The Real Reason We Don’t Yet Live Among the Stars
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
The man in the photo above is Gene Cernan, the last human to walk on the moon. Cernan left the moon in December of 1972 – more than forty years ago – and no one has gone back.
To understand how far we went forty years ago, on how little technology, consider this: Our modern smart phones have 200,000 times more power than the computers that took men to the moon.
Let me restate that: Space travel can be accomplished with forty-year-old technology.
Lamentations Are In Order
It is tragic beyond measure that human exploration has been neutered since 1972. Sure, we’ve sent out a few probes and placed a good telescope in orbit, but we have done nothing brave, nothing bold, nothing daring. Productive humans have been delegated to mute observance as their hard-earned surplus is syphoned off to capital cities, where it is sanctimoniously poured down a sewer of cultured dependencies and endless wars.
We remain locked onto this planet, not because we lack the ability to leave, but because so few of us are able to do anything about it.
What we have lost can be measured only in the billions of unactivated lives. Fifty years ago humanity was shocked to realize that they could go to the stars. After untold millennia of looking to the heavens, of wondering, dreaming and mourning the impossibility, we saw that we could go to the stars. And for ten years we took our first brave steps, successfully!
But after our first major step away from our crib, we were thrown back and surrounded with double-height rails. Since then, we have stagnated, and human culture has undergone a widespread rot. We watch science fictions about going to space, living in space and even fighting in space, but we have given up all hope of going ourselves… even though we did it just one generation ago.
Humanity – having recently discovered the ability to expand without limit – wanders aimlessly, with no challenging goal, no elevated purpose, and no path of escape. Space travel has leapfrogged us: it was done by our fathers; we imagine that it will be done by our sons; but we dare not think that it is possible to us.
They Were Men Like Us
We have more than enough ability to explore space right now. The men who did so a generation ago were not supermen, regardless of how the promotions made them appear.
I’ve met some of the people who did this forty years ago, including one of the men who walked on the moon. I found them to be reasonably decent and competent men (the astronaut struck me as especially capable), but I’ve known other men and women who were of equal or greater decency and competence.
The fault of our earth-bound lives lies not in our abilities. The spacemen were men like ourselves.
Now, please take a look at this photo:
You are observing a workman building a Mercury capsule. Look at the metal work: It is fine construction, and it was advanced for its day, but there are shops in every large city in America that could do the same job, faster, cheaper, with closer tolerances. Like every other technology, metal working has massively improved over the last forty years.
Now look at this Gemini launch. What in this picture is particularly hard to build?
We see concrete, metal frameworks and sprinklers. None of those things are remotely hard. Even the rocket is simple by modern standards.
In other words, this technology is simple to reproduce. None of it is beyond the grasp of journeyman craftsmen.
Leibniz, Newton and Aldrin
Originating is hard; second and third uses are not.
It took brilliant men like Leibniz and Newton to invent calculus, but now, millions of schoolchildren learn it every year.
It took a brilliant engineer like Buzz Aldrin to invent the technologies of space rendezvous, but there are millions of bright young men, right now, who are more than capable of using his discoveries.
Again, none of this is beyond us. And, by the way, we have lots of real geniuses in our time too… it’s just that they have been forced into systems that punish them for their brilliance, rather than rewarding them, or at least just leaving them alone.
Why Haven’t We Gone Back?
There are several ways to answer this question. Here are the answers that I think matter most:
#1: Space is Against the State’s Interest
Can you imagine what would happen to government in space? Once beyond Earth’s gravity well, the spacefarers would be gone forever: no more taxes, no more obedience, and heaps of scorn for the distant barbarians who demanded money and attempted violence to get it. Space would be the 17th century American wilderness on steroids. Politicians and tax gatherers would have no hope of keeping up.
The reason I’m so sure of this is simple mathematics.
Space is a territory that expends exponentially (as a cube of the distance) and endlessly. The numbers look like this:
- At one million miles, government requires 4,188,000,000 billion cubic miles of dominance.
- At two million miles it is 33,504,000 billion cubic miles of dominance.
- At three million miles it is 113,076,000,000 billion cubic miles of dominance.
- At four million miles it is 268,032,000,000 billion cubic miles of dominance.
And so on. The people who left could never again be contained and have their money removed by force. Those cows would never be milked again.
I should add that one million miles in space is almost trivial. At the speeds used forty years ago, that’s only 38.5 hours of travel.
17th century voyages across the Atlantic took weeks, and there was no lack of paying passengers. So, there is no hope of governments getting us back to space. To do so would be to shoot themselves in the chest, and they probably understand that.
#2: The Culture Has Gone Conformist
Consider what became of the past forty years: There has been no striving, no searching, no becoming. Instead, we’ve had:
- 24/7 entertainment, which made billions of otherwise-productive hours worthless.
- An obscene level of advertising that replaced authentic dreams with scientifically implanted manipulations.
- A success ethic that addresses the animal aspects of human life while utterly ignoring its higher aspects.
- Fame for the basest, weirdest and most lurid men and women; conformity for everyone else.
- The glorification and unlimited empowerment of the institution.
As a result, we’ve had boring, washed-out decades, focused on anything but the awe-inspiring, the good, and the truly heroic. These years have been stripped of the greatest excitement, discovery and growth that have ever been possible to our species.
Our current decade features no goals save bodily comfort, and no aspirations save existence and status. Underlying it all is a palette of manufactured fears that can only be salved by buying the right products or electing the right politicians. We are living through the triumph of manipulation and the disappearance of vigorous individuals.
The 1950s are considered a time of mass conformity, but they look like radical experimentation compared to the fully-scripted lives of today’s ‘successful’ people.
The men who went into space knew that death was a possibility, but they valued more than just animal rewards; they wanted to excel, to touch the heavens, to expand, to become more. In the broader cultures of the West, that attitude has been suppressed and nearly lost.
It may be that the next generation will demand more out of life than animal gratifications. Such changes have occurred in the past. Would to God that they come again soon.
#3: Our Money Is Taken from Us
We are taxed on our income at national, state and even local levels. We are taxed on what we spend. We are taxed on Ponzi retirement programs. We are taxed on property we own, and on gasoline we buy, and hundreds of other things.
We have no money left over for things that matter.
The taxation systems of the West are designed to rob us of every dollar we get, right up to the point where we’d be tempted to rebel. This is a science.
If you are a productive person, working in any sort of normal job, roughly half of your earnings are taken from you every year, leaving you just barely able to hang on to an acceptable lifestyle. Understand this: You are already rich, but your money is stolen from you, generally before you ever hold it in your hands.
If we actually held our own money, reaching space again could be done, easily, from a small percentage of our surplus. No coercion would be required, only a bit of excitement.
Photo: The relics of the last moon mission
What has been lost to us?
What happens to humans themselves (and by that I mean internally) once we get to space and have a few moments to “consider the heavens”?
Preliminary evidences are that humans in space think more deeply, more expansively, and more spiritually… that their consciousness opens up and expands.
Consider just these passages from astronauts on the first and last moon missions. (And I have many others.)
As Neil and I first stood on the surface of the moon looking back at Earth – a bright blue marble suspended in the blackness of space – the experience moved us in ways that we could not have anticipated.
– Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11
Out there on another planet, I was looking back at the Earth, or I was looking back at the other stars in the universe – science and technology could no longer explain to me what I was feeling. Not just what I was seeing, it’s what I was feeling. And I kept thinking, above all religions, there has to be a creator.
It was to me like I was just sitting on a rocking chair on a Friday evening, looking back home, sitting on God’s front porch, looking back at the Earth; looking back home. It was really that simple, but it was an overpowering experience.
I’m sure that viewing the world from the moon only enriched me spiritually and also gave me a new vantage point on life… Anyone who walked on the moon had such a spiritual experience, similar to it or stronger.
– Gene Cernan, Apollo 17
When we lost the moon we lost our bearings; there was no distant star to guide us, no magnificent vision to pursue. Four decades on, we remain in a kind of stasis, mollified with streaming vanities and base satisfactions.
Perhaps we should have known that this would be the result. But when shall we return to the stars?
It isn’t rocket science anymore.
[Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from our flagship newsletter Freeman’s Perspective Issue #20: “Forty Years Gone: A Lamentation.” If you liked it, consider taking a risk-free test drive. Not only will you gain immediate access to the rest of the issue, but you’ll also be able to enjoy the entire archive – more than 520 pages of research on topics of importance and inspiration to those looking for freedom in an unfree world. Plus valuable bonus reports and all new issues as well. Click here to learn more.]
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
Why have we not went back ? That’s easy, BECAUSE WE ARE FUCKING BROKE. 72 we went off the Gold standard it’s been down hill since.
Sensetti said:Why have we not went back ? That’s easy, BECAUSE WE ARE FUCKING BROKE. 72 we went off the Gold standard it’s been down hill since.
I mainly agree, however there is more to it than that. Why would we go back…
Moon dust is Moon dust…
What is the relevancy to going back; to get more Moon dust?
Also should explain that space travel is a losing proposition like peak oil…
Extra trips to space will produce less resources than we can bring back over time.
“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”
we live in a fish bowl, no matter how far we go or how fast or slow, we cannot escape this prison of a planet. no tower of babel or space elevator will invalidate the dictum, what goes up must come down. man has reached the final frontier in the abyss, there is no there there in space, inner or outer. no matter how far into the universe you look, however many galaxies you peep into, there is no lady godiva behind the curtain of stars. the only way man can escape inner space is to transfer his consciousness to a machine because carbon based mediums are susceptible to the environment; radiation, the cold vacuum of space, direct sunlight, lack of water, air, food, solitude, loss of sense of time, direction and circulatory system dependent on earth’s gravity, to name a few problems without even mentioning the fuel requirements.
The above comments are why we never went back. Ignorance and stupidity.
FACT: The total world arms expenditures for the last 10 years = $20,000,000,000,000.00+ or 20 Trillion dollars.
FACT: The total cost to go to the Moon (Apollo Mission) in 2013 dollars = $152,000,000,000.00 or 152 Billion dollars, adjusting for inflation. Less than 2 months printing by the Federal Reserve.
FACT: US Military expenditures alone would fund FOUR (4) Apollo Missions PER YEAR. That is 36 trips to the Moon per year. That is easily done by just not going to war for corporate profits.
Perspective, people. Think before you type.
So … for less than 1% of the world military budget, we could have a base on the moon and for the total budget, we could be on Mars and maybe other planets or on our way to the stars. We were fools and now it is too late. War is our future and species extinction is our fate.
Makati1 says:
“The above comments are why we never went back. Ignorance and stupidity.
Think before you type.”
If I had to stop and think before commenting, you’d never hear from me. Let me say this, I work with a control freak with a little woman complex. She has a verbal habit of saying the same thing over and over – you don’t know what you are talking about, she asks me a two or three part question and gets offended when I try to explain each part of the question in detail.
when I comment here on TBP, I expect that people are secure enough in their own intelligence to avoid trying to get one over me. if you don’t like my answer, a simple “fuck you very much” will suffice, you don’t have to call me ignorant.
Got a few nit picks with Rosenburg’s piece.
Assertion 1: Rosenburg is bitching about bright people being forced into systems. blah, blah. Gimme a fucking break.. If a guy is really bright and applies himself doors still open. Whether in private industry or anywhere else. Ellison, Shockley, Cray, Moore and a thousand other geniuses are living proof of that. It didn’t stop with Newton. Sheesh.
Now, one of the major events that changed the space program forever was when the Soviets gave up. We declared victory and the politicians started focusing on other things after that. Skylab and the Shuttle were the last vestiges of that era.
Had nothing to do with peak oil or gold.
We were getting spanked by the Soviets and we simply responded. After winning we went into competition with them building ICBM’s and other nasties.
It was the modern political equivalent of building dreadnoughts. For those who know some history it was quite the fad prior to WWI.
Assertion 2: Space isn’t against the state’s interest. In fact only states can really access it, it’s their playground Rosenburg. Take Space X, it wouldn’t be anywhere without the billions of taxpayer money spent on all the basic research done over the decades on rocketry and everything else associated with space travel. They are direct recipients of that knowledge. This is a big boys game.
Assertion 3: The Culture Has Gone Conformist. Nope not conformist but cultural destruction, big difference. The space program came of age in era where the WASP male and the protestant work ethic was per-eminent in society and long before the CRA and affirmative action would redefine much of American society and open the door to the destruction of Western values and their replacement with 3rd world cultural values.
The original astronauts were old school country white boys turned test pilots. We still produce them But not in the numbers like we used to and they aren’t wanted in NASA either.
Today we have quotas at NASA, if you’re female and say a black, Mexican or Asian you’re golden. Competency isn’t that important, they’ll just find someone who can carry the work load for the precious minority. JFK introduced that little nasty legacy – he even wanted a black astronaut for Apollo . It finally culminated with the some of the shuttle missions being nothing more than feel good diversity shows that put 3rd worlders into space for no real apparent reason.
PC/MC gone a muck.
Space exploration needs to be profitable for humans to attempt making it permanent. Large corporations could put up the capex for the first run of colonies on the Moon or Mars if they knew the value of the resources they could eventually extract.
Wow, after my last run in with “jaun,” after reading this, i was going to basically thank him for not being quite what I thought he was. Now I run into the golden shit nugget that is “TheCynic.”
My god, what is your expertise Cynic? I’ve just been a hacker for the last 2 decades, and you fall thru so many holes, its not even funny.
You have some truth in your assertion #1. But really, we game up on the space race after 1969. Those Saturn V’s were already in the pipeline (that were used for the rest of the moon landings and Skylab). In fact there were a couple more that got cancelled that were partially built.
Assertion 2 is wrong. SpaceX yes got a huge speed boost from NASA funding. They did Falcon 1 on their own, Falcon 5 (cancelled) would have been a stepping stone without the Nasa funding. Falcon 9 would have happened regardless (eventually, perhaps two years later). Hell look at the Grasshopper. When the Falcon 9 Heavy shows, if they do manage to integrate the Grasshopper tech, they are going to make Nasa look like fools. There is no Nasa funding for Grasshopper.
Watch the vid, I never enjoyed this tune as much as I did before watching this:
Even take into account Orbital Sciences. They did a lot of that without Nasa’s funding help. And they didn’t end up that far behind SpaceX. Granted they did rely on re-using cold war tech for most of their design (that I will give you, even tho you didn’t mention them).
Assertion 3: WTF? I mean, totally, WTF? Are you some ayrian from the deep south? Get some fucking culture mate. One of my best IRC friends 19-18 years ago was from Lebanon. Made me question my government’s official stance on that country, and my entire view of it. Talking to people like that from weird corners of the world is what started me on the path to lead me here. Do ‘towel heads’ max out with an IQ of 20? Because if that is what you think, you should look again, because even if you are stupid enough to think that Bin Laden was behind 9/11, the goals stated that were purportedly behind his motives, he’s succeeded. They can’t hate us for our freedoms, we don’t have much left.
Anthony: That’s already happening. We know there are massive amounts of precious metals to be found in asteroids. There’s a couple of companies looking into that as we speak. With SpaceX/Orbital Sciences opening up the market even more to commerce, it’s just a matter of time.
Let alone the amounts of Iron/Aluminum, etc.
If there is a moon base to be made, I suspect the motivating force behind it will be for refining metals mined in orbit (I don’t see metal processing happening without at least some gravity). If you can process and manufacture from the moon, its much cheaper/easier to get into orbit from the Moon then from Earth.
Oh, just wanted to add, in about 3 months the next Falcon 9 will be going up. The first v1.1. Different engine layout.
On that core’s re-entry, is when they plan to start testing the ‘Grasshopper’ tech on flight certified hardware. It’s not supposed to land on land, its supposed to attempt “landing” on the Pacific. While you can’t land on liquid, if that faux attempt ends in what would have been a success if done over land, then the next flight will lead straight to attempting it for real. If it goes badly, why not have it crash and burn where so many other space debris have come down?
If that isn’t cutting .gov red tape and testing the bleeding edge of tech, I don’t know what is.
Additionally, SpaceX is the only resupply ships that can return cargo from the ISS. Ever since the Italian’s near drowning while spacewalking, the US sourced spacesuits have been “grounded.” Not enough room on a Soyuz to bring one back that way, and the rest of the cargo ships (Progress/ETV/HTV/Antares) burn up on re-entry. Dragon is it.
What rubbish. The only part of this screed of any value is to focus on the reactions of those who traveled to outer space. Their focus, once they got out there, wasn’t looking outward into the infinite blackness. It was to gaze back upon the earth and see this blue, white and green marble suspended in the universe.
That alone should tell us something.
The notion that our infinite future lays out there beyond the “prison” of the planet is infantile thinking. A real adult would look at this amazing, bountiful, resilient lifeboat we live on hurtling through space and accept the limits that it places on us with regards to extraction of resources. Then, maybe if we began to recognize the incredible abundance that the earth and its ecosystems provide for us, we’d stop shitting all over them and actually begin to behave like responsible adults instead of spoiled children.
Want to know the real reason we’ve stopped trying to get into space? BECAUSE THERE AIN’T A FUCKING THING OUT THERE THAT CAN PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR LIFE HERE ON EARTH! The moon? It’s a dead rock. Mars? Basically the same. Beyond that? More of the same.
We know about 10% of all bacteria and fungi on the planet. They’re right in our backyard. And people are slobbering all over themselves to reach out among the stars? You can take your fantastic visions of humanity’s infinite ascent and cram them up your backside. The grown-ups among us will work on trying to be better stewards of what we have here.
The only reason we went to the moon in the first place was to show that our swinging dick was bigger than the Ruskies. If not for that, I doubt that we would have gone there when we did if at all.
I’m reasonably confident that NASA will never put another hooman in space on a NASA built/owned/launched vehicle. I really hope we hit the energy roadblock before we get too commercially invested in raping space for resources.
I_S
“We remain locked onto this planet, not because we lack the ability to leave, but because so few of us are able to do anything about it.
What we have lost can be measured only in the billions of unactivated lives. Fifty years ago humanity was shocked to realize that they could go to the stars”
I’m not looking to leave, therefore as a taxpayer I shouldn’t be forced to fund the interstellar fare of those desiring to leave.That said, all those wanting to leave should pool their monies, unless it’s the national bureatardicy wishing to leave ,and then I’m sure most sane people will be happy to contribute.
Maybe the real reason space exploration is in decline is due to conservation of available energy resources?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/plutonium-238-problem/all/
NASA’s Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration
Most of what humanity knows about the outer planets came back to Earth on batteries called thermoelectric generators filled with plutonium-238. But there’s a problem: We’ve almost run out. We’ve got enough to last to the end of this decade. That’s it. And it’s not just the U.S. reserves that are in jeopardy. The entire planet’s stores are nearly depleted, says Dave Mosher in this article,
varnelius says:
“Wow, after my last run in with “jaun,” after reading this, i was going to basically thank him for not being quite what I thought he was. Now I run into the golden shit nugget that is “TheCynic.”
I don’t recall any run-in, sorry. Maybe you are referring to SSS. When I read the cynic’s comments I have to agree somewhat even though I do not want to agree with his cynical outlook.
More basic reasons why we haven’t gone back are:
1. We never went. How many people went? I don’t know the actual number of astronauts who went to and/or around the moon. But it wasn’t many. So, the gist of the whole thing is, we never went.
2. Anyone with a grain of sense realizes, that when you need to carry your own air and water just to live out there, that it is too risky to make it desirable to do.
3. Most of us who would like to go, wouldn’t like the difficulties and stress of those astronauts that went. It might be a whole lot easier these days, but it will never be as easy as a picnic on a beach.
4. Most of us who watched the guys go to the moon, simply had no other goal. Oh sure, we thought we had goals beyond the simple getting there, but then we raised a family, and found that the moon took a way back, far back, back seat.
There might be lots of folks who sincerely want to go. Do you want to go? Figure out what it is that is holding you back, and then fix the problems and GO.
There are some very shrewd thinkers around, folks who think up all different kinds of computer software programs… folks who invent marvels of machinery this way and that. Clever, clever, clever. So why isn’t there anyone clever enough to circumvent the few problems in government that are still holding you back?
I’m sure there are some countries out there that would accept you if you wanted to go there to build your rockets. I’m sure that you could figure out a way in all your cleverness to sweet talk some government into letting you do it. Maybe go somewhere where there isn’t any government to bother you. The problems are not simply mechanical or electronic. The problems are that you are not free. Use your brains to set yourself free so that you can go to the stars.
Actually, it’s probably been done. I mean, if some group had done it already, would they necessarily want to tell you about it? After all, the only thing you seem to want to do is cry about it. Meanwhile, they are long gone… or maybe long dead out there.
He does know how far the stars are, I think. And there’s not going to be a warp drive, because if there was, we wouldn’t be here.
That pipe dream aside, no one even here on earth knows of a purely self-sustaining ecosystem/biosphere, other than the earth itself. Putting a man in space with supplies is much simpler than building a reasonably self-sustaining presence in space, and the technology is still beyond our reach.
We can’t because of two reasons.
1. There is no atmosphere to protect us from the radiation, etc., and we don’t know how to effectively block it.
2. Where would we go? What we see in the sky outside our own solar system is thousands if not millions of light years away. We are seeing the light from these stars and planets that took light years to get here. This means we are looking at objects that might not be in the same location or may not even exist anymore. This creates a problem. Who want to try to reach something that might not still be there?
i noted long ago that Cyn is my neighbor, apparently, so is Varn.
@jaun, wow never had someone guess the abbreviation that i’ve been called by on IRC for years by anyone who didn’t know me there. (I had gotten upset about a comment you made on the drug thread days back, doesn’t matter now, i think I had taken it out of context anyway).
@black, WTF? Are you a black shirt calling an AR-15 racist or something? Perhaps take some time to check out the .50 Cal taking on the brand new gold iPhone 5S. Joking aside, how in the hell can you say that because only a few people went around and/or to the moon, that it never happened.
To continue, it takes a certain skillset to build a modern rocket. We’re not in the WWII days where 1 man could make it happen (and those were were not going to take men to space, let alone the moon). Now days it takes an entire team, and a whole lot of financing. When sending missions aloft, the skills that it took to make the rocket to take them there are not the skills you need once you get there. I love your idea, if I could just jump in my canoe, head for Antartica, be “free,” and start my own space program? Yeah, that’d be fucking awesome. But its just not going to happen.
As for your #3, your just being a pussy. I’d sign up for the one way trip to mars. Where the hell are you going to stake out your unclaimed 1 square mile homestead on the planet these days? That’s right you can’t.
#4? Mars was always the next step. But when your financing drops by a factor of 10 in a few short years, you’re not going to get your golden grab ideas done. You have to start settling for what can be done with what you have. Seriously, look at what Nasa funding has done over the past 50 years (as a percentage of GDP, that’s much easier then trying to calc in inflation). Once the moon race was done, funding dropped like a stone. We would be flying our own astronauts to space at this point if it were not for the colossal fuckup that was the Constellation program instituted by GWB.
It was off duty Nasa engineers and others that designed Jupiter, more or less what we will be ending up with when SLS finishes up. Problem is, under GWB we scrapped so much of the shuttle program that trying to rebuild what was scrapped, has added years to the launch gap.
When we last had a launch gap between Saturn V and Shuttle, we lost many talented folks to other careers/positions. There were many at the time that ended up pointing out that colossal mistake. It was pointed out again prior to the retirement of the Shuttle; none listened, we did it again.
Hell at this point, we will hit economic collapse before Nasa again lifts humans into orbit.
Let me go into a bit more detail so this isn’t so just “off the cuff.” This is why Constellation was a mistake:
First, the decision to separate the “manned” rocket from the “cargo” one. Yeah at first glance, it sounds great. you only need to “human-rate” one of them. Thing is, the amount of cargo that “manned” rocket was just about the same as what an Atlas V Heavy or Delta IV Heavy (none of those have been built/launched–yet). The launch success rates for the Atlas 5/Delta 4s have been very good, it would be much cheaper to just human validate one of those if that’s truely the way you want to go.
The Ares I, over time as it was developed, became clear it would not have the lift capacity it was originally intended to have. This required many re-designs of the Orion capsule. Originally the Orion was supposed to be able to do a parachute/rocket assisted ground landing. That was deleted, now it will only land in water (with parachutes). Even the bathroom got deleted. Try going to the moon with no bathroom. Yeah the Apollo guys did it, but would you really want to?
The Ares V…. Oh jeez where do I start with this beast. Yes at launch, it would have “looked” like a derivative of the Space Shuttle, but the appearance would have been the extent of the similarities. First, since the Ares V was supposed to LIFT EVERYTHING ELSE TO TAKE MEN TO THE MOON AND BEYOND, the lift requirement ballooned fast. One of the first things to get changed was the shift from 4 segment solid boosters (like the Shuttle used) to 5-5.5 segment boosters. Being solid, you can’t just fuel them at the pad, they are carried out fully fueled, and thus heavy. That extra weight caused the need to re-engineer the crawlerways. They were already 1 foot think for Saturn V, which worked fine for Shuttle, but Ares V needed MOAR.
Next the Shuttle External Tank. Originally 8.4m, this needed to be expanded to 10m. The 8.4m tanks were built at the Micheloud MFG facility, which, already one of the largest buildings int he world (one of the places where they were going to bring some of the Deepwater Horizon blowout stuff for analysis), is not capable of building 10m tanks. They would have had to tear down those buildings, and BUILD EVEN BIGGER ONES. Oh, and they would have had to build new barges to ferry those new bigger tanks from LA to FL.
And now the engines. Jupiter called for SSME’s for the first core stage, and a re-use of engines we commonly use in upper states for deep space satellite launches derived from Apollo era engines that we still make. Ares V called for brand new all the way around. They wanted a new J-2X for the core stage (based on the main Apollo V engines, but re-engineered), the upper stages would have been new as well.
SLS is taking the Jupiter approach, we’ve salvaged the 12 surviving Space Shuttle RS-25s, and the 3 spare RS-25s for use in the first 3 flights of the SLS (4 per flight). When we did need new SSMEs (RS-25s) because we were not making them in quantity, it was upwards of 400mil per engine to build new ones. Even if we don’t change the spec of the RS-25, and just start mass production on them, the price will drop to around 55mil per engine. There are plans to (over time) evolve a RS-25E (E for expendible) to make them even cheaper to mass produce. This should drop that price even lower to around 35mil per engine.
Yes when SLS does take flight in a few years, it will go up with 5 segment external boosters vs the Shuttles 4 segment boosters. Too much of the development on that was done under Constellation to just throw it away, so a core stretch will be done to the Shuttle tank with mounting points adjusted to fit them. They are already adjusting the crawlerway to meet this midpoint requirement. Must need more then 12″ of reinforced concrete, but not the 16″+ they were talking about for Ares V. While they are at it, they are finding massive amounts of corrosive damage that would have needed repair anyway, and are re-adjusting the design to prevent that damage from happening in the future.
Under SLS, the upper stage is optional. Crew is optional. They can test potential upgrades even to the core stage without having to do so on a manned flight. Everything is so modular that upgrades are basically “baked in” to the cake. By the time we are done (if given the time), we will be looking about a launcher that can put about 175t into LEO. That compared to the shuttle that could only do around 10k pounds in a small cargo bay. We wouldn’t need 75 or so flights to build the ISS had we had the SLS back when we got started.
Oh and for those who didn’t know, it was the Air Force that dictated certain requirements on the Space Shuttle that forced it to be shaped the way it was. They wanted to launch from Vandenburg, do a “once around” orbit, and be capable of capturing enemy satellites etc without being able to be tracked. The Shuttle never launched from Vandenburg, but at the time of Challanger, they had alternate composite shelled solid boosters that were lighter and thus capable of lifting more into polar orbits. They also had 3 seals per joint vs 1 on the originals at the time of Challanger.
Nasa resigned the boosters after Challenger to have 2 seals, still not composite, instead of just putting the Air Force designed ones into mass production.
Now, where do you want to start talking about waste?
As long as governments have a monopoly on human travel to space we will not make any useful voyages into space. As long as 90+% of our labor is confiscated in the form of regulatory costs, taxation through its various means and draconian beatdowns that continue to be dispensed on the productive there will be no significant private resources available to expend towards space travel. Even the glorious SpaceX which is not government funded has been seduced (with underlying threats) to sell all of its space rockets and capsules to government…we shall see how much is available for anyone else (NONE without government approval) in a few years.
If you want to go to space or anywhere else you first must remove the impediment to your travels.
varnelius says:
“I had gotten upset about a comment you made on the drug thread days back, doesn’t matter now, i think I had taken it out of context anyway”
another heartwarming drug story, I only took a shot at Tof, I swear.
We have no hope of ever getting past our gravity well in score this generation for many reasons, but all I can hope is that we change before it becomes too late. Space exploration is the answer, and is the most “common sense” step for our species to flourish in the future. Here are a few thoughts about why we aren’t already there yet, and an argument on why we should be:
1. Our dysfunctional greedy elitest culture does not promote individual genius, or independent thought. We have been programmed to think “group effort”, and not “self achievement” for all but a few in entrenched academia. The saying “there is no ‘I’ in team” comes to mind, where I always respond, “But there is in ‘Innovation, Invention, Pioneer, Exploration and Principle”. Sure there are geniuses out there, but where are the Einstein’s, Galileo’s, and Columbus’s of our time? Forward thinkers who didn’t prosper an idea from a “think tank”. Answer: Probably working for some corporation where their “Intelectual Property” of any idea or dream is not truly theirs, and finding VC to promote one without giving away controlling interest is next to impossible. Don’t worry, everyone gets trophies for participating in the end to make them feel better about themselves.
2. We count on methodology to get us to space which is equivalent to the “Model T”, and has hardly progressed since then. Since we don’t have much of number 1 above, we will hardly get to number 2. I could give you all a bright perspective on getting to space without sitting atop a controlled explosion, which could potentially drop the cost of a space flight to just a few dollars per pound, but no one is truly interested.
3. The notion that there is “nothing out there” is the same common ideology found in Columbus’s time before the “New World” was discovered. And for those who question cost, where is the profitability in a practically limitless supply of materials? We have an abundance of bodies floating around our solar system alone with rare earth metals, Iron, cobalt, platinum, Helium 3, gold, water, etc… It’s not like you have to bring much with you once you get a foothold.
4. Jobs, technology, culture, philosophy…. No one that I’ve ever read has actually calculated the impact of what “could have been” if we had gone boldly into space with a purpose post Apollo, although I’ve seen recent studies of asteroid mining profits which rival the US national debt. Anyone involved in space enthusiasm knows that the cost argument is a mute one once you realize all that is out there. Do you all think that we are better off with the population exploding in “Hell’s Kitchen” in our fragile biosphere? I mean seriously, who wouldn’t grab at the chance to actually “fly” with plastic wings under a dome on the moon for a family vacation? And what artists and philosophers are we missing out on who might have had the chance to spy the earth rise and write profound words of wisdom of who we are? As ignorant a culture as we are, one day soon it will be evident that in order to keep producing mass quantities of those cheap smart phones everyone loves so much to occupy their time texting, that we will need to mine asteroids for the rare earth elements to keep producing them. The Chinese, who are at peak production of this limited earth resource already know this, and have built a space program to support just that.
5. Freedom. There are studies which show the population of mice within a given space reaches a tipping point, to where they grow cannibalistic, self-destructive and chaotic… And that’s with a non-sentient animal who doesn’t have ideological, cultural, and geographical differences which put us at odds with each other. Space is the next step if we want to prevent that as a species, and luckily, there’s plenty of room.
6. Extra solar exploration. Who’s to say we can’t venture to the stars? Back in the sixties, the “communicator” from Star Trek was considered to be fiction/fantasy… now everyone has one in their pocket. Many thought the earth was flat in medieval times, but that also proved to be false; who’s to say that star travel is as well?
Just a few thoughts from an oldtimer who thought we could have done much more.