If You Could Leave Today, to Go on Deep Space Exploration...

[Spinward Scout]

This week, there's a small seminar in Chicago that asks the question:

If You Could Leave Today, to Go on Deep Space Exploration and Pioneering Endeavors, Would You Go?

Here's the link for the Meetup, if you're interested.

https://www.meetup.com/Outer-Space/events/242068247

The main thing they are asking is to list the 10 Main Things You Feel Are Preventing You From Embarking on Deep Space Exploration and Pioneering Today.

This should be easy for us.

What do YOU think is keeping us from the stars?

 

[Blue Ghost]

In a word? Yeah!

 

[Spinward Scout]

In a word? Yeah!

I'd definitely go if I could.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Main reason. No rocketships launch from Chicago.

 

[Phocks]

What do YOU think is keeping us from the stars?

Physics. More accurately, our current understanding of Physics.

 

[Timerover51]

There is the extremely small matter of funding. Then there is also this problem of being a medical oddity.

 

[Reban]

Radiation

I was re-watching a BBC made docu-drama from a few years ago;Space Odyssey Voyage To The Planets (its available on YouTube).

One of the crew of a deep space exploration mission receives too much radiation and dies of lymphoma.

A very emotional sequence that looks at the psychological and physiological consequences of deep space exploration on the crew.

Leaving Earth's protection is pretty scary when you consider just how hostile conditions are beyond our sky...

So I'm staying put until we get magnetic field generators and nano-bots that actively fight cancer thank you very much.

 

[Reynard]

1) Reliable and efficient power and thrust agents to get us anywhere in our solar system.
2) Food preservation for very long duration missions.
3) Adequate shielding materials for radiation and micro-debris.
4) Suitable accommodations for crew for their physical and mental health.
5)Money
6)Ships large enough to carry everything at less than insane costs.
7)Knowing there are no repair stations out there.
8)Unlike a submarine that can surface and there's civilization at reasonable distances, you go nothing except radio contact once you leave.
9)Money
10) Jeez, you think those are not enough reasons?

 

[Barrel]

I was re-watching a BBC made docu-drama from a few years ago;Space Odyssey Voyage To The Planets (its available on YouTube).

One of the crew of a deep space exploration mission receives too much radiation and dies of lymphoma.

A very emotional sequence that looks at the psychological and physiological consequences of deep space exploration on the crew.

Leaving Earth's protection is pretty scary when you consider just how hostile conditions are beyond our sky...

So I'm staying put until we get magnetic field generators and nano-bots that actively fight cancer thank you very much.

Yeah, I'd want to go, but under what conditions?

 

[atpollard]

Unlike the universe of Science Fiction, there is nowhere to go and nothing to do.

If I launched to the ISS (the only location currently equipped to support human life outside of the Earth), they would refuse admission ... it is not open to the public. So we first need to launch at least a Bigelow Inflatable Hotel in LEO.

The Moon and Mars are the same story, only more so. First we need to develop the technology to sustain life, then we need to construct it at the destination, then we can go there.

Just for fun, let's wave away all of the missing initial investment in developing and constructing a destination and say it just magically already existed. Everything that I read in the white papers indicates that other than millionaire tourism, no industrial case generates a ROI better than could be achieved on Earth. In other words, any Industry you could do in space appears to be more cheaply done investing that same money on Earth.

Just as an example, take the old Solar Power Satellites that were going to beam power back to Earth and support a reason for man in space. For the same investment, you could build more solar panels on Earth (at lower initial efficiency, but a fraction of the cost) and avoid needing lasers to beam the power and suffering the transmission losses associated with beaming power from space. The conclusion, Earth based Solar Power is cheaper and more efficient at the point of delivery than Solar Power Satellites. Of course, Nuclear power is cheaper than Solar and burning Coal is cheaper than Nuclear.

So far the quest for the "killer application" that will support space industry has been a bust. Thus there is nowhere to go and, once you get there, nothing profitable to do ... except millionaire tourism.

[... and I am not a candidate for spending $50 million for a space tourism experience.]

For those who might argue the price will come down, assuming 300 kg per person for the passenger and capsule, 10% payload mass fraction on the rocket and $4 per kg for the fuel, the cost to launch me to deep space (based only on the cost of fuel and a free rocket) is $12,000 (about Cr 3000 in Traveller). Still out of my price range for a one way ticket ... and I still have hotel costs at the destination.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Zero-G manufacturing, in theory, creates stronger materials. The reason is that planetside (on earth) when you make any material, an I-beam or some kind of plastic or glass, the heavier elements will tend to settle to one side. It's not really significant, in my book, but if you made a steel ingot (or a sample of any material) in orbit or in zero-G, and you spin it while it's still pliable, then the distribution of elements is uniform.

At least that's the case that was made in a book by some UK publishing company that I bought many many years back. The degree of benefit from such manufacturing to me seems more in the "it might help" category than something that's pragmatic, noticeable, and in this way helpful. But that is one of the arguments I hear every so often of why we should go into space.

It's been so long I can't remember everything I read on the topic, but it was one reason it was a first career choice with me.

 

[Ulsyus]

Well, at least one of the problems, a food supply for extended voyages, is a little closer to being solved with this solution.

 

[Barrel]

Unlike the universe of Science Fiction, there is nowhere to go and nothing to do.

If I launched to the ISS (the only location currently equipped to support human life outside of the Earth), they would refuse admission ... it is not open to the public. So we first need to launch at least a Bigelow Inflatable Hotel in LEO.

The Moon and Mars are the same story, only more so. First we need to develop the technology to sustain life, then we need to construct it at the destination, then we can go there.

Just for fun, let's wave away all of the missing initial investment in developing and constructing a destination and say it just magically already existed. Everything that I read in the white papers indicates that other than millionaire tourism, no industrial case generates a ROI better than could be achieved on Earth. In other words, any Industry you could do in space appears to be more cheaply done investing that same money on Earth.

Just as an example, take the old Solar Power Satellites that were going to beam power back to Earth and support a reason for man in space. For the same investment, you could build more solar panels on Earth (at lower initial efficiency, but a fraction of the cost) and avoid needing lasers to beam the power and suffering the transmission losses associated with beaming power from space. The conclusion, Earth based Solar Power is cheaper and more efficient at the point of delivery than Solar Power Satellites. Of course, Nuclear power is cheaper than Solar and burning Coal is cheaper than Nuclear.

So far the quest for the "killer application" that will support space industry has been a bust. Thus there is nowhere to go and, once you get there, nothing profitable to do ... except millionaire tourism.

[... and I am not a candidate for spending $50 million for a space tourism experience.]

For those who might argue the price will come down, assuming 300 kg per person for the passenger and capsule, 10% payload mass fraction on the rocket and $4 per kg for the fuel, the cost to launch me to deep space (based only on the cost of fuel and a free rocket) is $12,000 (about Cr 3000 in Traveller). Still out of my price range for a one way ticket ... and I still have hotel costs at the destination.

I think historically a lot of migration came from people and their neighbors who just couldn't get along. Either the migrating group felt they were escaping oppression (or death) or they were being exiled. Something like the way the Mormons came to make the trek to Utah.

 

[whartung]

If someone asked me to beam up to the Enterprise for a "30 day journey", whirlwind tour, "If it's Tuesday, this must be Gamma Hydra 6", yup...beam me up, let me charge my iPod.

If a Free Trader landed, and asked if I wanted to spend a month as a deckhand, hitting a few ports on the way, I'd grab my Dramamine(tm) and tell them "Yup, ready to Jump when you are."

If you asked if I was willing to cram myself in to a 5x5x5ft box and wear the same clothes for the next 6 months only to come home with no bone mass, cancer, and maybe some neat snapshots -- I'd probably pass.

 

[Timerover51]

If funding were not a problem, and neither was health, I would start with Mars. I know, quite pedestrian, but I would love to see if it is possible to survive there.

 

[Reynard]

Leave the soil alone. Perchlorates are a bitch.

https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals.html

Bring air, lots of air.