The End of the Space Age

[Zaune]

You know, I've often thought that the problem of space colonisation is less "how do we reach another planet?" than "what are we going to do once we get there?" The main reason NASA hasn't sent a manned expedition to the Moon since Apollo was wound up is that we've probably learned as much as we're going to about the place; it might have certain advantages as a launchpad for longer-range missions but it's unlikely to support a large civilian population unless someone finds a vitally important use for helium-3. Mars is a slightly better prospect, even without terraforming, but any suggestion it could be absorb our overpopulation problems is optimistic at best.

[Zac Naloen]

Another problem is that unless we invent artificial gravity, anyone that goes to live on the moon will not be coming home again easily after they've been there half a year or more..

Any kids born up there will be similarly stuck, perhaps more so having never lived in earth like gravity.

[K. A. Pital]

Another problem is that unless we invent artificial gravity, anyone that goes to live on the moon will not be coming home again easily after they've been there half a year or more..

Any kids born up there will be similarly stuck, perhaps more so having never lived in earth like gravity.

Realistic issues, but ones which hardly preclude creating bases. After all, these places are going to be filled with hardcore scientists and explorers, not with Joe Average who is not ready to make any sacrifices at all. I remember watching Planet ES and thinking how god damn real the whole thing seems to me, and all these issues were mentioned therein, except they did not preclude space exploration at all.

[Broomstick]

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

Excuse me - a "colony" is when you go and set up long-term habitability somewhere else. When Europeans went to the New World or Australia they set up local "life support" for themselves - planted food, built from native materials, etc. When you have to bring everything with you, down to the air you breathe, that's not a colony. A truly established colony, while enjoying importation of some items hard or impossible to produce locally, is capable of supporting itself long term with the basics. If you're going somewhere to live, to raise children to adults, to build cities and live long-term, you can't rely on constant re-supply from afar. You have to either produce, gather, or recycle locally. We haven't done that. Sure, we have tried to do that, but the success has been extremely limited and insufficient to even supplement the diets of people living for months in orbit.

That seems to be a point people are missing. Sure, you need to be able to get to the Moon or Mars or wherever you're going, but you also need to live once you get there. I question if we are any closer to a self-sufficient colony from the prospect of living somewhere long term, not merely just getting there.

[K. A. Pital]

When you have to bring everything with you, down to the air you breathe, that's not a colony.

You can and eventually will produce stuff like air locally. Orangeries for a fully local oxygen supply were developed as early as the 1960s and a project with full technical feasilibity study was completed in Russia in 1983. You are seriously overestimating the needs to supply a team of 12 men or so. The garden module and water tank modules developed in 1969-1985 for the Russian moon base program were projected as being capable of creating a fully self-sufficient base, in case of a supply catastrophe the citizens would be able to survive for a while taking the necessary vitamins from the precise selection of resilient flora picked for the mission.

I think we shouldn't make scientists look dumb. They spent a lot of effort to make a COLONY, not just a spaceship which landed on the moon. Everyone understood that to actually live there, you'll need more than an oversized Apollo lander.

[Broomstick]

Did anyone ever actually test those modules? Granted we couldn't plunk them down on the moon (or at least, we never tried to) but did anyone ever have a team of folks lock themselves into a sealed environment for a year or two and try to live in a genuinely closed-loop system? I've never heard of such an experiment and would be delighted to find out one was successfully done.

The closet I'm aware of is Biosphere II which was not exactly a roaring success - but then, I'm not entirely disappointed as some of the lessons learned were what NOT to do.

[PeZook]

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.

Total launch cost is an amalgam of a lot of things. The Shuttle could've been absurdly cheap with far more launches per year, because a significant part of its cost is the complicated infrastructure. It's also a manned system, so the checkout procedures themselves are expensive. Also, its thermal protection system eats a fuckton of man-hours. Very well paid man-hours.

The Soyuz doesn't have that. Small rockets can be launched off tiny, simple launch pads, assembled horizontally, etc.

But with the amount of launches necessary to match heavy lifters, those tiny fixed costs can accumulate. Delta IV Heavy is a great rocket that has no competitor in its weight class, so it also could probably be cheaper if Boeing didn't have a monopoly on that.

Altogether, I am prepared to trust NASA's evaluation, imperfect as they may be, since the guys doing them are sitting right in the middle of those issues. And NASA thinks it needs on-orbit refuelling, and it ALSO thinks it could use a shuttle-derived heavy lifter.

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?

This I am not qualified to answer

It could crush other systems, or it could not. It depends a lot on design decisions, technology used, procedures, mission...too many variables to answer. It's the same reason why nobody gives reliable estimates on cost-per-launch for Energia.

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

A fully reuseable heavy lift rocket would be pretty much a wet dream. The Shuttle can get away with (relatively) cheap flights thanks to the fact it can reuse its ridiculously expensive SSMEs, but I have no idea if it's at all possible to achieve. After all, the Shuttle does that only by sacrificing 80% of its lifting capacity for the orbiter airframe, which kinda kills the point

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.

That estimate isn't very reliable, though. It never really flew operationally outside of a couple test flights.

[K. A. Pital]

Did anyone ever actually test those modules? Granted we couldn't plunk them down on the moon (or at least, we never tried to) but did anyone ever have a team of folks lock themselves into a sealed environment for a year or two and try to live in a genuinely closed-loop system? I've never heard of such an experiment and would be delighted to find out one was successfully done. The closet I'm aware of is Biosphere II which was not exactly a roaring success - but then, I'm not entirely disappointed as some of the lessons learned were what NOT to do.

Biosphere II was freaking large and thus very complex. Humans would've started by smaller things. I think this may be exciting for you: BIOS-3, made in the USSR to test possible future Moon/Mars habitats, successfully functioned for many years and numerous tests for oxygen, soils, fertilizers and plant selection, food production from chlorella etc. were done there. Only by 1972 did BIOS-3 arise, because the prior system (BIOS-2, a successor to BIOS-1 tested in 1964) produced the necessary result (85% recycling and useful nutrients, as opposed to just making enough chlorella to recycle air - that was easy, but it didn't solve the food problem). However, it did succeed even if it took a decade.

Gas and water requirements were FULLY covered by BIOS-3 (for a term as long as 13 months - a record set by engineer Nikolai Bugreev), and food requirements were covered 80% - which means you only had to supply 20% of required food externally. A jolly good and exciting result if you ask me.

In 1983, it was BIOS which lay as the foundation of the Soviet Moonbase modules which were supposed to make it a true colony. And the fate of it? The USSR collapsed and the unique closed ecosystem was stopped. Tough luck. Although ESA did help us a bit and funded the reconstruction of BIOS-3 in Krasnoyarsk. Cosmos help them, and thanks to Europe!

[Zac Naloen]

Another problem is that unless we invent artificial gravity, anyone that goes to live on the moon will not be coming home again easily after they've been there half a year or more..

Any kids born up there will be similarly stuck, perhaps more so having never lived in earth like gravity.

Realistic issues, but ones which hardly preclude creating bases. After all, these places are going to be filled with hardcore scientists and explorers, not with Joe Average who is not ready to make any sacrifices at all. I remember watching Planet ES and thinking how god damn real the whole thing seems to me, and all these issues were mentioned therein, except they did not preclude space exploration at all.

I agree, not deal breakers.

But certainly something to make sure colonists understand. It won't be like other types of isolated outposts (i.e the artic) where you can always come home again relatively easy. Coming home would mean months of painful physio or an exosuit to move you around for the duration. (the latter actually sounds like something that could be a reasonable thing to live with to me, if exo-suits become more mainstream and streamlined for the disabled)

I understand it affects the cardio-vascular system as well though so no strenuous activities.

[K. A. Pital]

Altogether, I am prepared to trust NASA's evaluation, imperfect as they may be, since the guys doing them are sitting right in the middle of those issues. And NASA thinks it needs on-orbit refuelling, and it ALSO thinks it could use a shuttle-derived heavy lifter.

That's rather sensible - I already said the SLS is a good rocket. Orbital refuelling coupled with the SLS will grant even greater interplanetary capabilities.

A fully reuseable heavy lift rocket would be pretty much a wet dream. The Shuttle can get away with (relatively) cheap flights thanks to the fact it can reuse its ridiculously expensive SSMEs, but I have no idea if it's at all possible to achieve. After all, the Shuttle does that only by sacrificing 80% of its lifting capacity for the orbiter airframe, which kinda kills the point

To be fair, both the Shuttle and the Energia were designed with a fully reusable version in mind. It was technically feasible - but probably required another 4-5 years of testing, if not a whole decade. That's not what I'd call a wet dream.

That estimate isn't very reliable, though. It never really flew operationally outside of a couple test flights.

Even if it is three times the figure, that's for a rocket made in the 1980s. We're in 2011 now. We can probably do with radically lower costs, if we make it a priority to make large rockets with low per-kilo costs - priorities matter. And considering Energia's engines were some of the most powerful and efficient in the entire field, I can sort of believe the rocket was a tad more efficient than other superheavies.

So I'm not arguing for another Apollo - "screw the costs, reach the goal" - on the other hand, setting a correct goal (wide-scale interplanetary exploration) while aiming for a low cost (cheap but very powerful rockets) seems to be the best idea.

[Beowulf]

That estimate isn't very reliable, though. It never really flew operationally outside of a couple test flights.

Even if it is three times the figure, that's for a rocket made in the 1980s. We're in 2011 now. We can probably do with radically lower costs, if we make it a priority to make large rockets with low per-kilo costs - priorities matter. And considering Energia's engines were some of the most powerful and efficient in the entire field, I can sort of believe the rocket was a tad more efficient than other superheavies.

In Soviet Russia... you can't trust their costings of stuff. Since Energia didn't last past the fall of the USSR, unlike Soyuz and the R-7 rocket, we can't trust how much they'd say it costed because they didn't have a good handle on it either. Powerful and efficient is somewhat at odds with cheap. Efficient engines cost more, because they need tons of extra tech to boost their Isp. Powerful and inefficient while cheap is believable.

[phongn]

To be fair, both the Shuttle and the Energia were designed with a fully reusable version in mind. It was technically feasible - but probably required another 4-5 years of testing, if not a whole decade. That's not what I'd call a wet dream.

Fully-reusable Shuttle was a radically different design* that was much less capable than what flew (but also probably would've made far higher flight rates). I doubt it would've taken more time, but it would've cost a lot more money - money that wasn't available in the 1970s.

* There was also the present shuttle launched on top of an S-IC (complete with winged flyback varient) but that one was really unlikely

[K. A. Pital]

Powerful and efficient is somewhat at odds with cheap. Efficient engines cost more, because they need tons of extra tech to boost their Isp. Powerful and inefficient while cheap is believable.

You wouldn't buy these engines (well, scaled versions of them) if they were inefficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-170_(rocket_engine)
What say you?

I doubt it would've taken more time, but it would've cost a lot more money - money that wasn't available in the 1970s.

Money is a question of will.

[PeZook]

That's rather sensible - I already said the SLS is a good rocket. Orbital refuelling coupled with the SLS will grant even greater interplanetary capabilities.

Well,we don't know how the new heavy lifter will perform, since it's still on the drawing board, but the idea seems sensible at first glance, yeah.

To be fair, both the Shuttle and the Energia were designed with a fully reusable version in mind. It was technically feasible - but probably required another 4-5 years of testing, if not a whole decade. That's not what I'd call a wet dream.

"Wet dream" means everybody would love it, not that it's fundamentally impossible.

Though I've never heard of a fully reuseable Energia variant. The top stage is always going to be extremely difficult to salvage, because it boosts the payload to orbit. So it would have to carry fuel to deorbit, and be able to survive re-entry...like the Shuttle orbiter

Even if it is three times the figure, that's for a rocket made in the 1980s. We're in 2011 now. We can probably do with radically lower costs, if we make it a priority to make large rockets with low per-kilo costs - priorities matter. And considering Energia's engines were some of the most powerful and efficient in the entire field, I can sort of believe the rocket was a tad more efficient than other superheavies.

I think 2500-3000 per kilo is about the limit of what you can do with today's technology. The Falcon 9 is pretty much state-of-the art, and made with the objective of minimizing costs from the start.

So I'm not arguing for another Apollo - "screw the costs, reach the goal" - on the other hand, setting a correct goal (wide-scale interplanetary exploration) while aiming for a low cost (cheap but very powerful rockets) seems to be the best idea.

Yeah, starting with a goal would be pretty essential

You wouldn't buy these engines (well, scaled versions of them) if they were inefficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-170_(rocket_engine)
What say you?

I say the RD-170 and RD-180 don't hold a candle to the SSME, which is fully 1/3rd more efficient than both of them.

The Shuttle couldn't afford to throw away three SSMEs each launch. It would drive launch costs through the roof, so it saves some money on bringing those back (it's exactly as Beowulf says, efficient engines are expensive, so single-use ones are always somewhat inefficient compared to what they could be).

[K. A. Pital]

Though I've never heard of a fully reuseable Energia variant.

http://www.buran.ru/htm/41-3.htm
GK-175. From an engineering standpoint it looks feasible, if you ask me. Too bad the project only had theoretical calculations. In general, the throw-off approach is wasteful and future technologies should definetely center on reusability.

I think 2500-3000 per kilo is about the limit of what you can do with today's technology.

Non-reusable technology, that is. Yeah, 2500 modern dollars is pretty much the lower limit for non-reusable stuff, but reusable projects aimed for twice lower figures.

[PeZook]

Another problem is that unless we invent artificial gravity, anyone that goes to live on the moon will not be coming home again easily after they've been there half a year or more..

Any kids born up there will be similarly stuck, perhaps more so having never lived in earth like gravity.

This will be true for children, sure, but stays of a year or so should produce no health problems. Several cosmonauts lived in microgravity aboard Mir for periods from six months to a year or more, and readapted to Earth gravity quite quickly.

And, of course, the Moon is not in microgravity. Unless you're talking about stays of a decade or more, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

http://www.buran.ru/htm/41-3.htm
GK-175. From an engineering standpoint it looks feasible, if you ask me. Too bad the project only had theoretical calculations. In general, the throw-off approach is wasteful and future technologies should definetely center on reusability.

This is pretty awesome! Thanks for the link

Though I have to note this article makes the note that such a design will have to sacrifice some useful payload, just like the Shuttle, to allow reuseability. Still, I love those theoretical concepts

Especially when they morp into useable stuff later on...

[someone_else]

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.

Even if they are inflatable, they aren't rubber dinghys. The materials they are made of withstand easily stuff that would puncture the ISS. And manage to have 1/5 of the internal space of ISS per module.
You are also ignoring SpaceX, I was thinking mostly of SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace, not that air-launched suborbital nonsense. SpaceX's Dragon capsule is in testing, and they are designing the Falcon Heavy, a 50 tonner that they plan to sell for a competitive price (around 100 millions).

After some kind of businness in orbit is established, like satellite and GEO/Moon rocket refueling, and space hotels, costs will go down as the launches of people/propellant/supplies per year increases.
Now that there is some profit to be made regardless of government's whims, real money will be put onto the fray and modern stuff will be designed. Those will drive costs down further.

With 700 ton-to-LEO rockets which were quite feasible even with 1960s level of technology you could do much, much more.

They were paperwork of "feasible stuff" back then no less than Orion BOOM BOOM drive was. Or, for that matter, 100 ton payload fully-reusable LANTRs (nuclear thermal drives with oxygen afterburner).

Besides, what are the names of such heavy lifters?

you failed basic economics - a bigger rocket = economy of scale, launch cost per kilogram decreases.

The biggest cost in rocketry is the manpower necessary to have it ready to launch, the rocket itself isn't so horribly complex to have a price worth decreasing. Commercial designs anyway. Military stuff is gold-plated as usual.
Skgoa said that the general rule of thumb about rockets was that only 1/5 of the launch cost is actually the hardware production cost (hope I understood it correctly ).

Manpower is a fixed cost (and slave labor is not very good for reliability). The more you launch, the less the costs per launch since you split the cost of employee wages on more launces.

Big Rockets tend to be launched much less due to handling problems and payload capacity, and require more manpower since they have more components.
More people + low launch rate = far higher price than anything else.

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?

I need to know the upkeep for a 100 to 700 tonner of yours. The costs of launching 130 tons of fuel on smaller cheaper rockets we have already (from Soviet Russia) are generally cheaper, not taking the price reduction due to higher launch rate into account.

Saturn V was 2 billions dollar plus spare change a pop. Similar LEO payload, 110 or so tons.

The main point is simple, the smaller rockets require less people, that work more. They also require cheaper launch facilities and can be less reliable than the Big One since they are designed to lift propellants and cheap crap, but that still means you have a relatively acceptable success rate. For example, Zenits seem to have a 6:1 success failure ratio (58 launches, 8 failures).
That means if a launch costs around 40 million dollars, you add the cost of a launch every 6 that blows up and you get that on average to send 13 tons of propellants to LEO you are paying 46 million dollars.

So, if we want to put the Saturn V to shame, to launch 130 tons of propellants up you need just 460-500 million dollars and 10-15 launches, plus the cost of some kind of reusable propellant depot stationed in space, that receives the propellants and stores them for a long time (which isn't horribly complex).

High reliability has its price, and it's very high when you get above the 80% (I've seen people claim that to go from 80% to 99% success rate the price triples or quadruples easily, but I don't know how reliable they were). It is smarter to have small high-reliability man-rated rockets that lift the capsule with the people, and use less-reliable rockets to boost up everything else.

Also, the more rockets you launch, the more you see where they can fuckup, this means that in general such rockets will become more reliable after the first 50 or so launches.

You are simply taking another sphere of scientific exploration and, in the absence of any major space exploration breakthroughs, declare this a huge progress.

The article said we are losing capabilities and that we will all die alone in the dark. Which for the case of robotic space exploration is frankly not true. Plenty of probes around doing useful science.
Ok, robotics and computers are not only geared to conquer space, but remain significant progress that is very useful in space endeavors as well.

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.

Newsflash: robots don't need so heavy support machinery as humans, and most importantly they don't need to be able to come back (major weight savings). This means now you can do the same job with much less payload capacity than back then. Just as you said, it is a sector of necessary technology, that helps doing something better.

You can scream it does not decrease the launching costs, but it does significantly decrease the payload, so the cost of the mission is significantly decreased anyway. So it is useful progress for space exploration AND exploitation.

http://www.buran.ru/htm/41-3.htm
GK-175. From an engineering standpoint it looks feasible, if you ask me. Too bad the project only had theoretical calculations. In general, the throw-off approach is wasteful and future technologies should definetely center on reusability.

It's indeed pretty cool, but I can only look at the images . Any chance of an article in english?
The "rocket boosters" remind me of those Baikal things.

Yeah, 2500 modern dollars is pretty much the lower limit for non-reusable stuff, but reusable projects aimed for twice lower figures.

Would be interesting to know the fly rate they planned to have for those low prices to happen.
If reusables don't fly often they aren't better than a standard rocket.

The top stage is always going to be extremely difficult to salvage, because it boosts the payload to orbit. So it would have to carry fuel to deorbit, and be able to survive re-entry...like the Shuttle orbiter

Designing it from the beginning for the goal, you can keep spent upper stages in space and build fucking huge space stations with them. With Shuttle was not feasible due to the annoying orange thermal insualtion that constantly lost pieces and would become a space debris generator, but you don't necessarily need that.

Heh, goals goals...

[Skgoa]

you failed basic economics - a bigger rocket = economy of scale, launch cost per kilogram decreases.

The biggest cost in rocketry is the manpower necessary to have it ready to launch, the rocket itself isn't so horribly complex to have a price worth decreasing. Commercial designs anyway. Military stuff is gold-plated as usual.
Skgoa said that the general rule of thumb about rockets was that only 1/5 of the launch cost is actually the hardware production cost (hope I understood it correctly ).

Actually, I was making a point about actual complete cost of doing stuff in space, in order to show that the cost of the actual rocket isn't the only significant factor. The way this rule of thumb it has been handed down to me (from former NASA engineers) was in the form of "the five major parts of the mission all more or less cost the same, each" Now, I'm not sure I remember all of them correctly right now - as its 4 am and I haven't slept last night either - but I think it was: mission planing/r&d, spacecraft hardware, launcher hardware, the actual launch(i.e. shipping, fuel, handling) and administration/overhead(/people watching the rovers so they don't bump into anything ).
So, typically the rocket itself is roughly halve of what it costs to launch a block of aluminum.

BTW according to NASA's own budget proposals the cost of launching the Shuttle nowadays - if people are on the payroll and lights are kept on etc. anyways - is a relatively meager USD 100 million. I think this has even been said by one of the former NASA bosses (while still on the job) in a Senate hearing. It should be noted that average cost of a Shuttle launch over the whole duration of the project including r&d and initial orbiter production was USD 500 million. (So in this case, the 1/5 relation actually is true. )


And as a point regarding economies of scale: actually, you get advantages from mass producing simple stuff, not producing one big thing. someone_else has given good answers to that, but I don't want to fracture my post by commenting on every single thing once at a time.
Simpler things cost less. They even cost disproportionally less, because they pose far simpler engineering challanges and require less complicated production processes. A smaller rocket is disproportionally simpler than a bigger one, because many effects (combustion instability, chamber pressure, the rocket's own weight, aero loads) scale higher than lineary and thus are way bigger problems for bigger rockets. And - crucially - small rockets can get away with more inefficiency, becauy one lost kg of payload is far less problematic than 500.
And if that wasn't enough, here is a direct quote from a DLR (german NASA) guy: "If we had a rocket that has halve the payload but only costs halve, we would go for it." (Translated from german by me, quote is from the DLR's podcast Raumzeit.) The reasoning behind that being that you would be more free to choose launch dates and trajectories if you don't have to worry about filling up the payload cappacity of an Ariane 5 launch. Thats why ESA's next rocket will probably be significantly smaller than the A5.

[Skgoa]

(So in this case, the 1/5 relation actually is true. )

... I am too tireded. :/ I meant that this is a relation with a factor of 1/5 not, that this is the relation we were talking about.


Another tidbit about Shuttle launch cost that I couldn't add due to the edit window being closed:

Just as a comparison: a Saturn V launch had a cost of USD 1.11 billion. (adjusted for inflation, i.e. its in 2011's USD.) I don't know if that is computed from the whole cost program like the Shuttle figure or for just the launch. That doesn't matter anyways, because the cost per kg is already staggeringly in favor of the Shuttle. And many see that launch vehicle being unnecessary costly, as well.

[Bluewolf]

The BBC did a feature on the history of the Space Shuttle, it has a fair few clips and I thought it'd be generally quite interesting and relevant for this thread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14056002

[Zixinus]

I disagree. The USA developed those capabilities during/after WW2 to deal with the Nazi's/Soviets respectively.

Dealing with nazis was done in relatively short period. The USA was never directly threatened by the Third Rich (at best, it sent submarines to intercept US shipments).
As for the Soviets, yes, that's a more complex topic. However how much was it necessary and how much of it was made just to appeal to some ficticious scenario based on educated guesses?

Yet, even if it was necessary, NASA's budget was always tiny compared to how much it spent on not only creating a military but various DOD projects.

For the price of an aircraft carrier to be made or even to be just maintained, NASA and the likes could have made incredible things: maybe even have funded a great shuttle replacement (there was one, but it got cancelled). For all I know, it could have even a highly-effective launch system that could send people to the Moon easily.

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.

Not to sound like a cold-war-era, communist-hating wanker but: for now. We don't know how the global political situation can change in the future.

But even if that's ignored, here's the following point:

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.

Even if they don't, money in the budget can be allocated to a lot of things. Some of it good, some of it strange and I'd be not surprised that some of it downright stupid or even corrupt.

Maybe China won't be spending more on warfare, but I wouldn't be surprised that it can find something else to spend it on. I admit that I'm not too familiar with Chinese politics. But it doesn't make much of a strench of an imagination that they will find something.

[Uraniun235]

Another problem is that unless we invent artificial gravity, anyone that goes to live on the moon will not be coming home again easily after they've been there half a year or more..

There have so far been five humans that have spent more than a year in continuous orbit of the Earth; two launched by Russia and three by the Soviet Union. My understanding is that they have all successfully readapted, usually within two months of returning from space.

[Zac Naloen]

And was it easy?

[Skgoa]

If we are talking about single people just living for a while, most problems have been solved sufficiently. Actual populations living up there for their whole lives is something else entirely, though. E.g. no one has had a baby in space, yet. So while people should be ok for a couple of years, nobody really knows how easy or hard real colonization is going to be. Don't know if that is an argument for or against your position, so yeah.

[Zac Naloen]

My position is that coming back to earth after an extended trip in space is not as easy as spending half a year or more in a remote location such as the antartic.

You require hours of exercise daily to prevent bone and muscle wastage, and then when you come back it's still weeks of physio.


That is not even close to my definition of easy.