# Space Speech 50th Anniversary



## J-Sun (May 25, 2011)

I believe that this nation [the US] should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

Then, for 30 of the next 40 years, we should fly shuttles and then quit doing that and just wait for the asteroid like those clever dinosaurs did. (Sorry, I'm still a bit pissed off about the US not having space capability before the year's out - the point is "happy anniversary!".)

Incidentally, here's how far we've come in 50 years: Apollo, Jr. Oops, there I go again. I mean, "Yay, we may go to an asteroid (whee. do it to them before they do it to us) and I might conceivably not even be dead by the time it happens!"

But seriously, historic speech.


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## Dave (May 25, 2011)

Firstly, you are completely ignoring the roll of private enterprise: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/528187-vss-enterprise-makes-first-manned-flight.html

It was a government sent Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic, but it was people like the Pilgrim Fathers who colonised and explored America, and private companies that laid railroads. 

Secondly, while huge jumps in technology were necessary to make Apollo 11 possible, the actual launch vehicle itself was still just a bigger version of a Nazi V2. Some men 'sitting in a tin can' on the end of a huge firework was never the future of space travel and we still haven't worked that out yet.

Thirdly, the space race was a function of the Cold War. The USA may have won both, but the Russians probably did a lot more useful work on the medical implications of actually keeping men in space for long periods of time.


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## Metryq (May 25, 2011)

Dave said:


> Firstly, you are completely ignoring the roll of private enterprise



I think that's where it's going:

*The Free Frontier*

I'll save the political rant, but landing a manned mission on an asteroid is absurd and wasteful. While I'm gung-ho for more manned space missions of actual worth, many things can be done far more cheaply and safely with robots. The only real reason for sending humans into deep space is colonization.



Dave said:


> Secondly, while huge jumps in technology were necessary to make Apollo 11 possible, the actual launch vehicle itself was still just a bigger version of a Nazi V2.



That's stretching it quite a bit. Why not call a Saturn V booster a bigger version of the Congreve rocket? While Von Braun may have been the "mastermind" of the US space effort, he did not do everything himself. I believe he favored "safer", lower Isp fuels, but was "outvoted" by other engineers. Also, there are many other engineers from around the world, most notably Robert Goddard, who developed the foundations of the V2 (like regenerative cooling). The real significance of the V2 is that a raving madman poured a lot of money into refining existing technologies for his own purposes. And while the Apollo missions were a kind of "wartime" effort, at least we weren't tossing these big rockets at each other.



Dave said:


> Some men 'sitting in a tin can' on the end of a huge firework was never the future of space travel and we still haven't worked that out yet.



No doubt about it: manned spaceflight has been mainly a brute force effort up to now, but I'm not counting on any space elevators. I know they're a sci-fi staple, but one of the characters in John Scalzi's _Old Man's War_ spelled it out in the opening chapters:



> “This beanstalk isn’t here because it’s the easiest way to get people to Colonial Station, you know. It’s here because it’s one of the most difficult—in fact, the most expensive, most technologically complex and most politically intimidating way to do it. Its very presence is a reminder that the CU is literally light-years ahead of anything humans can do here.”
> ...
> 
> “But the beanstalk is a constant reminder. It says, ‘Until you can make one of these, don’t even think of challenging us.’”



STS—"the space shuttle"—is a beanstalk. How often was that huge cargo bay actually filled? And even then, could the same tonnage be lofted for less money with big boosters and manned capsules like Space-X's Dragon? The shuttle was primarily a showpiece, like the politically correct orbit of the ISS.

*The Chip * is an excellent book about the development of "monolithic circuits," more commonly known as the microchip. Semiconductors were not the spark of the revolution. The book describes a dilemma known as "the tyranny of numbers" where the man-hours needed to build a circuit (with tubes or single transistors) without flaws outweighed the work that could be done by it. Monolithic circuits and the means of mass producing them were the solution that led to revolution.

Manned spaceflight may be a similar Gordian knot in need of another brains-over-brawn solution.


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## Nik (May 25, 2011)

http://www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency/news-and-events/2011/May/confidence-in-skylon
;-)


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## J-WO (May 25, 2011)

Yep, Skylon looks set to change the game. £10 grand to lift a kilo into Orbit reduced to £1 grand is not something to be taken lightly.


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## Metryq (May 25, 2011)

As near as I can tell, the SABRE engine has not actually been built yet, let alone the rest of the plane. Although, the Reaction Engines site is in full PR spin mode to make it sound like a _fait accompli_. Aerospikes sounded like a solution, too, but no one has built an SSTO yet—except Andy Griffith.

Until it actually flies all the way to orbit, it's still vaporware. And it's still a brute force approach. Hardware doesn't mind high-G methods. (Catapult?) Are space visionaries missing some viable methods in an effort to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution?


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## Starbeast (May 25, 2011)

J-WO said:


> Yep, Skylon looks set to change the game.


 
I've been wanting technology like Skylon since the 1970's.

*Thunderbirds are Go!*


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## J-WO (May 26, 2011)

I'm picturing you typing that last post with strings attached to your hands.


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