The good news in space travel just keeps piling higher. An american group has launched a rocket to suborbital altitude.
An amateur unmanned rocket has been launched into space from the Nevada desert – the first time this has been achieved by a privately-built vehicle.
The Civilian Space eXploration Team’s 6.5m (21ft) GoFast rocket is understood to have exceeded an altitude of 100km.
The BBC’s statement may not be entirely accurate. I would have to look into the altitude reached by Space Services Inc. of America’s (SSIA) test rocket in the mid-eighties. It was launched from Matagordo Island on the Texas coast and impacted in the Caribbean.
The GoFast rocket of the Civilian Space eXploration Team rates higher marks in any case. SSIA used the upper stage from a surplus Minuteman Missile, if I remember correctly. In contrast, these folk did it from scratch.
The only other private ‘launch’ into space I am aware of was a BB sized bit of molten metal fired into solar orbit by a shaped charge final stage of a Tripoli Rocket Society rockoon in the sixties.
This is only an appetizer for the year 2004. The main course will be a manned suborbital flight by Scaled Composites. This is almost certain to happen within the next few months. I would not find it at all surprising to see SpaceShipOne ‘passenger’ flights before this year is out.
This is a very good year.
Talk of space is common in my office at the Robotics Institute, part of Carnegie Mellon. The environment is so hostile that “use robots” is our answer to almost any question.
My office mate and I agree step 1 (before Mars, before the Moon, before the Hubble) is more research on cheaper methods to get something into space.
The plausibility of any other mission is too much based on the whims of politics, as the cost is so high; there is little or no short-term bottom line benefit to anyone. It is PR.
This X-prize competition is amazing for this reason. Having a prize large enough to get many people working on the problem, but small enough to make sure aero-space giants don’t attempt it, is the key. Currently it costs around $50K/Kg. This is unacceptable.
After that, the next prize should be one of the following:
1) Bring back a rock of a sufficient mass from the asteroid field between Jupiter & Mars,
2) From space, laser X MWs from a solar cell array.
Allowing for $100M each would easily spawn multi-billion dollar cumulative efforts, solve real world problems, and cost less than half of either Opportunity or Spirit.
While #2 assumes certain efficiency levels in you solar cells, alternative methods exist such a fusion made possible by pristine manufacturing conditions in zero-G.
In general, prizes seem to do a much better job at accomplishing a number of tasks:
– The money is only spent if someone wins.
– Numerous agents spend resources to achieve the same prize, so it acts as a value multiplier.
– Coercion and bureaucratic waste usually associated with governmental action don’t really apply, unless the task to accomplished is not important enough or would already be achieved in a given time span by private resources. Looking at the X-prize, the DARPA Grand Challenge, and others, this is probably the case.
In short, this is all exciting, and I look forward to more of it in the future.
Despite all the optimism and anti-statism rhetoric, maybe we shouldn’t forget that a lot of the technology used in the current push into space by private concerns is a result of government-funded programs, all the better to kill people. An engineer friend of mine gave me a short list of stuff that had to be developed first before any private company could be induced to take the plunge.
Stuff like jet engines, supersonic flight, fly-by-wire. To build better fighters, bombers, spycraft. No commercial firm would be likely to develop the technology on its own. For what possible purpose?
In addition, most structural, rocket engine, nav engineering solutions were the results of government research to lob nukes on rockets better. GPS, inertial navigation, hybrid rocket engines, hydrogen peroxide rocket engines, ablative heat shields and many, many other details were funded by the government because no one else would cough up the money. And indeed, why would they?
It wasn’t just because NASA was overbearing in the past. The point was that space technology hadn’t progressed to the stage that non-state organizations could jump on. The costs were simply too high for any non-state organization to bear, considering the dubious results.
But since the ‘much hated state’ coughed up the massive amounts of tax funds and splurged it to develop those technologies, they are there now and on the shelf, and it’s relatively easy for private companies to pick up.
To think that private companies, even filthy rich men(eg. Paul Allen) would throw money into such technological ventures in the 1970s without even knowing if they’ll work, in the absence of admittedly wasteful government programs to develop and test the various concepts for the sole purpose of achieving space travel is ludicrous.
TWG
TWG: rubbish. These things would have been discovered, albeit perhaps piecemeal and slower, by private companies doing such things as lobbing satellites and building faster aircraft, and by private hobbyists doing space-shots.
What most people don’t realize is that this rocket is that the telemetry data, pictures, and tracking information from the rocket were transmitted using ham radio.
There are currently about 14 operational or semi-operational ham radio satellites in orbit, if you include the ham radios aboard the International Space Station. One of them was launched in 1974. The first ham radio satellite was launched in 1961, a mere 4 years after Sputnik.
We had wireless GPS tracking of objects, with map displays and even messaging capability before it was commonly available (APRS).
We were doing wireless networks (with some traffic passing through our satellites!) in the 1980’s (Packet).
The point I am trying to make is that ham radio doesn’t get the publicity it deserves. We are at the cutting edge of technology. Want to see what you can do with communications technology in 10 years? See what hams are doing now.
“Rubbish. These things would have been discovered, albeit perhaps piecemeal and slower, by private companies doing such things as lobbing satellites and building faster aircraft, and by private hobbyists doing space-shots.”
See? You admitted it yourself. ‘Piecemeal’ and ‘slower’ being the key words. You did not try to explain why they would try ablative technology. You did not try to explain that to put rockets in space in the very first place without any government effort AT ALL in the beginning is next to impossible for private companies.
The funding levels required to reach our present level was simply too high to surmount by mere hobbyists. Private companies wishing to launch satellites before the Space Age heralded by Sputnik(another horrible, horrible State program!)? Laughable.
Let’s assume there was no state in the world in the 40s willing to build rockets. There was no war, no V2. Would the science of rocketry and space flight have taken off in the first place with hobbyists and private concerns? Remember, the key phrase is ‘without a state’.
And let’s not forget advanced flight technology as a result of WW2 and the Cold War, which trickled down to huge advances in flight technology.
Don’t throw out the good along with the bad. The state, as unwieldy and inefficient as it is, is sometimes good for something. It is only as a result of pure nationalistic folly that private companies have all this cool technology available for use.
But for all that, it was the state which laid the foundations first for all to follow.
The biggest problem that I deduced was that by the 70s, it was entirely possible for private companies to take up the slack, if they so chose. The basic technologies(as developed by the government)were there, crude but usable. That they’re only doing it now tells me something about the costs being simply too high even then, and it is only now that costs are low enough for a sustained effort.
TWG:
1) You should look into the space clubs Asimov would frequent in the 40s. They were NASA’s first generation
2) Just because the government did it doesn’t mean private industry wouldn’t. If the cost was so high, doesn’t that tell you something about the usefulness?
3) There is little or no question that NASA has blocked private efforts, legally and competitively. If you disbanded NASA in 1975 and made all of the technology public (al least that which we knew the Russians already knew), then we would be more advanced today. I say this with certainty because there has been very little accomplished since then, so it could only be more.
4) Given the amazingly profitable telecommunications system that derives from satellite communication, why do you think the cost of research would be too great for these companies?
TWG says “See? You admitted it yourself. ‘Piecemeal’ and ‘slower’ being the key words.”
As an anarchist myself, I admit there’s times the state can push something faster than it would otherwise have gone. I call this the “pyramids” approach. Huge, unaccountable funding can sidestep technological progress and achieve the implausible merely by drowning the problem in resources. The pyramids were a wonder of the ancient world, but they didn’t spawn a skyscraper-building industry. They weren’t a technology, they were a brute-force-and-ignorance solution. Skyscrapers would have to wait until the modular brick and the modular steel girder, both private technologies.
I liken this to the space program. The state got us to the moon by ridiculous funding, well before the time it would have been worth business’ bother. In the process they developed technologies, most of which make no commercial sense. Some of them, like shuttle tiles, solve problems the state itself created. And there are technologies such as nuclear propulsion that were never allowed to be tried. This is why space progress stalled in the 80s. Having built pyramids, where do you go up from there? nowhere, because it’s not a technology anyone can afford to use.
It will be the present generation of private rockets that will carry forward the science of space travel.
“1) You should look into the space clubs Asimov would frequent in the 40s. They were NASA’s first generation”
Good point, but that hardly means anything. Would Goddard or Von Braun(IIRC) have managed to put something into space by their own efforts or by some private company instead of the state?
The level of funding to achieve orbit is so huge, so cost intensive that only a state or a REALLY BIG megacorp could do it. And that’s before we even consider if they would at all in the first place.
“2) Just because the government did it doesn’t mean private industry wouldn’t. If the cost was so high, doesn’t that tell you something about the usefulness?”
Cost-high does not equal ‘useful’. This is the crucial error in your logic. High costs does not always mean that something is useful. If that was true, the state might not be so reviled.
“3) There is little or no question that NASA has blocked private efforts, legally and competitively. If you disbanded NASA in 1975 and made all of the technology public (al least that which we knew the Russians already knew), then we would be more advanced today. I say this with certainty because there has been very little accomplished since then, so it could only be more. ”
This is a good point, and one I did acknowledge. I did say that in the 70s, the technology was more or less there for private companies. But if NASA was blocking the knowledge, then all bets were off, and it had little to do with costs.
“4) Given the amazingly profitable telecommunications system that derives from satellite communication, why do you think the cost of research would be too great for these companies?”
But space is certainly costly, and at the time of the 40s, 50s, would the advantages be worth all that ghastly investment?
You’re talking about billions of dollars to develop the technology from scratch to even reach a level where profit could be attained. The point becomes: Is there any company or organization able to amass resources to even 10% of the US government’s to support such a program?
The answer is probably: No.
“The state got us to the moon by ridiculous funding, well before the time it would have been worth business’ bother.”
Righto. All for the sake of the Cold War.
“In the process they developed technologies, most of which make no commercial sense. Some of them, like shuttle tiles, solve problems the state itself created.”
But of those technologies, many have found uses in the current private programs. You take both the good and the bad.
“And there are technologies such as nuclear propulsion that were never allowed to be tried.”
And this is where it gets even more laughable. Without the threat of a German nuclear program, would there even be a Manhattan project in the first place? And from there, leading on to nuclear reactors?
By private concerns, no less, when the research costs were so high that it took the wealthiest nation in the world and all the smartest scientists it could gather to develop the technology during WW2?
See, once you take away the state, you’re left with an awfully big hill to climb.
“This is why space progress stalled in the 80s. Having built pyramids, where do you go up from there? nowhere, because it’s not a technology anyone can afford to use.”
And again you neglect the fact that a lot of the present technology that is in use was based on government research. And that’s even before we consider the testing stages and the carrier aircraft that were used.
“It will be the present generation of private rockets that will carry forward the science of space travel.”
Now this statement is quite true. The technology, the foundation is there. Now we just have to build on it.
But in an anarchic world from the beginning, would we have progressed to space at all? Perhaps, but very unlikely.
TWG: The nuclear reactor was invented by Fermi with state aid as part of the Manhattan project, but it would have been invented regardless. It’s basically pretty easy to get critical uranium to heat up. Fermi managed it with a hand-assembled stack of graphite bricks.
Nuclear rockets use reactors, not bombs. So while there might never have been a Hiroshima, there would still have been the technology for nuclear powered spaceflight.
The progression from the nuclear pile that Fermi used to the huge, massive uranium enrichers required for any industrial program requires a lot of money. Getting the uranium, essentially.
That state aid you mentioned was supporting Fermi? You’ll need a heck of a lot more funding if you want to pull anything useful out of it. That’s only barebones level research, and other than the state, I don’t see any corporations taking the plunge. You give them far too much credit.
That fact is that we’re looking at the past with perfect 20/20 hindsight. We know what works and what doesn’t NOW. But imagine if it’s 60 years ago. Would anybody be crazy/stupid/rich enough to try out something they’re not even sure if it’s going to work? Out of the thousand possible research paths where only a mere 5% is of any use? Would private companies be perfectly willing to throw their money at the 95% waste in order to get that 5% benefit?
Just because they’re private doesn’t mean that their reserach will always be 100% efficient(though one hardly needs to know that the state is even more inefficient). It doesn’t mean they’ll always select the best research pathways. They’ll probably stumble into the same cul-de-sacs, the same pitfalls, the same blind alleys, as the state did. And that’s a waste of money in any case, and a private company often cannot afford such waste.
Only the state can afford the cost and the waste. The same stupid, short sighted state, that bulldozes everything in its path, is sometimes good for something.
Well, other than the machinery of war…
>>concerns is a result of government-funded programs, all the better to kill people.
Some people need killing.
You are the state, unless you refuse to participate in which case; you are an obstacle to more productive people and have no business bitching.
There is plenty of room for 6 or 60 Billion citizens on the planet, the universe isn’t enough room for 6 hundred isolationists.
None of this makes me a fan of NASA; it is the worst space agency – except for all the others. Or none.
>>concerns is a result of government-funded programs, all the better to kill people.
Some people need killing.
You are the state, unless you refuse to participate in which case; you are an obstacle to more productive people and have no business bitching.
There is plenty of room for 6 or 60 Billion citizens on the planet, the universe isn’t enough room for 6 hundred isolationists.
None of this makes me a fan of NASA; it is the worst space agency – except for all the others. Or none.