Space Exploration

Are NASA's future missions and budget justified?

  • It's worth the time and expenditures

    Votes: 222 66.1%

  • Complete waste of money

    Votes: 41 12.2%

  • We need to explore, but not at the current cost

    Votes: 73 21.7%
  • Total voters
    336
#3,702
#3,702
twoffo said:
The newest droneship:
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You know, I know the "plan" is for the sub orbital test flight of Starship to have a water landing in the Pacific...

But does anyone else suspect SpaceX of pulling a fast one and attempting a landing on their drone ship?
 
#3,709
#3,709
Meanwhile, in REAL spaceflight news….SLS is stacked except for Spacecraft, SpaceX is testing a fully sized prototype of Superheavy Booster 3 in preparation for first flight of a fully stacked starship. Bezos and Branson can keep playing with their little cap guns all day as far as I am concerned
 
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#3,713
#3,713
OrangeTsar said:
Bezos and Branson in a crazy race to recreate a feat Alan Shepard accomplished…….(checks notes), 60 years ago 😂😂😂
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Apparently you have completely missed the significance of what Bezos and Branson are doing. They aren’t trying to compete with SpaceX (yet) or push boundaries with these projects. It’s a different demographic these companies are targeting. They are making space accessible to a much wider audience. While this ain’t cheap either, 250k for a seat on Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft is far more affordable than the $50 million for a seat on a Dragon Capsule. This gets more people excited about space and indirectly benefits everyone.
 
#3,714
#3,714
Matt2496 said:
Apparently you have completely missed the significance of what Bezos and Branson are doing. They aren’t trying to compete with SpaceX (yet) or push boundaries with these projects. It’s a different demographic these companies are targeting. They are making space accessible to a much wider audience. While this ain’t cheap either, 250k for a seat on Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft is far more affordable than the $50 million for a seat on a Dragon Capsule. This gets more people excited about space and indirectly benefits everyone.
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No, I realize the point. But I think they have miscalculated. What really gets the public excited about Space Travel is cutting edge new technology. There are dedicated 24 x 7 YouTube live streams with multiple cameras just pointed at the test site in Boca Chica. Tens of thousands of people are checking daily just to see what tanks and tower segments have been installed that day. And actual flight tests draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic can only DREAM of generating a fraction of that interest. The general public really couldn’t care less about what is basically the aerospace equivalent of America’s Cup yacht racing….rich people playing with toy rockets. I bet less than 10% of the general public even know those two companies even exist in the rocket sphere:
 
#3,716
#3,716
OrangeTsar said:
No, I realize the point. But I think they have miscalculated. What really gets the public excited about Space Travel is cutting edge new technology. There are dedicated 24 x 7 YouTube live streams with multiple cameras just pointed at the test site in Boca Chica. Tens of thousands of people are checking daily just to see what tanks and tower segments have been installed that day. And actual flight tests draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic can only DREAM of generating a fraction of that interest. The general public really couldn’t care less about what is basically the aerospace equivalent of America’s Cup yacht racing….rich people playing with toy rockets. I bet less than 10% of the general public even know those two companies even exist in the rocket sphere:
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The thing is, the novelty will wear off kinda quick unless the price drops and they'll run out of customers pretty quickly.

Now, what Virgin needs to be looking at is a orbital capable craft. That's really the next "tourism" frontier. And honestly, they don't necessarily have far to go to get above the Karman line.

Obviously, shielding and everything else will need to be worked on. But the base is there.
 
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#3,717
#3,717
Matt2496 said:
Apparently you have completely missed the significance of what Bezos and Branson are doing. They aren’t trying to compete with SpaceX (yet) or push boundaries with these projects. It’s a different demographic these companies are targeting. They are making space accessible to a much wider audience. While this ain’t cheap either, 250k for a seat on Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft is far more affordable than the $50 million for a seat on a Dragon Capsule. This gets more people excited about space and indirectly benefits everyone.
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For that $250k you get 3 minutes of weightlessness. For half that you can see practically the same thing for 3 hours at Space Perspectives. So is 3 minutes of weightlessness worth $125k?
 
#3,718
#3,718
Battle of the Space Barons: Where the billionaire space race stands - CNN
CNN sets the record for stupidity, even by their own standards. The race isn’t even CLOSE. I believe SpaceX has launched 124 rockets INTO ORBIT (payloads delivered in the thousands). Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have exactly ZERO launches into orbit and their combined total suborbital flights can be measured in minutes. This article is equivalent to asking who is the leading all time NBA scoring leader, Kareem Abdul Jabbar or OrangeTsar 😂
 
#3,719
#3,719
Grand Vol said:
The thing is, the novelty will wear off kinda quick unless the price drops and they'll run out of customers pretty quickly.

Now, what Virgin needs to be looking at is a orbital capable craft. That's really the next "tourism" frontier. And honestly, they don't necessarily have far to go to get above the Karman line.

Obviously, shielding and everything else will need to be worked on. But the base is there.
Click to expand...
Virgin Orbit ( also owned by Richard Branson) actually has on orbital capable rocket. It isn’t human rated though and it’s pretty small. It probably wouldn’t have the payload capacity to launch a capsule with life support systems on board but I don’t know the exact specs on it. Basically they have experience in orbital rockets so it wouldn’t be far fetched for them to make a tourist vehicle that could do the same thing.

Elon Musk I think will beat everybody to making an affordable orbital rocket with Starship.
 
#3,720
#3,720
Matt2496 said:
Virgin Orbit ( also owned by Richard Branson) actually has on orbital capable rocket. It isn’t human rated though and it’s pretty small. It probably wouldn’t have the payload capacity to launch a capsule with life support systems on board but I don’t know the exact specs on it. Basically they have experience in orbital rockets so it wouldn’t be far fetched for them to make a tourist vehicle that could do the same thing.

Elon Musk I think will beat everybody to making an affordable orbital rocket with Starship.
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Yeah, meant manned craft like an orbital version of the current tech.
 
#3,721
#3,721
See, I look at life differently.

Today, people want to spend money on citizens of USA to keep them alive when people are always destined to die. From a Human Race, Survival perspective, it makes sense to cut Welfare/Social Services and spend on Space Flight because if the sun goes Supernova, our species goes Extinct.

People all of the time talk about life as if human beings are invaluable but there are WAY too many people and people have very short and finite life. So yes, I think you can put a $$$ to human life and some humans are actually a net loss (i.e. violent law breakers or just wicked people). I define a net loss human (sometimes I call a useless air breather) as a human being in which society would have been better off had that human being NEVER been born.
 
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