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I think the key missing element is a clear commercial driver. Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil... then yeah tha

by apalmer 12y ago

I think the key missing element is a clear commercial driver. Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil... then yeah that would lead to a radical revolution in human space exploration. What we have now as far as i am aware is very little commercial incentive to really explore space, in this scenario space flight will probably advance very slowly.

rglover 12y ago
I'd argue that commercial incentive is the biggest limiting factor of the human race. Yes, it costs money to do things but I'm really surprised that we don't aggressively pursue space travel just on the basis of knowing why we're here. There's more than enough wealth on the planet to do it, but we're too concentrated on politics/hoarding. There's this strange fixation with the ground (I usually attribute this to fear masquerading as a budget) and what's happening here, but I feel like there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking. The kind of stuff that would eliminate the need for commercial incentive that we can't necessarily see now.
- warfangle 12y ago
  > just on the basis of knowing why we're here. But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Why would we want to ever leave this puddle that, so obviously, was made just for us? /tongue-in-cheek
  - rglover 12y ago
    But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Made me chuckle, thanks :)
- bduerst 12y ago
  Keep in a mind that only a century ago did people begin to have the free time to even dream about what exists in the heavens. Science fiction was radical because it was asking the "What if?" questions. It will probably be a few more generations before the human race starts to come around to the idea of figuring out why we're here.
- ctdonath 12y ago
  there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking Not within individual limits of time and scale. The Moon is a couple days away, but for all we've looked at it seems it's little more than a dead atmosphere-free rock. The next nearest place to walk is a couple years away. Both will require hauling an oppressive amount of stuff along to stay there long enough to achieve anything resembling self-sufficiency. The sheer scale of time & effort - balanced against payoff of any kind - is vast beyond human comprehension. "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." [Douglas Adams] Travel time gets a lot longer the farther the destination. Between Mars and the next place we have any hope of surviving on is a very, very long distance. I remember when Voyager I was launched: decades later, we're arguing over whether it actually left the solar system yet. Yeah there's interesting things out there...but don't underestimate how very, very, very, very, very far away they are. Oh sure, look hard enough and we'll find "something interesting", and perhaps come to grok "why we're here" - but at enormous cost to those who don't get to go. Sure you'll find a few people actually willing & capable to make the trip (stark raving boring as most of it will be, even with a Morale Officer), but those "orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude" more people needed to make it happen don't get enough out of their contribution to bother contributing, and ultimately it's their paychecks that will be "redistributed" to fund the effort. Firefly Alpha will cost (optimistically!) about US$10M to launch 1 ton into low orbit, with that cargo assured to return at least $10M revenue; if not for that payoff, those involved have compelling reasons to elsewhere route money which provides a good life for some 400 people ... how much then the human cost of sending a handful of people on a trip which, beyond a couple nearby rocks, would take a lifetime or far more? TL;DR - very little of space is close enough and interesting enough to get to before you're dead.
  - deeviant 12y ago
    I don't agree with your line of reasoning. There are a lot of not only interesting but also commercially viable things right here in our solar system. We have several huge balls of fuel, each of which has many orders of magnitude more energy that humanity has harnessed in our entire history. There are planets that we can build on and adapt to, or potentially adapt to us. There are millions of floating gold mines with more mineral riches than than exist in the entirety of earth. Regarding the distances, I don't think they are as big as you are putting them out to be. If you look at the ratio of how far we need to travel to get somewhere interesting(moon, mars, comet, etc) over how fast we can travel( 36,000 MPH+) and compare that to the ratio of the European wind powered ships speed vs a trip to the new world, you'd see that the solar system is not at all outside of our reach and there are many precedents to speak to humanities willingness to make sure trips.
luckyno13 12y ago
There are also obvious barriers. We still have an issue with radiation during lengthy space travels. Plus the type of ships you would want to use in long term or large scale trips would need to be constructed IN space (or at least orbit). Otherwise the craft would be too heavy and too energy intensive to be worth while or even feasible. We need an orbiting dry dock :) On a side note,I think one of the simplest (but skillful and dangerous) jobs here on Earth that I would want in the age of space construction would be space welder.
benihana 12y ago
I don't know if there is commercial incentive to explore space, but there is enormous commercial incentive to make spaceflight cheaper. Gather everyone on hacker news into a warehouse and throw a water balloon into the air. Chances are very high that when it lands it will splash multiple people who'd be willing to pay to fall around the earth at 200 miles high a few times.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
InclinedPlane 12y ago
Not necessarily. There's already many billions of dollars a year being spent on space, both by governments and by private entities. Lowering the cost of access to space would greatly increase what can be done with those funds, even assuming they wouldn't grow.
seanflyon 12y ago
There's platinum in the asteroid belt
stcredzero 12y ago
Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil.. There is such a fuel on the Moon. He3.
- kondro 12y ago
  Yeah, if only we knew how to get it back to Earth cheaply and fuse it with itself we might have another 500 years of fossil fuels delivered by destroying the surface of the Moon.
  - MPSimmons 12y ago
    The future economy in space is so much larger than the future economy on Earth, that it doesn't make much sense to ship non-rare materials back to the surface. There are some where I think it will, for the foreseeable future, just because they're so rare in the Earth's crust and so plentiful in asteroids, but long-term, microgravity assembly plants are how things will go.
kilroy123 12y ago
There is and will be a fair amount of demand for launching satellites into orbit. [1] Lowering cost and more advanced micro satellites will probably increase demand. I think the real economic driver in the future will be mining resources from asteroids. Could be a trillion dollar market in the future. [1]http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/2013_GSO_NGSO_Forecast_Report_June.pdf?page=2 http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast...
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Seems like the costs of dealing with low orbit would make high endurance balloons and solar-powered aircraft, such as Google is experimenting with, a more viable option.

by apalmer 12y ago

rglover 12y ago

I'd argue that commercial incentive is the biggest limiting factor of the human race. Yes, it costs money to do things but I'm really surprised that we don't aggressively pursue space travel just on the basis of knowing why we're here. There's more than enough wealth on the planet to do it, but we're too concentrated on politics/hoarding. There's this strange fixation with the ground (I usually attribute this to fear masquerading as a budget) and what's happening here, but I feel like there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking. The kind of stuff that would eliminate the need for commercial incentive that we can't necessarily see now.

warfangle 12y ago
> just on the basis of knowing why we're here. But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Why would we want to ever leave this puddle that, so obviously, was made just for us? /tongue-in-cheek
- rglover 12y ago
  But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Made me chuckle, thanks :)
bduerst 12y ago
Keep in a mind that only a century ago did people begin to have the free time to even dream about what exists in the heavens. Science fiction was radical because it was asking the "What if?" questions. It will probably be a few more generations before the human race starts to come around to the idea of figuring out why we're here.
ctdonath 12y ago
there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking Not within individual limits of time and scale. The Moon is a couple days away, but for all we've looked at it seems it's little more than a dead atmosphere-free rock. The next nearest place to walk is a couple years away. Both will require hauling an oppressive amount of stuff along to stay there long enough to achieve anything resembling self-sufficiency. The sheer scale of time & effort - balanced against payoff of any kind - is vast beyond human comprehension. "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." [Douglas Adams] Travel time gets a lot longer the farther the destination. Between Mars and the next place we have any hope of surviving on is a very, very long distance. I remember when Voyager I was launched: decades later, we're arguing over whether it actually left the solar system yet. Yeah there's interesting things out there...but don't underestimate how very, very, very, very, very far away they are. Oh sure, look hard enough and we'll find "something interesting", and perhaps come to grok "why we're here" - but at enormous cost to those who don't get to go. Sure you'll find a few people actually willing & capable to make the trip (stark raving boring as most of it will be, even with a Morale Officer), but those "orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude" more people needed to make it happen don't get enough out of their contribution to bother contributing, and ultimately it's their paychecks that will be "redistributed" to fund the effort. Firefly Alpha will cost (optimistically!) about US$10M to launch 1 ton into low orbit, with that cargo assured to return at least $10M revenue; if not for that payoff, those involved have compelling reasons to elsewhere route money which provides a good life for some 400 people ... how much then the human cost of sending a handful of people on a trip which, beyond a couple nearby rocks, would take a lifetime or far more? TL;DR - very little of space is close enough and interesting enough to get to before you're dead.
- deeviant 12y ago
  I don't agree with your line of reasoning. There are a lot of not only interesting but also commercially viable things right here in our solar system. We have several huge balls of fuel, each of which has many orders of magnitude more energy that humanity has harnessed in our entire history. There are planets that we can build on and adapt to, or potentially adapt to us. There are millions of floating gold mines with more mineral riches than than exist in the entirety of earth. Regarding the distances, I don't think they are as big as you are putting them out to be. If you look at the ratio of how far we need to travel to get somewhere interesting(moon, mars, comet, etc) over how fast we can travel( 36,000 MPH+) and compare that to the ratio of the European wind powered ships speed vs a trip to the new world, you'd see that the solar system is not at all outside of our reach and there are many precedents to speak to humanities willingness to make sure trips.

luckyno13 12y ago

There are also obvious barriers. We still have an issue with radiation during lengthy space travels. Plus the type of ships you would want to use in long term or large scale trips would need to be constructed IN space (or at least orbit). Otherwise the craft would be too heavy and too energy intensive to be worth while or even feasible. We need an orbiting dry dock :) On a side note,I think one of the simplest (but skillful and dangerous) jobs here on Earth that I would want in the age of space construction would be space welder.

benihana 12y ago

I don't know if there is commercial incentive to explore space, but there is enormous commercial incentive to make spaceflight cheaper. Gather everyone on hacker news into a warehouse and throw a water balloon into the air. Chances are very high that when it lands it will splash multiple people who'd be willing to pay to fall around the earth at 200 miles high a few times.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

InclinedPlane 12y ago

Not necessarily. There's already many billions of dollars a year being spent on space, both by governments and by private entities. Lowering the cost of access to space would greatly increase what can be done with those funds, even assuming they wouldn't grow.

seanflyon 12y ago

There's platinum in the asteroid belt

stcredzero 12y ago

Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil.. There is such a fuel on the Moon. He3.

kondro 12y ago
Yeah, if only we knew how to get it back to Earth cheaply and fuse it with itself we might have another 500 years of fossil fuels delivered by destroying the surface of the Moon.
- MPSimmons 12y ago
  The future economy in space is so much larger than the future economy on Earth, that it doesn't make much sense to ship non-rare materials back to the surface. There are some where I think it will, for the foreseeable future, just because they're so rare in the Earth's crust and so plentiful in asteroids, but long-term, microgravity assembly plants are how things will go.

kilroy123 12y ago

There is and will be a fair amount of demand for launching satellites into orbit. [1] Lowering cost and more advanced micro satellites will probably increase demand. I think the real economic driver in the future will be mining resources from asteroids. Could be a trillion dollar market in the future. [1]http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/2013_GSO_NGSO_Forecast_Report_June.pdf?page=2 http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast...

Tloewald 12y ago
Seems like the costs of dealing with low orbit would make high endurance balloons and solar-powered aircraft, such as Google is experimenting with, a more viable option.