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No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations
- mikkupikku 8mo agoNobody can even come up with a coherent reason for any of these proposals to exist. Even the ISS is more of a political instrument than a real science thing. NASA likes to say its about studying how to help humans live in space, but those results were in decades ago: more than a few months in zero-g wrecks people. So why are we still trying to build old modular Salyut/Mir derivatives instead of trying to figure out the minimum spin humans need to stay healthy? Because the whole point is to do familiar safe things while providing full time jobs for ground control.
- metalman 8mo agoRight! And because China has a good chance of pulling of a moon and then mars landing first, they are lurching into, hmmmm,ok,they are lurching flat out trying to bluster up a program without disturbing the space grift industry, ie: SLS , Shuttle Leftover Systems and the whole thing disolves into cringe
- Muromec 8mo agoDisbanding NASA would be one of those symbolic things thay people will associate the dusk of American empire.
- readthenotes1 8mo agoNah. It will probably be either the Space Shuttle or Artemis. That is to say, programs that showed NASA lost control of its mission to graft
- pfdietz 8mo agoAvoiding something for such symbolic reasons is negative cargo cult thinking.
- Supermancho 8mo ago> Avoiding something [disbanding NASA] for such symbolic reasons [???] is negative cargo cult thinking. Cargo-cult requires a rigid through-line. What criteria would you use, to choose to avoid something in order to preemptively avoid hindsight analysis? It's a nonsensical line of thinking.
- pfdietz 8mo agoCargo cult requires a confusion of cause and effect. Airplanes carrying cargo didn't land because there was a control tower; they landed because of prior causes that also caused the construction of a control tower. And here, the US does not decline because of some symbolic action, but rather decline causes the action. This confusion of cause and effect is literally a kind of magical thinking.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoYou're broadly right, but I think you're missing the part where perception of reality feeds back into reality, e.g. through economic effects. Demoralized Americans with less hope for the future stop caring, stop trying, and this in turn hastens that same decline.
- pfdietz 8mo agoI think that's just an untestable rationalization.
- Muromec 8mo agoYou are right and I don't think it should be avoided. It's just that, a symbolic milestone of sorts. A cutoff date.
- ACCount37 8mo agoI agree that a "long term fractional g spin test" is one of the most valuable things a LEO station can do. But there are others too. For example, medical interventions against zero-g decay can be tested in any microgravity, spin or no spin. Development of in-space manufacturing and assembly can happen on any sufficiently capable space station. All of that, however, requires a good amount of ambition. And I'm not sure if NASA under the current political system can deliver ambition.
- le-mark 8mo ago> For example, medical interventions against zero-g decay This seems obvious but I’ve never heard of anyone working on a drug to address it. Strapping astronauts to a treadmill yes, pills no.
- MagicMoonlight 8mo agoBecause that’s like saying you’ll develop a fuel additive to stop the body from rusting. Physical damage and weakness can’t be stopped by a pill.
- avmich 8mo agoSeems like a very broad statement. Do you have anything to confirm this opinion?
- mrits 8mo ago"Physical damage and weakness can’t be stopped by a pill." If you rephrase that to correct English then it would make sense. We aren't trying to stop physical damage or weakness we are trying to prevent it from happening. Pills can prevent many things that cause this.
- Havoc 8mo agoAt risk of crassness - human lives are pretty cheap and there are plenty of people willing to take the hit for a chance to be in space for an extended timeframe. Meanwhile building something with enough spin and shielding is a huge ask
- maxerickson 8mo agoIf manned stations aren't doing any particularly unique research, especially research that couldn't be done with automation, why spend huge resources on them?
- __patchbit__ 8mo agoHorses for courses micromanagement business administration and lobbying gravy train.
- Havoc 8mo agoI'd be very surprised if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space. If that is actually true then humanity has a problem. >research that couldn't be done with automation I'd think there is room for both. Automation makes sense, but don't think the versatility of meatbags is entirely there yet.
- gus_massa 8mo ago> if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space A bigger problem is lack of expertise. Astronauts are not specialist in whatever is the topic of the current experiment. You need probably like 5 years of training (assume the second half of the undergraduate degree, and perhaps the first half of the PhD). So experiments must be fully automated except for a button to turn they on and off.
- maxerickson 8mo agoLots of research has technicians doing the actual experimental tasks, your argument would benefit from even a short list of experiments that have not been done because astronauts couldn't be expected to handle it.
- idiotsecant 8mo agoNobody cares about ground control. They care about aerospace industry in their states. Public space programs aren't about science and engineering, no they are primarily about jobs. We burn enormous capital in strange ways in order to divert a small amount of capital into useful places. Its the only way to get it done, so I can live with it.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoSenators care about ground control. Jobs is the whole reason any of them agree to fund NASA at all.
- avmich 8mo agoNASA is the goverment agency routinely favored by the general public. They can't meaningfully reduce funding, now that "race to space" with China is heating up.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoMost of the public don't know there's another space race and would probably tell you that Artemis is a new brand of deodorant or something. Senators don't care about space fans, they just want NASA to be a consistent reliable jobs program that doesn't throw any curve balls (hence NASA's [nominal attempts to have a] low tolerance for risk.)
- avmich 8mo agoUnlike other government agencies, space fans are electorally meaningful number of people, as far as I know. Wait till China start scoring firsts with manned Moon expeditions and journalists start explaining that Senate not caring, and situation will get interesting, uncomfortably so.
- aaron695 8mo ago[dead]
- somenameforme 8mo agoExtended space spays doesn't really wreck people, it's just that your body adjusts to the new environment so your strength decrease, your bone density decreases, your orientation mechanisms shift to 6 degrees of freedom, and so on. Of course when you get back to Earth you're body again has to go through a readjustment phase because those previous adjustments are now unfit for the new environment, but it's nothing beyond that. It'd be interesting to see what an extremely long stay of like a decade+ would do, but that's a major ask of anybody not only in time commitment but also because it's basically asking whether or not the transition would be fatal, and the answer is unclear. As for a spinning station, that's something NASA will probably never do. They're extremely risk averse and you're opening up an unknowable, but very large, number of new possible failure scenarios there - many of them likely catastrophic. If anything that's something of an argument for genuine private stations who may have different levels of risk tolerance. Or we can just wait for China, because they'll 100% do it and probably relatively soon.
- rcxdude 8mo agoIt's not just adjustment, there's a decent amount of evidence it's just bad for your health in general, apart from the issues when coming back to earth. Stuff like your circulation also gets messed up.
- rzerowan 8mo agoTo expand on that - there are many body systems that depend almost entirely on the 1g glodilocks zone. Lymphatic systems movt , venous blood returning deox blood to the heart and even some digestive processes. Keenly dependent on a g value that allows proper muscle tone/function to the systems at play. Too little or too much and and human life becomes non-viable. Throw in the effect of ping ponging between microgravity and 1g and the issues multiply.
- somenameforme 8mo agoI'm active in this topic and have never heard anything similar to what you've mentioned. And in looking this up, there's a very recent study [1] that's quite relevant. They studied the cardiovascular health of astronauts for 5 years after their return from long-duration stays on the ISS. They were all perfectly healthy. [1] - https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00264.2024 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
- cl0ckt0wer 8mo agoIt's liability laundering. If an openclaw blackmails a politician while hosted in space, what's the legal recourse?
- Muromec 8mo agoA person who wrote the prompt, the person who spawned the instance, the person who provided the access to infra, the person who launched it. At the end of the day, there is somebody who profits from it or could have prevented it
- steve_adams_86 8mo agoMy worry is that networks can be established on and orbiting the moon which become extremely difficult to get data from if someone decides to abuse it. You can raid a data center if bad actors are utilizing it to break the law, but if some billionaire is using a moon relay to do bad stuff, the best you can do is de-allocate their bandwidth on the spectrum since you can't just hop over to the moon. Or to some craft in space. De-allocation would depend on international cooperation, inevitably. It would suddenly be far, far easier to break the law on networks and become effectively untraceable. This equipment will certainly be privately owned (like the prototypical versions already are) and it will be an extremely potent tool for breaking the law without consequence. Also it looks like allocation of spectrum doesn't mandate logging, so you could in theory have data centers floating around which don't even trace who did what and how. If any country chooses to facilitate this and allows this communication to be received, and propagates it to their internet, what does the rest of the world do? Is it cause for conflict? Are there ways to stop the traffic from outside of the country? I'm sure I'm missing tons of pertinent details here and this isn't meant as a totally impenetrable statement about the future. It's more so that I have concerns that this could actually happen based on the limited understanding I have. So feel free to tear it apart and let me know how dumb my idea is.
- Muromec 8mo ago>You can raid a data center if bad actors are utilizing it to break the law, but if some billionaire is using a moon relay to do bad stuff, the best you can do is de-allocate their bandwidth on the spectrum since you can't just hop over to the moon. You don't need to raid the data center, you just need to compel the flesh-bound weakling in your jurisdiction that has effective control to cede the effective control. Or hack into it by obvious means. > If any country chooses to facilitate this and allows this communication to be received, and propagates it to their internet, what does the rest of the world do? If a hostile country wants to do that they don't need space data centers. Case in point starts with r and end with ussia. Even if it is in space, somebody assigns the AS numbers and provides peering. You don't have to reach the other end of the rope to cut it. As a worst-case scenario, you just stop Internetting altogether and only allow information to flow to and from AS that are in your geopolitically aligned jurisdiction.
- codexb 8mo agoNASA hasn't had a proper goal or mission for decades. That's their problem. And the spaceflight goal that everyone wants -- making things cheaper -- is not something that government agencies are particularly good at producing.
- dboreham 8mo agoThat said, SpaceX exists entirely due to early NASA funding.
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoYou can point to any administration in the government and make the same statement. They're mostly defensive administrations; making sure things aren't getting out of control. NASA almost by definition needs a technical project and problems to solve. They were never a defense administration keeping the status quo.
- Sharlin 8mo agoTheir goal and mission of returning to the moon turns 25 this year. But you're right, it has hardly ever been a proper goal. But that's the manned program only. The unmanned planetary science program has been hugely successful relative to the amount of money they get.
- dylan604 8mo agoIt's hard for NASA or any government agency to have a real vision for anything longer than the current administration it is operating under. When the current POTUS can replace the head of that agency to install someone that more closely aligns to their views, you get ping ponging agendas. Stop everything you're doing because POTUS does not believe in it. Okay, just kidding, new POTUS disagrees with previous POTUS, so go back to what you were doing. That's not a problem to do after stopping work for 4-8 years, right?
- vaadu 8mo agoNot enough opportunity to grift off the taxpayers. Private enterprise will focus on faster, cheaper, better while the government and its contractors focus on keeping the gravy training running.
- le-mark 8mo agoIt seems obvious to me there will be methods and techniques using solar energy to disassemble asteroids and output large structures such as cylinders or spheres that will then become habitats. Example given a spherical grid one kilometer in diameter, apply a charge to it, place several tons of steel at the the center. Focus a mirror at the steel, vaporize and electro deposit the steel on grid. Voila steel sphere. I’d like to see someone working on this, could be done in LEO.
- ck2 8mo agowait 1,000 days this is the lost decade of science and progress unfortunately
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoYou can have private or you can argue to Congress about the budget and get nothing. Take your pick.
- xoa 8mo agoIt's pretty wild to me that in both the article (written by Eric Berger, who really knows his stuff and did two fantastic books on the history of SpaceX and the rise of new space) and the first 31 comments made here on HN as I write this that a Find for one word has zero results: "starship". That's the overwhelming behemoth elephant in the room. For the purposes of launching/building a space station, it doesn't matter if Starship can't reenter, or refueling doesn't work or any of the other hard problems. It just needs to get to orbit. Which it has proven it can. And that means that any space station developed using anything before that will be rapidly completely obsolete from a commercial perspective. Starship will just offer so much more volume and mass for the same cost or less. NASA may want very hard to hit their 2030 deadline, but the technology may simply not line up to do it on the budget they want and desired partner concerns, same as how the retirement of the Space Shuttle didn't line up with American private launch (though of course in the end that has made it and been a big win). No company that actually wants to make money is going to risk billions on something that somebody else can lap them on by an order of magnitude in a few years or less. I suspect that of "continuous presence in low orbit", "longer term new capabilities", "in budget", and "commercially successful" NASA is going to be forced to pick one or two and that's what they're resisting. Rushing things along almost always costs a lot of money and features. If you want to hit a budget and features then you have to be willing to wait for the various bits to line up and preferably spend some time experimenting and exploring new capabilities and strategies before big hardware commitments. There's a lot of moving parts here to think through. This would all be true even if that was NASA's only concern, vs going to the Moon and all the normal and importance science and so on they're getting pushed on.
- stogot 8mo agoThe Starship is also built to house astronauts for longish trips. It’s not a stretch to think of it as a larger Skylab station. If the can figure out how to attach six or eight of them in a ring with bridges and spin, they could have the artificial gravity station that’s been the stuff of science fiction (and the movie The Martian)
- pfooti 8mo agoFor reasons of gyroscopic precession I suspect that they will remain largely science fiction for the foreseeable future.
- creantum 8mo ago[dead]
- youknownothing 8mo agoWell, I'm happy about NASA's idea for private space stations. Maybe I'm not happy with the timing, but I definitely think that this is the future. If you make space stations a valid, self-sustaining industry, that frees up budget for NASA to pursue other non-economically viable missions like going to the Moon and to Mars. It's like someone else's comment about the space shuttle: I was sad to see it go, and maybe it was premature, but private space transport is a more economical way of reaching space.