This is a very good (if unintentional) argument against manned space flight.
There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap, and there is no scientific basis for continuing to do it (other than the circular justification of learning more about how space affects the people we fire into it).
This is a very good (if unintentional) argument against manned space flight.
There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap
One should only say something like that with some physical principle as its basis, otherwise, it's just pointy-haired boss flying by the seat of one's pants.
Some prominent physicist once published a "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight in the New York Times. (One which treated atoms as billiard balls and ignored fluid dynamics.) I think it was Kant who once gave "the chemical composition of the stars" as an example of something we'd never know. Two very smart gentlemen who had good sounding arguments, but a mistaken physical basis. From this thread, I haven't any idea about your acumen nor the basis of your argument.
I think if someone told a subject of Queen Elizabeth, that someday teenagers could idly write a screed, to be read by ten-thousands or millions of others, and effectively pay only a pittance to do so, they'd be dismissed as a lunatic.
EDIT: energy to get a spacecraft to orbit? It's comparable to sending a 747 over the Atlantic.
According to somebody google found, the energy to get the shuttle into orbit is 1.17E11J, but that is just the potential and kinetic energy, neglecting the losses due to air resistance, etc.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=229835
I agree that 8.6e12J is comparable to 1.17e11J, but the energy required to flying a 747 in real life is not comparable to the potential + kinetic energy of a shuttle, neglecting all losses required to achieve that potential + kinetic energy.
In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant
plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is not comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel.
The point is that marshaling energies of that magnitude is actually pretty routine for our culture.
In particular, two million pounds of SRB propellant plus more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is not comparable to 64,225 U.S. gallons of jet fuel.
In particular, you are acting as if the fundamental problem is represented by the Shuttle. That's just one particular configuration of one possible solution. What you're doing would be like someone from the early 1900's showing the in-feasibility of the performance envelope of a 747 by quoting the stats of a Curtiss biplane.
Abandon the idea that you have to use chemical propulsion, or that you have to carry your own power, or even your own reaction mass, and you get fantastic improvement.
Here's what you get when you only keep doing the 3rd thing:
The physical principle is basic inertia. You need to accelerate a container large enough to hold a human being plus the systems needed to keep that person alive to 17,000 mph, and then decelerate them again without cooking them alive or smushing them into a paste against the inside of the vessel.
Your 747 argument is specious. The energy in a stick of firewood is comparable to that in an equivalent mass of dynamite. I invite you to set both on fire and report back on the difference.
So, your argument is that oh noes, there's Too Much Energy! (gasp). That clueless scientist's "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight rested on a speed of 600 mph being "unobtainable."
Color me impressed!
Really the hurdle for rocketry to LEO has to do with the horrendous increase of reaction mass in the rocket equation. With the enthalpies available from chemical reactions, the required delta-V for earth is just on the cusp of impractical, requiring mass-fractions just at the edge of our practical fabrication technologies.
But we are not inherently limited by the energies of chemical bonds or by the rocket equation.
I agree. Manned space programs are a waste of money. Space is a dangerous place inimical to life. There is nothing out there, no places to go, no economical resources to claim. The analogy to seafaring implicit in the term spacefaring is an emotional appeal to adventure and discovery. But going to the moon is not comparable to the discovery and colonization of America. I am happy we went to the moon, it is a great achievement but nobody can live there or on Mars. Though I oppose govt stimulus spending, if we must spend a fortune on an "adventure" program let's colonize the oceans or learn to sea-farm or drill to the center of the Earth or build giant pyramids in the Nevada desert. Such projects would at least have the virtue of being honest goals.
> The thing is, nobody has compared the moon and North America.
The comparison is implicit and my statement was a generalization; that spacefaring means traveling and colonizing the moon and beyond.
> Instead.. the moon is analogous to the inhabitable rocky island just off the coast, just past the horizon.
This is exactly the analogy I was rejecting in my comment. The moon and space are inhospitable. Even the astronauts who went to the moon and back were lucky they weren't fried by radiation. They were getting dosed the whole way and avoided a solar flare or radiation flux that would have killed them out right. Not to mention the deleterious effects of long term zero-G on biological systems. For the Vikings it was "relatively" easy to get there by orders of magnitude and no need to bring air, food and water to their destination and total dependence on complex support systems.
I'm not trying to quash your dreams and I am as big a fan of the early explorers as the next guy but living in space is totally impractical at this point. I wouldn't rule out venturing out in space some day but that is probably 100's of years away, if ever.
I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it was to build a ship capable of traveling for a few days, landing at islands with no source of food or fresh water, and returning safely home 1300 years ago.
The only thing on your list they didn't have to worry about was bringing along oxygen. Food? Water? Life support systems? Check. Check Check.
The only difference is that early sea explorers were able to realize economic benefits incrementally. With space flight, the possibility of incremental economic viability is murky at best, and almost certainly improbable.
But you honestly strike me as somebody who hasn't grown up on a coast. The ocean is a dangerous, dangerous place. So much so that even now we haven't come close to mastering it.
Today, we're the 8th century vikings. Not the 14th. But there'd never have been 14th century vikings without the icremental achievements along the way...
"I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it was to build a ship capable of traveling for a few days, landing at islands with no source of food or fresh water, and returning safely home 1300 years ago."
If I am, so what? That is completely irrelevant to the point that space is inhospitable to human life and drastically different than setting sail to risky and unknown, far-away destinations on the earth. Nobody is going to get space-ship wrecked on an asteroid. They would be dead.
"The only difference is that early sea explorers were able to realize economic benefits incrementally."
That is far from the "only" difference and this statement is delusional if you actually believe it. I think that you've been reading too much science fiction.
Actually, I'm not much of a sci fi fan. You've been trying the "Sci Fi Dreamer Pander" three posts in a row now. Starting to get old. It's an obvious way of saying "you're affected by some dogma, I'm not." Nice try. Nobody is buying it.
There is no way that firing an elaborate terrarium full of large primates into space is ever going to be cheap, and there is no scientific basis for continuing to do it (other than the circular justification of learning more about how space affects the people we fire into it).