How would you develop a space program?

reply to post by crazyewok


You've certainly thought this through OP, But there is a loop hole in your challenge.

I would develop Quantum entangled communications (which is not a new idea) and somehow integrate them with a Von Neuman probe (also not a new idea) and map the local cluster for inhabited planets.

Then I'd use Mars as a staging base for future operations; then onto the moons of Jupiter. Then from that base I'd use Jupiter as a gravity slingshot to propel my new Ion engined starship (once again not a new Idea) into interstellar space.

The only thing stopping us from achieving these feats is ourselves. That is the loop hole.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


Thing is I would use the Orion only as a way to build the foundations.

Once set up I would look into better propulsion methods.

Unfortunately just cause something good at moving a ship through space doesn't mean it good at taking off at earth level gravity. So the Orion bit really the mule work.

Once it all set up and you have offowrld manufacturing there are all sorts of possibility. You could set up any size telescope with all the equipment a astronomer would only dream off, you could test every type of propulsion system that comes to mind.

This is the issue I think with NASA at the moment and EU space agency. They are focusing to much on the exploring part. What they need to do is pour 100% of there energy into getting available infrastructure in space first. Once that done the cost of space projects would drop by orders of magnitudes and they could the do a 100X on the pure exploration front.

By the way as aside note I would be a big fan of exploring the potential for Anti matter propulsion to create interstellar ships. You could get a good 90% speed of light out of such a ship. But that's something just for safety alone would need building in space. It also would be very energy intensive, something we would need to either crack fusion before we did it OR build huge solar arrays in space and create the energy to make the Anti matter that way. Unless of course we find natural pockets of Anti matter which I beleive is theorised.

reply to post by crazyewok

Unfortunately just cause something good at moving a ship through space doesn't mean it good at taking off at earth level gravity.

That's the point, Planets like Mars and other satellites has weaker gravity and that would reduce the fuel payload and the amount needed for exit velocity. Bases could be established on land and the generation ships could be built in orbit.

Thecakeisalie
reply to post by crazyewok

Unfortunately just cause something good at moving a ship through space doesn't mean it good at taking off at earth level gravity.

 

That's the point, Planets like Mars and other satellites has weaker gravity and that would reduce the fuel payload and exit velocity. Bases could be established on land and the generation ships could be built in orbit.

No I agree. Hense why a big push needs to be made to set up the foundations for production and minning facilites on mars/moon and Titan.

hummm ok my space programe .
call swiss hey blond dude could I pay you a million bucks to use your Large Hadron Collider
for a few days?
Creat one gallon of antimater .
place antimatter under grabage can place really dumb person on garbage can .
total cost Pluse 1 million dollars ((the really dumb persons mom payed us to get him out of living in her basment. really dumb dude should be passing mars any time now.
O the big hole in your yard well hey we will be sending you a bill for your new pool

I would start nearby so if anything was to go wrong help is nearby. So.
The Moon it is then.
Hopefully I would be lucky enough to have a high intelligence and good with technology.
Strange China recently landed on the moon lol
Then using technology use a nice printer hopefullu a 3D printer and use a laser beam to transfer more than just a distance.

I think the Goal should be Moon/Mars/Titan with near earth objects. Once you have these under your belt you got what you need.

crazyewok
How would you develop the a space program? What would you goals be?

Couple of rules:

You have to use Known technology available or soon to be avalible now. It can be old technology or cutting edge. If its a real solid idea you can have it.

Research and ideas that were never created but use known and realistic technology is allowed.

Assume resources are not unlimited, you have a budget, a very high and flexible budget like NASA 1964.

Assume we have no ET contact.
...............................................
So ATS what would your ideas be?

Can you give us at least a basic budget? Because anyone can imagine anything with no budget constraints. NASA 1964 in today's dollars would be around what exactly?

Having that figure would allow us to choose missions and technologies better.

Without having a budget I'd like to talk about percentages.

I'd devote 60% of the budget to astrobiology because most of the public that would be footing the bill thinks that is what we should be doing mostly anyway. Looking for life out there in the solar system and around the nearest stars.

I would devote 30% of the budget to human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit.

I would devote 20% of the budget to non-astrobiological missions (astrophysics and cosmology instruments, earth and solar observations)

I would devote 10% of the budget on commercial crew ventures to help companies like Space-X, Orbital Sciences, Virgin Galactic, etc develop a low earth orbit human flight capability to the space station and other orbital assets.

Basically the motto of the agency would be similar to the old Star Trek: To boldly go where no one has gone before, to seek out new life and civilizations.

Priority missions:

1. New Worlds Space Telescope (the much larger successor to the Hubble) - A visual/near IR telescope capable of imaging nearby exoplanets due to a starshade which would be flown with it and it would do a lot of other things which Hubble simply can not do.

2. Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer - This cancelled program would be fully funded.

3. Mars by 2030 based on two cyclers - Two large ships that would constantly cycle between Earth and Mars every two years would be built in Earth orbit at the ISS and launched. These ships would never land nor need fuel once sent on their way, they would use the Earth and Mars's gravity and celestial mechanics to constantly come and go from the planet. Landers/Shuttles would meet them at their closest approaches to either world and offload cargo and crew. This would allow a steady movement of people and materials to and from Mars. If the budget allowed then two more would be added within 5-10 years. This would allow hundreds of people to be present on Mars before 2050.

4. Space Elevator by 2030 in partnership with NASDA (Japan). High strength nanomaterials have already been developed to make this a reality and Japan is already working on building one. We'd partner with them the way they partnered with us on the ISS. This would effectively bring down the cost of getting crews and cargo to orbit beyond 2030.

5. Europa Express and microlander sample return - We know there is an ocean on Europa. We know now that Europa erupts liquid water near its South Pole. We may not need to drill through the ice to detect life afterall. A sample return of the material from one of the water plumes would be cheaper than any proposed Europe probe/submarine mission by a factor of 10 or more.


My program would basically make it so that two or three things happend:

a) Bring the cost of operating a future program down because big budgets are not sustainable through economic downturns so rather than like Apollo I'd want us to have infrastructure up there which was already paid for during the "boom time" which could be used in even an depressed economy.

b) Bring the science to the people. People are interested in the fundamental question of whether we are alone in the universe. Most scientists have good reasons to suspect we are not so I would give them the tools to gather the conclusive evidence that we are not. The moment that we find other life, even primitive life, there will be much more interest in funding the program. The moment we find another civilization there will be interest and political will to build a starship. Right now most people have no idea that we have the technology to find other life in the universe, its just not being funded. I'd see that corrected.

c) Bring space closer to the average person. There is no reason why space travel in 2113 shouldn't be like air travel is now to the average person. In order for that to happen we have to continuously drive down the cost of getting into low earth orbit. Things like commercial crew and more importantly the space elevator would allow eventually your average, non-rich person access to Earth orbit. Once this happens there will be a plethora of private development of near earth space. You name it, space hotels, space resorts, beamed solar power satellite infrastructure to eliminate nuclear and drastically cut dependence on oil would all be within reach.

reply to post by crazyewok


Q: "How would you develop a space program?"
A:

Can you give us at least a basic budget? Because anyone can imagine anything with no budget constraints. NASA 1964 in today's dollars would be around what exactly?

It was around 35 billion in todays money.

crazyewok

Can you give us at least a basic budget? Because anyone can imagine anything with no budget constraints. NASA 1964 in today's dollars would be around what exactly?

It was around 35 billion in todays money.

Excellent.

So even with the program I proposed above there would be about $5 billion left over.

So with that $5 billion surplus I'd spend it on the following.

$1 billion to reactivate and fully fund NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program to find ways of travelling faster, farther. This was known to some as "The Warp Drive Office" at NASA until it was shut down. $1 billion may not seem like a much for such a big goal as developing something like a warp drive but most of the researchers are in the theoretical or experimental stage at this point and they don't need a lot of money. If and when a technology or technologies evolve from it then we could ramp up funding them. For instance if Alcubierre's warp theory turns out to be viable and scaleable then that would then get the majority of funding. It should be noted that this program received very little money even when it was operating. I believe its budget was around 3 million dollars a year or so.

$1 billion to basic science education in the US. This can not be stressed enough. Most of the country is science illiterate and indifferent. There is no reason why other countries such as India, China, etc should be turning out more people interested in this subject and perhaps choosing it as a field of study. This would start at K-12 and extend to community colleges. Just as there was a ton of interest from the average person in Apollo, a robust new worlds NASA would get a lot of people who are not really interested in the subject interested in it. So what to do with them? Get them involved, encourage them to go back to college or attend college for the first time and take up subjects like aerospace engineering, biology, genetics, software development for science applications, etc. Teachers are some of the most underrated professionals in society. That has to change if we're going to truly begin our star trek.

$1 billion to an interstellar precursor mission to send a telescope (either optical, near-ir or radio) to 550 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun (That's 550 * 98 million miles = 53,900,000,000 miles or 0.000872 light years). This would allow us to use the Suns gravitational lens to be a huge telescope capable of resolving oceans and continents and perhaps city lights on exoplanets in our Galaxy. A near IR and radio telescope positioned there would be able to examine atmospheric conditions on exoplanets and perhaps be able to detect their leakage radiation (their equivalent to our relatively weak radio and TV signals). It also gets us ready for developing our first true interstellar probe which by mandate would be launched before this century is out.

$1 billion to develop space based industry, particularly on Mars. We have a problem with producing carbon dioxide on Earth. Yet if we could move carbon producing industry to Mars then we solve two problems with one stone. We thicken Mars's atmosphere with the "pollution" which allows us the first step towards making the whole planet more Earthlike, ie: terraforming. And we make Earth a better place in the process by moving this harmful pollution to a place where its helpful, not harmful.

$1 billion would be given as a series of basic research grants to universities and private industries for developing technologies to help make much of what I proposed possible.

The most important is to have the public play a part in the inactivation for space.
just look at what normal people (not nasa and big company's)
are doing with building their own rockets.
they can have some group that will give out money
to fund good ideas.
this would get public support for space.

First you need a world agreement to let all use space.
not like US.
they have calmed all land around the maned moon landings as US land.

privet company need to be a part of it.
monitored by the Earth space agency. ESA?
we need the money they will put into it.

Space elevators. to make it cheap and safe to get up and down.
clean up the junk in space.
when you have the Space elevators up. say 3.
you have the same cable connect them in space.
like a ring around earth.

to this you put the satellites, telescopes and more.

I think we need a better idea of budget.

If one looks at the percentage of the 1964 federal budget NASA took it was 3.52% (as opposed to the 0.43% it takes now. NASA is barely funded at all by 1960s standards, existing on a meager $16 billion. That's roughly the cost of eight B-2 Stealth Bombers for the USAF by comparison or eight space shuttles constructed).

So if we were to do the math then that works out to be 131,091,348,837 or 131 billion dollars as a 3.52% of today's FY2013 $3.43 trillion dollar budget.

Quite a difference from 35 billion which was simply the cost adjusted for inflation.

SO for the original poster, which is it? 35 billion or 131 billion or some other number of your choosing in between?

Because one can do ALOT more with 131 billion than 35 billion.

If you dont want space war and um accidents.
then you need to make all of the world a part of it.
it Can Not be like old America.
who ever gets their fires has all the land.
then the bad men come along and kill them.
Please learn from past mistakes.

buddha
If you dont want space war and um accidents.
then you need to make all of the world a part of it.
it Can Not be like old America.
who ever gets their fires has all the land.
then the bad men come along and kill them.
Please learn from past mistakes.

No one was suggesting it be all US. The original poster was just using NASA in 1964 as a reference point. I totally agree. The thing we have today which we didn't have back then is a bunch of other countries willing to cooperate and build stuff in space. Shared cost = more getting done.

However, the big projects like ISS would not have been built if the US/NASA had not originally planned to build it. Europe has very little interest in human spaceflight on its own but they are more than willing to come along. Japan and India are devoted to space science and technology development so again, don't expect them on their own to propose a human mission anywhere anytime soon because they like Europe depend on the Russians or us to get them into orbit.

This is why it is exciting what private companies like Space-X and Golden Spike are doing. In theory any nation will be able to buy seats on a Dragon capsule just as they buy them from Russia but Dragon will be cheaper.

And China will no doubt begin selling seats as well so there will be more competition which will drive the cost down.

We will go into space together. Don't worry about that at all.

JadeStar
I think we need a better idea of budget.

If one looks at the percentage of the 1964 federal budget NASA took it was 3.52% (as opposed to the 0.43% it takes now. NASA is barely funded at all by 1960s standards, existing on a meager $16 billion. That's roughly the cost of eight B-2 Stealth Bombers for the USAF by comparison or eight space shuttles constructed).

So if we were to do the math then that works out to be 131,091,348,837 or 131 billion dollars as a 3.52% of today's FY2013 $3.43 trillion dollar budget.

Quite a difference from 35 billion which was simply the cost adjusted for inflation.

SO for the original poster, which is it? 35 billion or 131 billion or some other number of your choosing in between?

Because one can do ALOT more with 131 billion than 35 billion.

edit on 18-12-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

£35 billion a year, your makeing over complicated

But if you wann do one for 135 billion be my guest.

crazyewok

JadeStar
I think we need a better idea of budget.

If one looks at the percentage of the 1964 federal budget NASA took it was 3.52% (as opposed to the 0.43% it takes now. NASA is barely funded at all by 1960s standards, existing on a meager $16 billion. That's roughly the cost of eight B-2 Stealth Bombers for the USAF by comparison or eight space shuttles constructed).

So if we were to do the math then that works out to be 131,091,348,837 or 131 billion dollars as a 3.52% of today's FY2013 $3.43 trillion dollar budget.

Quite a difference from 35 billion which was simply the cost adjusted for inflation.

SO for the original poster, which is it? 35 billion or 131 billion or some other number of your choosing in between?

Because one can do ALOT more with 131 billion than 35 billion.

edit on 18-12-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

£35 billion a year, your makeing over complicated

But if you wann do one for 135 billion be my guest.

35 billion GBPs is different from $35 billion USD.

So will take the 131 billion US dollars.

Wow, so much money. I don't know what to do with it all.

I suppose we can spend 50 billion of it to "Build the Enterprise"", no?

reply to post by crazyewok


Very interesting ideas. As for creativity, I have to wonder just how much of what Hollywood has thought up/created, stuff like photon type energy, and the warp core used in Star Trek Enterprise, has been created / designed by scientists already, but they are waiting for the right time to introduce this stuff to the government / TPTB??

We need power that has enough energy to get us to space and beyond without costing a fortune and is not as dangerous as a nuclear breach. Also, we need scientists to determine the space radiation solution so that if we were able to live in space, we wouldn't be so exposed to radiation from the sun and other sources. Also, it would need to be built of something that could withstand the meteors that are floating around in space that we are already concerned could possibly hit earth. If one of them hit some craft/station we have built in orbit, then how would that benefit us at all?

We need the creativity and the science behind what we saw on the latest Star Trek movie. How they were building spacecraft on earth and there was another station in space already that was building a MASSIVE spacecraft that would take thousands to operate and keep running. Then, once that is done, we need to continue to build more massive spacecraft for exploration of other potential 'EARTHS', but at the same time, we need to find energy that does not destroy the new world. Also, we need to have CORRECTED the society issues that plague this planet so that we don't have the same problems on the new world.

Considering it was already dreamed up, I just wonder if they have already created a spaceship?? They have drones, yes? What technology does that run on? Is it clean energy? Is it silent?

All ideas we need to consider for sure.

I would build a ship yard in orbit and start building spacecraft in space that can operate in the solar system similar to the Navy ships we use now. Take a current submarine design and modify it for space and build it up there.

I also would stop wasting anything we place in orbit. For instance design the fuel tanks so they can be converted into habitat instead of burning them up in the atmosphere.

I would build space craft in a modular fashion so you can say easily replace the engine module when a newer design is ready.

I would design space telescope so they can self return to ISS for servicing and upgrades.

Other metal I would crash on the moon for future use instead of burning it up in atmosphere.

MountainEnigma
reply to post by crazyewok

 

Very interesting ideas. As for creativity, I have to wonder just how much of what Hollywood has thought up/created, stuff like photon type energy, and the warp core used in Star Trek Enterprise, has been created / designed by scientists already, but they are waiting for the right time to introduce this stuff to the government / TPTB??

Well it's not so much that Hollywood comes up with these things. They exist in science in some form. ie: a photon is a unit of light energy, a warp is a bending of space/time according to Einstein's relativity.

What sci-fi authors do is they look at what is part of what we know about science and extrapolate it out to create the things you see in sci fi.

I-Robot was written in like the 1930s for example.

Gene Roddenbury was very interested in getting a lot of the science of the Star Trek universe right so he consulted with people in theoretical physics, materials science, propulsion (which is why they have impulse engines as well as warp drives in Star Trek.)

This is very different than George Lucas's Star Wars which is more future fantasy than hardcore sci-fi as the stuff like light sabers, etc make little sense scientifically.

Today most big hollywood films actually follow Roddenbury's example and have scientists as consultants on movies like Gravity, Interstellar, Contact, Event Horizon, etc.