It’s killed off the only hope of the agency getting beyond low earth orbit, at least for now.
Arguably, there is no greater enabling technology to be achieved with less overall investment than cryogenic propellant storage and transfer. While we currently have the ability to conduct long term deep space missions using storable hypergolic propellants, their relatively low performance is a critical limiting factor in both robotic and crewed space missions. Developing and demonstrating the ability store high performance cryogenic propellants in space for long periods of time without significant boil-off is nothing less than a necessity for long term exploration. Taken together with the closely related challenge of transferring cryogenic propellants from one container to another in zero-g, as well as accurately measuring the amount of fluid in a storage vessel, the net result is leveraging effect with stunning capacity. In fact, as the Augustine commission determined,
“In the absence of in-space refueling, the U.S. human spaceflight program will require a heavy-lift launcher of significantly greater than 25 mt capability to launch the EDS and its fuel. However the picture changes significantly if in-space refueling is used.” Furthermore “Studies commissioned by the Committee found that in-space refueling could increase by at least two to three times the injection capability from low-Earth orbit of a launcher system, and in some cases more. Thus, an in-space refueling capability would make larger super-heavy lift vehicles even more capable, and would enable smaller ones to inject from low-Earth orbit a mass comparable to what larger launchers can do without in space refueling.”
For a nation and an agency serious about exploring space, it is difficult to think of a single justifiable reason why proceeding with an orbital demonstration of this enabling technology should not be a priority. It is very easy to come up with an unjustifiable reason however. It represents a viable alternative to SLS.
In his mind, it’s the Scientists versus the Deniers. There is no middle ground. And remember, the Department Chairman at the Georgia Institute of Technology is apparently one of the latter.
[Update a few minutes later]
Read this critique of Mann, from one of the Scientists. Though this post will probably get him cast into the pit with the Deniers.
The post is now on the main Ricochet feed, so anyone should be able to view it, if you couldn’t before. Of course, several commenters there are saying “Rush is right!”
“After 30 years of waiting, the fact that this committee is addressing sustainability issues brings me a lot of pleasure,” she began. Clancy went on to advocate that Americans should become vegetarians in order to achieve sustainability in the face of “climate change.”
“What pattern of eating best contributes to food security and the sustainability of land air and water?” Clancy asked. “The simple answer is a plant-based diet.”
“Now, this is not new, this idea of how important plant-based diets are has been around for, gosh, 30-40 years,” she said. “Before that for people who long ago were eating vegetarian.”
Clancy said plant-based diets lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and have a “smaller ecological impact” on “drought, climate change, soil erosion, pesticides and antibiotics in water supplies.”
There is zero scientific evidence of cardiovascular disease being caused by eating animals, per se (though corn-fed beef and chicken might be problematic due to omega 6).
There is no nice, clean line between private “buck making” and high-minded government exploration just for the sake of it. From the Wright Brothers making the key advances in aviation to IBM funded Nobel Prize winning basic research, innumerable breakthroughs in science and technology have been led by private non-governmental ventures.
Yes. It’s the post-war government funding that’s been an anomaly, historically. Fortunately, when it comes to spaceflight, that era is ending.
Sorry, this seems like a ridiculous way to do subtraction (particularly for that problem which is trivially easy). And I can’t imagine how I’d do it in my head. Borrowing seems a lot easier to me.
Some thoughts on their foolish political tendencies. And as noted, this Sagan quote is crucial in the “settled climate science” debate:
Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those that tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious who comes ambling along.
“Scientist” isn’t a profession. We are all scientists to one degree or another, if we are successful at every-day living.
Launches of NASA cargo to the International Space Station, including one planned early Sunday, don’t guarantee SpaceX is ready to launch military satellites, the head of Air Force Space Command said Tuesday in Cape Canaveral.
If a rocket failed, the loss of a national security satellite potentially worth more than $1.5 billion would be a bigger setback than losing food, clothing and other station supplies, Gen. William Shelton told the National Space Club Florida Committee.
“So there’s a big difference,” he said.
This is one reason that talk about “human rating” an Atlas (or Delta) is silly. If it’s reliable enough for a $1.5B satellite, it’s reliable enough to carry crew. All it ever needed was failure onset detection. And when SpaceX starts flying crew, the general’s argument will be much less strong.