it for us.

I agree...Mass transit...universal healthcare...

Agreed!

housing and feeding the poor.

NO!

Make it possible for "the poor" to take care of themselves.

Now imagine spending the monies I suggested on a new "space race",
this time one shared with other nations...Not all of that money goes
into "research"...There are salaries to be paid, goods to be bought and
sold, and new means of transportation and communications to be
installed.

It's been done already. It's called ESA.

Collateral good instead of collateral damage.

THAT would be amazing.

Sure - but it would take a long-term vision and leadership. Willingness
to compromise.

And it wouldn't solve most earthbound problems.

73 de Jim, N2EY