Very soon they will become the only remaining nation on earth with a mature, tried-and-true, humans-to-space capability. Thanks to Obama's jackassery, this will be the case for maybe 10 years or more. What does this mean for the Russian space industry? Is it on the verge of boom times?
Have the Chinese secretly shot everyone involved with their space program and you're the only Westerner to know about it? The Russian program is only able to function because of the money the rest of the world is pouring into it (since that's less worrisome than having a bunch of unemployed rocket scientists). Unlike NASA (for now) and China, the Russians can't afford to send people up into space unless they're going to the ISS.
That's why I said mature and tried-and-true. The Chinese space program is still pretty much a startup. They've had one or two manned launches for a few spins around the earth and then down again. Yuri Gagarin type stuff. The Russian manned launch systems have been used hundreds of times over four decades. Their reliability is second to none. If you climb into a soyuz capsule in Baikonur you can be pretty sure you're going to get into space and that you're going to come down again in one piece. They're the Toyota Hilux of manned launch vehicles. And finally the Chinese aren't renting out their space program to the west AFAIK. Nor are they partners in the ISS.
I suspect they'll be using it for political leverage eventually. "You vant your crew to come home from the station? Here's vat ve vant you to do..."
I didn't know a donkey, a cart, and some old Soviet-era punch card computers could be described in such glowing terms.
While Obama has fucked this up, it's not in the way you are thinking. At this point in time all LEO other than military should be turned over to commercial enterprise. He is doing that. Where he has fucked the chicken in the ass is by killing the programs designed to get us to the moon and mars. That is what NASA should be doing, not taxi service to LEO.
Yes. A somewhat pessimistic acquaintance once told me that after the great disaster, the Cadillac owners would bow before the horse owner. It would seem that America has become the Cadillac owner.
Those programs were already dead, best case scenario was an Apollo style landing happening at the earliest by 2028.
The Constellation project was the backbone of both. No reason to kill the bird with over 5 years development and billions in it already. All that money is now gone and useless.
I heard a few years ago that the Russians were going to take the space tourism thing one step further. They already offer orbital flights to people with 20 million dollars to pay. I heard they were going to modify the Soyuz capsules to sustain three cosmonauts for flights around the moon (no landing), which is what the Soyuz was originally designed for anyway, and sell one of the seats to anyone who wants to put up 120 million dollars.
Sunk cost fallacy. That money is spent and gone now either way, so you base decisions based on what the cost and time needed from this point on is. I'm no rocket scientist, but the Augustine Commission spent a lot of time running all the numbers and came to the conclusion that Constellation was not going to come close to meeting any of its targets, and with the way things were going would never make it to Mars.
The Chinese have done more in space than Yuri did. While the Chinese have had fewer launches at this point in their program, compared to where the US and the Soviets were at the same number of years after they sent the first astronaut up, the Chinese have done more in each launch than either the US or the USSR did for the comparable launch. The Chinese also don't have to figure shit out from scratch like the US or the USSR did. You can bet that the Chinese have scraped ever last piece of data from NASA's servers that they possibly can. And unlike the US or Russia, the Chinese are aiming for the Moon. I know they've done the space walk already, and I think they've done the docking as well. One other thing: Anyone who dismisses the Chinese does so at their peril.
This reminds me of an old war story I head once, about these WWII era fighter pilots that were just entering Korea and the cold war I dont know if you all understood that analogy, and for those that dont, Obama and the Govt have to start looking towards our Future, and he's not going to get us there by living in the past We've already been to the moon. We were the FIRST ones there.. remember? Our Space Shuttles are all as old as dirt, they are falling apart, and are no longer reliable. We need NEW GOALS, along with NEW TECHNOLOGY to reach them if we are to stay ahead of the rest of the world. If I remember correctly, I believe Obama's scientist all have their sights on building manned missions to Mars pretty soon!
Yes, we do, unfortunately, we haven't been given any. You don't remember correctly. Bolden's said he'd be upset if we don't go to Mars within his lifetime, but the path Obama's put us on, even in the most optimistic scenario does not lead to Mars. It does not automatically rule that out, but it by no means makes it even remotely assured, and given the way NASA tends to get fucked over by Congress, makes it more likely that the entire agency will get flushed down the crapper in a few years.
I believe Obama killed the moon mission so he could use the money to build better spacecraft and technology for deep space exploration. Instead of focusing on going back to the moon where we've already been (several times), He wants us to focus more on unchartered territories. I can't find the article I read this in, but when I do I'll post it here!
Actually in the most optimistic scenario it leads to Mars faster, although I don't expect to see that happen. The idealistic outcome of this situation is that private industry starts worrying about all the headaches of how to get into and operate in LEO, and NASA's heavy lift development will enable them to put together vehicles that can explore beyond LEO.
Not true. It leads to a rocket which could deliver a manned mission to Mars or a Near Earth Asteroid being started on a year or so sooner, but it does not have any kind of final destination in mind. Its as if we built a Saturn V, but didn't bother with a lunar lander or Skylab. We can do either, and it won't necessarily take us a long time once we make up our minds, but it in no way says that we're gonna do anything more than build a big ass rocket.
