Posted on 02/11/2018 8:32:50 PM PST by Voption
First, 2016 was the worst year for the Russian rocket industry in decades...Second, China has been aggressively ramping up its launch rate, and in 2016 moved clearly into the top tier of space-faring nations...Third, the United States is clearly transitioning away from a government owned and operated rocket industry to one owned and operated by the private sector. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the federal government has not launched a single rocket that it designed, built, and owns. Instead, every payload put in space by the U.S. has been put there by a private sector rocket.
(Excerpt) Read more at behindtheblack.com ...
Read it...and cautiously ask: Is USA winning? Do we have a comfortable enough lead? Or are we still playing catch up from years of wasted time...is NASA going to re-blossom or is it just SpaceX/private companies now?
Weren’t they the villains? Must have spiced up cartoon watching with the kids always cheering on the bad uns.
This is an excellent article on the state of space industialization.
Thank you for posting it. Most informative.
I found it well worth reading.
The current International Space Station was built using 40 flights of the shuttle and other launch vehicles. A new space station 80% of the size of the ISS can be launched with two BFR launches and two of the largest Bigelow modules, costing probably 5% of the ISS.
We are not hurting in the launch department. We need to build places to go, like moon bases, bases on Mars and the Asteroid belt.
Exactly.
SPS beamed power LCOE of $30-$50 megawatt at BFR projected cost to orbit.
Here comes trouble...
Article is misleading, the military is still sending rockets, and it was sending rockets way before spunik.
Nasa is backwards. No other nation has a civilian rocket program. It syphons our military and it syphons private industry competitiveness.
I am sure we could set up solar stations in space to take in CO2 and make fuel and O2 to drop back down to Earth. There is a lot that can be done in space.
judgemall,
Please don’t tell me that you have bought into the whole “carbon dioxide is a pollutant” BS. CO2 is a fundament and absolute requirement for plant photosynthesis which is the basis for all higher forms of life on Earth by growing vegetable matter and oxygen.
No CO2, no people. It is that simple.
So is USA’s lead in space race comfortable? Or are other countries close to their own version of SpaceX?
I am not trying to put down astronauts and visionaries from other countries and space should be shared but:
Even the International Space Station (which Trump is thinking of spurring on towards privatization) - seems like the United Nations to me: a “global” institution we pay for and sustain but then gives rise to anti-American forces designed to undermine us and diminish our leadership in the end...
I just think “America First” needs to be back en vogue even in space.
It has been theorized that aerogels can be transparent if manufactured in zero G. That would be another good use for a factory in space.
We've been experimenting in space for fifty years now, and should have volumes of research on what materials can be made in orbit, and at what costs can be competitive.
I agree. Subsidizing another non profit priesthood of space expecting its entitled dues is a socialist disaster
Sadly I fear Trump loves the very Fed Reserve about to destroy him.
Now and then these Presidents suddenly realize its power and want to do away with it but it always is too late ...
No, my statement was not meant to relate to reducing CO2 on Earth, but more making it a valuable commodity thanks to space.
Right now it is treated as a poison, as you say, but I think it is because it is valuable that it is beng attacked.
It would be bad indeed if some JamesBond villain siphoned all the CO2 out in space in a frozen sphere behind the moon and starved us of life and materials...
...the problem is no longer rockets, it is having enough things ready to launch to fill the launch capacity Falcon Heavy and BFR provides. The only company ready for this is Bigelow, which makes inflatable space station modules.Well put. My only quibbles with that -- BFR doesn't exist yet, and Bigelow has shown it can't build so much as an ISS module that works right. I'm rooting for SpaceX and Bigelow (the other day, I'm surprised the neighbors didn't hear me rooting when the FH went up like a boss, and stuck the block 3 and block 4 booster landings at the same time), but the most likely outcome IMHO is that the Falcon 9 with its Merlin 1D engines will be spun off by SpaceX as Elon pursues his colonization pipe dream via the BFR.
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