Tag Archives: space

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Space race rebooted? Or, y’know, not.

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All this talk of rocketry and path dependency, and now it looks like we’re going to re-run one of the classic (arguably) bloodless megaconflicts of the 20th Century all over again: Russia is working on a clone-job of the US Air Force’s little-known but oft-alluded-to “spaceplane”, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle!

Stepping away from sensationalist overstatement for a moment (hey, us internet hacks have to attract eyeballs somehow, right?), I don’t think this is anywhere near as big a story as it it’s being made out to be. For a start, all we have to go one regarding the Russian project is a statement of intent, and given the state of the Russian economy (and the alleged state of its government), I’m not sure they’re in any position to pour funding and expertise into a space race right now… indeed, I’d have thought China would be a more potent potential player on that particular gameboard.

Secondly, a similar but less severe problem pertains with the United States, namely the same econopolitical instability that’s so globally fashionable right now (“favela chic, darling – everyone‘s doing it!”). I don’t doubt there’s work being done on the X-37B, but I can’t see it being a significant budget draw in an era of domestic financial woes, long drawn-out “liberation” projects in the Middle East, and an internecine state of polarised political pugilism.

Again, among the nation-state players I’d say China looks like a much better bet for significant progress toward the top of the gravity well in the next decade or so. The commercial space outfits may make some strides as well, but given the sort of characters heading those organisations, I suspect any allegience to the U.S. as anything other than a source of expertise and skills will be more a matter of convenince and expedience than of national pride.

Nonetheless (and as I seem to be saying on a pretty much daily basis of late), interesting times ahead.

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Will human spaceflight ever be safe?

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That’s the question being asked over at Space.com as the anniversaries of the Challenger and Columbia disasters draw near. The question is rhetorical: of course it’s bloody dangerous. Strapping oneself to a firework the size of a small office building in order to travel beyond the gravity well into an environment that’s as inimical to human life as can be imagined… you’d have to be pretty naive to imagine it could ever be otherwise, really. Statistically, though, it’s a lot safer than you might have thought:

NASA has launched 132 manned shuttle missions in the 30 years of the space shuttle program. The agency has lost two of them — Challenger and Columbia.

Russia’s Soyuz program has a similar failure rate, with two fatal accidents in just over 100 manned missions — though Soyuz hasn’t had a fatality in nearly 40 years.

The shuttle and Soyuz risks are thus in the same ballpark as the chances of dying while trying to climb Mount Everest. From 1922 to 2006, one out of every 49 people who undertook the climb ended up dying, O’Connor said.

2% risk of fatality… considering the prize on offer, I’d take that gamble without a second’s hesitation (though I freely admit I’d probably be terrified the whole time).

This question always reminds me of Stephen Baxter’s novels of the early noughties, which had a tendency to feature maverick can-do types embracing the risk of space flight as a means to an end… or rather a means to potentially averting a very nasty existential end for the entire species. Much as it’s an understandable reaction, I think the shuttle disasters were probably one of the biggest contributors to the fading-off of interest in the space program in the public mind (though that whole end-of-the-Cold-War thing certainly played a part as well; much like sports, the veneer of the glorious drive to explore covered up what was essentially a pissing contest between two superpowers, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of Freud can spot the clues a mile away). Political interest in space seems to be on the uptick again, though (possibly because funny-coloured people in far-away countries are getting close to taking some dusty trophies from the Western cabinet) – so how to balance that urge with our risk-obsessed culture?

As Baxter’s novels – and the public response to the recent suggestion of one-way manned missions to Mars – demonstrate, there’s no shortage of people who’d be willing to take the risk of dying in exchange for the chance to go into space, and the emerging commercial space outfits ill doubtless take a less political view of risk management if the ROI looks good. And as Karl Schroeder (among others) has repeatedly pointed out, the risks can be mitigated by investment in better technologies. Crossing the oceans was once the most risky undertaking a human society could imagine, as was powered flight, but now we do both without a second thought.

Human spaceflight could easily become as safe as commercial air travel, so long as we have to have the guts and will to take the risks involved with getting better at it.

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SpaceFence: The Movie

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Via FlowingData, here’s a sort of promo-documentary-advertorial-edutainment spot for Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence system, designed to protect us from rogue bits of crap colliding in orbit above us.

As remarked at FD, I think it’s likely that a lot of the visualisations here are speculative, but the result is something that looks momentarily convincing in that ultimately-unconvincing-once-you’ve-thought-about-it Hollywood way – designed to sell the concept rather than the actuality, in other words. (In other words, I expect the Space Fence control room will look a lot less like the bridge of a space opera dreadnought… though there’s a part of me that wishes that wasn’t the case.)

Makes sense, really; if you want to convince people that putting in expensive systems to mitigate (or at least monitor) potential existential risk problems is worthwhile, making them look a bit sexy is a good tactic. I suppose this is a kind of design fiction, too…

[ Note: my assumption that the footage in the video partakes in artistic license is just that, an assumption; I would very much like to see the real thing, or evidence that the footage represents the reality. If anyone at Lockheed is reading, I’d love to drop in and take a closer look… though you’d probably have to stump up my airfare. 🙂 ]

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Worldbuilding

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Did you enjoy that planetary impact simulator I linked to a while back? Did you enjoy it, perhaps, a little too much, and feel that your galactic karma could do with a bit of balancing? Well, what better way to atone for smashing planets to bits than by building new ones, which is exactly what NASA’s Planet Makeover webapp lets you do [via BoingBoing]. A bit of random fun for friday afternoon: adjust planet size, orbital distance, solar type and planetary age, then hit the button and see whether you’ve made a habitable world. [SPOILERS: your odds of doing so are very low. Good afternoon, Professor Drake!]

Not a new idea, of course (I had a serious hankering for a copy of SimEarth back at the start of the nineties, but never got one), but NASA have wisely brought the idea kicking and screaming into the Twentyteens by a) simplifying it and putting it on the web for free and b) using the word EXTREME! in the name.

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Commercial deployment for Soviet space relics

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When you’re trying to get your new business off the blocks, keeping costs low is important. When that business is space flight, keeping to technology that has a proven track record is also important. Excalibur Almaz are combining that business wisdom with a bit of large-scale recycling, and are buying up old Soviet space modules and vehicles as part of their bid to grab a slice of the commercial space-truckin’ pie.

As elegant and sleek as the Space Shuttle is, I have an aesthetic affection for the more utilitarian approach to space – possibly born of the knowledge that, once you’re out of the atmosphere, you don’t need things like wings or an aerodynamic body. Indeed, probably the most redeeming feature of Stephen Donaldson’s Gap Cycle space opera series (not so well known as the inexplicably popular and interminable Thomas Covenant bore-fests) was the way his fictional spacecraft were ugly, practical things, built for function rather than form.

I’m also reminded of a number of Stephen Baxter’s novels, where gutsy defiers-of-bureaucracy blast themselves up the gravity well in vehicles so crude they’re little more than an unpressurised metal box bolted on to the top of a giant rocket, and the time-worn undermaintained habitats and vehicles of Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix.  Safety and elegance are fine things, but they’re prohibitive obstructions when you’re breaking a new frontier.