[jcoffland]

China has now done 6 crewed missions to space in the last 3 years. In that time, Russia has had 13 manned missions many of which NASA astronauts have hitched a ride on. NASA is still on the ground since discontinuing the shuttle program in 2011.

[djaychela]

True, but is it not the case that NASA is focused beyond the level that's being achieved by the Chinese? I appreciate that the sls has its detractors (I'm from the UK so I don't think I have the same internal political perspective that a US commenter might), but aside from that the US government appears to have helped create a nascent private space industry that will yield real fruit in terms of both leo capacity and also beyond in the future?

[jcoffland]

My statements above were neutral but yes I do think that the US and the western world in general are falling behind. What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Privatization of the US space industry is interesting but has yet to prove itself. No private institution has achieved manned orbit.

[avar]

    > What happens if US and Russian relations break down?

Isn't it literally the case that if the US wanted to send people into space on their own hardware they could do it with months of lead time with the Falcon 9, Delta IV etc.?

Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets?

I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper to launch with the Russians" rather than "we can't do it" problem to me.

[tjohns]

We can launch things to space, yes. But we don't have any vehicles that have life support, abort, or re-entry capabilities. It would be a short, one-way trip.

So no, we really can't send anyone to space right now.

And the Soyuz is actually pretty safe, relatively speaking. Aside from two notable failures early on, Soyuz hasn't had a fatality in 27 years.

[Tuna-Fish]

> We can launch things to space, yes. But we don't have any vehicles that have life support, abort, or re-entry capabilities.

Dragon has all three. The reason there are not people it right now is just that there is not enough experience with it to rule it safe. If the risk was ruled worth it, the very next CRS mission could take people up to the ISS.

[fbender]

While it does have "a life support system", this basically means ventilation and some environmental monitoring & control (incl. N2 and maybe O2 for repressurization). It does not mean that it can sustain a vertebrate let alone humans for a substantial period of time. Experiments sent to the ISS containg lifestock always have their own life support system embedded.

The integrated life support system is designed so astronauts can access Dragon while attached to the station, not to sustain them. It receives all utilities from the station and returns "used utilities" (i.e. consumed air) back to the station's systems. It cannot reprocess/regenerate the components by itself.

[eggymatrix]

dragon V1 has no abort capability

dragon V2, scheduled to do its maiden flight sometime in 2017 will have.

[ifdefdebug]

Big problem for NASA: once they discontinued manned space flight, they now have a very hard time getting back into it. The Russians spacecraft is considered relatively safe because they are building upon a proven technology that has been "debugged" for decades now. NASA just has a prototype that hasn't proven anything yet, and I doubt it will be ready by 2023.

The decision to go for a lander with wings and wheels looked so progressive then, and looks so misguided from today's point of view. NASA could build upon decades of expertise with Apollo-like spacecrafts today in order to build their Orion. Having switched to a shuttle, now they have to begin from scratch.

[digi_owl]

The shuttle would have worked better without the military involvement (made the bird overly large) and pork barrel politics (solid boosters).

Observe that pork barreling is holding back any NASA options while the private companies are pushing forward.

[lmm]

We launched an Orion into orbit on top of a Delta IV, no? We could do that again and put people in if we were willing to accept the risk.

[thatsso1999]

Orion has been launched once, on a short 4-hour test flight, during which it only orbited the Earth twice. That spacecraft is very, very different than the Orion that is scheduled to launch with humans inside in 2023. It's not a matter of being "willing to accept the risk" - it's just impossible. Safety is one of NASA's highest priorities, (if not the highest, especially after Columbia), so even considering doing such a thing would be unthinkable and is a non-starter. Even if you manage to somehow sidestep decades of a deeply ingrained culture of safety, it's just not even a possibility right now - significant portions of the spacecraft's design have yet to be finalized, and then you have to figure out how to manufacture it, and once you've actually manufactured it, it goes through several rounds of insane amounts of testing and revision before getting anywhere near the launchpad. Spaceflight is incredibly complex - even if NASA somehow managed to get a blank check (like it did during the early space race) there is still a very significant amount of work to be done that takes a very long time, no matter how much money you throw at it.

[kuschku]

Aside of the fact that that was only a very early prototype, the Orion service module is actually not a NASA project – it’s actually contracted out to ESA.

And a crew module without a service module is not good for much.

[mikeash]

If there were some extremely urgent problem, like if aliens showed up in orbit tomorrow and demanded we send an emissary, then no doubt it could be done pretty quickly.

The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.

[jcoffland]

Manned flight meaning LEO.

[ChoHag]

Minutes, seconds, can make all the difference in some cases.

Months? We're fucked.

[jacquesm]

What kind of manned missions do you have in mind?

[ChoHag]

That's the point: we may not know until we have days or hours remaining to achieve them.

[throwaway123098]

The Western world isn't falling behind. It's just not so push-over ahead.

What China is doing right now, the USSR did in the 1960s, and the US did in the 70s (it had a ten year detour to go to the moon first).

While NASA hasn't done anything innovative in manned space-flight since 1980 (sunk costs, politics, no _real_ need, etc), they've done crazy work with unmanned spacecraft.

Think landing a _car_ on Mars (and then driving it around), launching routine missions to outer planets (and beyond!), being the only agency to get a probe out of the solar system.

Honestly, if Congress ever feels it necessary to launch someone to the Moon, they'll get it done in less than a decade.

[505]

And 'driving it around' is not as simple as it might sound, due to the time taken for commands to travel 4 light-minutes (minimum, and almost always a lot more). Feedback similarly.

[stickfigure]

No private institution has achieved manned orbit.

That's because manned orbit is motivated by prestige, not rational economic behavior.

[ballooney]

Not really, there are commercial agreements in place between both SpaceX and Boeing, and Nasa, as part of its Commercial Crew Programme. The current estimates are that they will not launch until 2018, three years behind the original schedule:

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/09/01/nasa-oig-report-delay...

I also have customers who have been sold slots for their satellites on Falcon Heavy which is now 4 years behind schedule (the first demo flight was originally meant to be 2012, with the first commercial flight in 2013, as yet nothing has flown, with the current estimate being 2017). It's frustrating for these customers.

I point this out here just because HN can have too many credulous website designers saying [to the effect of] 'No but Elon will be on Mars in 10 years so we should just fund private companies' and the reality for everyone in the industry is somewhat different. The Indian Government is currently about the cheapest and most reliable commercial satellite launcher in the world with its PSLV vehicle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle

[avar]

Countering "there's no economic reason to put humans into orbit" with "but look at these commercial programs 100% paid by the government" isn't really a rebuke, you're just making the OPs point for them.

It's only commercial in the sense that say there's say commercial manufacturing of ballistic missile submarines. It's just an implementation detail of how the US (v.s. say China) does manufacturing for purely state-sponsored projects, not something indicating that there's an economic incentive to put people into orbit outside of government sponsored programs.

[kobeya]

They (SpaceX at least) are not 100% funded by the government.

[manarth]

Whilst it's frustrating for the customers whose launches are delayed, I'm sure they're accepting the delay for rational economic reasons, otherwise they would switch to an alternative supplier.

[jcoffland]

Well the reason could be that they haven't gotten their money back.

[tellarin]

Research (especially pure research) and innovation are many times initially incompatible with rational economic behaviour.

[jcoffland]

That's one way to look at it. The other is that a commercial enterprise will not do something in the name of science if it does not make a buck.

[505]

Can't perceptions of prestige help actors make market choices?

[ChoHag]

Research is irrational?

[anc84]

If personal, economical gain is your goal, yes.

[manarth]

R&D is a rational choice for many companies, and their motivation is generally economic rather than altruistic.

[fit2rule]

In my opinion, cooperation in space is one of the reasons that US/Russian relations haven't broken down already...

[Retric]

Having people in space is kind of pointless right now. Yes, it's a low G environment, but ISS is in such a low orbit that people in my state can be further from me than an overhead ISS 'Astronauts'. It's even protected by earths magnetic field making it a poor test of long term space flight.

[rtkwe]

Absolutely wrong. Having a manned station is a boon for the research taking place. Without a station anyone wanting to do research like the packed bed or the docking and refueling experiments would require the investigating institution to design and launch a vastly more complicated automated satellite or to rely on short manned missions that would have more competition for space and time. Instead it's much easier to package an experiment and send it to the station which has a lot of equipment to support experiments and humans that can troubleshoot and modify experiments.

As for studying long term space flight the only thing it really doesn't provide a model for is radiation which we can model on the ground pretty well. You still get the other health impacts from microgravity that we're still trying to figure out how to effectively combat.

[Retric]

ISS cost ~200 billion, saying we can't do the same research for less is kind of a high hurdle when it's close enough for minimal lag, nobody tried, and people need a lot of ridiculously expensive consumables.

[rtkwe]

The lag isn't the hurdle it's making the robotics on the satellite to run the experiment. The closest analog is probably the robot that's used to service the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy [0]. With a station for some types of failures with experiments an astronaut can work around or heavily reconfigure the equipment to still get good data. Without a person up there every experiment launch would have to either just accept failures and write off the whole thing or include whatever system we're talking about that would replace the repair and reconfigure ability of people. Instead the various governments front the cost of having a person in space and it's way easier and cheaper for companies to package and run their experiments. It's a subsidy that opens up the ability to do microG science more easily.

Also there's no good alternative way to study the long term microG effects on humans other than a station since you need both space for people to live for up to a year and space for the various experiments on how to combat the deterioration that happens. Having a station up there also teaches us how to work and repair things in space and how things break when they've been running for 15+ years.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrtGp8hv-0Y

[dTal]

I won't take a strong position on the larger point of whether humans in space are worth it, but there are other uses for a space station than "being far away", "being low g", and "seeing how many astronauts get cancer".

[Eerie]

>What happens if US and Russian relations break down?

Russia loses the ISS, because it can't be maintained without USA ground facilities.

Essentially, it will be the end of Russian manned space flight, until they build themselves a new space station.

[madaxe_again]

Dude, we were already behind. The only significant US first in space was the lunar landing - the USSR thrashed the US with everything from Sputnik to venera to Gagarin to salyut.

The only difference is that you now have a window out of your propaganda bubble.

There's a reason that Chinese space progress is barely reported, if at all, in the west. It's embarrassing, and doesn't tie in with the deluded "west is best" worldview.

[throwaway123098]

But we were not _really_ behind. We were about a year behind (if not less), and much was due to other American advantages: we didn't need huge rockets (which would launch humans into space) since American nuclear bombs were smaller.

The reason we don't hear much about China is because that don't do much:

Launch a man into space once a year? Land a rover on the Moon? That's 1960s news.

If it would be more serious, there would be a "Sputnik scare" like in the 60s, not silence

[exDM69]

The big difference between the execution of the US and Soviet space races is that the Soviets produced the Soyuz - a very capable space craft and launch vehicle that still flies today. On top of that they pioneered space stations and long duration manned space missions.

The US on the other hand built an impractically large moonshot rocket that was too expensive to keep on producing. Then the US moved on the the Space Shuttle, which overpromised and underdelivered (e.g. did not serve the air force and get funding from there) and didn't provide a contingency into the future and had to be retired leaving the US with no manned space launch capability.

[smileysteve]

By going directly from the moon to shuttle, you conveniently forget Skylab.

Also, something about hubble.

[ChoHag]

> But we were not _really_ behind.

We should keep telling ourselves that. It may also help us convince ourselves that our arsehole is indeed the best place for our head to be.

[throwaway123098]

Also, Explorer 1 had scientific payload (which discovered the Van-Allen belts), unlike Sputnik

[Figs]

The US does actually have some other significant firsts in space, especially in the outer solar system:

- First probe to reach Jupiter (Pioneer 10)

- First probe to reach escape velocity needed to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10)

- Arguably, first probe to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1, depending on the definition of "leave the solar system")

- First probe to orbit Jupiter (Galileo)

- First probe to fly-by an asteroid (Galileo) -- passed by 951 Gaspra

- First probe to reach Saturn (Pioneer 11)

- First (and only) probe to visit Uranus (Voyager 2)

- First (and only) probe to visit Neptune (Voyager 2)

- First (and only) probe to visit Pluto (New Horizons)

- First probe to reach Mercury (Mariner 10)

- First probe to orbit Mercury (MESSENGER) -- also, to date, these are the only two probes to visit Mercury

- First probe to orbit two different celestial bodies (Dawn) -- it orbited the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Also, the first time either body has been visited by a probe.

- First photograph of Earth from orbit (Explorer 6) -- not a particularly good image by modern standards, but a pretty significant first given the importance spy satellites have played in international relations since then (You can see the image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_satellite_photo_-_E... )

Somewhat less significant by modern standards, but still interesting:

- First probe to send back data from Venus (Mariner 2) -- the USSR had a fly-by before this (Venera 1), but lost contact with the probe and so couldn't get any data from the fly-by, unfortunately. Mariner 2 didn't have a camera though.

- First probe to successfully return images from Mars (Mariner 4) -- the USSR had the first fly-by (Mars 1), a few years earlier but they lost contact with the probe before it actually reached Mars.

- First probe to orbit Mars (Mariner 9) -- also the first to orbit another planet. Only just barely beat the USSR Mars 2 probe by about two weeks though.

Some other interesting links on space history:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes

[yitchelle]

With so much at stake, is it possible for all nations to play together and strive for the better good when it comes to space exploration?

[TeMPOraL]

Only in movies. A lot of people (including poliicians deciding about treaties and budgets) do not believe there's really anything at stake, and instead think of space exploration as a very expensive nerd hobby with some possible military applications.

[jcoffland]

And ironically those same people believe their silly little political games on earth are what's really important.

[smileysteve]

Yes! This is the concept between ISS! The idea that we are regularly sharing launch missions is a great work for international diplomacy.

[ceejayoz]

> Yes! This is the concept between ISS!

Sort of. China is banned by the US government from participating in the ISS (or any other cooperation with NASA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NA...

[logfromblammo]

All space tech is necessarily dual-use military. I'm certain the concern is that space launch cooperation with PR China will result in unintentional transfer of militarily relevant technologies.

Also, China is responsible for the largest single space debris generating event in history, from the intentional destruction of Fengyun-1C in 2007. That kind of thing doesn't matter to the politicians so much, but it was kind of a dick move, and had all the appearances of gratuitous saber-rattling. Space is too important for nationalist dick-measuring contests in LEO when it is already perilously close to Kessler cascade.

[ceejayoz]

That concern requires pretending (against all evidence) the Chinese haven't thoroughly penetrated US defense contractors' networks and personnel. http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fighter-hacking-idUSL2N0E...

We managed to cooperate with Russia, too.

> Space is too important for nationalist dick-measuring contests in LEO...

I posit that's exactly what the policy forbidding China from collaborating with NASA is.

[logfromblammo]

Nothing good will come of freezing China out of "international" space collaborations.

[MrZongle2]

Well, you could look at it that way.

Or you could also look at it like this: the Chinese have made it to the early-70s "Skylab" stage (minus the Apollo program that came before it), the Russians are content to stick with 1990s Soyuz/Mir/early ISS technology and their orbital shots. NASA has little to show of their manned space program since the shuttle retired in 2011, but still leads the world in robotic exploration of the solar system.

Hardly as dire a situation as you paint.

[Shivetya]

Russia and China can continue to push their space program with its costs simply because their societies are not geared around hand outs and pandering for the votes of those seeking hand outs.

Space is portrayed as having been there, done that. Worse, there are some trying to portray it as a rich man's place with the advent of space tourism and thus not a place government should be except to regulate it.

With regards to NASA, the shuttles, and such. Losing the shuttle was probably the best thing to happen to NASA long term. In the short term it wasn't and not because of the decision but because the management is so dysfunctional they don't know what they need. They have enough wants to fill a Sears Christmas catalog but none spark the imagination of the public and as such get little support.

They need a good spokesman, a long term goal, and some flashy steps that are achieved along the way to keep people interested and thereby keeping the funding alive. I would love to see a permanent moon settlement for more than just a few astronauts, more like a few dozen. Tie it in eventually with private trips to help keep it up and expanding...

[mhurron]

If it wasn't for the national dick waving contest that we call space exploration, it wouldn't matter that NASA isn't from the nation running a vehicle project. But out of everything that NASA does what gets attention? The fact that it's not the nation sending rockets up. Why? Because it's not about exploration and expanding knowledge, it's about dick waving.

I laugh at all this talk about going to Mars to save the human race. We're just going to show up, if we get there at all, and fuck it up just as hard as we have on Earth. We're a species of idiotic assholes.

[BFatts]

Well I guess we won't be sending you then.

[fsloth]

I think you are being too harsh. If all the humans had all the information available all the time and not dependent on their community then it would be just a matter of character.

Humans are humans - and at least currently it appears we learn and improve all the time.