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Getbig Main Boards => General Topics => Topic started by: Eyeball Chambers on June 16, 2009, 11:29:19 PM
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There were 6 manned trips to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Why did we quit visiting the moon? ???
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Because we never went in the first place........
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There were 6 manned trips to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Why did we quit visiting the moon? ???
Annunaki
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Tons of reasons with the main being Reagan sucking up NASA research money for Weapons development. Clinton recovered NASA only to hand it off again to an incompetent administration.
We launched 2 vehicles this week to the moon with one probe which will beam back an entire mapping of the moon`s surface for a future manned mission by 2020.
Also, this probe will be able to beam back the Lunar Rover tracks which will hopefully shut you stupid and idiotic conspiracy theorists up for good.
RPF, on a side note, Ron Paul wanted to dissolve NASA completely and actively ran on that as a campaign issue. Ron Paul is a moron.
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Because we never went in the first place........
You are an idiot.
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Because we never went in the first place........
::)
If by "we" you mean Austrailians, then yes, you're correct.
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I heard Plazmosis will be used by NASA as the official fuel for the Space Program.
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I making that post on behalf on 240.......
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Maybe we should send Johnny Falcon to the moon.
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Because we never went in the first place........
true.
Americans never stepped on the moon.
Russians, yes.
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(http://i41.tinypic.com/33f9afs.jpg)
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Tons of reasons with the main being Reagan sucking up NASA research money for Weapons development. Clinton recovered NASA only to hand it off again to an incompetent administration.
Reagan wasn't in office when we stopped going to the moon in the mid 70's. The main reason was the high cost of the Apollo program (which is indeed one of, if not THE greatest achievement in human history), and the need for newer, cheaper, re-useable spacecraft to more frequently travel to space to conduct experiments in micro-gravity environments, set up networks of communications and other types of satellites, etc...
The sad thing is.... today's annual NASA budget equals what we are blowing in about 6 weeks in Iraq.
We launched 2 vehicles this week to the moon with one probe which will beam back an entire mapping of the moon`s surface for a future manned mission by 2020.
Not yet. The Atlas rocket carrying these 2 vehicles was supposed to launch today (6/17), but it was pushed back to make way for the Shuttle Endeavor launch, which was moved to this morning after it was scrubbed last Saturday due to hydrogen leak. After range reconfiguration, the earliest the unmanned moon vehicles can launch is Thurs afternoon, but more likely Friday afternoon. Ironically, they should've left the Atlas on the 17th, as the shuttle was just scrubbed again due to another hydrogen leak, and now cannot launch until 7/11/09.
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Reagan wasn't in office when we stopped going to the moon in the mid 70's. The main reason was the high cost of the Apollo program (which is indeed one of, if not THE greatest achievement in human history), and the need for newer, cheaper, re-useable spacecraft to more frequently travel to space to conduct experiments in micro-gravity environments, set up networks of communications and other types of satellites, etc...
The sad thing is.... today's annual NASA budget equals what we are blowing in about 6 weeks in Iraq.
Not yet. The Atlas rocket carrying these 2 vehicles was supposed to launch today (6/17), but it was pushed back to make way for the Shuttle Endeavor launch, which was moved to this morning after it was scrubbed last Saturday due to hydrogen leak. After range reconfiguration, the earliest the unmanned moon vehicles can launch is Thurs afternoon, but more likely Friday afternoon. Ironically, they should've left the Atlas on the 17th, as the shuttle was just scrubbed again due to another hydrogen leak, and now cannot launch until 7/11/09.
Wrong.
This Thursday, the 18th, is the launch for the LRO and the LCROSS.
http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
New Launch Date Set
June 15, 2009 - As a result of the rescheduling of space shuttle Endeavour's STS-127 mission for June 17, LRO and LCROSS are now set to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, June 18.
There will be three launch opportunities from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:12 p.m., 5:22 p.m. and 5:32 p.m. EDT
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Melvin Goodrum eats cum.
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(http://i41.tinypic.com/33f9afs.jpg)
weird image.
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Also, this probe will be able to beam back the Lunar Rover tracks which will hopefully shut you stupid and idiotic conspiracy theorists up for good.
too bad those tracks are 50 years old. Doubt theyre still there. If anything they should send photos of the dusty flag where ever it is
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Reagan wasn't in office when we stopped going to the moon in the mid 70's. The main reason was the high cost of the Apollo program (which is indeed one of, if not THE greatest achievement in human history), and the need for newer, cheaper, re-useable spacecraft to more frequently travel to space to conduct experiments in micro-gravity environments, set up networks of communications and other types of satellites, etc...
It was Richard Nixon that canceled the rest of the Apollo program,...penny wise/pound foolish as it turned out.
Money spent on basic scientific research is always well spent.
too bad those tracks are 50 years old. Doubt theyre still there. If anything they should send photos of the dusty flag where ever it is
They are still there, because there is no atmosphere to erode them.
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too bad those tracks are 50 years old. Doubt theyre still there. If anything they should send photos of the dusty flag where ever it is
Its in Storage in a hollywood studio ;D
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I heard Plazmosis will be used by NASA as the official fuel for the Space Program.
ALL THEY NEED FOR THE ROCK SHIP IS 2 SCOOPS BEFORE LIFT OFF,,TAKING 4 WOULD BE SUICIDE FOR SURE
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ALL THEY NEED FOR THE ROCK SHIP IS 2 SCOOPS BEFORE LIFT OFF,,TAKING 4 WOULD BE SUICIDE FOR SURE
OMFG! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
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They are still there, because there is no atmosphere to erode them.
there are many elements that can erode the surface, especialy some tire tracks.
and there is an atmosphere. Its just very very thin.
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from the nasa website
Moon Storms
12.07.2005
An old Apollo experiment is telling researchers something new and surprising about the moon.
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December 7, 2005: Every lunar morning, when the sun first peeks over the dusty soil of the moon after two weeks of frigid lunar night, a strange storm stirs the surface.
The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.
Never heard of it? Few have. But scientists are increasingly confident that the storm is real.
The evidence comes from an old Apollo experiment called LEAM, short for Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites. "Apollo 17 astronauts installed LEAM on the moon in 1972," explains Timothy Stubbs of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It was designed to look for dust kicked up by small meteoroids hitting the moon's surface."
Right: The box in the foreground is the Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites Experiment (LEAM). [More]
Billions of years ago, meteoroids hit the moon almost constantly, pulverizing rocks and coating the moon's surface with their dusty debris. Indeed, this is the reason why the moon is so dusty. Today these impacts happen less often, but they still happen.
Apollo-era scientists wanted to know, how much dust is ejected by daily impacts? And what are the properties of that dust? LEAM was to answer these questions using three sensors that could record the speed, energy, and direction of tiny particles: one each pointing up, east, and west.
LEAM's three-decade-old data are so intriguing, they're now being reexamined by several independent groups of NASA and university scientists. Gary Olhoeft, professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, is one of them:
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"To everyone's surprise," says Olhoeft, "LEAM saw a large number of particles every morning, mostly coming from the east or west--rather than above or below--and mostly slower than speeds expected for lunar ejecta."
What could cause this? Stubbs has an idea: "The dayside of the moon is positively charged; the nightside is negatively charged." At the interface between night and day, he explains, "electrostatically charged dust would be pushed across the terminator sideways," by horizontal electric fields. (Learn more: "Moon Fountains." )
Even more surprising, Olhoeft continues, a few hours after every lunar sunrise, the experiment's temperature rocketed so high--near that of boiling water--that "LEAM had to be turned off because it was overheating."
Those strange observations could mean that "electrically-charged moondust was sticking to LEAM, darkening its surface so the experiment package absorbed rather than reflected sunlight," speculates Olhoeft.
But nobody knows for sure. LEAM operated for a very short time: only 620 hours of data were gathered during the icy lunar night and a mere 150 hours of data from the blazing lunar day before its sensors were turned off and the Apollo program ended.
Astronauts may have seen the storms, too. While orbiting the Moon, the crews of Apollo 8, 10, 12, and 17 sketched "bands" or "twilight rays" where sunlight was apparently filtering through dust above the moon's surface. This happened before each lunar sunrise and just after each lunar sunset. NASA's Surveyor spacecraft also photographed twilight "horizon glows," much like what the astronauts saw.
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Wrong.
This Thursday, the 18th, is the launch for the LRO and the LCROSS.
http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
New Launch Date Set
June 15, 2009 - As a result of the rescheduling of space shuttle Endeavour's STS-127 mission for June 17, LRO and LCROSS are now set to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, June 18.
There will be three launch opportunities from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:12 p.m., 5:22 p.m. and 5:32 p.m. EDT
No, you are wrong. Look at the date on your info - June 15th. My info is from a couple of hours ago (3:30am 6/17) at the news conference following the 2nd scrub of the Shuttle Endeavor launch. They originally had to reset the Atlas date for the 18th, because that was assuming that if Endeavor was to be scrubbed, it would be scurbbed before 12:00am on the 17th, and they would have enough time to reconfig the range in time for an 18th launch. Over night, Endeavor was not scrubbed until 2:00am, so the launch teams do not believe it will be possible to be ready for Atlas on the 18th. There's still a small chance that the Moon mission can go on Thursday the 18th, but it's very doubtful as they have to reconfigure the range for fueling, radar tracking, cameras, security, etc... from launch complex 39a (shuttle), to the launch complex for the Atlas rockets (forget the number). Most likely, the range will not be ready, which will result in launch attempts for Atlas on Fri and Saturday, weather permitting. Even if it DOES go up on Thursday, it's still consistent with the information within my post. I just said it's more likely for a Friday launch. Therefore, I am not wrong, sorry.
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who said we went in the first place?
abovetopsecret.com
Jim Marrs
The Dark Moon
do some reading
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Anybody who thinks we have been to the moon is a deluded as that silly kaffa Vince Goodrum.
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I liked "I Dream of Jeannie"
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There were 6 manned trips to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Why did we quit visiting the moon? ???
your answers
secret space...covers out lunar landings and the nazi UFO program
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1485155465058882626&ei=T2o5Ss_eEIXwrgKpj8CMBA&q=secret+space
case of the NASA UFO..nasa shuttle footage examined with UFO in the UV spectrum...pklus the STS mission..the smoking gun video
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000113495
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8524267568796529301&ei=fWo5SurgF4f8rgLctPX5Aw&q=case+of+the+nasa+ufo
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No, you are wrong. Look at the date on your info - June 15th. My info is from a couple of hours ago (3:30am 6/17) at the news conference following the 2nd scrub of the Shuttle Endeavor launch. They originally had to reset the Atlas date for the 18th, because that was assuming that if Endeavor was to be scrubbed, it would be scurbbed before 12:00am on the 17th, and they would have enough time to reconfig the range in time for an 18th launch. Over night, Endeavor was not scrubbed until 2:00am, so the launch teams do not believe it will be possible to be ready for Atlas on the 18th. There's still a small chance that the Moon mission can go on Thursday the 18th, but it's very doubtful as they have to reconfigure the range for fueling, radar tracking, cameras, security, etc... from launch complex 39a (shuttle), to the launch complex for the Atlas rockets (forget the number). Most likely, the range will not be ready, which will result in launch attempts for Atlas on Fri and Saturday, weather permitting. Even if it DOES go up on Thursday, it's still consistent with the information within my post. I just said it's more likely for a Friday launch. Therefore, I am not wrong, sorry.
http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
You are WRONG WRONG WRONG.
LRO at the Launch Pad
June 17, 2009 - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite are set to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, June 18, at 5:12 p.m. EDT. Two additional launch opportunities are available at 5:22 p.m. and 5:32 p.m .
In preparation for liftoff, the Atlas V launch vehicle has successfully rolled out to the launch pad.
Countdown milestones can be found on NASA's Launch Blog beginning about two hours prior to liftoff.
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(http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/11_2dees.jpg)
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look ma...no blast crater under the lunar lander
(http://www.youngeagles.org/photos/gallery/Spacecraft/Apollo12LunarLander.jpg)
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RPF, on a side note, Ron Paul wanted to dissolve NASA completely and actively ran on that as a campaign issue. Ron Paul is a moron.
The only way space exploration will ever advance is if private enterprise is allowed to get involved. Competition between companies will drive the price down, and increase the speed of innovation. NASA spent billions in research for the replacement of the space shuttles only to use fifty year old technology by building a bigger version of the Apollo lander.
If left to private industry we would be much farther along. If we were designing spacecraft rather than ballistic missiles we would be farther along. If we weren't designing disposable launch platforms, we would be farther along. In the 1950s we had a flying space craft. We scraped it in favor of Ballistic missiles. NASA is in the way of progress.....
(http://users.dbscorp.net/jmustain/X15-1.JPG)
(http://www.youngeagles.org/photos/gallery/Spacecraft/ScaledCompositesSpaceShipOne_1.jpg)
Whats not to understand?
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The only way space exploration will ever advance is if private enterprise is allowed to get involved. Competition between companies will drive the price down, and increase the speed of innovation. NASA spent billions in research for the replacement of the space shuttles only to use fifty year old technology by building a bigger version of the Apollo lander.
If left to private industry we would be much farther along. If we were designing spacecraft rather than ballistic missiles we would be farther along. If we weren't designing disposable launch platforms, we would be farther along. In the 1950s we had a flying space craft. We scraped it in favor of Ballistic missiles. NASA is in the way of progress.....
(http://users.dbscorp.net/jmustain/X15-1.JPG)
(http://www.youngeagles.org/photos/gallery/Spacecraft/ScaledCompositesSpaceShipOne_1.jpg)
Whats not to understand?
::)
The last results from the private sector have been a compete joke and utter failure.
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http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
You are WRONG WRONG WRONG.
No, idiot, - re-read my initial post....
...After range reconfiguration, the earliest the unmanned moon vehicles can launch is Thurs afternoon, but more likely Friday afternoon....
As you can see, I never said it wasn't launching Thursday, I said it was more likely for Friday, which was consistent with NASA officials press conference following the STS-127 scrub. The fact that they were able to get the range ready by Thurs jives with my initial post which said that Thurs is the earliest it could happen. Reading.... you might want to learn it sometime.
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No, idiot, - re-read my initial post....
As you can see, I never said it wasn't launching Thursday, I said it was more likely for Friday, which was consistent with NASA officials press conference following the STS-127 scrub. The fact that they were able to get the range ready by Thurs jives with my initial post which said that Thurs is the earliest it could happen. Reading.... you might want to learn it sometime.
;) Blast Off!
Lunar Spacecraft Launch to Moon!
June 18, 2009 - The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite are bound for the moon after a flawless liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket.
Powered by two liquid-fueled engines and a pair of solid-fueled boosters, the Atlas V roared off the launch pad at Launch Complex 41 to begin NASA's return to the moon missions.
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::)
The last results from the private sector have been a compete joke and utter failure.
examples please.
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examples please.
Can the private sector make a breakthrough in space access?
by John F. McGowan
Monday, June 8, 2009
Comments (27)
Many space enthusiasts embrace the idea that private entrepreneurs can achieve a breakthrough in space access where large government funded efforts have repeatedly failed. This belief remains widespread despite many years of many failures by the private sector. Previous failures include Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket, among many others. Current hopes are pinned on Elon Musk and SpaceX, Richard Branson/Burt Rutan and Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin, and miscellaneous other entrepreneurs and firms. Yet common business practices in modern high technology firms and the historical pattern of major technological inventions and scientific discoveries are in clear conflict, raising serious questions about the probability of success of the current crop of private sector attempts to achieve inexpensive and profitable space access. The rest of this article discusses the differences between common business practices and the pattern of major breakthroughs and suggests some changes to common business practices that may enable private efforts to make the breakthrough probably needed for cheap access to space.
Major breakthroughs take longer than the modern private sector is used to
Most major inventions and discoveries have taken a long time: usually in excess of five years, and often much longer. Consider, for example, that the famous German amateur rocket society the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Exploration) was founded on July 5, 1927. The VfR conducted 87 launchings and 270 static firings of rocket motors at Raketenflugplatz, Berlin in 1931 before receiving funding from the German military in 1932. Germany funded research and development of the liquid propellant rockets from 1932 until the end of World War II, culminating in the V-2 rocket. The United States funded continued development by Werner von Braun’s rocket team from the end of World War II. Von Braun’s effort did not achieve an orbit-capable rocket until 1958 (Explorer 1 was launched into orbit on January 29, 1958). The extremely expensive orbit-capable chemical rockets that have been the mainstay of the space program since the 1960’s took about three decades and probably thousands of trials to research and develop.
Common business practices in modern high technology firms and the historical pattern of major technological inventions and scientific discoveries are in clear conflict in efforts by the private sector to develop new low-cost launch systems.
The research and development of orbit-capable rockets certainly cost many billions of dollars. There are many examples of major inventions and discoveries, including revolutionary power and propulsion systems on much smaller budgets. In rocketry, some early rocket pioneers such as Robert Goddard and Jack Parsons made significant advances on much smaller budgets than the German rocket program. Parsons, in particular, invented the Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) rockets that were used in World War II. Nonetheless, both Goddard and Parsons worked on their inventions for over a decade with hundreds, if not thousands, of trials and numerous failures. For practical purposes, essentially all of Parsons experiments with solid fuel rockets based on black powder were failures until he conceived of the asphalt and potassium perchlorate mixture that made the JATO possible.
A number of major advances in power and propulsion technology were made on small budgets during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. These include the invention of the separate condenser steam engine by James Watt; the high-pressure steam engine developed by John Fitch and his partner, Philadelphia clockmaker Henry Voigt, for Fitch’s steamboat in 1790; and the invention of powered flight by Octave Chanute and the Wright Brothers. However, all of these inventions took at least five years and many trials and many failures. In all of these examples, the inventors were able to keep the per-trial cost and duration quite low. Watt used scale models of the Newcomen steam engine to conduct research and development. Fitch and Voigt worked on a high-pressure steam engine that was quite small, appropriate for a small steamboat. Fitch’s steamboat was much smaller than Robert Fulton’s much later and more successful steamboat, which ironically used a much larger and much more primitive steam engine. Chanute and the Wright Brothers conducted experiments with inexpensive gliders made of canvas and wood that could be easily and cheaply constructed, repaired, or modified. Although budgets can be small, there are few if any examples of major inventions or discoveries that took less than five years or required less than several hundred trials.
World War II saw the success of several large military research and development projects, notably the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, the German V-2 rocket, and major advances in radar, penicillin, and a number of other less well-known R&D projects. This led to a heavy post-war increase in government support for research, including creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the modern National Institutes of Health (NIH). World War II coincided with a “professionalization” of research in which the role of so-called amateurs declined markedly, universities adopted more corporate structures, formal credentials such as the Ph.D. were emphasized in a number of fields, and a number of other changes occurred or accelerated.
Modern “professional” research has not overcome the need for large amounts of trial and error to achieve major breakthroughs or significant inventions and discoveries. Indeed, the number of actual breakthroughs may have declined with increased funding and professionalization, at least in part because the per-trial cost has risen relative to funding. (See “Cheap access to space: lessons from past breakthroughs”, The Space Review, May 11, 2009) In space, a full launch attempt costs on the order of $50–100 million, depending on the vehicle, meaning that $1 billion can fund only 10–20 trials, a small number relative to the hundreds or thousands usually involved in a major breakthrough. There has been minimal progress in power and propulsion in aviation and rocketry since about 1970.
Even five years is an extremely long time by the standards of modern business, especially the high technology companies often looked to as examples of how to achieve cheap access to space. Venture capitalists, for example, typically invest in projects with an expected return (an initial public offering, merger, or other so-called “exit strategy”) within three to five years. During the Internet bubble, some venture capitalists appeared to have invested in a large number of dot-coms with very short turnarounds, little more than put up a web site and go public in a few months or years.
Major breakthroughs involve research that the modern private sector avoids
In addition, venture capitalists and other sophisticated investors in high technology emphasize investing only in “technically feasible” proposals in which the core technology is proven: a working prototype, proof of concept, or something similar already exists. Yet, this is exactly the opposite of the situation in a major breakthrough. In a major breakthrough, the hard technical work is to develop a working prototype, to prove technical feasibility. In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, some entrepreneurs like James Watt and the Wright Brothers were able to build successful businesses and make fortunes by conducting basic core technology research and development, at least during the early stages of their business. This was rare even then and has become almost unheard of in the modern business world.
Major breakthroughs often involve many years of frustrating failure before the breakthrough or breakthroughs occur.
One might sensibly ask where the working prototypes come from today? With the sharp increase in government support for research and development during and following World War II, the nominal private sector has frequently been able to rely on the government for the development of working prototypes of new technologies. Indeed, Silicon Valley, often cited as a shining example of free market capitalism, in part grew out of government spy satellite programs at Moffett Field. Similarly, the Internet and the World Wide Web were developed to the advanced prototype stage—really a working system—entirely with government funding by DARPA, NSF, CERN, and several other government agencies. A range of favorable legislation such as the Bayh-Dole Act have made it easy for private businesses to license the fruits of government research and development programs on excellent terms.
What this means is that “private” high technology investors and entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos often have negligible experience with the research and development of core technologies comparable to rocket engines. This differs from iconic historical inventors like James Watt and the Wright Brothers. Institutional investors such as venture capital funds also have little experience evaluating, funding or managing the sort of research and development of core technologies that is probably required to achieve cheap access to space.
Major breakthroughs often involve long periods of frustrating failure
Space enthusiasts and others often extol the private sector for its putative results orientation, contrasting this with the waste, inefficiency, and politics of government funding agencies such as NASA. However, major breakthroughs often involve many years of frustrating failure before the breakthrough or breakthroughs occur. The German rocket program labored for over a decade before producing the V-2, a weapon that worked but was not militarily significant without a warhead such as an atomic bomb, which Germany lacked. Robert Goddard never produced a working product. Jack Parsons took almost a decade before he invented the JATO. Parsons, who might euphemistically be described as eccentric, soon had trouble with the corporate environment of Aerojet, the company that he helped to found. In fact, the hardheaded business emphasis on measurable results, profit, quarterly earnings, and so forth conflicts with the realities of most major breakthroughs.
Market romanticism
Prior to the invention and widespread adoption of printing, we have limited information on the invention of many key technologies. We have only myths about the discovery of how to make fire. Ancient sources attribute some scientific discoveries to figures such as Pythagoras, but for the most part our knowledge of ancient inventions and discoveries is neglible. It is likely that many key technological inventions were made by blacksmiths, craftsmen, and others whose names are lost to history.
Before the development of mass production, craftsmen were numerous, widespread, and probably highly skilled in many cases, with the necessary skills, knowledge, and tools to invent key technologies. A blacksmith or other craftsman often faced downtime during his business when he lacked a project and when he (or she) could experiment at negligible marginal cost. Materials and tools were readily available from an ongoing business. Consequently, a would-be inventor could invest the many years in the research and development of an invention such as the stirrup or metal casting (a key breakthrough of the 14th century).
With the advent of printing and the modern patent systems, we have more detailed information about some inventions and discoveries. Thus we know the names of clockmakers such as John Harrison, the inventor of the nautical chronometer that made possible accurate measurement of longitude, or John Fitch’s partner Henry Voigt, who designed and built the high-pressure steam engine used in Fitch’s steamboat. We have detailed records of inventors like Watt and the Wright Brothers who followed in what was probably an ancient tradition.
Space enthusiasts who hope for the dynamic private sector to achieve cheap access to space are often unwittingly looking back romantically to an earlier era that has mostly disappeared with advances in mass production and the heavy growth of government funding of research and development.
The growth of mass production, factories, and modern corporations has steadily eclipsed this traditional system of invention and discovery. Significantly, the economics of a modern corporation differs substantially from craftsmen like Watt or the Wright Brothers. Watt made teaching models of the Newcomen steam engine for professors at the University of Glasgow. When he lacked a project, he had free time to research the Newcomen engine. Success would make him a fortune. Failure would cost him nothing. The Wright Brothers had a seasonal business selling bicycles during the summer. Researching powered flight during the winter mostly using materials and tools already available in their bicycle business could make them rich and cost almost nothing. In contrast, a modern corporation can often find more profitable immediate projects than a high-risk long-term research project, or simply lay off employees during downtime. Mass production has eliminated many of the independent craftsmen like Harrison, Voigt, Watt, or the Wrights.
Space enthusiasts who hope for the dynamic private sector to achieve cheap access to space are often unwittingly looking back romantically to an earlier era that has mostly disappeared with advances in mass production and the heavy growth of government funding of research and development. Mistaking the modern system of government research and nominally private commercialization of government-sponsored research for a romantic idealization of the old pre-World War II system can be a costly error. I should add that I feel that we need to recover some aspects of the old system to achieve a higher rate of technological progress both in space and other fields, in particular to solve problems that require major conceptual leaps, something the modern system seems to perform poorly.
Conclusion
A number of modern business practices, common in high technology business, are incompatible with the general pattern of major breakthroughs. This is not to say that these business practices will always prevent a breakthrough, but in general there is a serious conflict. For this reason, private sector attempts to achieve cheap access to space are likely to continue to fail.
To succeed, public, private, and public/private attempts to achieve cheap access to space must consider carefully the cost and duration of trials. Most major breakthroughs have involved hundreds to thousands of trials. The total cost and schedule is thus driven by the cost and duration per trial. Thus, technologies and approaches with high per-trial costs and durations are likely to fail, even if they otherwise seem promising, absent very heavy funding. Thus, efforts to achieve cheap access to space need to look closely at traditional methods such as scale models for affordable research and development of space access.
The private sector needs to develop funding and management mechanisms that are consistent with the longer time frame of major breakthroughs. The issue is not necessarily one of money. At least historically, major breakthroughs have sometimes been made on small budgets. It is not clear that this cannot be done with space access. However, these breakthroughs usually take a long time and involve numerous frustrating failures. Sharply lowering the per-trial cost can help make this process more acceptable. As a practical matter, it can be rather difficult to sensibly manage a process that usually involves long periods of repeated failures.
A closed investment fund with a lifetime of five to thirty years that provided a stream of funding to a basket of high return research and development projects that could demonstrate a low per-trial cost up front might address many of these problems. There are many potential breakthroughs such as cures for cancer and other major diseases, much cheaper energy sources, and so forth for which large markets almost certainly exist. The primary risk of these research and development projects is technical, not marketing. A clear billion-dollar market for cheap access to space, such as might be associated with space solar power, asteroid mining, or space tourism, has yet to be demonstrated.
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. is a software developer, research scientist, and consultant. He works primarily in the area of complex algorithms that embody advanced mathematical and logical concepts, including speech recognition and video compression technologies. He has worked at NASA Ames Research Center as a contractor and is active in the Mars Society. He has published papers on the exploration of Mars, anticipating the discovery of methane in the Martian atmosphere, and on the origin and evolution of life. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He can be reached at jmcgowan11@earthlink.net.
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examples please.
Launch of Private Rocket Fails; Three Satellites Were Onboard
Published: August 3, 2008
A privately funded rocket was lost on its way to space Saturday night, bringing a third failure in a row to an Internet multimillionaire's effort to create a market for low-cost space-delivery.
The accident occurred a little more than two minutes after launch, and the two-stage Falcon 1 rocket appeared to be oscillating before the live signal from an on-board video camera went dead.
"We are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on that vehicle," said Max Vozoff, a mission manager and launch commentator for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, on a webcast of the event soon afterward.
Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur, founded the company, known as SpaceX, in 2002 after selling his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion. The company, based in Hawthorne, Calif., has been hailed as one of the most promising examples of an entrepreneurial "new space" movement, and has 525 employees.
In a statement read by a spokeswoman early Sunday morning during a teleconference with reporters, Mr. Musk said, "It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit" on the flight. He referred to the first stage of the launching as "picture perfect," but said, "unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation."
The rocket was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific at 11:34 p.m. Eastern time, after several hours of delays and one aborted launch attempt.
The first Falcon 1 launch, in March 2006, failed about a minute into its ascent because of a fuel line leak. A second rocket, launched in March 2007, made it to space but was lost about five minutes after launching.
On this flight, the Falcon carried three small satellites: one, called Trailblazer, for the Department of Defense, which was built as a kind of quick-turnaround demonstration. The two others were for NASA: PRESat, a small automated laboratory, and NanoSail-D, a test of the concept of using sunlight to push a thin solar sail and provide propulsion without propellant.
The rocket was also carrying the ashes of 208 people who had paid to have their remains shot into space, including the astronaut Gordon Cooper and the actor James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the wily engineer on the original "Star Trek" television series. The service is called an "Explorers Flight" by the company that arranges them, Celestis, Inc. Last night the company's web page stated, "The Explorers Flight mission appears not to have reached orbit tonight," and the Wikipedia pages of Cooper and Doohan had already been edited early Sunday morning to reflect the news.
The company is also developing a larger rocket, the Falcon 9, with nine engines in the first stage. That vehicle is intended to provide cargo services to the International Space Station under a contract for NASA after the shuttle program winds down in 2010. SpaceX performed a successful test firing of the Falcon 9 engines at its facilities in McGregor, Tex., last week.
Charles Lurio, an independent space consultant, it should not be surprising to lose single-use rocket vehicles in the early stages of development, because their very design does not allow test flights. "It's all or nothing once it leaves the pad," he said. "But I hope SpaceX keeps trying," he said. "They're very competent people."
In Mr. Musk's statement, he insisted that the company will not be deterred and still has strong support from its backers. "SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward," he said, and added that the fourth flight, currently scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of the year, and fifth flights are being prepared, and that he has given the go-ahead "to begin fabrication of flight 6."
And, he added, "We are in very good financial basis here. We have the resolve, we have the financial base, and we have the expertise" to identify the problem and go forward. "There should be no question about that." In a version of the statement distributed to employees, Mr. Musk said that the company "recently accepted a significant investment" that, along with the company's current cash reserves, will ensure that "we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching" the Falcon 1 and the larger Falcon 9 vehicles.
In the teleconference, Diane Murphy, the company spokeswoman, said that the mood at the company's headquarters quickly switched from excitement and cheers at the seemingly successful launch to concern and then disappointment. But when Mr. Musk addressed the employees, she said, and told them that the company would move forward with the fourth flight, "One of our employees immediately spoke up and said with great resolve, 'yes we will. We will get to orbit' — and everyone sent up a cheer."
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examples please.
Planetary News: Human Spaceflight (2007)
Private Rocketship Falcon 1 Flies, Reaches Space, But Fails to Reach Orbit
By A.J.S. Rayl
March 20, 2007
The Falcon 1
After a year-long series of delays and last-minute aborts, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) finally launched its Falcon 1 rocket at 1:10 pm local time on a demonstration test flight, but about three minutes into the flight, the mission control lost its charge, and the rocket failed to reach the intended orbit.
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I can provide more examples of failure if you`d like. So far the Private Industry has been utter failure. :-\
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I can provide more examples of failure if you`d like. So far the Private Industry has been utter failure. :-\
Should I post a list of Nasa's failures, some of them completely moronic and how much money went down the drain, or am I wasting my time?
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IMO NASA is only there for public consumption. There is several black ops space divisions that we don't know about.
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IMO NASA is only there for public consumption. There is several black ops space divisions that we don't know about.
I'd like to know the % of money that goes into things like space exploration, etc.. and how much goes into defense.
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hang on I think it was in that death and taxes 2009 image I'll do a search for it.
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(http://fc00.deviantart.com/fs29/f/2008/140/5/7/Death_and_Taxes__2009_by_mibi.jpg)
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I'm kinda juiced atm I'm in no mood to look through every line.
if you find it lemme know :D
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I'm kinda juiced atm I'm in no mood to look through every line.
if you find it lemme know :D
:D
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IMO NASA is only there for public consumption. There is several black ops space divisions that we don't know about.
Proof?
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Proof?
not alot since it's black ops ;)
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=267688.0 (http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=267688.0)
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Who makes the Atlas V rocket?
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Who makes the Atlas V rocket?
Lockheed Martin and Boeing as a government project part of the EELV program.
The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) is a United States government program, primarily a Department of Defense–sponsored effort begun in the 1990s. Its goal is to develop at least one family of space launch vehicles, that would meet the long term needs of the military and fulfill commercial and government need for cost-efficient and reliable access to Earth orbit.
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Lockheed Martin and Boeing as a government project part of the EELV program.
The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) is a United States government program, primarily a Department of Defense–sponsored effort begun in the 1990s. Its goal is to develop at least one family of space launch vehicles, that would meet the long term needs of the military and fulfill commercial and government need for cost-efficient and reliable access to Earth orbit.
So it was developed by Lockheed and purchased by the government? Is that pretty much the extent of it? Who developed the Ares rocket and why didn't they choose it for the latest mission?
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So it was developed by Lockheed and purchased by the government? Is that pretty much the extent of it? Who developed the Ares rocket and why didn't they choose it for the latest mission?
No. The money was put up by the government using government research and the two companies, in their joint venture, were awarded a contract.
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No. The money was put up by the government using government research and the two companies, in their joint venture, were awarded a contract.
Hmmm, I just read an article that suggested that Lockheed, (a private company), developed the Atlas rocket and that it was used over the Nasa developed Ares rocket because it was cheaper. I'll have to go over it again. As far as the government research on the Atlas is concerned, could you be a bit more specific. Thanks.
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No, the Ares rocket is what they are working on now - it's not ready yet. It has it's first test flight later this summer. (was originally supposed to be June, now pushed back to late summer). The Ares I and the Ares V are the 2 launch vehicles for the Constellation program, which replaces the Space Shuttle program. They hope to have Ares I ready for human transportation into space by 2015. Then, along with the Ares V, they'll begin long duration space flight missions, long term lunar stays, and eventually on to a manned mission to Mars. (which will be approx and 2.5 year round trip journey due to distance travelled). The Constellation program is already well under way, but there are still many groups trying to pursuade NASA that there are other, more cost effective solutions available, such as using Delta IV H (heavy) in place of the Ares V, and reconfiguring Atlas and other Delta rockets in place of the Ares I.
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No, the Ares rocket is what they are working on now - it's not ready yet. It has it's first test flight later this summer. (was originally supposed to be June, now pushed back to late summer). The Ares I and the Ares V are the 2 launch vehicles for the Constellation program, which replaces the Space Shuttle program. They hope to have Ares I ready for human transportation into space by 2015. Then, along with the Ares V, they'll begin long duration space flight missions, long term lunar stays, and eventually on to a manned mission to Mars. (which will be approx and 2.5 year round trip journey due to distance travelled). The Constellation program is already well under way, but there are still many groups trying to pursuade NASA that there are other, more cost effective solutions available, such as using Delta IV H (heavy) in place of the Ares V, and reconfiguring Atlas and other Delta rockets in place of the Ares I.
thanks for the clarification.