Re: International Space Station

BlagooBlanaa wrote:

Or break it up and use it for shuttles/command
modules to get back to the moon or on to mars

energetics and orbital mechanics may be tricky though
which only goes to re-emphasise my original points.

What is needed is the vision to see that every launch should be
a part of an integrated philosophy for realising the exploitation
of space.

Define 'exploting.' Sometimes even the results of basic science has some future value to someone with some sort of gain in mind.

THE major failing is treating each launch as a seperate mission,
hermetically sealed from all other missions for convenience and
budget. This treats the materiel from each mission like
ammunition - to be discarded after one shot.

Um, maybe that's because many of them *don't* have much to do with each other, beyond possibly having used the same launch vehicle.

Sending, say, another probe to Titan is hardly the same mission (if it's even appropriate to call all space launches 'missions' anymore) as launching an Earth satellite to do real-world tests of new point-to-point communications technologies. They're both outside the atmosphere.* That's about it. Yet NASA might be the sponsoring agency for either one.

* (Plus, preferably, initially launched on some low-cost, high-reliability launcher that may also be an RLV. That's what we need to work on, and let the applications flow from there, not initiate some tightly intergrated plan for everything that goes into space. That implies the ability to forsee all markets and all other needs. No one can do that.)

In part this is due to how money is procured and how Nasa has
been treat like a budgetary flywheel to keep the economy ticking
over.

As such the disjointed mission oriented focus for sopping up dollars
and providing high tech jobs for the masses has basically wasted a
40 year advantage in space.

bah

So find this 'focus' that everyone will agree on, to the extent of committing public money to it. It should be intereting to see.

get on with it NASA or get out of the way and let someone
else use the money like it should be used

They're starting to, thankfully. It's just not gigabucks of tax money that's doing it. And that's good, too.


--

Frank

You know what to remove to reply...

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