Comment on Former NASA administrator hates Artemis, wants to party like it’s 2008

echo64@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  He (rightly) sees the commercial aspect of space technology to be a deadend, but nasa is spending a huge amount of time and effort working towards enabling it in favour of doing nasa things.

  I take issue with commercial being a dead end in space. Not only has it been VERY successful, it has saved huge amounts of money over what Griffen was proposing instead. Griffen was advocating for the Constellation program. Lets take just a piece of that where commercial spaceflight is there instead: flying crew to the ISS which we do two times per year.

  The Constellation program would have used the Ares I rocket and the Orion Crew capsule. The estimated flight cost of this configuration was about $1.1 billion together for two flights. source

  The commercial option used instead is the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule. The actual flight cost is $176 for the same two flights per year. source

  For the cost of ONE year of NASA Constellation flights to the ISS, the commercial solution pays for 6 1/4 years of flights instead.

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  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Commercial spaceflight for NASA reminds me of when the Postal Service contracted out airmail. From 1918 to 1926, all air mail service was flown by US government pilots, in US government planes. Then they contracted it out to a little airplane company named Boeing.

    I think NASA should absolutely be focused on deep space exploration, and LEO operations. But even if all they do is contract out their launches it would encourage people to reduce launch costs, which I think should be our number two goal after fighting climate change.

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  • Alto@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because obviously that's what we need, to be encouraging the expansion of capitalism into space.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because obviously that’s what we need, to be encouraging the expansion of capitalism into space.

      If you feel that strongly about the negative consequences of spaceflight, you should dispose of the computer or mobile device you’re using to post this on. Those are products of the commercialization of miniaturization needed to be small and light enough for the Lunar Lander to take humans to the moon. source

      You wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite, now would you?

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      • Evkob@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Image

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      • Alto@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I love space exploration. It's absolutely something we as a species should be doing. We just shouldn't be doing it for the motives of profit.

        But sure, put things in my mouth asshat

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    • Aqarius@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Tim Curry’s gonna have an aneurysm.

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    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Space is big enough. We can start an entire anarcho-socialist planet if we want and keep them far enough away and let them eat themselves.

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  • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    how is the commercial" avenue supposed to make profit if nasa isn’t funding it. and if it can’t, isn’t it just a government program?

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      the dead end of commercial space is that it can only function as a factor of government work. it’s not a viable industry by itself.

      The alternative to this LEO space work is that taxpayers pay 6.25 times as much for the same service. Where is the logic in that?

      you can see this tale play out time and time again in other industries that have had the same problem, it doesn’t end well, it ends badly.

      I disagree with your assessment that it is an inevitability. However, lets assume for a moment you’re right and it ends in bankruptcy for SpaceX. In the time it will have operated it will have:

      • launched over 300 times
      • proven rocket reusability
      • drastically lowered the cost of spaceflight around the globe from all providers
      • created and deployed a global constellation of high speed and low latency internet access satellites giving affordable access to many corners of the globe previously unserved
      • put an additional 42 human into orbit

      If commercial space company SpaceX went out of business tomorrow, we’d still be better off than had NASA ever contracted with them.

      also you don’t need to do the big text

      Thank you for sharing your opinion on that.

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    • gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      how is the “commercial” avenue supposed to make profit if nasa isn’t funding it. and if it can’t, isn’t it just a government program?

      NASA is not the only entity that send things into orbit.

      the dead end of commercial space is that it can only function as a factor of government work. it’s not a viable industry by itself.

      SpaceX does not seems to only rely on government orders.

      True, NASA helped (well, it is an understatment) SpaceX, but now it could capitalize on it if the costs are the one @partial_accumen@lemmy.world pointed out.

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