Jeff Foust has a story today on the current real space race (as opposed to the fantasy one between the US and China)--the new race for customers in the suborbital market.
Mike Griffin might be arrogant (and he has enough degrees to justify that) and he may be building the wrong rockets, but he has also been putting money into commercial activities while he builds das rocketz. We haven't proven ourselves. Elon still hasn't launched a payload to orbit. John Carmack still hasn't won his two million dollars. Only Burt has an accomplishment to date. We can't just be intellectually correct. We have to show the world that we can do it.
"It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that's unresolved yet. It's a shame because it's a good movie that's just ahead of its time."
The reason why most of the Iraq War movies have failed is that they constantly try to be “message” movies. War is bad. Halliburton is bad. Bush is bad. Cheney is really, really bad. If the American people wanted to hear stories about how incompetent our government is, we’d watch the news. Hollywood keeps coming back to the same old clichés—the sadistic soldier, the heartless military bureaucracy, the “rogue agent.” All of those clichés have been used up more than Britney Spears, and don’t look any better.
If anyone wants to make a truly great war movie, here’s what they need to do. Don’t try to give us a “message.” Don’t try to push an agenda. Just tell a story. You know, the thing that Hollywood is supposed to do well? You don’t have to create some scathing indictment of war—if you just show war it indicts itself. Saving Private Ryan is one of the greatest war movies ever made because it never flinches from showing the horrors of war. It’s not a “pro-war” movie, nor is it an “anti-war” movie. It’s just a movie about war. You don’t need to create the character of Col. Evil McHitler who secretly sells the organs of Iraqi children to Halliburton to be used to grease oil drills to expose the horrors of war. War is itself horrible, and by creating all these silly little contrivances Hollywood doesn’t add to their message, they detract from it.
"Scientific research can't be rushed," Hu said, citing proposals urging scientists to accelerate the pace of lunar exploration projects.
"Lunar travel is an undertaking that is difficult, risky and requires huge investment. You can't take a wish-list approach to it."
Hu also dismissed the rumor that China is planning a manned moon landing in 2020.
"You can't declare yourself the boss of a chicken farm when you've only got one egg now, can you?" he said.
The review, released on Thursday, also said China is likely to continue its space development programme "as a vital means of achieving military competitiveness against the United States."
"The organisations engaged in China's space development have strong ties to the People's Liberation Army and a considerable number of its satellites are presumably intended for military purposes," the National Institute for Defence Studies said in an annual strategic review of East Asia.
"Here lies Arthur C Clarke. He never grew up and did not stop growing."
The growing private spaceflight industry might provide shortcuts to re-establishing an American manned launch capability. NASA is exploring that avenue with the SpaceX corporation and others.
Congress should heed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and other lawmakers who are pressing for an additional $2 billion to speed up the construction of the Orion vehicle.
Q: Would it be such a bad thing for NASA if China or India got back to the moon first?
A: I will raise my hand and say I do not want another space race. What happens when you do that is, you tend to get a short period of intense funding, and then the attention goes away, funding dissipates, and it's like an army dealing with a retreat. The hardest thing to do in military circles is to manage an effective retreat. What I want for NASA is stable and predictable funding and a stable set of goals. Finish the (international space) station, retire the shuttle, return to the moon, go to Mars. Those are great goals for the next 50 years. I certainly wouldn't mind a higher level of funding, but the stability of funding is more important than the absolute level.
What the Apollo engineers did was one of the miracles of human accomplishment. But I could make a pretty good case for you that, for the long-term mastery of spaceflight by our nation as a strategic capability, Apollo did more damage than good. We built up an industrial base, we built up a set of expectations, we accomplished one of the most marvelous things that's ever been done, and then we dismantled it all. It brings to mind the fable of the tortoise and the hare.
The bacteria's survival instinct in such extreme temperatures has led scientists to determine that future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertiliser for crops.
I haven't worked on the program for a year and a half, but I can imagine that a lot of people are eying their options to bail.
BTW: An increasing buzz here at the meeting is to look for a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS)-like concept for NASA to buy private-sector lunar services.
There's been talk from NASA and some of their less discerning fanboys of a "Lunar COTS". Basically the idea is to waste $100-120B on using Constellation to setup a small ISS on the Moon, and then once its there start paying commercial entities to service said base. This creates an interesting situation. Since NASA won't have done anything for over a decade to help make it easier for commercial entities to actually service the moon, they'll either have to keep sustaining the base themselves while they spend the money to belatedly help develop that commercial capability. Or, if the commercial market has independently created that capability anyhow, that NASA base will likely be only a small niche market in the cislunar space. The smart thing to do would be to start finding ways to develop or promote those commercial capabilities from the start. Things like funding research or sponsoring prizes for fielding the technologies needed for propellant depots. Acting as a customer for commercial services especially on-orbit propellants. Acting as a better customer for commercially attained lunar environmental data. Finding ways to promote translunar tourism and eventually lunar orbital (or Lagrange point) stations. Finding ways consistent with federal laws to act as an anchor tenant, to champion these new technologies, to fund demonstrator missions, and even to put money aside in escrow for being a leading customer for these new capabilities.
Yes, there's a huge logical disconnect here. Either NASA will have developed technology that makes it easy for the commercial folks to access the moon (which they currently are not) or they are counting on the commercial folks to have done that on their own, in which case, that means that there's already a thriving lunar market, of which NASA will be a trivial part, because otherwise, it won't have happened commercially. NASA's current high-cost, low-activity plans really do have the effect of ensuring the worst of all worlds for them, and us.
, when I came upon a passage at the end of the chapter on Neil Armstrong. It might provide some illumination on Senator McCain's views on things space.I was in prison the day Americans walked on the Moon. The Vietnamese were always careful to provide us only information from the outside world that would discourage us. They kept us aprised on the anti war protests, international opposition to America's continued involvement in the war, and military setbacks in the hope that would would believe the repeated assertions that America was losing the war and that our government had abandoned us. It seldomed worked, and we managed to get a more accurate picture and events back home from newly arrived POWs. But I didn't learn about Apollo 11's momentous success until I caught reference to it in a radio broadcast of a speech by a prominate American opponent of the war. If memory serves, he said something to the effect that "if America could put a man on the Moon, then we ought to be able to withdraw from a losing and unpopular war." Not long after, I recieved one of the infrequent and short notes from my family that out captors permitted us. About the size of a small postcard, it bore on its back a small stamp with a picture of an astronaut standing near an American flag on the moon. That was a good day in Hanoi.
And when it comes to being a recognized leader in the world, is it any wonder why China has emerged in recent years as one of the three spacefaring nations? They understand the value of space activities as a driver for innovation and a source of national pride in being a member of the world's most exclusive club. China today not only flies its own taikonauts, but also has plans to launch about 100 satellites over the next five to eight years. It should be no surprise, especially to those who have read Tom Friedman's book "The World is Flat" or John Kao's "Innovation Nation", that this environment in China is breeding thousands of high-tech start-ups. As John Kao couches the issue, America is currently facing a "Silent Sputnik" where "many countries are racing for a new innovation high ground while our own advantages are showing signs of serious wear."
“I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting.”
To the Observer, Steinem insisted that “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”
McCain has championed Bush's plan for NASA and has been endorsed by former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe.
"Manned spaceflight is something that is elemental and a vital part of our space program. I think we've got to catch up," McCain told the Chronicle.
He said he wants to close the gap in manned spaceflight, but "I think we've got to sort out our priorities better. In other words, we can't do everything. From my observing NASA, I think that sometimes we have tried to spray money in a whole bunch of different programs without the priority that I think they deserve."
Mark Whittington continues to live in a fantasyland on this subject
COTS is helpful, but in no way essential for commercial human spaceflight.
SpaceX was developing the Falcon 1 and 9 before COTS, and it would continue to do so in the absence of COTS. OSC might not move forward without COTS, but Dragon development will continue, Falcon 9 development will continue, and Atlas V upgrades will continue. The real market is not COTS, which is a sideshow from a payload standpoint, but Bigelow's private space facilities, which were also moving forward before COTS, and would continue to do so in its absence.
simply don't understand Mark's blindness to these realities that intrude so rudely on his theories, and his continuing obtuse insistence that commercial space is doomed without COTS, other than some sort of faith-based belief that it is not possible to put people into space without government funding.
And the notion that China is going to land a man on the moon any time within the next twenty years, at their current pace of development (far slower than Apollo was) remains laughable. So is the notion that they would suddenly do so out of the blue and that it would be a "rude awakening."
This isn't the Sputnik era, in which one can slip a satellite on a missile, in a world in which there was no space-based surveillance. There will be no surprise. If the development pace of the Chinese program picks up, it will be quite obvious, given the need for either a very large Saturn-class vehicle or (if they're smart) orbital infrastructure, long before it actually happens. We will have plenty of time to respond, from a policy perspective, should we decide to.
CFE has it right--the race is between NASA and the private sector, not between slow-paced, expensive and moribund government space programs.