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> Nobody has yet demonstrated any manufacturing process that's enough better in microgravity to justify the launch costs... let alone the enormous infrastructur

> Nobody has yet demonstrated any manufacturing process that's enough better in microgravity to justify the launch costs... let alone the enormous infrastructure you'd need to do any of it a remotely interesting scale. And if it did, you could likely do it lights-out more easily than you could keep people alive to do it hands-on. This has already been demonstrated via Varda Space and yes, they do it robotically with no humans in orbit. As for the rest of this comment, thank goodness this type of incredibly depressing and pessimistic attitude is not widespread among engineers, we'd never achieve anything.

ryandrake 3y ago
I don't think it's really depressing or pessimistic. A serious argument can be made that manned spaceflight is unnecessary when everything we need to do in space can be done remotely with robotics. The delta-V-times-mass spent launching relatively heavy redundant meatbags (people) into space could be saved or repurposed for launching even better machines.
- IncreasePosts 3y ago
  One of the things we do in space is inspire future generations to look up and dream about space. Will robots help with that?
Hizonner 3y ago
[flagged]
- knowaveragejoe 3y ago
  It is a depressing and pessimistic way to look at the world! > Varda demonstrated crystallizing ritonavir (presumably without getting form II). > This is already done at scale on Earth. Is it? The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided. > and these are the same people who couldn't get their shit together to get a permit to land their spacecraft on time. The issue appears to stem from the FAA's side of things. One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with only a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's hardly "not having their shit together".
  - avmich 3y ago
    Saying "human shouldn't fly to space" is like saying "we shouldn't build particle accelerators or sequence DNAs". It's purely uneducated point of view, which doesn't cost much. No reason for depression at all.
  - Hizonner 3y ago
    > Is it? It's part of the standard HIV therapy, which means it's being given to literally millions of people on a regular basis. A generic version is approved in the US, and probably elsewhere, which means that more than one company is making it. It's a WHO-listed essential medicine. Short of ibuprofen or something, that's about as "at scale" as it gets for drugs. > The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided. Apparently it can be crystallized reliably enough to support heavy use. There was a bad problem in 1998 where a more stable, but less potent, form was showing up. Apparently if there's even a tiny bit of that in a batch, it propagates and ruins the whole batch, so forward microcontamination was ruining all the batches. I think that was the first time anybody knew that that form even existed. My guess is that that is happening in approximately zero batches right now. But even if it's ruining half the batches, throwing them away is still cheaper than trying to do it in space.
  - Hizonner 3y ago
    > One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with only a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's hardly "not having their shit together". Yeah, it really is. They took dumb chances and endangered their mission. You can't cut corners on that kind of thing. ... and that's assuming you fully accept their version of events.
    - knowaveragejoe 3y ago
      It could only be construed as dumb insofar as we assume the FAA's side of things is totally sane in its own right. Which, knowing government, it's probably not.
      - 3y ago

ryandrake 3y ago

I don't think it's really depressing or pessimistic. A serious argument can be made that manned spaceflight is unnecessary when everything we need to do in space can be done remotely with robotics. The delta-V-times-mass spent launching relatively heavy redundant meatbags (people) into space could be saved or repurposed for launching even better machines.

IncreasePosts 3y ago
One of the things we do in space is inspire future generations to look up and dream about space. Will robots help with that?

Hizonner 3y ago

[flagged]

knowaveragejoe 3y ago
It is a depressing and pessimistic way to look at the world! > Varda demonstrated crystallizing ritonavir (presumably without getting form II). > This is already done at scale on Earth. Is it? The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided. > and these are the same people who couldn't get their shit together to get a permit to land their spacecraft on time. The issue appears to stem from the FAA's side of things. One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with only a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's hardly "not having their shit together".
- avmich 3y ago
  Saying "human shouldn't fly to space" is like saying "we shouldn't build particle accelerators or sequence DNAs". It's purely uneducated point of view, which doesn't cost much. No reason for depression at all.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  > Is it? It's part of the standard HIV therapy, which means it's being given to literally millions of people on a regular basis. A generic version is approved in the US, and probably elsewhere, which means that more than one company is making it. It's a WHO-listed essential medicine. Short of ibuprofen or something, that's about as "at scale" as it gets for drugs. > The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided. Apparently it can be crystallized reliably enough to support heavy use. There was a bad problem in 1998 where a more stable, but less potent, form was showing up. Apparently if there's even a tiny bit of that in a batch, it propagates and ruins the whole batch, so forward microcontamination was ruining all the batches. I think that was the first time anybody knew that that form even existed. My guess is that that is happening in approximately zero batches right now. But even if it's ruining half the batches, throwing them away is still cheaper than trying to do it in space.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  > One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with only a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's hardly "not having their shit together". Yeah, it really is. They took dumb chances and endangered their mission. You can't cut corners on that kind of thing. ... and that's assuming you fully accept their version of events.
  - knowaveragejoe 3y ago
    It could only be construed as dumb insofar as we assume the FAA's side of things is totally sane in its own right. Which, knowing government, it's probably not.
    - 3y ago