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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
| Thank you for coming, Ron Paul. Question number 1: does Al-Qaeda fight for the Caliphate? |
I love that question.
I wonder how some liberals have decided to support RP despite the fact that he doesn't support government research on alternative energy. |
I assume it's because they are concerned with the environment itself, and don't care about who is in charge of fixing it up as long as it gets fixed up. It's no conflict of interest if a person believes that state governments and private industry can do a better job (because they do, look at the agreements between American states and American provinces that get pushed through despite a reluctant central government).
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Why not let private industry do the space program?
You like the space program why is alternative energy different? |
Totally different, and private already is involved in the space program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#Manned_orbital_spaceflight:_SpaceX_Dragon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
The difference however is that unlike energy, space isn't really an industry yet; no company is going to foot the bill for a mission that only returns science. Energy OTOH is only about making money, and everybody needs it every day. But the spinoffs from the space program go into the private industry and eventually benefit us as well.
The debate between government and private programs is quite heated on astronomy boards as well. The government does space a disservice when they both decide to do everything themselves and also enact rules that keep private industry from competing/participating. That's not so much an issue anymore though. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a quote from somebody that knows a lot more than I do on the same subject that explains it better than I could:
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=businesstech&Number=658367&page=5&view=collapsed&sb=9&o=0&fpart=1
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I think you are rather confused over several things, including what private industry can and cannot do and of the relationship between private indutry and NASA
Private industry of itself has little interest in black sky space research and exploration. Which is quite reasonable. Private industry exists to make a profit on the short term, typically 20% ARR in the companies I have worked for. There is no direct commerical interest in astronomy or planetary exploration, or space physics. Private industry therefore will not and should not do these things.
Black sky space research the province of NASA. This is for the public good, not private gain. However the research can pave the way for commerical developments. This too is as it should be. It is not the province of most government agencies to supply commerical services, but to provide the context in which new and exist private industry and flourish.
However NASA does not build hardware itself, it develops the requirements and contracts the work out to private industry. This allows private industry to develop the technology and expertise that enables them to idfentify and exploit commerical opportunities. This too is as it should be.
Launch services are a classic example from this. Originally a purely NASA function they have moved onto a commerical
basis for unmanned spacecraft and, assuming COTS is a success, will start to supply manned services as well. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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Let someone discover massive mineral deposits or what-have-you, in the asteroid belt or on one or another moon somewhere in our solar system, and then see where private industry can and almost certainly will take us vis-a-vis space-exploration technology, logistics, transportation, communications, etc.
Presently, such motives are missing.
Consider: Columbus had to beg several princes for sponsorship to sail three small ships across the Atlantic. A generation later, Cortes reported massive gold and other riches beyond-belief in the Aztec court. Suddenly private Spaniards are falling all over themselves to scour every inch of "the New World" and the Spanish govt, the Portuguese govt, the Vatican, and several other nation-states are doing all they can just to keep up with it... |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:11 am Post subject: |
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Mith Wouldn't it be fair to say at this point the cheapest and most easy source of energy is oil.
It might get better one day but only after the US suffers terribly because of the US addition to oil.
Without oil the middle east would have nothing except good food.
Without oil Vensuzuala would have nothing but hot girls who win Beauty contests |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:19 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Let someone discover massive mineral deposits or what-have-you, in the asteroid belt or on one or another moon somewhere in our solar system, and then see where private industry can and almost certainly will take us vis-a-vis space-exploration technology, logistics, transportation, communications, etc.
Presently, such motives are missing.
Consider: Columbus had to beg several princes for sponsorship to sail three small ships across the Atlantic. A generation later, Cortes reported massive gold and other riches beyond-belief in the Aztec court. Suddenly private Spaniards are falling all over themselves to scour every inch of "the New World" and the Spanish govt, the Portuguese govt, the Vatican, and several other nation-states are doing all they can just to keep up with it... |
Yes indeed. There are a few other things that are keeping us back (here are two off the top of my head):
-High launch costs and still too-frequent accidents (a Russian rocket just lost a Japanese probe a few days ago). SpaceX is working on that, and there is a much smaller company called JPAerospace (both American) that is working on getting into orbit without rockets, by using these triangle-shaped airships, one smaller one to get up to a certain altitude where there is a waystation, and then one super huge one that gets all the rest of the way up. Here's the animation, kind of cheap but you get the idea:
http://www.jpaerospace.com/video/ATO_Animation.wmv
-Lack of knowledge of what's out there. People like myself and anybody else interested in space knows that there are other solar systems out there with planets like ours, but it's going to take a really good discovery to have the average person realize that space isn't just a whole lot of nothing. It's a whole lot of nothing with billions of worlds floating around in it.
Once we're done with the shuttle program it's going to be interesting because we'll be able to look at manned missions to places like near-Earth asteroids, a destination people often forget about. These asteroids are a natural next step after the Moon and are actually quite a bit easier since there's almost no gravity and so you just need to dock, not land, so all you have to do is wait until one comes close and then go out there and rendezvous with it. The Moon takes about three days to get to whereas an asteroid might take about two weeks there and another two back depending on the distance, but that's nothing compared to the six months to Mars. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:23 am Post subject: |
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Here's an article on the proposed idea for a manned mission to an asteroid:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070730_asteroid_probe.html
That would be so Little Prince to land on an asteroid only a few hundred metres in diameter. Looks like I was a bit low on my estimates - they're looking at 90 to 120 days for a mission of this type. Still, people stay in space for much longer than that already. |
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mack4289
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
Mith Wouldn't it be fair to say at this point the cheapest and most easy source of energy is oil.
It might get better one day but only after the US suffers terribly because of the US addition to oil.
Without oil the middle east would have nothing except good food.
Without oil Vensuzuala would have nothing but hot girls who win Beauty contests |
Maybe the thing to do is tax the he*l out of oil. That would drive investment in alternative energy.
Then again, Europe already does that and they're not running any cars on hydrogen yet. The problem with government getting involved in alternative energy is they find a project like ethanol to focus on. They could import ethanol from Brazil, but then they wouldn't be able to give a huge sop to American corn farmers. Another problem with ethanol: "more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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