[MicahKV]

I don't see the bizarre part. Wikipedia says Barron was born in 1927 when we were still figuring out the basics of aviation, and just a few decades later he was making these plans in the midst of the space race. Considering the rate of progress he had witnessed in his time, it's not very surprising that he expected us to aggressively colonize space in his lifetime.

Maybe I have overly romanticized notions of what could have been, but I feel like humanity lost out big time when the space shuttle was chosen over a manned mission to Mars.

[dang]

Ok, we've taken the bizarre part out of the title above.

[aphroz]

People who are saying that is not possible and that it does not make sense economically speaking have won. We are now in hands of managers, not dreamers.

[helsinkiandrew]

It is possible, perhaps even 10 or 20 years ago, But it isn't economically feasible. You could build or refurbish the ISS into something that looked a Japanese capsule hotel 'fairly cheaply', but getting there still costs millions, we are thousands or 10s of thousands of spacecraft away from making them cheap to produce and run.

Hotels on earth aren't exactly money spinners and apart from the zero gravity and looking at the earth the novelty of being in space would probably wear off after a day or two. Projects like Virgin Galactic - for a 'near space' fun ride will probably be more lucrative in the short term. Getting (government funded) astronauts and satellites into orbit is where the money is right now.

[Retric]

LEO is ~10$ per kg in fuel. Given a similarly reusable vehicle space travel could be relatively cheap.

The economic issues are more about how space flight has been funded than the underlying physics. The space shuttle for example had some terrible tradeoffs relating to which orbits it could achieve and needing to return cargo etc. SpaceX has dramatically lowered the cost to orbit, but they don’t have the funds to explore dramatically different designs.

[hutrdvnj]

And we need a transportation that is much more economical than rockets, otherwise it will always be very costly to lift a kilogram into space.

[helsinkiandrew]

Actually rocket fuel although very old fashioned doesn't seem that costly.

Falcon 9 flight to LEO costs $200K in fuel but can lift 22,800Kg. If a person and their seat could be squeezed into 200Kg that's only $2K per person. I think the biggest cost is that the forces and extremes of temperature mean the 'rocket' needs to be engineered and maintained very well as any small failure is likely to be catastrophic - its very hard to abandon ship or divert to the the nearest airport.

[zizee]

Rockets aren't inherently expensive. Air travel would also be prohibitively expensive if the aircraft was disposed of at the end of each flight.

If SpaceX's Starship plans come to fruition, the $/kg to orbit cost will fall dramatically.

[cm2187]

Not to talk about the environmental impact!

[DennisP]

Not necessarily that high with methane fuel. The exhaust is CO2 and water, and you can make it from water, CO2 in the air, and clean energy.

[dangerbird2]

And potentially near-zero emissions with hydrogen/liquid oxygen rockets. Of course, methane rockets probably ends up having lower emissions in practice due to hydrogen typically being produced in methods that emit CO2.

Ultimately, even if we massively increased the rate of rockets being launched, the greenhouse gas impact would be pretty minimal compared to cars, electricity, and cement production.

[aphroz]

But what is economy anyway ? Recent events showed us that money was not economy, you can print as much as you want and 'helicopter' it.

It is more about the resources, do we have enough of it to make it possible for regular people to travel to space ? Probably not on earth, so let's build mega factories on the Moon. You might argue it's not possible or feasible for some physic reasons, so let's find a solution. But not money, money does not exist, it's made up.

The purpose of humanity as I see it is not to go smoothly and safely, to be able to go without troubles to a final destination (that does not exist). I say buckle up and let's do it! As Billy said you need to be solution oriented.

[geoduck14]

> the novelty of being in space would probably wear off after a day or two.

"I could get used to a view like this" - Flynn Ryder

[lordnacho]

Bureaucrats, not engineers. The difference being that bureaucrats are there to pour glue over something to stabilise it, whereas engineers are meant to try new things.

[gibolt]

A company or government reducing quality and effectiveness over time is not stabilization, but erosion of core principles.

Engineering is innovation and maintenance. Bureaucrats slow good change while pushing to cut corners.

[grp000]

I never thought about bureaucrats that way, it makes sense and it's refreshing.

[amelius]

I'd say the difference managers vs dreamers is better. Musk is a dreamer. He is not really an engineer.

[DennisP]

The managers won for a while. A few dreamers are getting it done now, though.

[adrianN]

Until we figure out a way to make lots of money from deep space missions, progress will be slow. The space race was, imo, mostly a race to optimize nuclear warhead delivery systems.

[runevault]

We probably would need to somehow uncover massive deposits of rare "earth" elements or similar to convince people to push for reaching to space seriously again.

[adrianN]

Mining some Unobtainium from the asteroid belt seems to be the most plausible thing we can do in deep space that we can't do in LEO or right on the ground.

[jahnu]

Some prominent people involved feel Apollo was the mistake if the goal is to colonize space and other worlds asap

https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner/status/1402314414515273728?s=...

[orbital-decay]

The original idea of the first step in outer space exploration by Korolev & co was a mission to circumnavigate Venus (before the surface conditions were known) or Mars. The N family or rockets, the concept of which had been studied before R-7 ever flew, was envisioned as a tool to assemble the large modular interplanetary spaceship in LEO.

Moon wasn't terribly popular among Soviet space engineers because orbital construction was seen as necessary tech, and a single launch mission would have accomplished nothing towards it. But the party decided to participate in the moon race so the largest rocket in the family, N-1, which was never optimized for TLI missions, has been selected and repurposed for this task (and never flew since the concept itself turned out to be flawed in several regards unlike R-7).

Hard to say whether this vision was right - too many unknowns, and they would probably have finished in early 80s at best - but the outcome of that idea was the modular space station tech.

[jahnu]

I guess it's really impossible to know for sure but imagining an alternative history of the space race is always fun. I really liked how For All Mankind did it.

[JKCalhoun]

Would a manned Mars mission really have been feasible? Is it feasible now? I have no idea, myself.

The shuttle might have been fine if it weren't twisted into the boxcar-like thing the Air Force insisted upon. And if the other parts came along with it: space tug, lunar-orbiting station, etc. Instead we got a starter salad and then were shown the door.

Perhaps it was a lack of money. The U.S. worrying so much about (South)East Asia meant money went to war and things like the DynaSoar X-20 and MOL were nixed.

[TMWNN]

>Would a manned Mars mission really have been feasible? Is it feasible now? I have no idea, myself.

No less than Michael Griffith, *the NASA Administrator*, said in 2007 that the shuttle was a mistake (<https://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_e...>), and that NASA should have instead continuing launching Saturn rockets:

>If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for "the next 50 years." We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I don't think we would be on Mars. The hard part isn't getting there, it's creating a sustainable semi-independent habitat that will get you there and keep you alive there between resupply runs.

This is not a "Oh, we'll just deal with that when we need to" problem. It's absolutely critical for long-term missions. And there's been shockingly little research done on it.

The ISS is trivial in comparison because you can send up stuff and take stuff down almost instantly with relative ease. Mars is seven months away. So your mission has to be self-sustaining for at least that long. And it's going to need a steady stream of resupply runs - with a seventh month lead time if have an accident or start running out of stuff.

And all of that - for what? Mars is not a pleasant or easy environment. Aside from unpleasant, difficult, and hostile living space it has no obvious resources.

"Because we can" is a good enough reason for an initial exploration, but it's not a sustainable project without a long-term goal.

[JPLeRouzic]

Thanks for your link about a NASA administrator saying "the shuttle was a mistake". As someone who was a pre-teen during the Apollo area, this warms my heart.

However, even is Saturn V was an extraordinary engineering feat, to explore space we needed something much less expensive, much less polluting, much more secure.

Perhaps SpaceX fills better this niche, but I hope that we simply become a space species with most jobs and people at least in orbit around Earth or Moon.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

> much less polluting

Isn't the SpaceX Merlin a fuel-rich RP-1 engine too, just like the Rocketdyne F-1? Or is it another source of pollution that you have in mind?

[JPLeRouzic]

RP-1 is much less toxic than Hydrazine, but toxicity is not the same thing than pollution. One is qualitative, the other both qualitative and quantitative. Burning a huge amount of kerosene is polluting. For comparison a Boeing 747 (4 engines) consume 2,8 kg per second, while a Saturn V 1 first stage burns 13,600 kg per second, nearly 5000 times the amount of the Boeing 747.

I hope for a breakthrough in rocket engines, but I am quite sure it will not happen. We need something new.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

Yes, but the Merlin engine doesn’t burn hydrazine, it burns RP-1 just like the F-1. I fail to see the environmental benefit.

Also, how energy efficient is the production of hydrazine? Non-fossil processes for making fuels tend to be pretty wasteful, take hydrogen from methane compared to hydrogen from electrolysis for instance.

[nasmorn]

Why would we ever put most people in orbit? Of the sun sure but then it is just called a planet.

[JPLeRouzic]

Hilton's plan was for an hotel in orbit. It's a nice idea, but it means it would have been for a short stay, assuming some space tourism.

It would be better if we have several good reasons to stay permanently in orbit.

[adrianN]

Mars missions are feasible now. See for example the missions described my Zubrin, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

[mattowen_uk]

> Would a manned Mars mission

I think you mean 'crewed Mars mission'.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm showing my age, I hope not any bias.

[lordnacho]

Yeah there's nothing bizarre about it. Moore's law could as well be applied to space travel, why shouldn't you expect that a field that was new would reduce costs exponentially over the next few decades? Turned out to hit a wall but there were reasons to be optimistic at the time.

And the demand side of that business is still there. Who wouldn't book a hotel in space for a few days if the price came down to an annual salary, then a monthly?

[oldgradstudent]

Why would you expect a Moore's law in a new field?

Gordon Moore only stated his thesis almost two decades after the start of the semiconductor era.

It was an empirical observation based on the history of integrated circuits.

Why would you assume a Moore's law in fields that have never shown anything resembling Moore's law?

[lordnacho]

Maybe not the constant but the idea that things will get cheaper. Like batteries.

[loloquwowndueo]

Like gold. We are constantly mining more of it, stands to reason it would become cheaper over time. /s

[perl4ever]

As it mentions, 2001: A Space Odyssey came out about a year later with a Hilton in a space station, so that pretty much portrays the vision at the time.

[iamgopal]

And we have achieved what ? 99 other ways to share naked women’s photos. I hope young people get bored with this stupidity real soon and dream about the bigger space future. Elon is on right path with that one too.

[scrollaway]

You're using the internet wrong.

I'd say if you're watching star trek or some other sci-fi show from earlier than the 90s, we may not have achieved FTL or teleportation, but the whole "magic device that contains all knowledge and can communicate with anyone at any time" thing we actually did pretty well on.

[xwdv]

I remember reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was young and thinking how amazing it’d be to have a such an all knowing device that could look up anything, but didn’t think it was possible, never imagined everyone would have one in their pocket someday.

[zepto]

> that could look up anything

As long as you can find a sci-hub mirror that hasn’t been taken down.