There are tons of serious problems to solve here on earth, no need for another huge waste of money.
I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible. — Lord Kelvin, 1895
That money could be much better spent, like on tanks we will never use.
If we didn't have interest in space, there would be no SpaceX, Starlink, Mars rover, planetary missions, etc.
I personally think we're about to reach the terminal generation in 100-200 years with advancements in ML, and we won't be worried about sending human bodies anywhere. Just engines, sensors, and computers.
As such you could make these kinds of dismissive posts about every single human endeavour, why just complain about space research?
If you have these kinds of serious issues about humanity as a whole what are you doing to solve these problems that you perceive? It sounds to me like you're caught in a negativity loop and it isn't a good place to be in. If that's the case try and find something that you enjoy or take interest in and speculate about how you could make it better.
I have an on-going list with idea's I'd like to attempt. But I don't have the funding to carry them out. So I have to work, invest my own money with a limited target in attempt to help out.
I've started taking night classes in environmental studies, I daily go out and pick up trash. I don't eat meat, I recycle. I do all I can do. Every day I try to discover new methods on how I can do my part. If I didn't have to work, I could be focusing on research and working to a better environment but that's not possible. I'm doing all I can with the resources I have available with me but those itself are limited.
> If that's the case try and find something that you enjoy or take interest in and speculate about how you could make it better.
As much as I would like to, I can't. It's not like I can self-invest my time when I have to work eight hours a day to just allow myself to live. As much as I would love to start inventing to come up with new strategies, it's not possible. The interests I do have are underfunded, inaccessible without some sort of scientific degree and a life style where you have time for education.
How is space exploration different than these arguably frivolous activities? Should humans not use any resources for things that don't address these pressing issues you are talking about? I believe there are enough resources and wealth on earth to do all of these things, however, I, like you, disagree with how exactly the resources are being distributed. However, I don't think we need to single out space exploration, which I believe has potential for progress and expands human knowledge, as something we shouldn't be doing because of this unequal distribution.
I do agree with your sentiment about space increasingly being for the rich, with private companies and space tourism on the rise. However, I don't think all space exploration is and has to be this way
You earned that flag just for saying downvotes "prove your point", let alone the petty arguing.
But sure, reposting the first half of that comment without the extra hostility is pretty reasonable.
Retrospectively I do agree that the whole edited, down-votes comments may of been childish. But when people can just walk on by, down-vote without any justified meaning to why the down-votes are, I call them out; I do the same in real life.
Just about every technical advancement has benefited from space race everything from reducing size of electronics to the rumble strips on the side of the highway.
I think there are a few reasons you're getting downvotes, but they're involved enough that few are going to spare the effort to explain.
For example, all three of your last sentences are going to be strongly disagreed with and some people are going to read both a lack of thought on your part and a flawed way of thinking (ie. In terms of narrative, memes, drama) into those sentences and will decide it's not worth trying to engage and instead will just try and get rid of your message/you.
And just because we need them now doesn't make fair reason to space ventures.
Excluding the childish editorial remarks I made, the questions in which I pointed out are serious and are all pressing issues we currently face.
If they can be involved on clicking on a down arrow, they should be able to invest in to why they are clicking the down arrow. There was no attempt to fuel drama.
Those who are funding the space ventures are the ones who currently control the today and they don't exactly make it a pleasant place to be.
> Do you not believe people can focus on multiple different efforts
No, not really. Maybe if lucky but are you able to focus on multiple different efforts with the time and energy available?
Between our technologies, standard of living, relative peace, pushing exploration etc etc we're most definitely in a golden age relative to any other historical period. The problems we face are such that they relate to a continued and long term existential survival as a race and higher order concerns instead of mostly individual day to day survival for a majority of the worlds population and the fact we've even gotten far enough as a species to face such problems is in and of itself to be celebrated.
Hard times bring the most opportunity :)
And yes I personally focus on multiple different interests to a degree I make tangible impacts in all of them.
Currently we get it from fossil fuels, which is running out, heavily pollutes, and destroys the natural ecosystem. Nuclear was discovered, but it’s super complicated to handle and radioactive. Renewables are hit and miss, and must require a massive energy storage system in battery or water storage potential energy. Solar doesn’t always shine. Wind doesn’t always blow.
But in space, energy is infinite. For as far as we can see.
The problem is getting up there, and bringing it back down to earth.
But, what if we can harness it? In the form of solar collectors, and beam it back down to earth as microwaves or lasers. We can have vast fields of microwave collectors that can convert this energy back into electricity. Or laser receptors that can convert the laser back into electricity. No more pollution. No more environmental degradation. What you get is pure, clean, energy. All year round, day or night, rain or snow.
The challenges are great. The impossibilities are high. But the consequences of not achieving this is far worse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#:~....
A more useful one is the extensive of the satellite network which powers our ability to share and collaborate like we are doing now, along with the GPS network allowing us to travel more easily.
I hear you about the enviormental concerns and it's terrible how we are not aware or thoughtful about how all the externalities/problems which are created by new technologies. But to say we should not invest in space tech is a real step in the wrong direction if you care deeply about the environment. Some of the best energy capture technologies will come from our ability to master space travel, as well as the need to understand Terra forming other plants which will help us tackle climate problems here on earth.
I didn’t downvote but felt like this was worthy of a response.
Your whole perspective is a mechanical pragmatic one but the goal of a space program goes beyond that. It’s intended to be aspirational because we are species that wants to be inspired. It’s why NASA dedicates part of its mission to outreach. It’s also why a lot of countries have a space program when they have even larger problems to solve; it’s serves as both inspiration and national pride. If we only care about pragmatism, we might as well get rid of literature, music, art... you know the things that help make life worth living. Personally, I think doing hard, pioneering things to help inspire a populace is worth 0.45% of the national budget*
And from the extreme negativity in your post, a little inspiration might be of use to you, too.
* I also say this as someone who left the space industry to focus on an industry geared towards more immediate problems
Space will be a great thing, but when those in control of it, also control the damage of the current planet kind of makes moot of the whole two elements.
You could say the whole space venture is for the future, our kids, kids but how is there to be a future if we destroy the now?
I hate being stuck in the rut I am in, 31 and highly cynical. But from what I've experienced and seeing the decaying future gives less hope every day. I try hard to keep an optimistic type of view but it's bare threaded. Knowing that I've picked up four bin-bags daily of trash gives me hope that someday we can all be doing the same and that I've saved the planet a tiny bit.
I too also hope I can create awareness that turn a few heads with a few ideas but then with that you still run the extreme risk of being taken down for trying to promote a good deed.
> I’ll ask more directly: do you think 0.45% of the budget will solve those environmental problems enough to offset what is lost in aspirational benefit?
Yes, I do. If that 0.45% pushed towards environmental which helped develop new form of technology that returns well-being to the planet, then the aspiration wouldn't of been loss. Aspiration would return and would wager higher return including hope for humanity. It works both ways.
As like the current example on the front page at the moment about plant based recycling. That's inspirational but has much thought, time and money as of going in to space been invested in to that? Where would we be if did the same.
I'm just weighing down to what is more important now:
A lunar gateway, a space elevator. Or trying to harness the sun, clearing plastics from within the ocean? Fixing the planet we are on now, or living in space? It does currently show that people are more inspired by space than environmental science. Anything environmental is declared boring, it is boring. It doesn't yield the same practical results. As I mean you don't see the same result in the same sense as a new rocket, footage of a new planet. But regardless or not it is, which is more important?
I think the people who claim otherwise might benefit from looking at the actual relative funding.
It's strange that many people will happily discuss wasteful NASA programs like the Space Shuttle or the SLS years after the decision is made, but there's so much resistance to even considering that the currently proposed programs might end in a similar fashion.
Space really doesn't interest me, maybe it should. So it would be fair to say I am dumb on the subject and I would agree. Maybe it shows in my post. But my interests are on that we tackle those climate issues in the present now rather then waiting for an spinoff for a cure all. I don't disagree that the spin-offs are not great achievements. I want Lasek someday.
Geothermal, Renewable tech and the so is where my interests aim and I just don't see what the current space missions are achieving. Why do we need a lunar gateway? It feels like there is a whole private class wanting space to be their thing.
It would be fair to say there could be a rock on Mars or other distance planet that I dunno, could resolve environmental issue X. But when I see immature posts from entrepreneurs such as Elon, other rich classes such as Jeff, Richard Branson toying with new rocket can achieve turbo flames using precious resources turns me the other way. Especially when they're the ones contributing to the environmental problems we currently live with. That's what leaves me unconvinced. And yes you could say Elon's venture of Tesla is start of the electric car revolution but that should of happened many years ago. But is better then nothing.
It's hard to take a positive stance that space exploration is for the good when we have governments of evil, greed wanting to watch, control and who currently rule the planet that way and sure would love to rule the universe in the same nasty way. Same with technology used as a snooping device, data mining and monitoring for other big companies. How can you convince me that Starlink isn't being used to spy on others? The internet is a waste-land as it is.
I am not saying stop all space exploration nor that we shouldn't fund such programs but there is so much time & investment in to space lately that could be funneled in to beneficial fixes to the environmental problems of the now allowing produce of real technology rather waiting for the next spin-off. Anytime I come across something space, it looks and feels gritty for selfish greed rather then to help cause X of this planet. If there was a vibe of "Mars travel and we are going to work on solving environmental problems too" then I would view it differently.
Lets face it, there has never been true money pushed forward to resolving on-land problems and we let those who destroy off the hook.
However, thank you the further resources on such.
To be explicit, the ARM mission propulsion bus, canceled in 2017, is now to be the main component of the lunar gateway program. But it's like putting the cart before the horse with no intention of getting a horse ever. All this talk about lunar gravity well exploration is just sour grapes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_and_Propulsion_Element#A...
However, the limitation is mass not volume so while an asteroid 1/3 that density might be chosen it’s still going to be fairly compact.
So yes, we've put 11 space stations in orbit: only if you count a one-room flying can as a space station. I think we have a few more practice steps to go before we start hollowing out asteroids as GP was suggesting we do next.
It has vast amounts of Helium 3. This could potentially be very valuable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Lunar_surface_2
Every time a Moon mission comes up, Helium 3 gets trotted out, but it's just absurd.
For one, billions of tons of rock would have to be mined to extract any reasonable amount of Helium 3. Even with heavy machinery and robotic miners operating 24/7, this is a stretch.
But much more importantly, Helium 3 is utterly useless. It was proposed as one possible fusion fuel but then a much cheaper alternative was developed almost immediately: breeding the required fuel from a blanket of Lithium.
Last, but not least: There are exactly zero fusion power plant operational on Earth right now. There will be exactly zero commercial fusion power plants operational on Earth for at least a decade, no matter what new technologies are developed. At the current pace, according to current plans (e.g.: ITER/DEMO), there will be one (1) power plant generating a trivial amount of power staring in 2048. Likely well into the 2050s there won't be many more.
So to summarise mining lunar He3: We should spend trillions of dollars digging up the Moon for power plants that won't exist for three decades and don't need need the helium anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Old_Lady_(from_Pasa...
Good sci-fi always has an eye towards the future - we have transparent aluminium now. The whole point of science is to push the boundries of our knowledge.
Go check out the money being spent building ITER. I won’t spoil the surprise here, just to say if it doesn’t make your eyes water there something wrong with your tear ducts.
The payoff would be worth it a hundred times over. Not just because of cheap, clean energy, but also because the earlier we start weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, the better.
But did you notice my choice of words? I said nations, not governments. Governments do not represent their nations. They represent themselves. And they are made up of a small number of greedy, self-interested, mostly corrupt individuals looking out for their own personal benefit. They benefit from bribes (coughconsulting jobscough) from their "partners" in industry. The oil industry. The coal industry. The gas industry. Not just mining! Even power generation industries have a vested interest in delaying fusion as long as possible.
There is no fusion industry yet, and non-existent industrialists cannot pay bribes.
This is the essence of why governments are disinterested in the future. They're only interested in the bribes they get in the here and now. Oh, I'm sorry. "Alleged" bribes, I mean... perfectly legal donations.
Worse, the scientific bodies involved in the nascent fusion industry, like ITER, have become cancerous. They exist now only to justify their own enormous scale. A growing bureaucracy that benefits only from its own size, not in achieving its goals. Hence the plans out to 2050. The longer the better. Got to think about all the project managers that want to reach retirement age and start collecting that pension without ever having to actually deliver.
There is exactly one reason we spend $billions every year on Tokamak: it is a jobs program for high-neutron-flux physicists, to maintain a population to draw on for weapons work.
That is not to say fusion is itself a dead end; just that Tokamak is stealing the funding that could otherwise develop practical fusion power. E.g., the FRC DFD project shows every sign of near-term viability, but is starved for the small amount of money that would take them to fully practical power generation and also spacecraft propulsion.
The project is in "Phase II" development under NASA, and needs just $50m to get to a viable prototype -- pocket change for the Tokamak club.
I read a paper recently that basically said that the best bang for buck is to just work on better superconducting magnetic tape. Stronger fields make everything better, and the scaling law is cubic!
Even if such a tape is developed but doesn't lead to fusion, we'd have better MRIs and DC power lines as a side effect, so it's not even wasted effort!
We can still say that no amount of HTS tape, or of anything else, will ever make Tokamak hot-neutron fusion competitive. But that is not a reason to abandon HTS tape development.
If you want helium3, seawater is probably a better source than the moon. The difference between 150 tons of lunar rock and something like five times that of seawater is probably a wash, even ignoring the expense of gravity wells.
I'd read something else about the challenges of reactor design, but not sure what it was. I haven't been enthused about He3 since. I feel like the one interesting use would be a Project Orion / Nuclear Pulse Propulsion system, but wow, boy does that seem like an expensive way to do propulsion: what's the use case?
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshin...
Why is funding into technological advancement a "jobs program." We don't call research a jobs program. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Let's ship first.
Basically, launch a probe that goes to the asteroid, spins up to match, collects it in a net/blanket, and maneuvers to meet up with a Starship in an highly elliptical or maybe lunar flyby orbit. The Starship would rendezvous, match spin, load the cargo in it's payload bay, and proceed to de-orbit.
As long as you engulf the asteroid, the spin shouldn't be more than a minor nuisance (e.g. pulsed thruster firing control systems, reinforcement to endure centrifugal loads). You might even be able to de-spin on your way back to earth.
My understanding is that Starship is capable of landing with full 100+ t payload, thanks to the aerodynamic reentry. Also, with no passengers, it could easily spend a few orbits getting the apoapsis from "almost Earth-Sun L5" down to a LEO before re-entry.
ARM was a mission literally designed so Obama so NASA would have something to do with SLS and Orion. It was a pretty terrible mission that basically nobody wanted except the president.
The actual ARM that they settled on would only pick up a small bolder from an asteroid and bring it to earth orbit. Not large enough to live in, not even close. And not even useful for resources.
Water is by far the most useful thing you can find, and its what makes everything else possible. The moon has a huge amount close to each other. Almost every expert I have heard talk about is, think getting water from the moon is the best way to use space resources early on.
>In terms of resources the moon itself only has water
This is completely false. Just FYI.
There is lots of different useful materials on Mars.
Check out this video by former NASA engineer who has work on in Space manufacturing for many decades:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-RTBGnzNks
You can literally build solar panels, batteries, and many other things with martian resources.
* Asteroid redirect tech in case of, you know, a dinosaur killer coming your way.
* Asteroid harvesting.
It would have picked up a single small bolder and brought it to LEO.
Non are relevant for resource mining.
Can you clarify what you mean by that please?
What protects from radiation?
What are "sub-surface tracks" and the "acceleration" they provide?
And then, how much energy would it even take to spin such a huge rock? I think you’d need a new exotic propulsion system just to rotate it. Maybe nuclear or a sustained ion propulsion.
Being beneath the surface provides radiation protection.
Specifically by digging out tunnels beneath the surface of moderates size asteroids, putting down butyl ruber tubes, and laying tracks within. By having the cars on the track go around the curved track an artificial gravity is induced.
But you can stop the space train cars, step outside, and there's no deep gravity well to make getting things to and from there so expensive.
----
I'd also like to make it clear that the Asteroid Retrieval Bus, the mission that was canceled, is the reason the lunar gateway concept exists. Having the lunar gateway but not asteroid de-spin and retrieval is putting the cart before the horse without intentions of getting a horse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_and_Propulsion_Element#A...
>The Asteroid Redirect Vehicle... ...mission was cancelled in early 2017 and the spacecraft's propulsion segment became the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) for the Deep Space Gateway, now known as the Gateway.
Mining for He3 would require all kinds of new technology to be invented. And necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Long term all of those make it a very valuable place for exploring the rest of the solar system.
The Moon gravity well is weak but still significant.
On the other hand you could catch an asteroid and bring it back to Earth orbit and exploit it here or even completely remotely, by automated means.
That's simply false.
First of all, asteroid is already on an orbit...
You can move stuff around solar system with relative ease and little energy if you are patient enough.
For this, you go very far from the Sun (ie. Kuiper Belt) where things fly very, very slowly and then you can use very little energy to nudge it in direction of Earth orbit. You can match velocities and use gravity assists so that the object is captured by Earth.
Technically you can use as little energy as you want depending on how far you are willing to go, how long you want to wait and how precise you can steer the object.
You take a nuclear reactor and you can use asteroid as reaction mass.
If you are still not convinced, these guys also don't agree with you: https://space.nss.org/technologies-for-asteroid-capture-into...
The amounts of energy can be as little as you want if you go far from the sun where orbits are very slow and very little energy needs to be used to move an asteroid in any direction you want.
On earth, the nuclear reactors are radioactive rods that heats up water, to create steam, to spin a turbine, to create electricity. This is like a 5 stage process to indirectly generate electricity. But all the intermediary products are now radioactive.
So in space, I assume you can use the same steps to generate electricity, and then use the electricity to run a furnace, to heat up the minerals to melt it into pure metals.
Or is there some other process of using the nuclear radiation directly in space?
But really, reactors are extremely simple. For example, on Voyager missions the it is just a hunk of metal that is constantly hot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHW-RTG
You then do with that energy whatever you want.
You can use part of it to power electronics and actuators, part to melt a piece of asteroid and part of it to convert it to ions and send whichever way you want.
Also, RTGs have been used on earth, contrary to your implication they are only in space for safety reasons. Russian equipment in the arctic, for instance, has been powered by RTGs.
The point is you don't need huge complicated nuclear reactor to produce practically endless supply of energy in space, which is what the parent said he thought is a problem.
You probably need more energy than RTG but probably not as much as most people think. If you can apply a steady force for years, you would be able to give the required 10-100cm/s velocity delta to even large asteroid.
There are and have been fission reactors in space already. RTGs seem to typically be in the hundreds of watts, while the reactors are more in the kilowatt range.
The reactors are not RTGs, and they are definitely a lot more complex.
All the things above are fully realizable in the coming decades, they are not in the realm of science fiction what so ever they are merely engineering problems.
2. Define “technology”
The meta-technology of R&D and socio-economic programs that will make these things happen exists and gets better every day. If a method to perform the needful does not exist, it will given the right conditions.
The only thing you need to do is to be patient. A lot depends on how greedy you are, if you want a smaller one it gets exponentially easier.
Just read this 10 year old report: https://space.nss.org/technologies-for-asteroid-capture-into...
"Reasonable" is subjective to define, but there are many multi-decade projects running right now so I don't think of multi-decade projects as unreasonable.
Things like sending man to the Moon or building Space Station would have been deemed "pure sci-fi" with the approach of the parent commenter.
with the number of billionaires walking around, it probably can make a decent money as a tourist destination. Especially if there is an option to get down for a walk on the surface. Though it can become quickly at least partially outdated once one can just charter a Starship to make a quick long weekend trip around the Moon.
What a dark evil Neuromancer 'the rich floating above the problems of earth (that they have created)' prospective.
In terms of resources the moon itself only has water. But it's down in a difficult to access gravity well. There's no nitrogen. Far, far, better would be fully funding ARM and starting to despin and drag asteroids to the lunar gateway for study, resources, and eventually living space in space protected from radiation and, if you build sub-surface tracks, enough acceleration to live normally.