The End of the Space Age

[Chirios]

The End of the Space Age

Space exploration
Inner space is useful. Outer space is history
Jun 30th 2011 | from the print edition


HOW big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is 12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is the atmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planet’s true diameter is actually nearer 13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For the Earth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites, forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only a few hundred kilometres above the planet’s solid surface. Many, though, form a ring like Saturn’s at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.

Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. And viewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weather forecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised. So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exact location of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioning systems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged by the enthusiastic “space cadets” who got the whole thing going. Though engineers like Wernher von Braun, who built the rockets for both Germany’s second-world-war V2 project and America’s cold-war Apollo project, sold their souls to the military establishment in order to pursue their dreams of space travel by the only means then available, most of them had their eyes on a higher prize. “First Men to a Geostationary Orbit” does not have quite the same ring as “First Men to the Moon”, a book von Braun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early space rockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American space project and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of “Star Trek” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Other planets may or may not have been inhabited by aliens, but they, and even other stars, were there for the taking. That the taking would begin in the lifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

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Manned spaceflight
No longer. It is quite conceivable that 36,000km will prove the limit of human ambition. It is equally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return to fantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

Bye-bye, sci-fi

Today’s space cadets will, no doubt, oppose that claim vigorously. They will, in particular, point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson in Britain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise of such people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful). The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted International Space Station (ISS), surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that has ever been built in the name of science.

The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking 2011 might, in the history books of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets’ dream finally died. It marks the end of America’s space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th (see article, article). The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make the business of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble. Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, that would not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But the pretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used by NASA, “Space Transportation System”, says it all.

But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone—at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia.

The space cadets’ other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, like President John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedy’s “by the end of the decade” bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even if China succeeds in matching America’s distant triumph, it still faces the question, “what next?” The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixon’s in 1972, will say “job done” and pull the plug on the whole shebang.

No bucks, no Buck Rogers

With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to the stamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, public interest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.

The future, then, looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past. Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

[K. A. Pital]

The drive for extreme exploration is always driven by a corresponding ideology. Today most nations exist in an ideological vacuum. There's no coherent ideology which would support such a drive to other planets of the solar system. China's appetite for state triumphs in the name of China itself might be a suitable candidate, but other nations have a huge ideological gap, especially when it comes to space.

No universal superheavy (100 ton to LEO or above) lift vehicles have been produced in the last several decades, existing projects have been forgotten and let die silently or constantly reshuffled to more niche goals. Amibitions have been definetely collapsing - in the 1960s and 1970s it was nice to plan 700-ton to LEO rockets, and it was something completely okay at least as a theoretical engineering effort, even if practical realization never came. Now it's sort of crazy to plan for much more than space tugs, maximum - "Moon rockets" with clear design limitations.

I said it before and I'll repeat that my opinion is, the lack of any ideological need for space exploration basically destroys a large-scale Solar system exploration plan like the one seen in the 1960s ultra-hard scifi like "2001: Space Odyssey".

[Skgoa]

I always find it hilarious when people lament the end of the world because they failed to realize that slow, incremental progress is happening. So the author of that article just now realized that the pipe dreams he has been fed in the 50ies and 60ies aren't afordable or what am I supposed to take from that?
e/ I also like how he so melodramatically states that things that ARE ALREADY BEING PLANED/DESIGNED RIGHT NOW will happen "with luck"...

[K. A. Pital]

Projects of the 1960s weren't "pipe dreams" at all. They had a lot of solid engineering behind them.

Incremental progress sounds more like "incremental regress" - the ISS plays the same function as the "Mir", and that's been humanity's only big space project for years. Interplanetary progress was and remains more or less limited to the Cassini-Huygens mission and the Mars rovers, which weren't that expensive and there should have been many more such drone missions which would explore most planetoids in the Solar system.

In short, the development pace of cosmos exporation has slowed down a lot and this has not been an entirely unworrisome development, neither have the factors been related only to some objective technological reasons.

[Sarevok]

I always find it hilarious when people lament the end of the world because they failed to realize that slow, incremental progress is happening. So the author of that article just now realized that the pipe dreams he has been fed in the 50ies and 60ies aren't afordable or what am I supposed to take from that?
e/ I also like how he so melodramatically states that things that ARE ALREADY BEING PLANED/DESIGNED RIGHT NOW will happen "with luck"...

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

[Skgoa]

@Stas: I wasn't talking about actual projects, but about proposals and concepts that were absofuckinglutely sure to be realized before the year 2000. Like colonies on Moon and Mars, giant rotating space stations... There just was no money around to build them, even if an actual reason for them could be found. Apollo leveles of spending were absolutely unsustainable already.


To the rest of your post and to Sarevok I have this answer: then you aren't paying attention. Seriously, if you guys really mean what you are saying, you should look up whats going on in space science/engineering right now. If anything, humanity has finally decided once again to go beyond LEO.

[Broomstick]

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

How are we "less capable" of colonizing space than in the 1970's? We have never been capable of colonizing space, not on a long-term self-sufficient basis.

[K. A. Pital]

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

How are we "less capable" of colonizing space than in the 1970's? We have never been capable of colonizing space, not on a long-term self-sufficient basis.

How about the fact that the only thing remotely useful for space colonization, even "short-term" and very near, distance-wise, namely heavy rockets with over 100 ton to LEO capability, have been gone both in the USA (since the end of the Moon program) and in Russia (since the scrapping and ultimately, destruction not only of the rocket itself but the entire program and the pool of specialists who constructed it)?

Clearly, in the 1960s and 1970s and even 1980s we were more capable of deep space travel and colonization because we actually had (a) the heavy rockets (b) the people who made them (c) the engines for these rockets (d) the tools which made them, making serial production possible. Now we have almost none of the above, except point C, which is engines.

I wasn't talking about actual projects, but about proposals and concepts that were absofuckinglutely sure to be realized before the year 2000. Like colonies on Moon and Mars, giant rotating space stations... There just was no money around to build them, even if an actual reason for them could be found. Apollo leveles of spending were absolutely unsustainable already.

Yeah, yeah, "absolutely unsustainable" in a world which wastes trillions of dollars every year on military spending and more yet on bullshit luxuries.

In 2009, NASA held a symposium on project costs which presented an estimate of the Apollo program costs in 2005 dollars as roughly $170 billion.

As of February 2010, around $704 billion has been spent based on estimates of current expenditure rates

It seems 10 years of imperialistic war cost 4 times as much as the entire Apollo program. So don't give me this crap. No Iraq war = enough money to sustain another Apollo program.

To the rest of your post and to Sarevok I have this answer: then you aren't paying attention. Seriously, if you guys really mean what you are saying, you should look up whats going on in space science/engineering right now. If anything, humanity has finally decided once again to go beyond LEO.

So what's going on in science and engineering? In the 1970s to the late 1980s we actually had, between the two superpowers, the rockets far more capable (in terms of useful mass delivery to orbit, and thus also Mars and Moon) than ANYTHING which exists or is even proposed for a close future right now. Well, thankfully there is a 130 ton to LEO booster being developed at NASA (the SLS), but that development only barely started. If it gets the same half-assed negative treatment from the U.S. government as the prior NASA program, development will not be swift.

[PeZook]

Incremental progress sounds more like "incremental regress" - the ISS plays the same function as the "Mir", and that's been humanity's only big space project for years. Interplanetary progress was and remains more or less limited to the Cassini-Huygens mission and the Mars rovers, which weren't that expensive and there should have been many more such drone missions which would explore most planetoids in the Solar system.

Dude, what?

Currently running NASA missions

There's an orbiter around Mercury, missions to comets, several Mars orbiters, at least two lunar orbiters, solar research missions, space telescopes, solar wind investigation...

Unmanned exploration is going through a reneissance, not collapsing, thanks to breakthroughs in automation.

It's manned exploration which waned, mostly due to cost - manned lunar missions cost two orders of magnitude more than unmanned ones. Even though they have the potential to give awesome SCIENCE (we still haven't truly gone through all the Apollo data), lots of people feel they're not justified costwise.

I wasn't talking about actual projects, but about proposals and concepts that were absofuckinglutely sure to be realized before the year 2000. Like colonies on Moon and Mars, giant rotating space stations... There just was no money around to build them, even if an actual reason for them could be found. Apollo leveles of spending were absolutely unsustainable already.

They were? Really? Then how home you guys can spend hundreds of billions on "defence" year after year after year after year?

The entire Apollo program cost some 15-17 billion per year. Almost nothing.

[Broomstick]

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

How are we "less capable" of colonizing space than in the 1970's? We have never been capable of colonizing space, not on a long-term self-sufficient basis.

How about the fact that the only thing remotely useful for space colonization, even "short-term" and very near, distance-wise, namely heavy rockets with over 100 ton to LEO capability, have been gone both in the USA (since the end of the Moon program) and in Russia (since the scrapping and ultimately, destruction not only of the rocket itself but the entire program and the pool of specialists who constructed it)?

Clearly, in the 1960s and 1970s and even 1980s we were more capable of deep space travel and colonization because we actually had (a) the heavy rockets (b) the people who made them (c) the engines for these rockets (d) the tools which made them, making serial production possible. Now we have almost none of the above, except point C, which is engines.

I said nothing about deep space travel, I was specifically discussing colonization. You are correct, we had better deep space travel capacity in the past, but we couldn't then and can't now set set up a self-reliant colony anywhere off planet. Either we have to carry everything with us, or depend on regular resupply. That hasn't changed.

We might be marginally more knowledgeable about setting up small, isolated stations but that's still just visiting, not living somewhere permanently, which is what colonization is. We can get there (wherever "there" is) but we can't live there without a tenuous and expensive supply line.

[Zixinus]

This is the story as far as I can tell while growing up. Most truly long-term infrastructure is being scrapped or not even considered. I don't have much hopes for the private industry: it's only a matter of time until the plug is pulled because an investor finds making beercaps or something more profitable.

Most of the missions I hear about are once-use rockets. We're firing up mostly probes and that's a good thing. But as far as capabilities go, we are decreasing in what we can actually send. We are not making launches more cheaper nor more powerful. I have doubts whether a rocket scientist from 25 years ago would find anything surprising in the next launch, if not be disappointed. The technology is there and the aerospace companies probably boast that they can make a spaceplane or a cheaper launch system if anybody would be interested (and willing to invest). No one is.

There are relatively few people interested in space: intellectuals mostly. The general public is more likely to believe in aliens than the idea that man walked on the moon or that a man can walk on the moon. The idea of going to the moon is sci-fi stuff again not because it's impossible, but because it can only happen in sci-fi.
Sure, the Chinese might do a re-hash of Apollo, might even do something more with it. But the Chinese government will soon get bored with it and start putting the money into the same thing the USSR and the USA does: more tanks, air-craft carriers, newer jet-fighters and the like. To emphatically not fight a war with. Or fight a war with some third-world nation that nobody cares about.

[Chirios]

This is the story as far as I can tell while growing up. Most truly long-term infrastructure is being scrapped or not even considered. I don't have much hopes for the private industry: it's only a matter of time until the plug is pulled because an investor finds making beercaps or something more profitable.

Most of the missions I hear about are once-use rockets. We're firing up mostly probes and that's a good thing. But as far as capabilities go, we are decreasing in what we can actually send. We are not making launches more cheaper nor more powerful. I have doubts whether a rocket scientist from 25 years ago would find anything surprising in the next launch, if not be disappointed. The technology is there and the aerospace companies probably boast that they can make a spaceplane or a cheaper launch system if anybody would be interested (and willing to invest). No one is.

There are relatively few people interested in space: intellectuals mostly. The general public is more likely to believe in aliens than the idea that man walked on the moon or that a man can walk on the moon. The idea of going to the moon is sci-fi stuff again not because it's impossible, but because it can only happen in sci-fi.
Sure, the Chinese might do a re-hash of Apollo, might even do something more with it. But the Chinese government will soon get bored with it and start putting the money into the same thing the USSR and the USA does: more tanks, air-craft carriers, newer jet-fighters and the like. To emphatically not fight a war with. Or fight a war with some third-world nation that nobody cares about.

I disagree. The USA developed those capabilities during/after WW2 to deal with the Nazi's/Soviets respectively. Afterwards, the military kept its global projection capabilities for largely practical reasons, as well as being a d*ck waving contest. The Chinese on the other hand haven't had a war that balloons their military capabilities, and for everything they're interested in they only need to be able to control their own waters. Because of that I doubt they'll spend a similar proportion of their budget on the military as the USA. I don't doubt that their manned exploration could decrease, but I doubt that they'll spend the money on warfare.

[inviz345]

sad day it looks like russia won.

[K. A. Pital]

Dude, what? Currently running NASA missions There's an orbiter around Mercury, missions to comets, several Mars orbiters, at least two lunar orbiters, solar research missions, space telescopes, solar wind investigation... Unmanned exploration is going through a reneissance, not collapsing, thanks to breakthroughs in automation.

Perhaps right now, yeah, sort of a renaissance, but consider this - Mercury orbiters existed before. Mars orbiters - too. Lunar orbiters - that's even older. The Hubble was launched in 1990. Solar wind investigation is not the same as exploring all planetoids in the Solar system.

It's manned exploration which waned, mostly due to cost - manned lunar missions cost two orders of magnitude more than unmanned ones. Even though they have the potential to give awesome SCIENCE (we still haven't truly gone through all the Apollo data), lots of people feel they're not justified costwise.

I know. However, I've already noted that just one war costs as much as the Apollo program in modern prices.

I said nothing about deep space travel, I was specifically discussing colonization. You are correct, we had better deep space travel capacity in the past, but we couldn't then and can't now set set up a self-reliant colony anywhere off planet. Either we have to carry everything with us, or depend on regular resupply. That hasn't changed. We might be marginally more knowledgeable about setting up small, isolated stations but that's still just visiting, not living somewhere permanently, which is what colonization is. We can get there (wherever "there" is) but we can't live there without a tenuous and expensive supply line.

Yes, we can't so far colonize space without resupply. However, projects of the 1960s and 1970s had some good ideas on how to enable a base which could exist for a long term and require only sparse cargo shots with far less expensive rockets (something like a Proton with 20 ton to LEO, which is being launched on a regular schedule). And such a base could, sooner or later, become self-reliant if exogardens would be planted in sufficient numbers on other planets. There was a lot of gardening research going on before the whole idea of going to other planets kind of collapsed.

[The Kernel]

The question that seriously needs to be asked is: what are the short, medium and long term goals of manned space exploration? Until this is answered satisfactorily we aren't likely to see much of an improvement in manned space exploration over the next few decades.

The reason unmanned space exploration works so well is because there is a serious business and scientific case behind it.

Short Term: Maintain existing space infrastructure.

Medium Term: Next generation of planetary drones (to perform even more involved planetary surveys), next generation of space laboratories such as James Webb (to increase our understanding of the universe), next generation of telecommunications/military satellites (to perform proven military and commerce roles).

Long Term: The sky (or beyond) is the limit, there is no shortage of good ideas. Increased space militarization, even more advanced telecommunications, deep space probes (possible even interstellar), asteroid harvesting...really there are tons of possibilities.

Ok, so unmanned space activity is likely to continue, it just has too much good stuff going for it. But why exactly in any of these goals do we need manned spaceflight? We have the ISS which has produced...what exactly? And the Apollo missions, while certainly interesting have done what that we haven't gotten out of unmanned probes? Hell arguably LCROSS told us more important things about the moon then all the manned surveys ever did.

The real problem with manned spaceflight is that it only seems to be about prestige and nothing else. Sure, everyone loves the idea of manned space colonization but there are no practical plans to get a self-sufficient colony off the ground and until that is in reach there is simply no reason to plan manned missions. I would even argue that there are a detriment to space exploration as a whole since a dollar towards unmanned flight goes a lot further.

[PeZook]

Ok, so unmanned space activity is likely to continue, it just has too much good stuff going for it. But why exactly in any of these goals do we need manned spaceflight? We have the ISS which has produced...what exactly?

This is one of the most often repeated questions about the ISS, which is answered in two minutes.

List of ISS experiments by mission

You have material properties experiments, stellar observation, radiation experiments, communications, obvious invesitgation into effect of spaceflight on biological life, crystal growth...

And the Apollo missions, while certainly interesting have done what that we haven't gotten out of unmanned probes? Hell arguably LCROSS told us more important things about the moon then all the manned surveys ever did.

LCROSS performed a very specialized task, which was valuable, but no probe so far or in the planning stages could duplicate Apollo. Apollo missions surveyed the surface directly and returned nearly 400 kilograms of samples people are still going over to this day. These samples are extremely valuable: they're diverse (including simple surface rocks, dust, core samples), come from a wide variety of landing sites, and have been selected by trained people on the ground.

Further experiments peformed by Apllo

Probes are vastly cheaper, yeah, and you can launch a couple dozen for the price of a single Apollo flight, which is an argument. But it is not true Apollo didn't bring us any important data.

The real problem with manned spaceflight is that it only seems to be about prestige and nothing else. Sure, everyone loves the idea of manned space colonization but there are no practical plans to get a self-sufficient colony off the ground and until that is in reach there is simply no reason to plan manned missions. I would even argue that there are a detriment to space exploration as a whole since a dollar towards unmanned flight goes a lot further.

So...according to you, planning space colonization does not require long-term operational experience from manned spaceflight, and manned missions should only be conducted once we have the plans?

If you long-terms goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies, it is absolutely critical that manned spaceflight exists, because we can't design a self-sustaining colony without experience in long-term space habitation. Furthermore, we can't execute these plans without operational experience in launching people into orbit, either: wait twenty years without any manned spaceflight and you'll have to reinvent the wheel from the ground up.

[The Kernel]

This is one of the most often repeated questions about the ISS, which is answered in two minutes.

List of ISS experiments by mission

You have material properties experiments, stellar observation, radiation experiments, communications, obvious invesitgation into effect of spaceflight on biological life, crystal growth...

Yes yes, the ISS is actually useful for something. That doesn't make it worth the price tag.

Just look at that list, it looks to fall into a few categories:

1) Things that don't require a manned platform.
2) Biological experiments for long term zero-g exposure. Interesting but worth the price?
3) Physical and psychological experiments of long-term space living. Very important if you plan to keep up manned space exploration but just gives further fodder for why probes can do things cheaper.

LCROSS performed a very specialized task, which was valuable, but no probe so far or in the planning stages could duplicate Apollo. Apollo missions surveyed the surface directly and returned nearly 400 kilograms of samples people are still going over to this day. These samples are extremely valuable: they're diverse (including simple surface rocks, dust, core samples), come from a wide variety of landing sites, and have been selected by trained people on the ground.

Do you honestly think we need manned flight to do geological surveys when you can send dozens of probes for the cost of a single person?

Probes are vastly cheaper, yeah, and you can launch a couple dozen for the price of a single Apollo flight, which is an argument. But it is not true Apollo didn't bring us any important data.

Sure it did, but the point isn't what Apollo gave us but what the same amount of money spent on unmanned missions can give.

So...according to you, planning space colonization does not require long-term operational experience from manned spaceflight, and manned missions should only be conducted once we have the plans?

If you long-terms goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies, it is absolutely critical that manned spaceflight exists, because we can't design a self-sustaining colony without experience in long-term space habitation. Furthermore, we can't execute these plans without operational experience in launching people into orbit, either: wait twenty years without any manned spaceflight and you'll have to reinvent the wheel from the ground up.

No argument from me, but that's the trouble isn't it? Without short and medium term goals that have any value besides "getting us better at this so we may one day colonize space" manned spaceflight isn't going anywhere. The human race simply does not have the psychology to invest in things that don't have short term payoffs and everything we've every accomplished as a species has been built off of things that build towards long term goals with shorter term stepping stones.

The problem with manned flight is that the payoff is really at the end, and even that is pretty arguable. I'm sure there are plenty of people that would argue against the idea of human colonization of space as a waste of resources even if it was realizable (although I'm not one of them).

[someone_else]

Someone should tell the writer that Space Age ended after URSS collapsed. That it was more or less a pissing contest and that to win they told loads of crap and propaganda about nonsense that wasn't going to happen.
More or less what China is doing now, although it is a solo pissing contest .

What we see is government stuff keeling over, after its propaganda trumpets stopped telling people to support space endeavours becauseifyoudonttheRedswillwinandwillbeHellonEarth.
Shuttle was the last gasps of such wondrous pissing contest. In the sense that the funds for it came from pissing contest mentality, that was decreasing noticeably after the US won the Moon Race.

But it's not the end of the space race. The real space race has begun with satellites, and is going on with private enterprises designing their space stations or rockets and capsules.

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

Technically speaking, from the 70s I remember only overpriced pipe dreams that required ludicrous effort (that was and is actually affordable, but none would ever pay) into something that was basically a money sink for the hell of it.
There was no real capability to make a manned mission to Mars without taking buttloads of engineering and environmental risks (as if Moon missions weren't already half-assed enough). It was not possible anyway without in-space assembly or having apollo-like accomodations for a 10 month voyage, but that's another matter.
Manned missions beyond Mars were unfeasible back then as they are now.
We knew jack shit of what goes on out of Earth's atmosphere (mainly solar activity), and aerospace engineering was much more limited before modern computers.
As for bases there was no real capability to do anything more than a tiny outpost on the Moon (that would be totally useless form any point of view) regardless of the weight we could put up to LEO. That weight has to be pushed around and landed somewhere, and doing so would have required dozens of Saturns (nonsense) or the development of on-orbit refuelling.

Nowadays, there are technologies being developed like on-orbit refueling that can make us do what we coud do with Saturn V but without the pain in the ass of so huge rockets, we know a boatload more about the environment out of Earth, and we can plan accordingly.

Also, progress in robotics allows us to send materials and humanoid bots to do the dirty and dangerous work of building stuff and mining building materials from the Moon, and then send the people only when everything is nearly ready.
Robonaut I and II are an example (the II is in the ISS now).
This is a major progress for space colonization, just not marketed as such.

That's progress from the days of Saturn V.

There are private companies that have the potential to do real work, and actually hope to make some kind of profit by building their own space stations in a short timescale.
Which is extremely positive, if space tourism starts to make profit on its own like the satellite industry, we get one step closer to the stars. Next step, a Moon Hotel.
It's slow as hell, but it keeps rolling.
This is the real Space Race, not that pissing contest in the Cold War. Because it is aimed to stay and make profit, and not plant flags, bunny-hop and go home.

No universal superheavy (100 ton to LEO or above) lift vehicles have been produced in the last several decades,

And for an exceedingly good reason. They are an enginnering nightmare and a huge money sink without any other customer than the US government (and Chinese government for their own version). NASA seems more interested in on-orbit refuelling, which gives more or less the same capabilities at a far cheaper price. With it and a tweaked Centaur we can go to the Moon on the cheap.

It seems 10 years of imperialistic war cost 4 times as much as the entire Apollo program. So don't give me this crap. No Iraq war = enough money to sustain another Apollo program.

But that's defending US on Earth . Defending US is more important than space.
Or I should say "defending US ruling elite's interests"? Yeah, probably the second .

The problem is that if you want money from them you need to find a reasonable reason to convince those guys. The only way I can think of is starting a nuclear war (and ending it fast). Given the current arsenal you don't annihilate Earth, but you should be able to throw enough shit around to convince them that living in orbit is better for them, and you see accounts in switzerland and other money storage places that get devoluted to the "project to save human race by going into space".

I personally prefer what is being done currently, with private riches with the right dream taking over and giving a shot at it (and doing rather well so far). That's the real space race, something with the right dream.

we actually had, between the two superpowers, the rockets far more capable (in terms of useful mass delivery to orbit, and thus also Mars and Moon) than ANYTHING which exists or is even proposed for a close future right now.

Wrong. On-orbit refuelling is being developed. That has the potential to give way better performance in terms of destinations. On-orbit assembly will become much more popular once on-orbit refuelling begins, and that allows you to have real spacecraft, big as needed for real voyages (I'm still talking of truss-like affairs with crap bolted around, mind me).

[PeZook]

Yes yes, the ISS is actually useful for something. That doesn't make it worth the price tag.

Just look at that list, it looks to fall into a few categories:

1) Things that don't require a manned platform.
2) Biological experiments for long term zero-g exposure. Interesting but worth the price?
3) Physical and psychological experiments of long-term space living. Very important if you plan to keep up manned space exploration but just gives further fodder for why probes can do things cheaper.

The price tag isn't actually particularly high, at 2.5-3 billion per year for upkeep. The 100 billion or so construction cost is hefty, but already spent and a result of fucked up organisation, not some inherent problem with space stations in general.

Skylab cost what, 10 billion in today's dollars, in total, construction, launch and upkeed costs included?

Do you honestly think we need manned flight to do geological surveys when you can send dozens of probes for the cost of a single person?

Sure it did, but the point isn't what Apollo gave us but what the same amount of money spent on unmanned missions can give.

At 30 billion per manned Apollo landing, you could send about 60 unmanned probes going by costs of the LRO (actually less because landers are more expensive than orbiters). If each is a sample return mission, and each managed to collected an order of magnitude more samples than Russian probes, they'd still return less samples of far worse quality than Apollo 12, and only marginally more than Apollo 11. That's with 60 perfect missions none of which fail, all of which are also lander sample return missions.

So yeah, when it comes to geological surveys, manned landings can accomplish a lot. Apollo 17 returned 111 kilograms of samples, and future missions of the program would have done even better. Constellation, for example, planned for 7 day stays with four astronauts right off the bat, at similar cost to Apollo (even assuming 50% cost overruns, that's still EIGHT TIMES the astronaut-hours than Apollo 17 to work with on the surface)

No argument from me, but that's the trouble isn't it? Without short and medium term goals that have any value besides "getting us better at this so we may one day colonize space" manned spaceflight isn't going anywhere. The human race simply does not have the psychology to invest in things that don't have short term payoffs and everything we've every accomplished as a species has been built off of things that build towards long term goals with shorter term stepping stones.

The problem with manned flight is that the payoff is really at the end, and even that is pretty arguable. I'm sure there are plenty of people that would argue against the idea of human colonization of space as a waste of resources even if it was realizable (although I'm not one of them).

Even without sweeping long-term goals, it's arguably advised to at least maintain the capability to run manned missions, should we ever need to ramp it up again.

Although yeah, I do agree the manned space program would need proper goals to determine what is the best future approach.

[Sarevok]

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

How are we "less capable" of colonizing space than in the 1970's? We have never been capable of colonizing space, not on a long-term self-sufficient basis.

Oh we had been capable ever since the first rockets. It's a matter of money not technology. Space was expensive, is expensive and will remain expensive. There is no silver bullet technology that will make space accessible. Unless society as a whole accepts this there will be no progress towards expanding human presence beyond Earth.

The problem is these days we are looking for magical cheap solutions that will wave away launch costs. At least back then people had big rockets like Saturn V and accepted the cost of using them. They were also willing to accept the risk and costs using unproven and dangerous technology nuclear thermal engines that enable manned travel beyond lunar orbit.

In summary we were not and never will be capable of colonizing space on a safe and economical manner. Enormous sums of money and some lives must be sacrificed for this and if society does not accept this then it must accept the eventual consequences of being consigned to planet Earth forever.

[K. A. Pital]

Someone should tell the writer that Space Age ended after URSS collapsed. That it was more or less a pissing contest and that to win they told loads of crap and propaganda about nonsense that wasn't going to happen. More or less what China is doing now, although it is a solo pissing contest . What we see is government stuff keeling over, after its propaganda trumpets stopped telling people to support space endeavours becauseifyoudonttheRedswillwinandwillbeHellonEarth. Shuttle was the last gasps of such wondrous pissing contest. In the sense that the funds for it came from pissing contest mentality, that was decreasing noticeably after the US won the Moon Race. But it's not the end of the space race. The real space race has begun with satellites, and is going on with private enterprises designing their space stations or rockets and capsules.

Yeah, inflatable "space stations" and most suborbital "space ships" for space tourism for rich idiots, as opposed to meaningful plans to explore the Solar system and exploit its natural resources. Whoa, wait, that's about the most pointless thing ever, unless of course private enterprises want to make superheavy rockets which would significantly lower the cost of launch per kilogram. Once they do that, my hat will be generously off, sure.

Technically speaking, from the 70s I remember only overpriced pipe dreams that required ludicrous effort (that was and is actually affordable, but none would ever pay) into something that was basically a money sink for the hell of it. There was no real capability to make a manned mission to Mars without taking buttloads of engineering and environmental risks (as if Moon missions weren't already half-assed enough). It was not possible anyway without in-space assembly or having apollo-like accomodations for a 10 month voyage, but that's another matter. Manned missions beyond Mars were unfeasible back then as they are now. We knew jack shit of what goes on out of Earth's atmosphere (mainly solar activity), and aerospace engineering was much more limited before modern computers. As for bases there was no real capability to do anything more than a tiny outpost on the Moon (that would be totally useless form any point of view) regardless of the weight we could put up to LEO. That weight has to be pushed around and landed somewhere, and doing so would have required dozens of Saturns (nonsense) or the development of on-orbit refuelling.

Overpriced as in "lower cost of launch per kilogram than most currently operating rockets"? Total price of launch is not important for an ambitious space exploration project. "No capability to do more than tiny outpost" - you have to be kidding. With 700 ton-to-LEO rockets which were quite feasible even with 1960s level of technology you could do much, much more. Even fully reusable 100-ton-to-LEO superheavy rockets would've enabled cheap and reliable ability to resupply outposts in the closest places like Moon and, in a while, Mars.

Nowadays, there are technologies being developed like on-orbit refueling that can make us do what we coud do with Saturn V but without the pain in the ass of so huge rockets, we know a boatload more about the environment out of Earth, and we can plan accordingly.

In-orbit refueling is excellent, except you failed basic economics - a bigger rocket = economy of scale, launch cost per kilogram decreases. You can refuel in orbit, but you will still have to lift this fuel up into orbit. What's cheaper, doing it with one launch of a 100 to 700 tonner, or using 15-ton upgraded R7 clones in dozens of launches? Depends on the launch cost per kilo and not on the size of the rocket. Huge rockets don't mean being uneconomical.

Also, progress in robotics allows us to send materials and humanoid bots to do the dirty and dangerous work of building stuff and mining building materials from the Moon, and then send the people only when everything is nearly ready. Robonaut I and II are an example (the II is in the ISS now). This is a major progress for space colonization, just not marketed as such.

Progress in robotics is happening regardless of space exploration. You are simply taking another sphere of scientific exploration and, in the absence of any major space exploration breakthroughs, declare this a huge progress. Yes, it is progress for space colonization, just like more powerful computers and more resilient breeds of plants and so on and so forth. However, all this is complimentary science which helps space exploration, not replaces it. You can build the most advanced robonaut on Earth, but unless you can cheaply launch it to the Moon and Mars and elsewhere, your robonaut is worth shit because a whole sector of necessary technology is missing.

There are private companies that have the potential to do real work, and actually hope to make some kind of profit by building their own space stations in a short timescale. Which is extremely positive, if space tourism starts to make profit on its own like the satellite industry, we get one step closer to the stars. Next step, a Moon Hotel. It's slow as hell, but it keeps rolling. This is the real Space Race, not that pissing contest in the Cold War. Because it is aimed to stay and make profit, and not plant flags, bunny-hop and go home.

This is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. "Moon Hotel"? Do you really understand that even suborbital flights are barely having any profit margin, and very powerful and costly boosters are required to launch cargo into space with a reasonable per-kilogram cost? Barring radical propulsion breakthroughs (which inflatable low-orbit "hotels" and suborbital and orbital planes are NOT a part of and not even relevant to), heavy rockets have the biggest bang for the buck.

And for an exceedingly good reason. They are an enginnering nightmare and a huge money sink without any other customer than the US government (and Chinese government for their own version). NASA seems more interested in on-orbit refuelling, which gives more or less the same capabilities at a far cheaper price. With it and a tweaked Centaur we can go to the Moon on the cheap.

Same capabilities with a "cheaper price"? You understand that launching hundred tons of fuel in a bigger rocket is cheaper than launching it in packs of ten tons with ten small rockets, each of which also has its own engines and other elements which die after lifting the cargo? Tell me, how much math did you flunk?

I personally prefer what is being done currently, with private riches with the right dream taking over and giving a shot at it (and doing rather well so far). That's the real space race, something with the right dream.

See above. That's an idiotic way of doing things. That's like saying instead of currently existing supertankers you should build micro-tankers owned by small companies and that will increase the efficiency of oil transportation. Effectively the same thing.

Wrong. On-orbit refuelling is being developed. That has the potential to give way better performance in terms of destinations. On-orbit assembly will become much more popular once on-orbit refuelling begins, and that allows you to have real spacecraft, big as needed for real voyages (I'm still talking of truss-like affairs with crap bolted around, mind me).

On-orbit refuelling increases efficiency, however, on-orbit refuelling with BIGGER ROCKETS is more efficient (just like ANYTHING with bigger rockets is more efficient) than with smaller rockets. Of course, OORF helps make current small rockets more efficient and capable of executing more than they otherwise could, but that's like giving crutches to a cripple instead of healing him. A cripple can do more with crutches, but you just helped his arms, not healed his crippled legs.

[Broomstick]

I am not sure any worthwhile incremental progress has happened. Infact there has been loss of capabilities. We are less capable of deep space travel and colonization today than we were in 70s.

How are we "less capable" of colonizing space than in the 1970's? We have never been capable of colonizing space, not on a long-term self-sufficient basis.

Oh we had been capable ever since the first rockets. It's a matter of money not technology. Space was expensive, is expensive and will remain expensive.

Bullshit. You can't eat (or even breathe) rocket exhaust. It's not JUST how much shit you can launch into space, it's being about to continue living when you reach your destination. We do not (yet) know how to set up a truly self-contained, self-sufficient colony that is NOT dependent on regular and continuous supply from outside. We don't even do that for Antarctica, which has the advantage of breathable atmosphere, normal atmospheric pressure and gravity, and something that could be turned into fertile soil if necessary. Sure, there are hydroponic set up at those bases, which are definitely a good thing during the long winter where resupply is problematic at best, but they are in no way independent and without resupply the residents would die within a year. If we can't even do it on Earth, how can you claim we can do it in space?

[PeZook]

Actually, Stas, this is not necessarily true. Witness:

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Saturn V launch cost: 2.7 billion (2010)
Saturn V payload to LEO: 118 tonnes

Delta IV Heavy launch cost: 290 million (2010)
Delta IV Heavy payload to LEO: 22 tonnes.

Thus, cost per kilogram:
Saturn V:  22 881 $
Delta IV Heavy: 7 727$

Do note, however, that the Saturn V was a man-rated rocket, while Delta-IV only does cargo.

Then witness more modern systems:

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Space Shuttle launch cost: 445 million (2010)
Space Shuttle payload (includes orbiter): 112 tonnes

Space Shuttle cost per kg: 3973$

Falcon 9 launch cost (promised) 34 million
Falcon 9 payload to LEO: 10.5 tonnes

Falcon 9 cost per kg: 3238$

All costs from Encyclopedia Astronautica

So while the answer to the question of economics is by no means clear-cut, you can see massive progress in launch costs nonetheless. Shuttle does it with reusability and limited number of engines (thought it wastes 80% of the system's payload on the orbiter, it still lifts it to orbit), while Falcon 9 with simplicity of construction.

So while heavy lifters don't really beat smaller rockets in costs, they're not uneconomical either.

[PeZook]

Bullshit. You can't eat (or even breathe) rocket exhaust. It's not JUST how much shit you can launch into space, it's being about to continue living when you reach your destination. We do not (yet) know how to set up a truly self-contained, self-sufficient colony that is NOT dependent on regular and continuous supply from outside. We don't even do that for Antarctica, which has the advantage of breathable atmosphere, normal atmospheric pressure and gravity, and something that could be turned into fertile soil if necessary. Sure, there are hydroponic set up at those bases, which are definitely a good thing during the long winter where resupply is problematic at best, but they are in no way independent and without resupply the residents would die within a year. If we can't even do it on Earth, how can you claim we can do it in space?

Broomie, look at it this way: we would have had to resupply colonies in the 1970s, and we would have to resupply them today. Except in the 1970s, we had something to resupply them with.

So yeah, we did have (slightly) more capability to set up colonies on other planets back then

[K. A. Pital]

I expected a general fall in costs per kg, given the progress in engines, components, etc. and maturity of some designs and technologies simply not there in the 1970s. I was actually kinda doubting my own paradigm, because the Soyuz had been about the cheapest per kilo launcher despite being rather small - maturity, reliability, cheapness of components also matter.

Question is, would a superheavy rocket a-la the Energia, Saturn V or something like this built with modern technology be "uneconomical", or would it absolutely crush the per kilo price even when compared to Shuttle and Falcon 9?

And of course, if you build a superheavy rocket, you have to think about creating a reusable one. Kinda like they thought about Energia.

Hmm... it seems that Energia had a launch cost with $1200 (in 1990 prices) per kilo, or $2100 in 2011 prices. A more modern rocket than Energia with 100 ton to LEO capability would be even MORE efficient.