...replacement for ISS?

I do not wish to halt the inevitable. I wish to speed it up and make it more practical. I wish you would try to make some kind of a distinction between these things. The difference is obvious.

Edit: I see that you are now doing so. I thank you.

 

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All true, and while I may disagree with your opinion about the importance of a space station, at least your heart is in the right place.

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Being an optimist, and as I have said before, the variables of costs and politics will change over time, and eventually for the better.
I just wish [and hope] that I'm around when we set foot on Mars.

 

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It will probably be on the order of hundred to a thousand years. In that sense it is time well spent to consider how best to do it, particularly since it may not be reversible once started. But the sooner started, the sooner finished.

 

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I find it interesting that some people seem dead-set against returning to space because of the cost... why does it matter the cost? It is an unknown frontier... if anything, we should work towards building a massive station that can function as a future launchpoint for deep-space exploration. After all - launching a large vessel into deep-space from the surface of Earth is just incredibly wasteful in terms of propellant resources. Launch it from orbit, and you've removed a large chunk of the problem.

I say let the private industry have its run at it...

 

Against our social costs, no: unless you are now in position to abolish the capitalist state. Until that point, we have the social obligation and responsibility to rank our results against our investments. The original goals are achievable, but there's no point in making blanket statements such as "some people are dead-set against because of the cost". Read the argument and, if you don't understand, ask.

 

"Build it and they will come...."

Once a station like that were built and functional, renting space would not be the real issue and just as with almost every other major space project, the spinoff consumer technology would wind up far out weighing the cost. The biggest problem we have is that people are generally short sighted, in spades for most traditional corporations, who think on a three month horizon.

I say build it, even as a staging platform for Station to Moon or Mars flights, it would be worth it.

As for the comments about the shuttle landing on a spinning station, it reminded me of an old scifi, circa late 1990's, Babylon 5. Big space station and they landed down the center axis. Still a lot of problems, but not nearly as bad. More likely a docking than an internal landing anyway. An air lock that big would be wasteful in time and air.

 

Because we don't have infinite money, so we have to choose wisely.

You haven't really solved anything. You still have to get it there and then launch it. There is no fuel in Earth orbit, nothing you can stock up there. Indeed, if you have to take off, rendezvous with a station, and THEN leave on your mission, you will need far more fuel (= more launches, more money, more time) to get your mission to its destination.

 

This is my argument for automitization. Think how cheaply, and with such little risk, we could learn what we need to learn - although Mars may be a put-off. I'd like to know how direly the absence of the full magnetic layer that we have on Earth will affect our ability to use Mars. I can't think Venus would be better. Some moon somewhere?

 

Indeed, we do not have infinite money. We seem to have plenty of it for waging war, squirreling away into the off-shore accounts of corporate executives, and generally throwing away.

You misunderstand - the idea isn't to launch, rendezvous, and then leave... the idea is to build the ship in orbit. Hence a large station - one that can be supplied by ground based launches (or, perhaps, a space elevator or other such method of lifting). You can build a much larger ship in orbit, one that doesn't have to withstand the rigors of escape/reentry, etc.

 

This is an interesting experimental result from an experiment being conducted in free fall on the ISS.
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/art...ults-create-cosmic-ray-puzzle?email_issue=733
Free subscription right to your email. Symmetry.

 

But you can do that without a space station, as the Agena program demonstrated. (And indeed as the construction of the ISS demonstrated.) For example, most Mars exploration plans call for two to three heavy-lift launches per outbound mission - one for the crew/lander, one or two for the boost stages. They all launch, rendezvous and are on their way. What would a space station add to that process? Indeed, if you used a space station you'd need FOUR launches - three for the mission, one for the consumables for the station during that time.

 

I should add at this point: if terraforming or colonialization of nearby worlds - a year away at most - in our system is untenable... that would indeed kind of be it under my doctrine. It's not that I think it can't be done, but that without any viable improvements to velocity, what is there to do? That said, colonization of other planets is indeed a cert - there's nothing we can't do, really, if we try properly. The main question is what is properly? If we screw up, then that's our one main chance gone, barring serious developments in other technologies. There is apparently a view to worry about WRT this in my link above: that, say, CO2 sequestering could result in complete lockup of carbon, ruining the carbon cycle. Could be very tricky to start over. Or could it? We have to press on anyway, so why not give it our best try and examine restorative philosophies in the meantime.

 

You are talking building the ship piece by piece on earth, then assembling it in space. I'm suggesting the entire fabrication process take place in space - the ability to build ships/structures far more massive than we could ever lift to orbit, even in several pieces.

 

Then you have to lift the furnaces, the ore, the welders, the wire extruders, the tools, the oil, the refinery, the chemical processing plants . . . . and thousands of workers, and food and other consumables for all of that. The costs would dwarf the GDP of the entire planet.

And why would there be a limit on how big a ship we build from pieces? The ISS is probably bigger than we ever need a spacecraft to be (at least for the next century) and we built that in pieces.

 

In time, we must approach this as a united effort. Even just to Mars should be a united effort.
I know that at this time, taking into account the state of society and the conflicts that seem to present themselves with monotonous regularity, that may seem a dream. But things have improved throughout the ages, and I believe that will continue.
Maybe I have watched too much Star Trek, but I truly see an optimistic approach, far more beneficial and closer to reality, then throwing ones hands up in the air and despairing.
Hence why I included Geoff's little quote.
Lives are going to be lost, let's be realistic about it, but we always gain knowledge from the things that go wrong.
The 20th Century hero, Neil Armstrong, came close to losing his life twice from memory, as a test pilot, and even the early Gemini missions came close to disaster by simply "ignoring" Newton's laws of motion.
I still see an operational space station as part of our inevitable progress into space exploration, positioned at one of the Lagrange points.
That appears to be the "stalling point" in this debate.
We all seem to be realistic enough to realise that space exploration is necessary and inevitable. Will a permanent space station be a part of this?
I believe it will and we should always have one up there.
I see Asteroid retrieval and mining as also beneficial.
If we screw up, that will slow the pace somewhat...but we learn and proceed again.
Our inevitable venture to the rest of our solar system, then onto the stars will be fraught with danger. But that will not stop progress.
We may need new physics, and as yet unknown applications of present physics. [the possibility of spacetime warps etc]
We have orginizations I have mentioned before, all run by reasonably reputable people.....http://100yss.org/mission/team http://www.tauzero.aero/
Then we have http://www.mars-one.com/ and http://www.planetaryresources.com/
Ambitious? Most probably, Impossible to achieve within quoted time frames? maybe......
Space stations, Asteroid mining, Moon bases, Manned Mars efforts, Interstellar voyages, are all desirable in my opinion, as are other dreams.
Dreams like.......
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-we-should-build-cloud-cities-on-venus

As long as we have people taking these dreams seriously, there is always hope, and in fact time will eventually overcome the economic and political barriers that maybe slowing the inevitable.

 

Little quote? Please. It was a giant.

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Looking ahead to the Geoffian future​

 

No, no: he's looking back on the right path taken from the future, which he owns, because he took the right path. He guards the future - the guardian of the future.

See? Very inspiring.