Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NSS and space settlement
Message-ID: <1989Feb14.180253.18858@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Feb9.100756.22055@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 89 18:02:53 GMT

In article <1989Feb9.100756.22055@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>Cut out the freshman debating tactics, Henry.

I will if you will.

>Did I suggest we not put men in space for centuries?

Basically, yes.  In the same way that a call for a cost/benefit analysis
is usually really a call for an excuse to kill the project (since costs
are usually much more quantifiable than benefits), a call to do something
"when it's appropriate" is usually really a call to forget it entirely.
If not, please name a date, or cite specific criteria that would indicate
that the time is at hand.

>Did I suggest we not do research on better boosters?

No, but you didn't suggest we do research on the physiological problems of
long-term spaceflight, which is the other real issue for man in space.
Stopping manned spaceflight means largely stopping such research, since
we have no faithful ground-based simulation of space effects.  (Bed rest
is a partial simulation but only a partial one.)

>...I said that having people in space today doesn't matter a whole lot.

Except in preparation for having them in space tomorrow.

> ...Today's manned spaceflight is largely PR nonsense.

I partially agree, but only partially.  Satellite deployment clearly does
not require a manned flight; the presence of a crew is occasionally of
some small use, but not often and it's not important.  If you believe that
satellite deployment is the only important use of spaceflight, then of
course manned spaceflight is largely PR.

>However, I will disagree that there is much that men can do in space
>in the next few decades.  Launch costs are not going to come down that
>much in that time.  I don't believe private launchers are going to
>save all that much, perhaps a factor of ten; the europeans don't even
>believe that much is possible with rockets...

Let us be specific:  *Arianespace* does not believe that much is possible
with rockets.  I can think of several reasons for Arianespace to say that,
only one of which is the possibility that it's true.  And even a factor
of ten would make an enormous difference in many ways.  I've met people
who believe much greater savings are possible, if only one stops thinking
of space launchers as military missiles.

(All existing space launchers, Ariane included, are basically missiles
at heart, despite the labels saying "civilian space launcher".  Not one
of them has been conceived from scratch by people interested in low costs
rather than mil-spec conformance.  [One doesn't find such people working
for government aerospace contractors.])

> The history of launchers
>shows that the cost of a launcher is usually lower on the sketchpad than
>on the launch pad...

Agreed... but some of the sketchpad costs are low enough to make one wonder
just how much they would inflate on the launch pad.

>About the Soviets: I think folks are going to be in for a rude surprise when
>the Soviet space program goes nowhere.  The Soviet Union is in deep economic
>trouble.  The standard of living has gone down in the last decade.  Gorby's
>reforms are a failure...

I seem to recall the same comments about the Soviet economy being made a
decade or more ago, and the Soviets have made more than a little progress
in space since then.
-- 
The Earth is our mother;       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
our nine months are up.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu