Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin filed a protest over NASA’s decision to award Elon Musk’s SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract, saying it was flawed. https://t.co/qC9iPm0txZ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 27, 2021
… Not ‘the most social-media-genic’ stuff.
I’m assuming — hoping! — the God-King of SpaceX, or at least his handlers, knows perfectly well that killing even one astronaut would be much worse for his brand than the occasional crisped auto-driver. Because whatever my qualms about MARS, BEYOTCHES! as a working model, I don’t want to see our space program made politically unviable.
the thing about space exploration is of course there is a huge amount of risk, but there is also a huge amount of effort into keeping astronauts safe. at no point was there an "oh, well, people are gonna die" attitude in the u.s. or soviet union during the space race https://t.co/pJKp88Tz4p
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 26, 2021
the u.s. didn't send people to the moon with a "let's just do it and be legends" mindset, no matter what popular culture may have you believe
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 26, 2021
(before even sending a person *into space*, nasa tested the rockets a bunch of times, then the empty mercury capsule, then the capsules with chimps. then it was alan shepard's turn)
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 26, 2021
Which reminded me that I’d never found the right time to share another space-related pandemic tragedy…
The pandemic potentially came within a thin sheet of glass to cosmonauts about to lift off into space. Star City, secretive home of Russia's space program, became a place of suspicion and fear https://t.co/QA7KA5Nf7U via @polinaivanovva
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 14, 2020
The Star City Closed Administrative Territorial Unit is barely an hour’s drive northeast of the Kremlin, but for decades the town never appeared on any maps. Only after the Soviet Union fell apart was its location revealed.
Even now, it is shrouded by forests, and behind its tall concrete walls lies the somber infrastructure of Russia’s legendary space program, and the Soviet-era apartment blocks that its cosmonauts and scientists call home…
“Star City is not just some city. The residents there are not easy,” said Irina Antropova, who worked with Lebedeva on the town’s ambulance service from 2006 until 2009. Fewer than 6,000 people live in the town’s dozen or so apartment blocks, many of them working for the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. “They are cosmonauts, the families of cosmonauts, military personnel.”…
When the first whispers of a new disease in China reached Russia in January, Lebedeva, a doctor trained in neurology, was working as the head of Star City’s ambulance service.
The team was close, ambulance driver Vladimir Chizhenko said. “We all lived as one collective.”
But medical work in Star City wasn’t standard fare. The clinic’s head doctor, Olga Minina, once received a late-night call on her mobile phone from a worried father asking about the health of his child.
The father was cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, and he was calling from space…
In the days before the virus started to spread in Star City, the three astronauts were preparing for liftoff at the Russian cosmodrome in Baikonur.
On the morning of April 9, liftoff day, the three men, dressed in their white spacesuits, met with Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency. They also met with Evgeny Mikrin, deputy head of RSC Energia, which had built the Soyuz rocket they were about to take.
The astronauts spoke with the officials through a wall of glass, a quarantine measure. They walked out to the launchpad without the traditional crowds of well-wishers lining their way. At 11:05 a.m. Moscow time, they blasted into space…
A spokesman for the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said that the liftoff group had tested negative immediately before and after the trip to Baikonur. Although tests were known to be unreliable in those early days, he said, there was no concern because strict quarantine measures had been followed throughout the liftoff.
Still, within weeks of Russia’s first confirmed case, the coronavirus had penetrated the closed walls of Star City and crossed the high-security gates of its cosmonaut training center. It had radiated across Russia’s revered space program during a moment of international attention and national pride, and had, potentially, come within an inch of glass away from traveling to space in a cosmonaut…
KrackenJack
I don’t want to find out if the public views the death of commercial astronauts differently than patriotic “volunteers”.
ETA: Where is everybody? I usually close down threads…
Stuart Frasier
3 astronauts were killed in the Apollo program and it was luck (and quick thinking) that kept the number from being higher.
mrmoshpotato
Pay federal income tax, Penis Rocket boy.
WaterGirl
Why is any of this being outsourced to the private sector?
Martin
Bezos is full of shit on this.
NASA didn’t have a lot of money in their budget for the first year of this contract. They made that clear when they asked for proposals. The winning proposal was going to have to be one that was relatively backloaded in terms of funding – not much up front and more later. Only one proposal fit NASAs budget – SpaceXs. They couldn’t afford Blue Origins, and Blue Origin should have known that.
The Blue Origin proposal was also odd because they also asked for all data and intellectual property from the moon, and would share some of it with NASA. That’s… not how NASA works. Blue Origin was also allowed to revise their proposals when they said ‘whoops, how on earth did that end up in there…’
I quite liked the Dynetics lander. It seems very practical, although they had a mass problem in their proposal. SpaceX, assuming they can get everything working buys NASA a LOT of capability for the least money. And it’s a vehicle already in testing. As an added bonus, that buys NASA work on in-orbit refueling which is something they would very much like to have done, and which only the SpaceX bid buys them.
Baud
Space is cool.
Bid protest litigation is dreadful.
debbie
I still think privatization was a boneheaded move, but Elon Musk’s tweet should automatically disqualify him from participating in any way in the space program. Seriously.
Brachiator
I have heard automobile enthusiasts and tech evangelists proclaim that driverless cars should be just as safe as regular driving. They make this stuff up without explanation or context. I would think that these cars should be safer than human drivers, and have far fewer accidents or casualties, or else I don’t see the advantage.
Space exploration is an incredible challenge. Although it would be cool to watch astronauts travel to Mars, I can see that probes are less costly and more efficient. And even here, we have lost probes as a result of various mishaps. We may lose human astronauts as well, no matter whether programs are private or government funded.
Either way, you are going to need extremely talented people who are able to anticipate and solve problems before they occur.
debbie
@Brachiator:
Which you will never get when profit’s at stake.
WaterGirl
@debbie: I don’t see a tweet from Elon Musk. What am I missing?
TomatoQueen
Musk should be made to dig ditches in Death Valley every time he hits ‘send.’
squid696
If there is even one accident with Starship a lot of people will die. We lost 14 in two shuttle accidents. That counts as a “bunch” to me. That being said, I am all for Starship and the exploration of Mars.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
It’s included in that second tweet (from NY Post) up top.
dmsilev
I’d take Bezos’s/Blue Origin’s protests a lot more seriously had they, you know, successfully launched _anything_ into low Earth orbit. Right now, all they have is New Shepard, which is a nice fully-reusable vessel, but it’s an up-and-down suborbital thing. They’ve got the engine for their bigger orbital launcher (BE-4) more or less done, but New Glenn itself seems to be getting pushed back at a rate of one year per year.
Also, even ignoring the reputation issues, as Martin points out above there were a number of substantive problems with their proposal.
Roger Moore
Given that they’re referencing the NYPost, I wouldn’t take that “quote” at face value. I think Musk understands the difference between “space travel is inherently risky and we can’t reduce that risk to zero no matter how hard we try” and “fuck it, who gives a damn about our astronauts’ lives”. There’s a reason he’s doing extensive unmanned trials of everything before even thinking of putting people on them.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Well, he does also have Trump’s Vendetta in his favor.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: The private sector has always built the hardware for NASA. And NASA has a long history of working with new companies, other than the giant defense contractors, to try to push the technology forward – e.g. Orbital Sciences Corp..
What’s different now is that outsiders are getting more of the manned-space mission work. It was probably inevitable and probably ultimately a good thing, but there will be teething issues and it will still need government support for decades to come. None of these groups will be able to survive without government support and that’s why Bezos is raising a stink. He maybe/probably won’t win this time, but he hopes to make it painful enough that he’ll get “better” treatment next time (and there is always a next time, even if it’s not for this particular program).
I can’t comment on the merits – I have no idea – but Musk is a bit of a kook and the US shouldn’t put all of its eggs in his basket…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@squid696:
Honestly, until our technology is more advanced and more reliable, I’d prefer sticking with robotics. We’re learning so much more from those little guys than from Musk et al.
craigie
Also, has Bezos actually put anything into space yet? SpaceX certainly has.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Honestly, it should be. The last big NASA controlled project is SLS, and it’s years late and billions over budget, so much so that almost everyone is looking at it and wondering what the fuck it’s for.
Congress is requiring that Artemis fly on SLS. That was originally envisioned as an Apollo style mission with SLS carrying a large lander stacks with astronauts. What we might get is Starship launching as a lander, with heaps of space for astronauts, but unable to be manned because of Congress’s mandate. Then a comparably large rocket SLS will launch a small Orion capsule which will dock with Starship for the sole purpose of transferring the astronauts over, and then Starship takes them to the moon, returns to earth orbit, and then transfers the astronauts back to Orion to return to earth.
Starship is not human rated for launch/landing, but neither yet is Orion/SLS.
Bottom line is that private launch providers, most notably SpaceX, are miles ahead of what NASA would design because there is enough of a commercial market now that they can afford to innovate off of private dollars. NASA always gets hamstrung by how the dollars should be used. SpaceX’s reusability completely rewrites the economics of space access. It allows them to iterate on designs toward reliability while taking big leaps on new platforms. That’s really hard to do with disposable rockets because so much of your energy is invested in just building the damn things.
NASA has effectively given up on anything in low earth orbit (LEO). That’s all commercial now, including manned flight. Moon is outside of that, but NASA faces a different embarrassing problem that SpaceX on their own dime could land people on the moon before NASA can get people there.
Tony Jay
These mega-billionaires should just come clean with the plebs and admit that it’s all about rocking up to their vast orbital satellite habitat with its six acres of hydroponic arboretum and zero-G tie-rack and being able to look down upon God’s meagre creation knowing that all this shit is entirely tax-deductible.
But they can’t, because the shareholders “wouldn’t like it”.
#outofthisworldproblems
Cheryl Rofer
@WaterGirl: Because the Republican Congresses (sometimes with help from Democrats) kept cutting the NASA budget so that they couldn’t do it.
Same as all the other privatizations of government services.
And, oh yes, the private sector could do it cheaper. Supposedly.
ETA: Indeed, they can do it cheaper because they are willing to kill people.
counterfactual
Let me stipulate that there are 100 reasons to despise Elon Musk, but after a year of being quiet I’ve seen a disinformation campaign about SpaceX starting.
The Blue Origin protest is mostly pro forma and expected. It may end up being used in Congress as a weapon to send more NASA money to the Usual Suspects as the Blue Origin bid for the Artemis lunar landing program included Lockheed and Northrop Grumman.
chopper
obvs bezos is right, the contract should go to the company that has (checks notes) no product to date that can achieve orbit
billcinsd
@WaterGirl: Because we haven’t funded NASA anywhere near enough to fund this sort of endeavor since the Apollo program received like 2% of the Federal Budget back in the 1960s. NASAs budget is 20-25 billion dollars to fund everything they do. Also, both Dem and Repub legislators like public-private partnerships, because …
Brachiator
@debbie:
Either way, you are going to need extremely talented people who are able to anticipate and solve problems before they occur.
This is not necessarily true. And there were tons of private contractors involved in the space program.
And the bottom line is that we should probably be spending more on unmanned probes than on human space exploration. This includes the rather close to home proposed lunar mission, which has little current scientific justification.
And I say this even though I would love to see a tourist-inhabitable space station or lunar hotel.
piratedan
@craigie: to my knowledge, only his ego….
Old Man Shadow
Privatization is going to get astronauts killed.
Cheryl Rofer
OT – Good to see this.
The Republicans’ criticism was of Kahl’s Twitter account. He retweeted me a couple of times, so that must have been it. And oh yes, he’s not a Republican.
debbie
@Brachiator:
When, in the history of this country, have corners not been cut in pursuit of profit?
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: ?
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
NASA did this.
dmsilev
@craigie: Into space, as in above the atmosphere, yes, New Shepard. Into space, as in orbiting so it stays up for more than a few minutes, no.
Cheryl Rofer
Martin
@Another Scott: Boeing/ULA/etc may have built the hardware, but NASA designed it. Boeing : NASA :: Foxconn : Apple.
What changed here is that NASA isn’t contracting construction but outcomes. They aren’t telling the bidders what to build, just what they need to achieve.
Put another way, the Space Shuttle was US Government property. Crew Dragon is SpaceX property that NASA buys seats on. In theory once the contract is up, then SpaceX could sell flights to the public. I mean, the FAA would have something to say about that too.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Wasn’t it Alan Shepard who famously said while waiting to launch in his Mercury capsule that he pondered the rocket being built by the lowest bidder?
burnspbesq
I hope SpaceX rockets are better made than Tesla cars.
kindness
Sending anyone to Mars right now is a suicide mission. We can’t land a rocket with enough fuel on board to ever take off again (and come home). There isn’t a breathable atmosphere on Mars. We don’t have a way to pack all that oxygen on a flight to keep anyone alive for very long. Mars having such weak gravity won’t shield anything living from cosmic or gamma rays. They’d fry once there.
I don’t have problems with going back to the moon, but trying to put anyone on Mars with the tech we currently have is ravingly stupid.
Martin
@Tony Jay: Musk owns the majority of SpaceX. He’s the only shareholder that matters. Same with Bezos/BO. Its mostly their personal money at stake here.
Cheryl Rofer
Its mostly
their personalUS government money going into their pockets at stake here.FTFY
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
They are having entirely too much fun. This mission has been spectacular, even before pondering how bloody complex it is.
They also “made” oxygen.
counterfactual
@Martin: Actually the first private flight on Crew Dragon is scheduled for this year. As long as SpaceX can meet the flight contract, it can do what it wants with the Dragon capsules between NASA flights
Belafon
He’s not saying anything that the people going up don’t know. When the Apollo 11 astronauts went to the moon, they weren’t even sure they could return.
I realize it’s Elon, but he’s being rather realistic about it. No matter how safe driving is, people die. People died exploring every continent they went on, and every ocean they crossed.
trollhattan
@Martin:
As much as I’m a space travel geek, I’d sure rather see them plowing all the resources into renewable energy and carbon capture, instead.
Another Scott
@Martin: I think it’s too simplistic to say “NASA designed it”. (My dad worked on part of one of the radar systems for Gemini for Grumman.)
NASA wrote the call for proposals, saying what the systems must be able to do. The contractors write the proposals saying what they will do and what it will cost. NASA oversees the contract, accepts delivery (or not), demands changes (or not), etc.
Yes, the new manned-space stuff is different, but NASA is doing more than just buying rides (though much less than it used to). E.g. 277 page .pdf of NASA/SpaceX contract.
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Think of it as job security.
Martin
@burnspbesq: They seem to be.
I have very mixed feelings about Musk. His tunnel idea is fucking idiotic. And he thinks with his mouth way too much. And Tesla is really overrated. I mean, credit to jumping in and making that a market – 100% deserved there – but they then leave every other problem with cars alone. And Teslas autopilot is criminally bad.
But SpaceX is amazing. First private space provider – big kudos there, but they are making the best engines in the industry. Genius good. They nailed reusability. They’ve completely gutted the economics of the industry. And they’re willing to stand apart from how NASA does things and take their own approach which is geared to rapid iteration and cost management. They are carrying *everyone* right now.
Cermet
As someone who has studied deep space travel by humans and the effects of galactic radiation, I will say that any proposal that does not consider radiation shielding both in deep space and on the Mars surface will end in total disaster. Just the trip to Mars (no significant shielding; i.e. typical capsule) will cause any person to exhibited advance dementia symptoms and it only gets far worse from there.
Designing a space mission to Mars and back that allows enough shielding is a real challenge. And it must be done with the cost of heavy lift rockets in mind.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I sat on a source selection board for a major defense contract. We were warned going in that the award would likely be protested because they always are these days. There’s no downside.
And in fact, much to my annoyance, the protest was successful. And that was then protested of course, but not successfully. I felt subsequent events confirmed our judgment of who we originally awarded.
Ken
They totally stole that name from some dystopian FPS game.
counterfactual
@trollhattan: SpaceX is *very* interested in carbon capture. Currently they get their methane for Starshp from the petroleum industry. If there was a commercially viable carbon capture process, SpaceX could take the CO2 and combine it with hydrogen for carbon-neutral rocket propellant.
Tony Jay
@Martin:
Then what are they waiting for? Operation: Gods Above Us is a go.
Slightly more seriously, I’m all for it. If the dick-swinging competition gets these super-rich boy-men to put their fortunes into something that will seriously benefit future generations, it’s worth the occasional moronic tweet.
trollhattan
@Martin:
The booster twins land simultaneously back on earth is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
Brachiator
@debbie:
Good question.
My bottom line is that for now the government should fund robotic missions. Manned space flight is currently a waste of money.
If people are hot to see humans fly to Mars, I can see private companies doing it with private pilots and crew.
karen marie
@Cheryl Rofer: They’ve got a lot of nerve complaining at all but complaining about someone’s twitter? The complainers should soak their heads.
Martin
@trollhattan: I mean, I don’t disagree. But I also am unsure what they could accomplish here. I mean, Tesla is already helping there, but I think it would help more if they could shed a lot of the mass of their vehicles, but the market may not tolerate that. Tesla also has their solar shingle business and are the market standard for whole house batteries. So, there is work there.
But really we need regulatory solutions there. It’s not like space where there are a lack of capabilities. We know how to get to the store – there are lots of options of what to buy there. The problem is that most are ruinous to the environment and it’s about figuring out how to get people to stop buying/using them.
The main problem of climate change is we need to do less of something, not more of it. Doing less is usually where government comes in. I don’t know how you monetize carbon capture other than carbon tax/cap and trade, which they can’t control. There really aren’t a lack of ideas there. There’s just a lack of go-to-market strategy for everyone until government gets their shit together.
debbie
@Brachiator:
I agree. Robotics to Infinity and Beyond!
Brachiator
@Cermet:
Every serious Mars mission proposal discusses this. It is pretty much standard.
counterfactual
@Martin: Mars colonists will need to build a lot of tunnels, and Musk’s tunnel boring machine will just fit into a Starship cargo bay. How surprising!
trollhattan
Here’s a fun stat.
Biden clearly needs to close the lie gap.
mrmoshpotato
@karen marie:
And boil their bottoms!
Ken
@debbie: I think Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood have a nice take on that. Sure, protein-based primates are not at all suited for space exploration, but as long as someone does it….
germy
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: A fun stat indeed! Good on all the stupid, selfish shitstains who decided we didn’t need a President for the past four years.
Ken
@trollhattan: But is it really a lie, if he believes it? In which case he’s just insane, right?
Brachiator
@germy:
Ordered?
Interesting.
dmsilev
@germy: “Who gave the order?” would seem to be the obvious follow-up question.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
Yep. They even wrote a speech for Nixon to use if it turned out the astronauts couldn’t get back off the moon. It’s an excellent speech and worth reading. It’s honestly very interesting to read some of those contingency speeches. The message Eisenhower wrote in the event the D-Day landings failed was also excellent.
Major Major Major Major
Yay space exploration!
I’m not actually bothered at all by the idea of people taking a one-way trip to Mars, we’re adults.
ETA and I’m sure every astronaut has played Kerbal Space Program.
germy
@Brachiator: @dmsilev:
It’s a Murdoch paper, so maybe the order came from the very top.
CaseyL
I long ago resigned myself to the idea that space exploration and travel were being privatized. I didn’t like it, but if the choice was between a private crewed space program or none at all, I’d go for the private. Anything, to get humanity into space.
Musk is a contradictory person. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I think he’s a dictionary example of “asshole.” But I will give him this: he got filthy rich actually creating and building things (cars, spaceships), and he has a fanboy love of space I totally identify with.
Bezos might be a (marginally; very marginally) better human being – but I don’t get the sense that he has a messianic fervor about space travel like Musk does.
Abnormal Hiker
@Brachiator: I think James van Allen said the same about 50 years ago
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major:
“That could have been me” after the umpteenth highly-amusing explosion.
Catherine D.
Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department says (Insert Werner von Braun, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos here)
WaterGirl
@debbie: Ah, okay, thanks.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: manned space flight is only a waste of money if it doesn’t inspire people to support research and exploration. Also, some things are worth “wasting” money on; I’m pro-audacity.
dmsilev
@germy: Probably not, or at least not directly. Murdoch has hired people who know what he wants done, so he doesn’t have to give direct “make up a smear on Kamala Harris” orders.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: followed by “let’s do it anyway” because these people are not like you and me (or at least me).
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Had Trump continued, he would soon reach Prevarication Escape Velocity and fly away into space.
This may be how the Wizard ended up in Oz.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: That, of course, is the true Kerbal Way.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
The market is a heartless bitch. Tesla’s most important good idea wasn’t anything technical; it was marketing. Previously car companies had assumed the market for electric cars was do gooders who wanted an electric car to protect the environment, and those people would probably want something economical. Tesla recognized that it made more sense to target the luxury market. Electric cars have a bunch of advantages for making a luxury car, and the margin in the luxury market is high enough to keep a niche manufacturer working the bugs out of a new technology in business. Unfortunately, the demands of the luxury market aren’t good for making economy cars now that we want EVs to take over the whole market.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: my first Duna mission I didn’t know it had an atmosphere, so we didn’t even get to explode on the ground! The Mars astronauts will be way better prepared.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
We are getting a huge amount of research and exploration from the Mars probes and other unmanned vehicles.
And Gil Scot-Heron still provided the most stinging reply to the “need” for expensive manned exploration.
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)
The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
It’s not just that he got rich building things. He got rich creating technology we desperately need. Not so much with the space travel, but we really need practical electric vehicles and household solar if we’re going to break free from our dependence on fossil fuels. I don’t like Musk as a human being, but I think the companies he’s built have made the world a better place.
Martin
@Cheryl Rofer: Well, presumably NASA is buying something that is cheaper than they can produce themselves. The continuing shitshow of SLS makes that hard to refute.
Robert Sneddon
@Ken: Charlie also wrote a short story, Bit Rot in that universe (posthuman android successors) where space radiation is the main driver of the plot. Three words, ‘gamma’, ‘ray’, ‘burst’. It does not end happily.
MisterForkbeard
@squid696: That’s my impression here. Going to Mars will probably result in deaths, because going there and getting back is hideously complex, and even a minor accident could kill a significant number of the crew.
It’s not something to brag about, but yeah. Going to Mars is very risky. We’ll do what we can do minimize that risk, but no one should be surprised if there are deaths.
Cheryl Rofer
@Martin: There’s zero reason to presume that. Zero.
The claim that private companies can do it cheaper has always been a scam. They do what the government does and slap a profit on it. No way that comes out cheaper.
If NASA were given that money and the freedom that Musk has to use it, they would probably do better. And it would be for all US citizens, not a petulant little rich boy.
Jeffro
This is just ridiculous. Neither of these clowns should have more than a couple hundred mil to their names
Dan B
@Martin: Isn’t SpaceX headedby a woman?
A
Regarding Teslas my partner points out there are 17 gasoline powered car fires every day, on average. But there are battery technologies that will not burn. They may prevail in the future.
And I’d like to see climate change addressed. Robots and virtual reality make it possible for all of us to be astronauts. What’s the purpose of putting our maladapted bodies on other moons or planets?
Jeffro
@Brachiator: all of this, yes.
Jeffro
@trollhattan: Tucker’s latest missive – that he’s going to quit calling it the ‘Biden Administration’, choosing instead to call it ‘the Administration’, or ‘the Kamala Harris Administration’, or the ‘friends of Susan Rice Administration’ – shows that the GQP just. cannot. deal. with Uncle Joe.
Literally nothing works. He’s smart, competent, hardworking, doesn’t fall for the usual DC media news cycle game, and oh yeah, is an old white guy.
So naturally, it’s now the ‘Harris/Rice Administration’. LOL
Craig
I was in a meeting with Gwynne Shotwell, Pres., and COO at SpaceX, a couple of years ago and she was awesome. Rip roaring enthusiasm about Space, and brilliant engineering manager. She kept going back to how they really embrace pushing the limits to the failure point in their prototypes, and having a team that’s encouraged to be audacious. She had a really clear vision, to me, of how to accomplish the goals they were setting. A combination of Silicon Valley ‘move fast’, but a pragmatic, practical side instead of ‘break things’.
dmsilev
@Dan B: Gwynn Shotwell, who (a) is very good at her job and (b) has the most appropriate last name imaginable. She’s the President of SpaceX; Musk is CEO. Basically, she’s the one responsible for keeping a lid on him and actually doing the real management of the company.
dmsilev
@Jeffro: God, getting banned from Twitter really broke what little was left of TFG’s brain, didn’t it?
Dan B
@dmsilev: She’s responsible for making Musk look like a big success in a very tricky enterprise.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to haul around 4,000 lbs of steel with me just to go get a pizza. And I don’t want to spend $20K plus all of the accompanying insurance, maintenance, and whatnot costs. I’d like something like the Hong Guang Mini EV, but I don’t think anything like that will make it into the US markets when BEVs seem to be heading more into Surburban territory than CVCC territory and any crash test is going to be Shaq vs Simone Biles.
Not only is it just going to perpetuate the environmental problem, it makes it really damn hard to make this affordable for people.
Kay
We had a Zoom meeting with Tim Ryan. First question- “Tim, why do we call it climate change and not climate chaos?”
This is why no one comes to our meetings. Anyway. I wanted to get him a little riled up so I asked why it is that Sherrod Brown wins and yet no one else does. It worked too- he got a little combative, but in a good way. He assured me he is as good or better than Sherrod :)
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
All kinds of additional risks. After a certain point it would be difficult to abort the mission and return to Earth. A person might get sick and need treatment or an operation, or even die from natural causes.
The contingencies that would have to be planned for are tremendous.
NotMax
@Cermet
The actual interplanetary vehicle will be constructed in space (same goes for design of the proposed Russian mission), and include shielding in its design. What type(s) and configuration the shielding will be still mostly on the drawing board.
Among other hurdles, a major bugaboo is choice of travel route for any planned round trip. If designing to take advantage of the closest approach of Mars to Earth to minimize travel time, for any planned return that means 18 months at/on Mars until the next such opportunity. Making the trip otherwise entails esoteric analysis, including a slingshot around Venus on the way there to pick up speed, a maneuver with virtually no margin for error never attempted with an occupied vehicle, much less one so large and bulky. Also too, firing the massive rocket engines which would be required while in space is a different ballgame than lighting them up on a launchpad, and something NASA has not had experience of any note with for over 30 years now.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Jeffro: Translation: it’s almost impossible to demonize a sunny, white, male grandfather, so we’re going back to tried and true racist and sexist appeals.
The Moar You Know
NASA has killed 17 in moon and shuttle flights. Another 1 in the X-15 program. People can and are going to die going into space, staying in space, and coming back from space. That’s just how it is.
NotMax
@The Moar You Know
As well, Russia admits to four cosmonaut deaths, although the true number is unquestionably greater.
zhena gogolia
@Kay:
I know it’s anathema around here to say it, but I like him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I ‘ve seen it argued that a human scientist on the Moon/Mars with a lab could do much more science there than a probe could
WaterGirl
@Kay:
I wasn’t there, but to me, that makes him sound like an arrogant ass. That would have pissed me off. It just reminds me that he was arrogant enough to think he is/was presidential material.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
The group really liked him.
My friend Michelle said my question was basically “Tim, Sherrod is dreamy. Are you also good?” :)
Guffaw.
Another Scott
@NotMax: +1
There are a vast number of details that have to be considered and designed for that even nominally smart people don’t understand.
E.g. “Just make a big rocket, we did it in the mid-60s, how hard can it be??”
NASA (from 2016):
I can’t find it now, but I think I saw estimates/measures of ~ 155 dB inside the capsule during liftoff. These are huge engineering problems if you’re wanting to keep people alive inside.
(One of the reasons why the USSR copy of the Concorde was never successful was that it was ungodly noisy inside.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
We have a probe on Mars right now. The Chinese lander may be operational soon. The UAE Mars exploration device is orbiting the planet and making useful observations.
This is happening now. A human on Mars is a fanciful speculation.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
I thought it was fine. They’re all really competitive people. They wouldn’t do this if they weren’t. It’s kind of fun to get them going.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Dan B:
Risk reduction of human extinction. We can do both
NotMax
@Kay
If Brown were running for senator for the first time in today’s Ohio I’m not at all confident he would win.
Another Scott
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): If we were worried about human extinction, we would probably be spending a lot more on understanding the brain and figuring out why so many “leaders” are so dangerous to humanity. And why “normal” people are drawn to them as “leaders”.
We have the science and technology to solve all kinds of problems here. What gets in the way is the way we think (or don’t) about them…
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I think it’s a tad premature to say that will never be a human landed on Mars
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
This. Getting human beings to Mars and back is probably two or three orders of magnitude tougher than the moon. And if getting to the moon wasn’t hard, some other major power (e.g. China) would have done it by now, just to show they could play on that level. (Kinda weird anyway that no one else has, given that we got there with 1960s tech.)
I could see a Musk or a Bezos, nearing the end of his life anyway, sending himself on a one-way trip to Mars, just to be the first human there.
Kay
@NotMax:
Oh, sure that’s true. Some of it is timing and luck. The Internet actually opposed Sherrod in the primary – Daily Kos had a former R who was a veteran (and kind of a rage man, incidentally, bit of a hot head) but normie Democrats prevailed and we got Sherrod.
CaseyL
@Belafon:@The Moar You Know:It might not be SpaceX, but one of the companies planning to send humans to Mars put out an open call to volunteers a few years ago, and one of the things they emphasized was that it was a suicide mission.
The purpose would be to get there and start setting up a base for the next mission. There would be no way to return to Earth, the supplies to be sent would not last more than a year or so, and there was no guarantee that the first group would be able to figure out how to create a long-term habitable environment when the supplies ran out.
I mean, they were very up front about it: “We’d love you to volunteer to go, but please note that you are MORE LIKELY THAN NOT TO DIE.”
I would absolutely have signed up anyway, but for the fact that I have no mechanical or technical expertise and would be a metaphorical dead weight on the mission even before I’d be a literal one.
lowtechcyclist
Space is for robots.
Really, they’re perfect for it. Don’t need food, water, or even oxygen. Immune to cosmic radiation. How much of the payload of any manned mission is about the mission itself, and how much of it is about keeping us fragile creatures alive and well and protected from the hazards of outer space?
Right now, robots are doing an absolutely terrific job of exploring Mars. How many human missions would it take to cover the ground that our Mars explorers have done, and without the least risk of life?
Robots have this space thing down. They’re made for it. We aren’t.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
True. I wish national sovereignty could be abolished and a world government established. The only thing I think that could possibly lead to this would be an extraterrestrial threat
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Kay:
They’re the kiss of death. Every candidate they go all in on goes belly up, from John Edwards to Cynthia Nixon.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: we are perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
I don’t get why things become zero-sum for some people as soon as manned space exploration comes up. Hell, the materials science innovations alone might deliver a good ROI.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Never said that. Never even hinted or implied that.
The landing of a probe on Mars is a tremendous event. And the little helicopter that can fly in the thin Martian atmosphere and survive wicked cold nights and still have a usable battery is an amazing achievement. I know someone who works at a company who provides some equipment used to allow the probe to communicate with Earth.
Everything we learn about landing robotic probes on Mars and the Moon helps us learn how to deliver other craft on planetary bodies. Even possibly humans.
Who knows. We might have actually made more progress overall had President Kennedy not committed the US to putting a man on the Moon, but instead had done more to perfect robotic probes.
But manned spaceflight was possibly more glamorous.
And we didn’t want to let the Soviet Union beat us to the Moon.
CaseyL
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Well, dKos was all about Purity Progressives even before Purity Progressives were a thing. Not as bad as FireDogLake – no one was as bad as FireDogLake – but right up there.
Not Kos himself, who IIRC was realistic about politics even then, but everyone else on the site was a nutter.
Another Scott
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Spending a few tens of billions of dollars to send some guy/gal up there to die after a few days isn’t a sensible use of the money.
Phys.org:
2000 mrad/day = 2 rad/day
1 rad = 100 ergs of energy absorbed per 100 g of mass
Wikipedia – rad:
Radiation shielding is not just a matter of wrapping everything in lead. Shielding material used depends on what the radiation type is, so several different types of materials may be needed. And one has to recognize that if one is shielding for, say, high energy protons, one doesn’t want to end up with the shielding creating high energy neutrons. Even if shielding isn’t lead, it’s heavy and every gram on a rocket costs money and reduces mission capabilities…
tl;dr – without several breakthroughs, a manned mission to Mars doesn’t make sense yet. Research on it is fine though, IMHO.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Tru dat. But though I expect to make it to mid-century, I’d bet against anyone landing on Mars and getting back by then.
Really the key thing will be whether we’re able to limit climate change. If we don’t, the number of humans the planet will support will drop precipitously, and reduce our ability to support higher-level tech with it. So no Mars misison.
But if we are able to limit climate change, then eventually* there will be a breakthrough that will make a Mars mission far easier than it would be now or even in the next couple of decades.
*As in, maybe in the next century, maybe not.
Kay
Local Ohio news that sadly does not have a happy ending. This was January:
The mayor who disciplined the police chief and the water supervisor is a Democrat. The village council are majority R. The village charter says a 2/3 majority on council can remove the mayor, so when the mayor disciplined the police chief and the water supervisor, the Republicans removed the mayor.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
This is, of course, the theme of a lot of SF novels. But look at the global pandemic, an obvious opportunity for global co-operation. But that’s not what happened.
Also, I would think that any aliens smart enough to travel vast distances to get here would have the ability to quickly obliterate us if they wanted.
Has anyone done a movie about rock and roll aliens? They have intercepted one of our probes with music samples on it, and come to Earth. When they exit the ship we see that they are all dressed as Elvis impersonators and they want to be taken to a Chuck Berry concert.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: I’ve mentioned this before, but I grew up about
11515 miles from where they tested those engines, even at that distance, they’re very loud and shook the ground.Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: I’m a big fan of research of all kinds. Go nuts figuring out what it would take to put people on Mars and bring them back safely.
Just don’t kid us about how difficult and expensive it will be and have impossible goals for the available funding. And don’t justify it as “we’re saving the Earth from Marvin the Martian and/or global extinction” or something.
Big rockets are useful for more than blowing up the other half of the planet. Build a big rocket, make a bunch of robots, send them to Mars to start on a yurt for astronauts that follow 5-10 years later. I could get behind something like that, along with a lot more money for brain research.
YMMV. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I guess I took “fanciful” to mean “unrealistic”. I apologize. I do agree that probes are important and are good at doing science/exploration. I think it’s important to eventually get humans to these locations to establish more permanent presences
Just Chuck
@Dan B:
“Because it’s there.”
NotMax
@Another Scott
Not to mention the deleterious effects of extended stay in zero G en route. If putting the craft into some mild rotation to simulate gravity, as some proposals seek, that opens the cover of an entirely new encyclopedia of if…then scenarios, enough to tax AlphaZero.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: sounds good! honestly just figuring out how to send people there and not have them immediately erupt in tumors would be pretty good too.
There are definitely lots of complications! Didn’t mean to single you out, but I feel like folks can get a little funny in the head on space exploration threads here.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Eh, that should be 15 miles.
VeniceRiley
@Kay: SCREAMING!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
Oh absolutely there’s lots of work to still be done for sure
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: and to be fair, we only have a few billion years to figure out how to live somewhere else. Ha.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: :-)
“Back in my day, the rocket engines were so loud we had to evacuate half the state before they set em off!!”
Cheers,
Scott.
Dan B
@Just Chuck: Thanks for pointing out it’s not just maladapted bodies. There’s maladapted psyche to consider.
I’d love to have very high resolution 3D video and equipment to control bots. The time delay makes Mars tough but there’s a learning curve that’s a great challenge. In 30 years we can determine if it is worth the effort to get live humans on the Moon or Mars. I believe if our psyche issues aren’t addressed we won’t have the ability to feed ourselves or surplus funds for anything but survival.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
You don’t necessarily need big rockets. But you may need rockets with better propulsion systems. And maybe one idea is a multi-launch approach. You send rockets with food and supplies. You send rockets with robots which can build a habitat. You send vehicles which can serve as backup rescue/escape craft. And then you send astronauts.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: New rocket engines are a huge engineering challenge. One of the ways they tried to economize and speed development of the SLS was to reuse the Shuttle RS-25 main engine design.
Of course, the guys and gals who designed and made those retired years ago, so there have been some hickups in that plan, but they’re making progress…
tl;dr – “Fast, Cheap, Good – Pick 2”.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@CaseyL:
Mr Musk got filthy rich because his family owned and operated an emerald mine in South Africa, in effect stolen from the native tribes whose land those emeralds were deposited upon a billion ears ago.
He hasn’t lost his fortune by being unable to build things at a profit. That’s the best you can say about him. He didn’t lose the family fortune, he managed to grow it quite well.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
Yet in commercial aviation, we see this fatality data:
And of course we have tens of thousands of automotive deaths annually just in the USA…
J R in WV
@Kay:
Big surprise, Ohio Republicans are racist bigots! Not a surprise at all.
Ken
Walter Jon William’s “Drake Maijstral” novels (The Crown Jewels, House of Shards, Rock of Ages) has alien Elvis impersonators.
There are also a few rock-and-roll alien movies. And there’s Rock’n’Roll Nightmare which is… It’s kind of a… you could describe it as… Well, whatever the hell it is, it has rock and alien-ish puppets.
Ken
Runaway greenhouse will begin in less than a billion years, unless we advance the timetable.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I’ve heard all sorts of rumors of covered-up space missions with dead cosmonauts–that Gagarin wasn’t the first man in space, just the first to survive the mission–but I don’t believe them. These things are actually pretty hard to hide. Did they cover up space-program-related deaths? Hell yes, lots of them. But I don’t think they were on actual space missions that flew.
(The 1960 Nedelin disaster, which may have killed over 100 people, was originally reported as the failed launch of a Mars probe, but we now know it was really an ICBM test. There was another rocket explosion in 1980 that killed 48 people and wasn’t publicly reported at all until 1989.)
Pete Downunder
@Ken: A funny book on that theme is Rock and Roll Babes From Outer Space by Linda Jaivin. Highly recommended.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: While human spaceflight is inherently dangerous, there’s a popular line in space-fanboy circles that the reason we haven’t colonized the planets or whatever is that we’ve become namby-pamby about death and haven’t accepted the need to kill many more people for the sake of our manifest destiny in SPAAAACE. That somehow, being more lax about safety will win us the stars. I find it kind of repulsive.
different-church-lady
Death of both combatants, please.