Space topic

So Branson's Virgin Galactic seems to be up and running. Bezo's Blue Origin also made it to space, Elon Musk is still doing his thing.

Maybe it's because my FB is filled mostly with left-wing woke wannabes, but all I see on social media are these memes about how this billionaire space race is a disgrace for humanity. How are these people allowed to horde that much wealth? How is it ok for them to literally shoot for the stars when there are hungry, starving people on earth? How hypocritical of Musk to go for green technologies and electric cars when one of his launches creates more CO2 emissions than all cars combined, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.

My first reaction to this is, "Well, Karen, the fuck are YOU doing with your call center job and high school diploma?"
My second reaction to this is, You don't hate billionaires, you hate the system that created them. Musk went bankrupt TWICE, before selling paypal and investing in Tesla. While Bezos wasn't exaclty "poor," he wasn't a millionaire either when he created Amazon. The business practices at Wal-mart and Amazon are no different than those of say.... Standard Oil and Carnagie Steel.

My final reaction to this is, well.... it isn't like NASA or any other space station is getting much funding. NASA's funding has been declining pretty much since 1970. Once they made it to the Moon it was over. Russia never attempted to get to the Moon after that, nor any type of deep space probing. It wasn't a scientific race, it was a political/ideological space race and once the U.S made it, it was over. It is a MIRACLE NASA kept making space probes.

So WHY NOT billionaires? Lunar bases, space hotels, Mars colonies... this WILL help humanity. Space/military tech have given us TANG, the microwave, temperpedic mattresses, GPS, satellite communications (TV, Radio, Internet), etc. It is so easy to criticize why aren't they solving world hunger without taking note that the world has already thrown billions at the problem and it's still there. The "green revolution" of the 50s with genetically engineered crops that were half as tall, but had twice the yield ended up feeding millions.... people are still hungry. All those concerts and fund-raisers for Africa and well.... still run by warlords (the REAL issue btw.)

In short, I say let these billionaire space cowboys do their thing.
 
I hoped Bezos' rocket exploded on launch. no /s.

They're reusing tax evasion millions to provide tourism with technology made by the national institutions 50 years ago, out of taxpayers money of course.

Musk is a charlatan. That man wouldn't pass a 1st year engineering school physics exam if you put it in front of him.

Reusable rockets weren't a thing because there were errors in investment and development. Space Shuttle should've been fully reusable but it didn't, not due to NASA or contractors, but due to politics.

It is a complex topic that is filling ordinary newspapers today, and there are a lot of lay opinions around thrown by people who don't know jack shit about this industry or the humanity's space enterprise.

You already listed some inventions NASA had to do for their projects. You did not list the most important one, doesn't matter. How many technologies did the world adopt because they were implemented for the $500M Roman Abramovich yacht? 0. Because there isn't any.

Just like with these asshats.
 
Onhell said:
In short, I say let these billionaire space cowboys do their thing.
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Well I don't necessarily disagree, but we as a society are not going to profit from it.
These companies won't make breakthroughs, they'll only optimize what's already developed, for profit.

Onhell said:
My final reaction to this is, well.... it isn't like NASA or any other space station is getting much funding. NASA's funding has been declining pretty much since 1970. Once they made it to the Moon it was over. Russia never attempted to get to the Moon after that, nor any type of deep space probing. It wasn't a scientific race, it was a political/ideological space race and once the U.S made it, it was over. It is a MIRACLE NASA kept making space probes.
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This is not entirely correct, Soviets and Russians after them made a lot of breakthroughs.
NASA, post-Apollo, made a lot of advancement in a lot of categories.

James Webb space telescope is far more important for future of space travel than some balloon habitat "space station".

Onhell said:
So WHY NOT billionaires? Lunar bases, space hotels, Mars colonies... this WILL help humanity.
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Except they can't build them. And they don't have any plans to do massive R&D for this. And even if they did, it wouldn't land in public domain for god knows how many years.

Any kind of 'space tourism' that isn't based in suborbital flights is dead from stage 0. We have exactly zero technology as of this moment.

Plus none of these companies would even be here if it weren't already for infrastructure of NASA/Roscosmos. Satellite launch is not a lucrative market.

I feel your enthusiasm but I can't fool myself into thinking that these space cowboys will do anything apart from entertaining themselves and their friends/customers.
 
Zare said:
You already listed some inventions NASA had to do for their projects. You did not list the most important one,
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The Micro chip? Space pen? Nutella? Kate Upton in space? It's Nutella, isn't it? Please let it be Nutella

Zare said:
Well I don't necessarily disagree, but we as a society are not going to profit from it.
These companies won't make breakthroughs, they'll only optimize what's already developed, for profit.



This is not entirely correct, Soviets and Russians after them made a lot of breakthroughs.
NASA, post-Apollo, made a lot of advancement in a lot of categories.

James Webb space telescope is far more important for future of space travel than some balloon habitat "space station".



Except they can't build them. And they don't have any plans to do massive R&D for this. And even if they did, it wouldn't land in public domain for god knows how many years.

Any kind of 'space tourism' that isn't based in suborbital flights is dead from stage 0. We have exactly zero technology as of this moment.

Plus none of these companies would even be here if it weren't already for infrastructure of NASA/Roscosmos. Satellite launch is not a lucrative market.

I feel your enthusiasm but I can't fool myself into thinking that these space cowboys will do anything apart from entertaining themselves and their friends/customers.
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That's not entirely true either.... A space hotel is already being built. Here is the google search results so you can pick your favorite source:
Also, as far as I know Space X and Blue Origin have been doing heavy R&D. From what you are saying I am to understand that all of it is directed to improving existing technologies or previously out of reach projects, but no innovation in and of itself.

The biggest issue I see with any of this is all the space junk around the Earth. You remember that Chinese satellite that came crashing down? That's just one of thousands. Breaking through low earth orbit will be like trying to cross the asteroid belt and, like you mentioned, the hotel I mentioned above will be in said orbit, like the Hobbel, like the ISS... just MORE junk in space. Never mind the post apocalyptic scenario that one little rock can take ONE satellite out which in turn can start a chain reaction of knocking more and more satellites out until we have no HBO.
 
Here's how I feel about billionaire space races: it's fine.

There's enough money for us to come along and take half+ of their wealth and leave them with the money to have space races. And that money would be enough to provide a lot of housing and food for the poor, be enough to pay for significant health care expansion, etc. The whole thing about budgets is there is enough money in the world/US to do the things the country wants to do, both left and right, as long as they can get people and corporations to pay taxes. So many just don't, and it's a disgrace.
 
Onhell said:
So Branson's Virgin Galactic seems to be up and running.
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Branson, who just last year was trying to sue the NHS and sacked half of his Virgin Airlines staff because he allegedly had no money, is now prancing about in a multi-billion space rocket.
Onhell said:
Maybe it's because my FB is filled mostly with left-wing woke wannabes, .
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Yeah, it's the "woke lefties" who are the real problem.

Onhell said:
How are these people allowed to horde that much wealth? How is it ok for them to literally shoot for the stars when there are hungry, starving people on earth?
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Well, yes. How is it OK?
Onhell said:
My first reaction to this is, "Well, Karen, the fuck are YOU doing with your call center job and high school diploma?"
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Generally people who identify as left-wing tend to be higher earners and better educated than your average "Karen" who tend to be on the denser end of the IQ scale.
Onhell said:
people are still hungry. All those concerts and fund-raisers for Africa and well.... still run by warlords (the REAL issue btw.)
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Concerts and fundraisers for Africa? What is this, the 80's?

Africa isn't a country. And the vast majority of African nations are democratic and not run by warlords. But thanks for showing us how clued up you are on geopolitics.
 
Onhell said:
The Micro chip?
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Yep
Onhell said:
That's not entirely true either.... A space hotel is already being built. Here is the google search results so you can pick your favorite source:
Click to expand...

Vapourware. Ordinary humans can't live in suborbital acceleration which negates gravity. You need vast predisposition and training for that.
This continues to reply below

LooseCannon said:
Here's how I feel about billionaire space races: it's fine.
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Where's the responsibility?

Hotel operates in a country that has laws and codes.

Polluting the orbit is also not fine. We need less launches and more coordination, space junk is already a problem, Starlink is a problem for astronomers.

They all have grand plans for something that doesn't exist. Space tourism doesn't exist, every non spaceman that was up there was trained like one and had to work like one.

I believe you're all aware that bulk of people that had the money was always larger than the people that were allowed to go. 6 million $ AFAIR, in mid 2000s, for a place in ISS's rotation. Only 1% of the people that desired to go actually had the physical capacity.
 
Look, you're new here. We don't know each other all that well, in fact, we don't know each other at all. Your response is clearly emotional and not constructive in the least. However, I will attempt to take you seriously and go point by point.

Spaldy said:
Branson, who just last year was trying to sue the NHS and sacked half of his Virgin Airlines staff because he allegedly had no money, is now prancing about in a multi-billion space rocket.
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This goes to part of what people criticize, yes, thank you captain obvious.

Spaldy said:
Yeah, it's the "woke lefties" who are the real problem.
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Um, yes... yes they are. These are the same individuals who claim that wearing a kimono on halloween and eating tacos is racist, because of "cultural appropriation." Just because they don't want to exterminate "the gays" doesn´t it mean they aren't full of shit as well. Keep up.

Spaldy said:
Well, yes. How is it OK?
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Easy. You want to start a business. You ask your family for a small loan and the bank gives you another start-up business loan. Your business does well. You feel good, because you are now "successful." Now people hate you because you have money and they don't. They think YOU should give THEM some of that money just because "you shouldn't have that much, it's not fair!" Again, don't hate the player, hate the game, bruh.
Spaldy said:
Generally people who identify as left-wing tend to be higher earners and better educated than your average "Karen" who tend to be on the denser end of the IQ scale.
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Generally, not always. And even College educated people have said some really stupid shit as of late. Here's an anecdotal example. A friend of mine from college lives in California. Of his own admission has 7 MILLION dollars in the bank he doesn't know what to invest in. His wife is a lawyer and he is currently unemployed, but don't remember what he graduated with exactly. Him AND his wife constantly post these, "If you do this perfectly normal thing you've done your whole life YOU'RE RACIST" memes. Usually stuff I mentioned above about if you dress a certain way or eat a certain food or partake in a tradition not of your ethnic group you are now racist. One Halloween they gave a list of "racist" costumes, among them "terrorsit," which, if you think about it is in itself racist as they assume you'll dress up as an ISIS member and not the Christchurch shooter or the guy from Norway. ANYWAY, he posts a picture of some Swedish actor in a Kimono and katana with the label "THIS IS SO COOL!" and I'm thinking... So if a white person paints their face as a skull for Day of the Dead or dresses in a kimono for halloween THAT'S racist, but this swedish actor doing it for a photo up is... "coool" yah, ok, fing hypocrit, that's what.
Spaldy said:
Concerts and fundraisers for Africa? What is this, the 80's?
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EXACTLY That's when we stopped doing that crap BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T WORK.

Spaldy said:
Africa isn't a country. And the vast majority of African nations are democratic and not run by warlords. But thanks for showing us how clued up you are on geopolitics.
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I never said Africa was a country. And last I checked, the DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of Congo is neither democratic or much of a republic. IN FACT one quick look at Transparancy Internationals corruption index shows most of the WORLD is a shit show, ESPECIALLY AFRICA... yeah... the whole CONTINENT not "the country."

Also, just taking ONE, just one, of the most popular charities, the Gates Foundation, while they promote themselves as a "Global" enterprise guess where most of their efforts are going? Yup. Africa. The continent, again, not the country. I rarely see any news from their camp about making sure Ecuador or Panama or Flint Michigan have clean water, but man, gotta get AFRICA clean water and vaccines and medical care. Why? Well, apparently they can't get a handle on Malaria, Ebola and 21 million people in East Africa (that's a REGION of the continent BTW), are still dropping like flies from HIV/AIDS. That happens to be from their website if you want to take a look yourself.

So I don't know what crawled up your arse, but it wasn't me.
 
Chill out guys, nothing to do with the topic at hand. And Spaldy, that's not the way to address people who you just met.

I vehemently dislike Musk, Bezos, I don't have an opinion on Branson (I don't know much about him).
Gates is the one person that I have positive views on. My opinion still stands if he was in question.

Both USA and Russia to the larger degree, have fucked up their own state's space program. NASA being reliant on super-cabal aerospace giants to get the payloads up, who set their profit margins way too high. Russians just being corrupt as fuck. Constant de-funding calls, "poor children of Africa" speak, and so on.
 
@Onhell

You accuse me of having an emotional reaction then proceed to rant using CAPS LOCK about kimonos, "the gays", pointless anecdotes about old college friends on Facebook, the "woke left", the DRC and Gods knows what else.

You sound like you wake up angry and go to bed furious. I stopped reading after a while as it's clear you're a few baskets short of a picnic. I'll be ignoring you from now on so have a nice life.
 
Zare said:
Where's the responsibility?
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This is a legitimate concern. It's no different from Cruise ship companies being registered in Panama or Costa Rica, but function out of the U.S and Europe to avoid taxes in the best case scenarios and in the worst cases legal action.
Zare said:
They all have grand plans for something that doesn't exist. Space tourism doesn't exist, every non spaceman that was up there was trained like one and had to work like one.

I believe you're all aware that bulk of people that had the money was always larger than the people that were allowed to go. 6 million $ AFAIR, in mid 2000s, for a place in ISS's rotation. Only 1% of the people that desired to go actually had the physical capacity.
Click to expand...

True that tourism as we know it on Earth like booking a hotel and staying for a week doesn't exist yet, but the Disneyland ride experience promoted by Virgin Galactic does precede him. Russian was selling low orbit flights for like 20,000 US dollars or some crap like that. That one NSync guy... Lance Bass, was one of many rich enough to afford it peeps to go on a essentially space rollercoaster. I don't know what training if any it entailed, but it's been happening for a while now.
 
Onhell said:
So Branson's Virgin Galactic seems to be up and running. Bezo's Blue Origin also made it to space, Elon Musk is still doing his thing.

So WHY NOT billionaires? Lunar bases, space hotels, Mars colonies... this WILL help humanity. Space/military tech have given us TANG, the microwave, temperpedic mattresses, GPS, satellite communications (TV, Radio, Internet), etc. It is so easy to criticize why aren't they solving world hunger without taking note that the world has already thrown billions at the problem and it's still there
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Because the things you listed, the progress we've made, was made out of the state run programs. Clearly cut state run programs with a concise goal where you could be charged for treason if you went corrupt.
 
Zare said:
Because the things you listed, the progress we've made, was made out of the state run programs. Clearly cut state run programs with a concise goal where you could be charged for treason if you went corrupt.
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That's a fascinating point of view.... When I was in the U.S, nearly everyone praised the private sector as the true source of innovation. The most popular example tauted about was Polio. The vaccine came from the private sector. The state gave us... iron lungs. Being an outsider I found it interesting, but I'm not completely sold on it. I think a partnershiip, like that of the Genome Project, would be best and I see this at least with Space X which rents existing NASA launch pads and personnel, which in turn is good for NASA. It is "extra" money not in their budget.
 
Check out the cost of lifting 1 metric ton to low earth orbit and then tell me how would you supply the hotel? People expect abundance in a hotel, cause they're willing to pay for it. How's it going to be done? "AI revolution"?

The people that are selling this haven't invented a thing in their lifetime, remember that. Now they're selling mass habitation of low earth orbit.

Do you remember the Mars 2020 thing or what was it called? People were mocked when they called utter bullshit, because they didn't need to call anything else. If something is profound engineering b.s. then debunk is not needed.

It is not possible.

What if I'm just wrong and it indeed is possible? Then there's the responsibility part. Hotels don't come crashing out of the sky, they don't block the sun for millions of people, etc.

Where I stand profoundly in difference with the way US does it, is that I want regulation before deployment if it has a domain that involves unaffiliated people or resources. What that means is that you shouldn't fly a prototype plane over civilian heads if the said thing didn't go through the entire FAA or whatever process.

We're risking heavy unrest in this socially unfair world, if a sky hotel comes crushing down on poor peasants somewhere.

Invention has been driven both by individuals and by collectives since the dawn of man. Whatever fits. In space domain, it was the collective.
I'm always open to changing my opinion if I see betterment of the world. When Musk at al. actually invent something that pushes the industry or science forward, then I'll be open to correction.
 
I agree with you, except in the "it can't be done," part. This hotel, as well as the lunar base are about a decade out. As I stated in a post a while back, each rich guy has a different angle on their space ventures. Branson is doing "space" tours and will most likely be the future of travel. You know, from London to New York in 45 minutes instead of 7 hours or so. Musk is OBSSESSED with Mars. Yet, Bezos has the moon in sight. In fact, he wants his project, Blue Moon, to be the reusable lunar lander to be the one that supplies the future Lunar Station. Is it to crazy to think he might be the go-to to supply the Hotel? Just imagine (quite the nightmare, really) Amazon... IN SPACE!
 
Ten years out, while nothing exists outside of promo material?
Sheesh.

It took best of the breed 10 years to build the first F-22 after the initial design phase has been completed. Just one. And it's a thing you build on land. The program costed more than these billionaires are worth in total. Thousands of employed. And in a private company, but backed up with governmental insurance. Can't get any better than that.

Look my friend, first some cavemen built himself a nice room, with something resembling a bed, somewhere to piss, with a roof, and a fireplace to see in the dark. Then 10 000 years later people started with boarding houses or whatever it was.

That first room was never built in space. If you want to see how our apex looks like check the tour videos of the ISS. That's no room that's living in the pipes.

If you think 'just some enterpreneurship' is between the current situation and the thing you posted, then you should really focus on learning how things work in space flight, where we are currently, what are the barriers and what needs to be done.

Putin has 10 times more money than these American noveau riche and an entire industry. Don't you think someone like him would build a station that can obviously house hundreds of personell and seemingly has power to run an entire array of sensors? We build specially optimized chargers for common off the shelf gear such as laptops used on the ISS, so they waste 5% less energy, and someone is going to run a treadmill in space. This is truly nuts.
 
It only took the Chinese 10 days to build a Hospital :lol:

And yeah, this has all been from press releases pre-pandemic. To be honest, even without the pandemic I don't see either materializing before 2040.
Zare said:
Look my friend, first some cavemen built himself a nice room, with something resembling a bed, somewhere to piss, with a roof, and a fireplace to see in the dark. Then 10 000 years later people started with boarding houses or whatever it was.
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Don't forget that up until the 70s indoor plumbing wasn't really a thing and neither was widespread electricity. So I get you. I may be a tad more optimistic than you, but all the concerns you bring up I have to, except, I want to see if they can overcome those obstacles. I'm more excited about the lunar station than the hotel, hope it spirals into the sun. But that lunar base? could be our answer to further space exploration.
 
Well if it has any chance to materialize, and by that I mean a low-power operation for a handful of visitors, it's going to be no earlier than the date you mention, and meanwhile breakthroughs need to be done every few years, build launches have to be on clock and start pretty soon, around 2030.

There's several steps this needs to take in order to 'not be vapourware', none has been taken.

Btw humans in space, utter stupidity, at least for the time being. The energy required to sustain one person's normal day in space is the energy required to solve problems down here on earth. I don't mean that as hyperbolic, it's a statement about physics.

There is no way to generate that kind of energy up there. Yet. Nuclear power is promising but has a lot of showstoppers in reaching space. Outer space treaty is just a cherry on top, everyone would freak out if someone tried to launch a reactor. The only way to do it is to build reactor in space. There are no concise plans to do this. When they appear, we're 15-20 years away even if it has accent and funding from all the space nations.

Before that happens, space cowboys will not have those giant shoulders to stand on. Like they have in forms of open rocketry knowledge, computer science, microchips, astronomy, radio, laser, running things in space. All produced by the agencies or academies of the nations of the world. Not a rich guy.
 
I agree about space junk - read an article today that said that 52% of 1km or nearer passes in orbit are done by Starlink. Some real bullshit up there.
 
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