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Jul. 3rd, 2004 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewbearAs I hope you've all heard by now, the first commercial spaceflight took place last week. It was spurred in part by the X Prize, a $10 million prize awarded to the first team that can successfully launch a piloted, privately-funded (non-government) spacecraft capable of carrying 3 people and do it again with the same spaceship within 2 weeks.
I've long held some strong opinions regarding space travel and exploration.
1) Get it out of the hands of any government. Or at least, make it so that governments are NOT the only ones in space. Historically, governments are *very* conservative with "blue-sky" projects that don't have immediate benefits to themselves or their constituents. We wouldn't even be in space at all if we hadn't been competing with the Soviets during the Cold War. So long as there is no incentive to go into or stay in space, the government won't fund it. And as of right now, the government doesn't see any incentive.
2) Trash the fucking Shuttles. They're decades old and falling apart, when the original designs assumed that they would be replaced every 7-10 years. Aside from that, the damn things are badly designed for the true needs of mass travel & exploration. It would be like trying to fit 10 passengers, a jet engine, a CIA sensor pack, 2000 pounds of cargo, and a 50-gallon gas tank onto a VW Bug's frame. It's theoretically possible, but a really bad idea. Multiple ship designs just make more sense. For inert cargo like steel, we can use equatorial rail cannons (friggin' HUGE ones, but still). For simple passenger transport, we can use space planes which disconnect from their support/fuel plane in the upper atmosphere. Hell, we can even use something like the Shuttles as cargo ships for delicate cargo like satellites. But the current single-design system is incredibly inefficient.
3) We need new frontiers. It's been scientifically proven that there are gene sequences found in common among adrenaline-junkies, risk-seekers, and explorers/trailblazers. It's literally bred into us to explore and find new frontiers and horizons. The world as it is today is effectively frontier-less. Yes, there are places where "no man has gone before" and there are challenges that "no man has ever faced", but they're harder and harder to find, and almost impossible for your average person to get access to. I firmly believe that a lot of the social problems in the US stem from the fact that too many people cannot satisfy this unnamed urge for newness. And it doesn't matter if they're not geniuses; if nothing else, we will need construction workers in space.
4) Commercial and, more importantly, industrial development in space will benefit not only the economy, but also the environment. There are manufacturing industries that would greatly benefit from the low-G environment of earth orbit. Ball bearings are an example, as it would be much easier to achieve near-perfect sphericality in a low-G environment than in the full-G environment of Earth. Not to mention the fact that any waste by-products aren't polluting Earth! We can sling it into the Sun if we have to! And there're enough mineral resources in the asteroid belt that we'd never need to dig up the Earth again!
5) An extinction-level global disaster will occur. Not necessarily anytime soon, but it'll happen. It's happened before, when a meteor crashed and killed the dinosaurs. Hell, many million years ago, Earth suffered a meteor strike severe enough to splash off what became the Moon! Not to mention ice ages, nuclear holocaust, biological devasation, ecological collapse, or any number of other natural or man-made disaster scenarios. We need to colonize other planets, moons, and asteroids. Otherwise, all the eggs in this basket will break.
Obviously, not everyone shares my views on this subject, but it's probably the one I'm the most passionate about and I'm glad to see that the first steps are being made.
I've long held some strong opinions regarding space travel and exploration.
1) Get it out of the hands of any government. Or at least, make it so that governments are NOT the only ones in space. Historically, governments are *very* conservative with "blue-sky" projects that don't have immediate benefits to themselves or their constituents. We wouldn't even be in space at all if we hadn't been competing with the Soviets during the Cold War. So long as there is no incentive to go into or stay in space, the government won't fund it. And as of right now, the government doesn't see any incentive.
2) Trash the fucking Shuttles. They're decades old and falling apart, when the original designs assumed that they would be replaced every 7-10 years. Aside from that, the damn things are badly designed for the true needs of mass travel & exploration. It would be like trying to fit 10 passengers, a jet engine, a CIA sensor pack, 2000 pounds of cargo, and a 50-gallon gas tank onto a VW Bug's frame. It's theoretically possible, but a really bad idea. Multiple ship designs just make more sense. For inert cargo like steel, we can use equatorial rail cannons (friggin' HUGE ones, but still). For simple passenger transport, we can use space planes which disconnect from their support/fuel plane in the upper atmosphere. Hell, we can even use something like the Shuttles as cargo ships for delicate cargo like satellites. But the current single-design system is incredibly inefficient.
3) We need new frontiers. It's been scientifically proven that there are gene sequences found in common among adrenaline-junkies, risk-seekers, and explorers/trailblazers. It's literally bred into us to explore and find new frontiers and horizons. The world as it is today is effectively frontier-less. Yes, there are places where "no man has gone before" and there are challenges that "no man has ever faced", but they're harder and harder to find, and almost impossible for your average person to get access to. I firmly believe that a lot of the social problems in the US stem from the fact that too many people cannot satisfy this unnamed urge for newness. And it doesn't matter if they're not geniuses; if nothing else, we will need construction workers in space.
4) Commercial and, more importantly, industrial development in space will benefit not only the economy, but also the environment. There are manufacturing industries that would greatly benefit from the low-G environment of earth orbit. Ball bearings are an example, as it would be much easier to achieve near-perfect sphericality in a low-G environment than in the full-G environment of Earth. Not to mention the fact that any waste by-products aren't polluting Earth! We can sling it into the Sun if we have to! And there're enough mineral resources in the asteroid belt that we'd never need to dig up the Earth again!
5) An extinction-level global disaster will occur. Not necessarily anytime soon, but it'll happen. It's happened before, when a meteor crashed and killed the dinosaurs. Hell, many million years ago, Earth suffered a meteor strike severe enough to splash off what became the Moon! Not to mention ice ages, nuclear holocaust, biological devasation, ecological collapse, or any number of other natural or man-made disaster scenarios. We need to colonize other planets, moons, and asteroids. Otherwise, all the eggs in this basket will break.
Obviously, not everyone shares my views on this subject, but it's probably the one I'm the most passionate about and I'm glad to see that the first steps are being made.
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Date: 2004-07-04 05:02 pm (UTC)