I’m a little reluctant to ask this, but I have a good deal of respect for some of the people posting in this thread, and others posting similar stuff on other platforms, in relation to this. And I am not of a scientific bent. So please bear with me.
What I don’t get is: how is this Space-x business not an enormous willy-waving show for Elon Musk? How/why is that something to be uncritically applauded?
I saw Helen Sharman on the news earlier, saying that Musk’s involvement frees up NASA funds so that they can go on and explore further into deep space, etc, because, well, low orbit stuff is boring - been there, done that, etc.
Let's be honest. Elon Musk has no redeeming features. He is a vile disgusting excuse for a human.
Unfortunately, we are in a position where the game of politics in Washington has effected what the smart people at JPL and Marshall etc... are able to do. Every nut, every bolt, every resister and diode, it's all controlled by bean counting bureaucrats in Washington who have no fscking clue what is actually involved in getting into space. Meanwhile in the wild west that is Silicon Valley, a bunch of rich tech bros with too much money have been trying to find something to do with it. Private space flight has been pretty unregulated, so they can get away with it. Whether it's Musk and SpaceX, or Jeff Besos and Blue Origin. Because they are largely funding it from their great piles of money, they aren't having to worry about the bureaucrats double checking it all, this has allowed them to make a few mistakes, blow stuff up, and not worry that the purse will be closed. This has allowed the smart people at SpaceX, and let's face it Elon isn't the one with the slide rule and the CAD system, he's just paying the bill, to test things we would never otherwise see. Such as the reusable first stages.
The reality is, they have pretty much nailed the journey from LC-39A to Station. They can do it cheaply, and so far, reliably. As such, there's little point in jumping through the hoops of NASA internal red tape. Things like the Apollo program were more expensive than they needed to be because of policies that required everything to be made across the whole of the US, so all states could benefit. Have a look on gootube at the journey the Apollo rockets took just to get to the Cape. There's no way doing it in house at NASA could be that cheap.
Helen Sharman is right, using Space X as a taxi to get Astronauts to Station does free up money for other projects. And those other projects include a return to the moon as the next stage. NASA's Artemis project will see an uncrewed vehicle go out to the moon and back to prove we have relearned the lessons (and it is relearned, the institutional memory of Apollo is long gone), then a bit later there will be a crewed mission round the moon, and then after that, a landing. They also want to look at the next steps beyond the ISS. This is likely to include a station at the Langrage point between Earth and the Moon. Artemis is on financial life support, congress has made multiple attempts to kill it off. It's got all sorts of cost saving compromises in there, the 1st stage is using old shuttle booster tanks. If you were to open up a blank page in CAD and start designing a mission to the moon, this is not how you would do it. But the bean counters. The fucking bean counters.
The history of rocketry has a dark side. Elon Musk is a vile human, but the men who designed the rockets of the space race were card carrying nazi's. The rocket that carried Tim Peak to orbit was designed originally to carry nuclear warheads into space to rain down death. We can celebrate humankind's achievements. That above me right now 3 humans are whizzing past at 28Mm/ph, is miraculous. That we have an entire planet, just a few Mm away populated entirely with robots. That I can look out the window, look up at the moon, and know there are human footsteps there. This is absolutely phenomenal. But we shouldn't forget that not everyone involved is a saint. Space flight has been of huge benefit to humanity, and we are only now touching the surface of what those possible benefits are. But unfortunately to get there has meant turning a blind eye to nazi's. It's meant turning a blind eye to the misogynistic racist piece of shit that is CEO of spaceX. I wish it wasn't true. I wish there was no taint to space exploration. I am not apologising for any of the vile people involved. Their behaviour is inexcusable. But it's the decisions of the meeting rooms of Washington that have left little choice if we are to get to space.
Isn’t there something just a little politically suspect in all this? Have we got to the point where we place responsibility of some element of our collective future in the hands of a man like Musk?
Fortunately Musk is not the only effort humanity has here. Of the Commercial Crew Program, there is also the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, which is due to launch sometime in 2021. It has been set back due to cultural problems at Boeing (see 737max...), but before we get too happy, Boeing is an arms company, as well as facilitators of considerable amounts of pollution. There are other projects like Dream Chaser from Sierra Nevada Corporation. You've probably never heard of SNC, but they have been involved in weapons manufacture too. Currently they are only contracted for cargo flights to the ISS, but they are trying to develop a human rated craft for crewed flights too.
Space exploration is expensive, incredibly expensive. Which means that funding either has to come from governments with all the bureaucratic bollocks that involves, of from private sector sources that have more money than sense. Most people who get to have several billion of what ever currency sat in the bank, have not got there by being nice people. The discussion of whether or not billionaires should even exist should probably be moved to the politics section of the forum.
Oh and don't think ESA has any cleaner conscience, they are contracting all sorts of arms companies to manufacture their various bits and pieces. Turns out the skill set for launching explosive stuff to kill people isn't that dissimilar to the skill set for launching humans and satellites into space...
J
