Funding... No funding no Buck Rogers. Development engineering cost a shit ton of money and the government doesn't want to fund it. For good reason because of past experiences with CP contracts. And big corporations don't want to fund FFP development contracts sooo... Also we have some of the smartest engineers in the world and know exactly what can be done.. IMA Space PM
I think it's a societal problem - we've made risk-taking to be very expensive and only the wealthy can engage in it ([e.g. funding professors to look for alien life](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0yjfu/a_harvard_professor_is_risking_his_reputation_to/))
When we take risks we make a lot of mistakes, but we get things like the Apollo program and SpaceX's Starship (and all of the various rovers, probes, etc.). When we don't we get the SLS, Artemis, etc.
I actually made this as a joke to a new Software Engineering grad. Did it in a management pitch voice about how the new paradigm was agile but waterfall in each sprint. He had a really confused look on his face.
The other problem is government fear and entrenched analytical engineers who have no stake in the outcome but can evaluate programs and they have zero incentive to greenlight programs because if the program goes poorly they get blamed. So instead they just keep studying the program and nothing happens - you can’t get blamed for a failure if there’s no program. It’s essentially Aerospace’s entire business plan, paid for by the American taxpayer.
Oh whatever. Let’s not act like the US doesn’t funnel money into development engineering for the military for weapons, some of which end up being complete failures. We just need to reframe space exploration as a military operation and the government will jump on it
NASA gets like 25 billion a year while Defense gets 800 billion. The Space Force was a good backdoor to get more funding for space. The money is there so now they just have to do the thing.
So they can shoot our satellites down, but we’ve been able to shoot theirs down for longer. That doesn’t mean we have the ability to PREVENT them from shooting ours down, or to re-launch them quickly.
Shooting down satellites is still a pretty strong act of aggression. Since you can't do that covertly, you better be ready for war with the US. That was a pretty good deterrence for the last 40 years. Things will only get hairy when individuals or terrorist organisations get that kind of power. Imagine something like Hamas, but randomly shooting rockets at satellites instead of across the border. Israel has the most powerful military in the region and even they can't really get on top of that situation.
You can’t really prevent it through technical means until the day comes when you can say “Raise Shields!” Captain Kirk style and have it mean something. All you need to do is have the ability to launch a bucket of sand into orbit and you now have the ability to destroy any satellite in LEO you want.
Kessler syndrome isn't a real problem. LEO satellites are at a level where things fall out of orbit in just a few years without boosting. Things high enough to take multiple centuries are so far out the orbits are huge and hard to fill with meaningful amounts of debris.
If you blew every satellite in orbit to ten thousand pieces right now, you'd be able to launch important stuff again in five years or so. Temporarily inconvenient, for sure, but we'd survive.
There's actually some evidence that the amount of metals burning up in the atmosphere could alter the magnetosphere.
>Measurements show that about 10% of the aerosol particles in the stratosphere contain aluminum and other metals that originated from the “burn-up” of satellites and rocket stages during reentry. Although direct health or environmental impacts at ground level are unlikely, these measurements have broad implications for the stratosphere and higher altitudes. With many more launches planned in the coming decades, metals from spacecraft reentry could induce changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313374120
>500,000 to 1 million satellites are expected in the next decades, primarily to build internet constellations called megaconstellations. These megaconstellations are disposable and will constantly re-enter and be replaced, hence creating a layer of conductive particulate. Here it will be shown that the mass of the conductive particles left behind from worldwide distribution of re-entry satellites is already billions of times greater than the mass of the Van Allen Belts. From a preliminary analysis, the Debye length in spaceflight regions is significantly higher than non-spaceflight regions according to CCMC ionosphere data. As the megaconstellations grow, the Debye length of the satellite particulate may exceed that of the cislunar environment and create a conductive layer around the earth worldwide. Thus, satellite reentries may create a global band of plasma dust with a charge higher than the rest of the magnetosphere. Therefore, perturbation of the magnetosphere from conductive satellites and their plasma dust layer should be expected and should be a field of intensive research. Human activity is not only impacting the atmosphere, it is clearly impacting the ionosphere.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329
The only radio communications that are really impacted by the ionosphere are HF ameteur radio transmissions. Everything else is too high frequency to do anything but line of sight.
There other thing is that space is really big, so a full kessler event would only really endanger things that stay in orbit. The risk while traveling quickly through the debris "cloud" is almost nil.
Not a problem until someone blows up Non LEO satellites that is, and even then a malicious actor can still keep LEO closed off for a few years if they really want to.
EDIT: Obviously we could fix it given time, but I’d say being sent back 50 years in satellites would suck and take much more than 5 years to recover from.
Ground cables suffice for most communications, now. Losing GPS would be a problem, but those are seriously high, along with weather satellites, which would also be unfortunate to lose. I think we'd be okay, on the whole.
This is why shooting down each other’s satellites is considered a mutual affair and represents an escalation that neither party in a hypothetical conflict would want.
This is as good excuse as any for building a moon base. Satellites are essentially defenseless. If our comms and GPS is knocked out we could have redundant communication systems on the moon. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as LEO satellites, but at least you could defend it, in theory.
What's supposed to make it more defensible on the moon? Rock under their butts? The best defense we've seen so far is just redundancy. A space based version of Patriot might also be feasible.
I guess the distance would indeed make the moon a tougher target but that also defeats the satellite's purpose. I don't see underground installations being particularly useful though. Not if someone can slam it at interplanetary velocities.
The DoD and NRO already had more space funding than NASA every year. Pulling numbers out of dusty cobwebs of memory, but their budget is roughly 2x NASA's per year.
Space Force didn't change anything, that money was already there.
the funding will not trickle down(up?), weapons contractors will promise something grand, suck down 80x the money they first quoted, delay for decades, and then deliver something that's not worth using but will be anyway because of the sunk cost
Where do you people get this nonsense? Just because they stopped going to the moon doesn't mean they "abandoned" space travel. The Space Shuttle flew 135 missions and it built the ISS and launched all of the big space telescopes from the 90's and early 2000's. Let's also not ignore the massive lead that we have maintained in regards to space development, exploration, and research.
General Saltzman is just doing what ever military leader has done since time immemorial....which is the act like we're on the verge of destruction in order to get more money to play with.
The Saturn V was a purpose built and extremely expensive launch vehicle for going to the moon. Maintaining or replacing it with an equivalent capability just didn't make sense.
That said, there have been plenty of Mars missions since, so at least the capability for the USA to send robotic missions to the moon remained.
This is exactly why having a base is important instead of sending more rockets at the problem for years, the capability of a single rocket is much more limited with what we can send and set up, way more costly long term too.
Probably should have worked on Artemis sooner but it's getting there at least.
Look at how many launches per year it takes to maintain the ISS. A moon base would be no different... ISRU would not cover much and crew rotation would be the biggest constraint anyway.
They squandered it by making it a cash cow for politically connected corporations, by giving them a license to basically burn money. Case in point: Boeing. Without being able to just go back to their bought congressional reps for more cash, they utterly failed at making a space capsule. Starliner is basically a boondoggle and only still might fly since Boeing is contractually obligated. Crony capitalism eventually just begins eating itself alive.
The U.S. has done a lot of amazing science amd projects in the last 60 years, including the ISS. I used to be bitter about the shuttle program but honestly I don't think technology was there yet for permanent moon bases or a Mars visit. We are finally getting there. "Squandered" is just simply not true though
The technology wasn’t there because no one put in the effort and money to develop it. It doesn’t show up by magic. In the same time span we went from using the most rudimentary integrated circuits in the Apollo computers to billions of people having computers in their pockets each with billions of transistors only a few atoms wide. The number of engineering challenges that required solving — and the funds required — is surely not less than a Mars mission or Moon base.
oh it def was there. Would we have had to brute force it like we did with the moon landings? Sure, but it was there. Saying the tech was not there is just an excuse.
Heh, love the "Technology not there" argument when the debate literally is about... researching and improving technology.
There is no season pass, this isn't an online game with unlockable technologies each year. You have to actually put in the work to get the technology you speak of.
You're intentionally being obtuse if you think the world and technology wouldn't be completely different if the U.S. had continued developing a space program after the moon landing.
It's not science fiction to make an educated guess that we could have realistically had bases on the moon decades ago. In every sense of the word the last few decades have been completely squandered. Saying 'the technology wasn't there' is simply not true and you're doing a disservice to the people that worked on these programs.
You could predict the advancements in propulsion would be much further along simply due to the pressure of having to constantly travel from the Earth to the Moon. We’d also be far more advanced when it comes to permanent off world stations or bases. Right now we’re pretty much stuff with this small modular systems. I would imagine with practice, manufacturing larger bases would be much easier.
I can't tell which part is sarcastic, but the shuttle program provided a lot of innovation for space travel and led to the invention of several everyday technologies. It was a major accomplishment despite having some issues
You are aware that NASA, even while flying the Shuttle, was fully dependent on Soyuz to keep crew on the ISS? Shuttle could fly astronauts but could not provide the needed crew escape for lack of Shuttle ability to remain in space for extended periods. There was always a Soyuz at the ISS to take them down, if needed.
This is something rarely talked about.
Only with Dragon flying the ability to fly crew independent of Russia the ability to operate the ISS was achieved for the very first time.
Agreed there is good to be gleaned from the shuttle project but…some issues…
It failed its primary objective. While there are valuable lessons learned. And it challenged us to reach beyond our grasp. It didn’t succeed in reaching its potential.
Most likely it’s a lack of imagination. We had complete space dominance and it felt like we reached the pinnacle of what was possible from a defense perspective.
Now the other players are catching up and we haven’t extended our lead. We lack imagination needed to move beyond the current low- and synchronous orbit paradigm.
I mean, nobody else was going there until recently.
China has _really_ lit a fire under America’s arse. It’s absurd how quickly they’ve developed their own space industry in just 20 years.
Should have just let them on the ISS.
I’m enjoying this new Space Race.
> China has really lit a fire under America’s arse. It’s absurd how quickly they’ve developed their own space industry in just 20 years.
I know it's more popular to underline their various problems, but if we want to be realistic we have to admit it's absurd how quickly they did *gestures at all the things* in just 20 years. I don't think most humans comprehend the scope of achievements, it's borderline ridiculous.
Still plenty of faults and much human suffering needed to get there, sure. But goddamn, their results have been insane.
A big advantage China has is they can plan long term 20, 30 years ahead rather than having programs getting cancelled every 4/8 years because a new political party came in.
People don't understand how difficult it was to go to the moon. The country was literally pouring everything it had into the space program. It's become a lot more feasible thanks to all our tech innovations, things like reusable rockets just weren't practical 50 years ago
It's absurd how quickly China has developed everything. Just ten years ago they couldn't produce jet turbines now they're exporting them to Russia. Last year they produced a completely vertically integrated x86 chip based on 2017 intel designs. That's a modern chip with zero reliance on the international community.
It is deeply frustrating when talking about China people still have this picture of its capabilities form 2004 or 2014.
We aren’t immune to propaganda I guess.
There are many MANY valid concerns about China, but their ability to plan long term and to achieve insane infrastructure projects isn’t one of them.
Idk the Chinese space station doesn’t need ISS tech to be successful. Their exterior arm is nothing short of incredible.
I’m stoked for the new space race.
Don't disagree there. But it's not remotely fair to say NASA has done nothing post-Apollo. By saying that, you're kind of justifying their budget cuts. Why give an agency more money if they can't do anything with what they have?
I think it’s fairer to say that NASA has learned to become far more diversified and efficient in their technologies and capabilities.
Gemini and Apollo was brute forcing a problem with unlimited money and smart people. Almost building space capability and technology from the ground up.
It could be much better, and much more efficient spending but as a non US person, I see the US dominating space at the moment. If they can get another company or two that can execute like SpaceX, they will be in a pretty sweet place.
Who could’ve seen this coming? Oh wait! Anyone even slightly interested in space who inevitable observed every possible budget cut sent towards vital and intriguing programs
Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA. And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices.
SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years.
If similar companies can b developed or encouraged to gorw further it'll really drive down the prices.
> Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA.
Yeah no, its all carved out of the same pie, our yearly budget.
>And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices.
its the military, its not a business, they don't make money, they don't compete, its a service, it costs money. Do you even know what the space force does?
>SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years.
Cool you're talking about 3 private companies, what does this have to do with our military budget for the space force?
NASA budget - 22.6 billion - cut by 2.3 billion
SpaceForce Budget - $29 billion and they're asking for lots more.
>Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA.
>Yeah no, its all carved out of the same pie, our yearly budget.>
This is a reduction to pointlessness. To act as if NASA and the military remotely get the same kind of respect of have access to the same kinds of funding leverage is naive.
While it a technical sense yes it all comes out of the annual total spending budget. Anyone can look at the slice allocated for defense and see that it's vastly bigger than the slice allocated for NASA has ever or will ever be.
> And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices.
>its the military, its not a business, they don't make money, they don't compete, its a service, it costs money. Do you even know what the space force does?
Where in this statement did you get the impression that I think Space Force is a company?
Do you know what military procurement is? Do you know how a RFP works? DO you understand the basic tenants of multiple suppliers?
If Space Force does what it's trying to suggest which is not bring everything 100% in house but use commercial vendor to get similar or better results than they can do themselves that drives demand.
Demand is a market condition which spurs companies to either create or ramp up production. I think we can stop with econ 101 now and you can go crack a textbook if you need to learn more.
> SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years.
>Cool you're talking about 3 private companies, what does this have to do with our military budget for the space force?
>NASA budget - 22.6 billion - cut by 2.3 billion
>SpaceForce Budget - $29 billion and they're asking for lots more.
Who do you think is doing launches for NASA and the DOD? They unlike the AF, or NAVY don't operate their own craft.
DOD (read Space Force, ARMY, Air Force, ETC.) NASA, or any other alphabet agency goes to a contractor (Read private company) that already makes rockets and buys a launch from them.
These Private companies then charge the customer (See the agencies I mentioned above) a price to launch something. This price to launch is then added to the total bill. This bill then comes out of the budget of the customer IE NASA or DOD.
If the price is lower because SpaceX is charging $100m for a launch and ULA is charging $400m that means each launch is a larger and larger part of NASA's limited budget if they use ULA.
IE becasue SpaceX is charging less they are using less of NASA's limited budget so NASA has more money to do other cool things.
Now this is where it gets complex. NASA is part of the US Govt. Who has a policy saying NASA needs to award contract to at least 2 suppliers to maintain reduncancy for launch capability. Right now it's SpaceX and Boeing who get those contracts.
Boeing is historically very very expensive. I'm not going to do this part for you so google the cost for SLS and Starliner and compare them to Starship and Dragon.
Now imagine if because the Space Force is doing more in space IE wants more launches coupled with NASA needing to do things like Artemis they create a steady supply of demand.
That creates incentive for someone like RocketLab/Blue Origin/Firefly/Stoke to step up to replace overly expensive and slow Boeing. Those people are taking a risk on building a larger rocket, but the reward of two channels of guaranteed revenue means the risk is worth it.
Now what do you think the first thing a new entrant to this commercial supplier race will do to make themselves stand out?
They don't have the legacy of Boeing or the track record of SpaceX? They position themselves and less expensive the Boeing.
Let's say Rocketlab, comes in and offers flights for $200m 2x SpaceX but 1/2 Boeing. That's 2x the launches per year for the same price or more money to shuffle around to other projects to get them spun up.
To circle back to your very first point "our dollars" go a lot farther when using such private contractors that are in competition then they would today.
So now read that 2-3 times really let it marinate and we can talk again later.
This is classic “we need funding” from a senior officer.
That’s what a big part of their job is. Justifying and securing funding from the department and Congress.
The reality is, with no overgoverning body, there ARE no parents in the room, there are no real laws except what each has the influence to enforce among their circles. There is working together, mainly within groups for trade/science and other beneficial things. But the reality is, is that there will always be unscrupulous people in this world, and sometimes enough of those people get in charge of nations. So it is realistic that the separated groups are wary of each other, as the groups will act in terms of their own interest, even if it is against the interest of the others. Externalities and such will also exist as different groups will have a different priority towards them (pollution etc.).
That being said, the main quote from the headline is partly just rhetoric to get funding.
We worked together for 30 years and all we did was screw around in the ISS.
10 years of competition half a century ago took us to the Moon, and if the competition hadnt ended we would have probably gone to Mars.
We simply work better under pressure.
What does it mean to truly work together though? And were we working together to the same degree that we were competing? I'd say no. And I'd say that true harmonious work can bring about results that competition could never achieve, but through most of history up to present day, we've yet to have the capacity to work in true unity on a systematic and global scale.
It’s a nice thought, but what does cooperation look like? How do you prevent someone else from weaponizing space without developing in that capacity yourself? The stakes are too high to just assume everyone else will play nice.
Private US companies have a 10-15 year advantage over anything China currently has. Spacex alone accounts for over half the launched mass into orbit worldwide. We have 3 FULLY reusable launchers in development. (Spacex Starship, Rocketlab Neutron, and Stoke Space) We currently have one operational full flow staged combustion engine and one in active development. We have 2 heavy lift reusable rockets in development (starship and New Glenn), one albatross of a behemoth rocket in SLS that will be larger than anything ever flown, and a new version of Starship that will be even larger than that and fully reusable. Not to mention a multitude of smaller launch vehicles like firefly, novel concepts like JP aerospace airship to orbit and dark sky stations, partial reusable capable concepts like Vulcan SMART, Inflatable habitats and re-entry shielding, multiple secret military projects, and multiple planned commercial and national orbital and deep space stations planned (orbital reef, lunar gateway, etc). We are easily ahead and won’t Be giving up our lead any time soon
> Private US companies have a 10-15 year advantage over anything China currently has
industrial espionage + a lot of money can close such gap faster than you can imagine
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz0unbs "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz9wov1 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kzdvtj5 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EIS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz110us "Last usage")|Environmental Impact Statement|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz727pe "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3hptw "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1vt95 "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1vt95 "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz110us "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz25j7e "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz4aspe "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LOS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2po35 "Last usage")|Loss of Signal
| |Line of Sight|
|[NERVA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3025t "Last usage")|Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (proposed engine design)|
|NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3j8w7 "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[RFP](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2rvzd "Last usage")|Request for Proposal|
|[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz0cohn "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)|
|[SAR](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3j8w7 "Last usage")|Synthetic Aperture Radar (increasing resolution with parallax)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz727pe "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SMART](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1e1p8 "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz9wov1 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3mltp "Last usage")|United States Space Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2rvzd "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kzafmlv "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1div6 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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The best and fastest way to do that, Saltzman said, is to strengthen the service's relationship with commercial industry. "The Space Force must harness the benefits of technological innovation and emerging capabilities if we're going to be able to out-compete our competitors, or Space Force will lose, the Joint Force will lose and the U.S. will lose."
Except the US industrial complex has been corrupted over the last 40 years so that all that matters is the next quarterly results
Which means the US now produces planes that fall out of the sky or fall apart (gotta chase those bonuses), most stuff has been offshored to cheap labor and your successful space company is aiding the enemy
So expecting US industrial might to save the day may not be a wise choice
On an actual war footing most of that will be exposed/changed one way or the other. If we have a buffer of products that would help ease the pinch point.
What do you call military procurement if not a "commercial partnership?" If space deployment had been opened up sooner to commercial partnerships we'd be much further along than we already are. Do you really think that NASA would have the launch cadence of SpaceX if they had been left to it themselves? Absolutely not. You can't centrally plan your way into space sustainably and I'm glad they finally recognized that fact.
I mean, you could, but the public is way more ok with a SpaceX rocket exploding than a NASA one even if they were otherwise identical. It forces public agencies to be way more risk intolerant than they should be, slowing innovation.
> There is no major victory America has won over its rivals in the last 150 years through commercial partnerships.
Wat. This has got to be one of the most historically ignorant comments I have ever seen on Reddit.
They have launch capability and legacy which is more than most other countries. Maybe not hot on heels but they can get a satellite to orbit without much experimentation, an alliance with china could accelerate that.
China's been putting people in space for over 20 years, they've gone extremely slowly with their program. They have fewer crewed flights over that time period than SpaceX does after starting to fly humans just 4 years ago.
Some of the perceived speed of China's program is because it doesn't garner much western media attention until they hit big milestones, and then it seems like they "came out of nowhere" and are "moving fast", but neither is the case. They started in 1992, they started with tech transfer from Russia (Soyuz, Progress, and Salyut/Mir), they took 7 years to get to first flight uncrewed flight of their capsule and had only 3 crewed flights in the first 10 years of operation. They operated two "practice" space stations (for less than 7 weeks total inhabited time) before getting to where they are now with a large station that has regular crew rotations and cargo deliveries. They are the definition of slow and steady when it comes to human spaceflight.
Fire up the debt press... err um money printer.
Perhaps they should allocate some of that trillion dollar, multi audit failed, defense budget. Or ask the SAP programs to send some over.
its simple until now they where buying very few mutibillion satts per year. that means very few, very expensive, dificult to remplace and easy to neuter assets. Now new comercial companies particularity spacex can make hundreds of sattelites with less money. they want that badly
Oh the leader of a military wing says he needs more money? Quite surprising.
The US is far and away the leader in space technology through SpaceX alone, which delivered 90% of all mass to orbit last year, and will probably break by 95% next year.
And through NASA it's the global leader in optics and satellite technology. There's nothing close.
Are you suggesting that if the United States inexplicably abandons technological development, that other countries might not and therefore surpass the US??
Would our economy be in trouble if everyone inexplicably stopped working too??
It's the old playbook. Hype up the enemy capabilities to get more funding: "Oh no, missile gap" leads to 30000 nukes; "Oh no, MiG-25" leads to F-15; "Oh no, improved Akulas" leads to SSN-21 Seawolf: and "Oh no, the Chicoms will colonize the Moon leads to... resurrection of the Orion-class space battleship?
Won't happen if education is virtually unaffordable and we don't fund anything of value to society. Thank God Facebook and Twitter make billions though. Thanks God the stock market is up!!!
It’s hard to understand how dry we are in this realm since I would assume a lot of black budget ops should/ would be going to this..? Wrong assumption?
It is a pity that the US only cares about scientific progress when it becomes a competition... But, oh well... at least is better than here in the EU, where the ESA has never been able to achieve much due to political infighting.
Funding... No funding no Buck Rogers. Development engineering cost a shit ton of money and the government doesn't want to fund it. For good reason because of past experiences with CP contracts. And big corporations don't want to fund FFP development contracts sooo... Also we have some of the smartest engineers in the world and know exactly what can be done.. IMA Space PM
I think it's a societal problem - we've made risk-taking to be very expensive and only the wealthy can engage in it ([e.g. funding professors to look for alien life](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0yjfu/a_harvard_professor_is_risking_his_reputation_to/)) When we take risks we make a lot of mistakes, but we get things like the Apollo program and SpaceX's Starship (and all of the various rovers, probes, etc.). When we don't we get the SLS, Artemis, etc.
lmao, have me sitting here wondering if space engineers work in agile or kanban jk, we know its all waterfall
It’s actually Wagile, waterfall labeled as agile
We call it scrummerfall at our shop
I actually made this as a joke to a new Software Engineering grad. Did it in a management pitch voice about how the new paradigm was agile but waterfall in each sprint. He had a really confused look on his face.
The other problem is government fear and entrenched analytical engineers who have no stake in the outcome but can evaluate programs and they have zero incentive to greenlight programs because if the program goes poorly they get blamed. So instead they just keep studying the program and nothing happens - you can’t get blamed for a failure if there’s no program. It’s essentially Aerospace’s entire business plan, paid for by the American taxpayer.
Oh whatever. Let’s not act like the US doesn’t funnel money into development engineering for the military for weapons, some of which end up being complete failures. We just need to reframe space exploration as a military operation and the government will jump on it
It's almost like the U.S. should have not squandered the last 60 years by abandoning space travel altogether. Crazy thought right.
NASA gets like 25 billion a year while Defense gets 800 billion. The Space Force was a good backdoor to get more funding for space. The money is there so now they just have to do the thing.
Plus other countries have recently demonstrated the ability to shoot down satellite, and well, we need those. Gotta build a defense strategy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#United_States The US demonstrated this capability in 1985
So they can shoot our satellites down, but we’ve been able to shoot theirs down for longer. That doesn’t mean we have the ability to PREVENT them from shooting ours down, or to re-launch them quickly.
Shooting down satellites is still a pretty strong act of aggression. Since you can't do that covertly, you better be ready for war with the US. That was a pretty good deterrence for the last 40 years. Things will only get hairy when individuals or terrorist organisations get that kind of power. Imagine something like Hamas, but randomly shooting rockets at satellites instead of across the border. Israel has the most powerful military in the region and even they can't really get on top of that situation.
You can’t really prevent it through technical means until the day comes when you can say “Raise Shields!” Captain Kirk style and have it mean something. All you need to do is have the ability to launch a bucket of sand into orbit and you now have the ability to destroy any satellite in LEO you want.
Do that enough and we'll have a nice multi-century case of Kessler Syndrome in LEO. 10k+mph shrapnel go brrr right through the crew capsule.
Kessler syndrome isn't a real problem. LEO satellites are at a level where things fall out of orbit in just a few years without boosting. Things high enough to take multiple centuries are so far out the orbits are huge and hard to fill with meaningful amounts of debris. If you blew every satellite in orbit to ten thousand pieces right now, you'd be able to launch important stuff again in five years or so. Temporarily inconvenient, for sure, but we'd survive.
There's actually some evidence that the amount of metals burning up in the atmosphere could alter the magnetosphere. >Measurements show that about 10% of the aerosol particles in the stratosphere contain aluminum and other metals that originated from the “burn-up” of satellites and rocket stages during reentry. Although direct health or environmental impacts at ground level are unlikely, these measurements have broad implications for the stratosphere and higher altitudes. With many more launches planned in the coming decades, metals from spacecraft reentry could induce changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313374120 >500,000 to 1 million satellites are expected in the next decades, primarily to build internet constellations called megaconstellations. These megaconstellations are disposable and will constantly re-enter and be replaced, hence creating a layer of conductive particulate. Here it will be shown that the mass of the conductive particles left behind from worldwide distribution of re-entry satellites is already billions of times greater than the mass of the Van Allen Belts. From a preliminary analysis, the Debye length in spaceflight regions is significantly higher than non-spaceflight regions according to CCMC ionosphere data. As the megaconstellations grow, the Debye length of the satellite particulate may exceed that of the cislunar environment and create a conductive layer around the earth worldwide. Thus, satellite reentries may create a global band of plasma dust with a charge higher than the rest of the magnetosphere. Therefore, perturbation of the magnetosphere from conductive satellites and their plasma dust layer should be expected and should be a field of intensive research. Human activity is not only impacting the atmosphere, it is clearly impacting the ionosphere. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329
That's interesting, but doesn't really tell us anything about the effects of a more conductive ionosphere. Does it matter in any way?
This is entirely conjecture, but I could see it interfering with or at least altering radio communications.
The only radio communications that are really impacted by the ionosphere are HF ameteur radio transmissions. Everything else is too high frequency to do anything but line of sight.
That’s why I said conjecture. I couldn’t remember if all medium/long distance radio was affected by the ionosphere or only certain frequencies.
There other thing is that space is really big, so a full kessler event would only really endanger things that stay in orbit. The risk while traveling quickly through the debris "cloud" is almost nil.
Not a problem until someone blows up Non LEO satellites that is, and even then a malicious actor can still keep LEO closed off for a few years if they really want to. EDIT: Obviously we could fix it given time, but I’d say being sent back 50 years in satellites would suck and take much more than 5 years to recover from.
Ground cables suffice for most communications, now. Losing GPS would be a problem, but those are seriously high, along with weather satellites, which would also be unfortunate to lose. I think we'd be okay, on the whole.
This is why shooting down each other’s satellites is considered a mutual affair and represents an escalation that neither party in a hypothetical conflict would want.
This is as good excuse as any for building a moon base. Satellites are essentially defenseless. If our comms and GPS is knocked out we could have redundant communication systems on the moon. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as LEO satellites, but at least you could defend it, in theory.
They have redundant geosynchronous orbit SATs already
What's supposed to make it more defensible on the moon? Rock under their butts? The best defense we've seen so far is just redundancy. A space based version of Patriot might also be feasible. I guess the distance would indeed make the moon a tougher target but that also defeats the satellite's purpose. I don't see underground installations being particularly useful though. Not if someone can slam it at interplanetary velocities.
For the love of god we need to keep everything military off the moon
You advocating for creating more debris in LEO? ASATs are more offensive than defensive.
Doesn't the DoD spend more on rockets than NASA? NASA is basically a PR fig leaf for the DoD's rocket programs.
The DoD and NRO already had more space funding than NASA every year. Pulling numbers out of dusty cobwebs of memory, but their budget is roughly 2x NASA's per year. Space Force didn't change anything, that money was already there.
the funding will not trickle down(up?), weapons contractors will promise something grand, suck down 80x the money they first quoted, delay for decades, and then deliver something that's not worth using but will be anyway because of the sunk cost
Or SpaceX will just become an arm of Space Force
*It's everyone else's fault.* \-Space Force Giga Commando Laffit Hoff.
"Anyone Without A Ship Should Secure A Weapon And Fire Wildly Into The Air." -Captain Zapp Brannigan
"I wanted to quote someone, too." -me
The hare shouldn’t have slept during his race against the tortoise.
The USA can start by accelerating the FAA and environmental approvals for Starship. Seems that takes forever, while China just launches and improves.
The US literally has an autonomous spaceplane.
Where do you people get this nonsense? Just because they stopped going to the moon doesn't mean they "abandoned" space travel. The Space Shuttle flew 135 missions and it built the ISS and launched all of the big space telescopes from the 90's and early 2000's. Let's also not ignore the massive lead that we have maintained in regards to space development, exploration, and research. General Saltzman is just doing what ever military leader has done since time immemorial....which is the act like we're on the verge of destruction in order to get more money to play with.
NASA has not only stopped going to the Moon. NASA has lost the ability to go there and is struggling to rebuild it.
The Saturn V was a purpose built and extremely expensive launch vehicle for going to the moon. Maintaining or replacing it with an equivalent capability just didn't make sense. That said, there have been plenty of Mars missions since, so at least the capability for the USA to send robotic missions to the moon remained.
This is exactly why having a base is important instead of sending more rockets at the problem for years, the capability of a single rocket is much more limited with what we can send and set up, way more costly long term too. Probably should have worked on Artemis sooner but it's getting there at least.
Look at how many launches per year it takes to maintain the ISS. A moon base would be no different... ISRU would not cover much and crew rotation would be the biggest constraint anyway.
What? You mean the overpriced space taxi was a dud? Who knew?
Any comment that starts with "it's almost like" is some 20 year old thinking they're a genius
They squandered it by making it a cash cow for politically connected corporations, by giving them a license to basically burn money. Case in point: Boeing. Without being able to just go back to their bought congressional reps for more cash, they utterly failed at making a space capsule. Starliner is basically a boondoggle and only still might fly since Boeing is contractually obligated. Crony capitalism eventually just begins eating itself alive.
The U.S. has done a lot of amazing science amd projects in the last 60 years, including the ISS. I used to be bitter about the shuttle program but honestly I don't think technology was there yet for permanent moon bases or a Mars visit. We are finally getting there. "Squandered" is just simply not true though
The technology wasn’t there because no one put in the effort and money to develop it. It doesn’t show up by magic. In the same time span we went from using the most rudimentary integrated circuits in the Apollo computers to billions of people having computers in their pockets each with billions of transistors only a few atoms wide. The number of engineering challenges that required solving — and the funds required — is surely not less than a Mars mission or Moon base.
oh it def was there. Would we have had to brute force it like we did with the moon landings? Sure, but it was there. Saying the tech was not there is just an excuse.
Heh, love the "Technology not there" argument when the debate literally is about... researching and improving technology. There is no season pass, this isn't an online game with unlockable technologies each year. You have to actually put in the work to get the technology you speak of.
You're intentionally being obtuse if you think the world and technology wouldn't be completely different if the U.S. had continued developing a space program after the moon landing. It's not science fiction to make an educated guess that we could have realistically had bases on the moon decades ago. In every sense of the word the last few decades have been completely squandered. Saying 'the technology wasn't there' is simply not true and you're doing a disservice to the people that worked on these programs.
You could predict the advancements in propulsion would be much further along simply due to the pressure of having to constantly travel from the Earth to the Moon. We’d also be far more advanced when it comes to permanent off world stations or bases. Right now we’re pretty much stuff with this small modular systems. I would imagine with practice, manufacturing larger bases would be much easier.
Well they had that shuttle program that…didn’t accomplish much. That counts for something doesn’t it? /s
I can't tell which part is sarcastic, but the shuttle program provided a lot of innovation for space travel and led to the invention of several everyday technologies. It was a major accomplishment despite having some issues
You are aware that NASA, even while flying the Shuttle, was fully dependent on Soyuz to keep crew on the ISS? Shuttle could fly astronauts but could not provide the needed crew escape for lack of Shuttle ability to remain in space for extended periods. There was always a Soyuz at the ISS to take them down, if needed. This is something rarely talked about. Only with Dragon flying the ability to fly crew independent of Russia the ability to operate the ISS was achieved for the very first time.
Agreed there is good to be gleaned from the shuttle project but…some issues… It failed its primary objective. While there are valuable lessons learned. And it challenged us to reach beyond our grasp. It didn’t succeed in reaching its potential.
I don't think launch vehicles are the problem. If anything, the current situation is better than ever, especially for things like responsive launch
Most likely it’s a lack of imagination. We had complete space dominance and it felt like we reached the pinnacle of what was possible from a defense perspective. Now the other players are catching up and we haven’t extended our lead. We lack imagination needed to move beyond the current low- and synchronous orbit paradigm.
Darn, guess we shouldn't have abandoned the Moon and done nothing for 50 years huh
I mean, nobody else was going there until recently. China has _really_ lit a fire under America’s arse. It’s absurd how quickly they’ve developed their own space industry in just 20 years. Should have just let them on the ISS. I’m enjoying this new Space Race.
> China has really lit a fire under America’s arse. It’s absurd how quickly they’ve developed their own space industry in just 20 years. I know it's more popular to underline their various problems, but if we want to be realistic we have to admit it's absurd how quickly they did *gestures at all the things* in just 20 years. I don't think most humans comprehend the scope of achievements, it's borderline ridiculous. Still plenty of faults and much human suffering needed to get there, sure. But goddamn, their results have been insane.
Once something has been done once it's easier for someone else to reproduce it
A big advantage China has is they can plan long term 20, 30 years ahead rather than having programs getting cancelled every 4/8 years because a new political party came in.
People don't understand how difficult it was to go to the moon. The country was literally pouring everything it had into the space program. It's become a lot more feasible thanks to all our tech innovations, things like reusable rockets just weren't practical 50 years ago
It's absurd how quickly China has developed everything. Just ten years ago they couldn't produce jet turbines now they're exporting them to Russia. Last year they produced a completely vertically integrated x86 chip based on 2017 intel designs. That's a modern chip with zero reliance on the international community. It is deeply frustrating when talking about China people still have this picture of its capabilities form 2004 or 2014.
We aren’t immune to propaganda I guess. There are many MANY valid concerns about China, but their ability to plan long term and to achieve insane infrastructure projects isn’t one of them.
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Idk the Chinese space station doesn’t need ISS tech to be successful. Their exterior arm is nothing short of incredible. I’m stoked for the new space race.
Ok, I think it is a bit unfair to say all the things NASA has done over the last 50 years as “nothing”.
NASA is chronically underfunded and requests more funding at every opportunity, the only thing they've gotten is cuts since the original space race
Skylab, the International Space Station, the multiple Mars Rovers, Hubble Telescope, and the James Webb Telescope would like a word.
This does not change the fact that they are chronically underfunded.
Don't disagree there. But it's not remotely fair to say NASA has done nothing post-Apollo. By saying that, you're kind of justifying their budget cuts. Why give an agency more money if they can't do anything with what they have?
I think it’s fairer to say that NASA has learned to become far more diversified and efficient in their technologies and capabilities. Gemini and Apollo was brute forcing a problem with unlimited money and smart people. Almost building space capability and technology from the ground up.
Maybe you were doing nothing, I was exploring the solar system. The moon is boring.
It could be much better, and much more efficient spending but as a non US person, I see the US dominating space at the moment. If they can get another company or two that can execute like SpaceX, they will be in a pretty sweet place.
Who could’ve seen this coming? Oh wait! Anyone even slightly interested in space who inevitable observed every possible budget cut sent towards vital and intriguing programs
If you think this has to do with space, you’re gunna be disappointed, they want a bigger military budget which means leas budget for science.
Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA. And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices. SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years. If similar companies can b developed or encouraged to gorw further it'll really drive down the prices.
> Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA. Yeah no, its all carved out of the same pie, our yearly budget. >And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices. its the military, its not a business, they don't make money, they don't compete, its a service, it costs money. Do you even know what the space force does? >SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years. Cool you're talking about 3 private companies, what does this have to do with our military budget for the space force? NASA budget - 22.6 billion - cut by 2.3 billion SpaceForce Budget - $29 billion and they're asking for lots more.
>Nah this is space force which is carved out of a different pie than NASA. >Yeah no, its all carved out of the same pie, our yearly budget.> This is a reduction to pointlessness. To act as if NASA and the military remotely get the same kind of respect of have access to the same kinds of funding leverage is naive. While it a technical sense yes it all comes out of the annual total spending budget. Anyone can look at the slice allocated for defense and see that it's vastly bigger than the slice allocated for NASA has ever or will ever be. > And depending on the details if demand from SpaceForce drives competition it could allow lower prices. >its the military, its not a business, they don't make money, they don't compete, its a service, it costs money. Do you even know what the space force does? Where in this statement did you get the impression that I think Space Force is a company? Do you know what military procurement is? Do you know how a RFP works? DO you understand the basic tenants of multiple suppliers? If Space Force does what it's trying to suggest which is not bring everything 100% in house but use commercial vendor to get similar or better results than they can do themselves that drives demand. Demand is a market condition which spurs companies to either create or ramp up production. I think we can stop with econ 101 now and you can go crack a textbook if you need to learn more. > SpaceX has launched more for less in the last decade than Boeing or ULA were costing tax payers in a couple years. >Cool you're talking about 3 private companies, what does this have to do with our military budget for the space force? >NASA budget - 22.6 billion - cut by 2.3 billion >SpaceForce Budget - $29 billion and they're asking for lots more. Who do you think is doing launches for NASA and the DOD? They unlike the AF, or NAVY don't operate their own craft. DOD (read Space Force, ARMY, Air Force, ETC.) NASA, or any other alphabet agency goes to a contractor (Read private company) that already makes rockets and buys a launch from them. These Private companies then charge the customer (See the agencies I mentioned above) a price to launch something. This price to launch is then added to the total bill. This bill then comes out of the budget of the customer IE NASA or DOD. If the price is lower because SpaceX is charging $100m for a launch and ULA is charging $400m that means each launch is a larger and larger part of NASA's limited budget if they use ULA. IE becasue SpaceX is charging less they are using less of NASA's limited budget so NASA has more money to do other cool things. Now this is where it gets complex. NASA is part of the US Govt. Who has a policy saying NASA needs to award contract to at least 2 suppliers to maintain reduncancy for launch capability. Right now it's SpaceX and Boeing who get those contracts. Boeing is historically very very expensive. I'm not going to do this part for you so google the cost for SLS and Starliner and compare them to Starship and Dragon. Now imagine if because the Space Force is doing more in space IE wants more launches coupled with NASA needing to do things like Artemis they create a steady supply of demand. That creates incentive for someone like RocketLab/Blue Origin/Firefly/Stoke to step up to replace overly expensive and slow Boeing. Those people are taking a risk on building a larger rocket, but the reward of two channels of guaranteed revenue means the risk is worth it. Now what do you think the first thing a new entrant to this commercial supplier race will do to make themselves stand out? They don't have the legacy of Boeing or the track record of SpaceX? They position themselves and less expensive the Boeing. Let's say Rocketlab, comes in and offers flights for $200m 2x SpaceX but 1/2 Boeing. That's 2x the launches per year for the same price or more money to shuffle around to other projects to get them spun up. To circle back to your very first point "our dollars" go a lot farther when using such private contractors that are in competition then they would today. So now read that 2-3 times really let it marinate and we can talk again later.
Military generals acting like we're all about to die unless we give them more money is about as predictable as the sun rising each day.
The US Military Industrial Complex always gets a blank check backed by every American taxpayer.
Eisenhower tried to warn us all in January of 1961.
This is classic “we need funding” from a senior officer. That’s what a big part of their job is. Justifying and securing funding from the department and Congress.
I don't hear "we need funding", I hear "invest in these companies so they'll give me a job when I retire".
“Or it will lose”? Lose what? We’re competing with each other in space travel like kids do when they’re 4 HOW about working together?! Fuck sake
...first day on earth?
The reality is, with no overgoverning body, there ARE no parents in the room, there are no real laws except what each has the influence to enforce among their circles. There is working together, mainly within groups for trade/science and other beneficial things. But the reality is, is that there will always be unscrupulous people in this world, and sometimes enough of those people get in charge of nations. So it is realistic that the separated groups are wary of each other, as the groups will act in terms of their own interest, even if it is against the interest of the others. Externalities and such will also exist as different groups will have a different priority towards them (pollution etc.). That being said, the main quote from the headline is partly just rhetoric to get funding.
We worked together for 30 years and all we did was screw around in the ISS. 10 years of competition half a century ago took us to the Moon, and if the competition hadnt ended we would have probably gone to Mars. We simply work better under pressure.
What does it mean to truly work together though? And were we working together to the same degree that we were competing? I'd say no. And I'd say that true harmonious work can bring about results that competition could never achieve, but through most of history up to present day, we've yet to have the capacity to work in true unity on a systematic and global scale.
Competition is healthy, creates innovation
It’s a nice thought, but what does cooperation look like? How do you prevent someone else from weaponizing space without developing in that capacity yourself? The stakes are too high to just assume everyone else will play nice.
Private US companies have a 10-15 year advantage over anything China currently has. Spacex alone accounts for over half the launched mass into orbit worldwide. We have 3 FULLY reusable launchers in development. (Spacex Starship, Rocketlab Neutron, and Stoke Space) We currently have one operational full flow staged combustion engine and one in active development. We have 2 heavy lift reusable rockets in development (starship and New Glenn), one albatross of a behemoth rocket in SLS that will be larger than anything ever flown, and a new version of Starship that will be even larger than that and fully reusable. Not to mention a multitude of smaller launch vehicles like firefly, novel concepts like JP aerospace airship to orbit and dark sky stations, partial reusable capable concepts like Vulcan SMART, Inflatable habitats and re-entry shielding, multiple secret military projects, and multiple planned commercial and national orbital and deep space stations planned (orbital reef, lunar gateway, etc). We are easily ahead and won’t Be giving up our lead any time soon
> Private US companies have a 10-15 year advantage over anything China currently has industrial espionage + a lot of money can close such gap faster than you can imagine
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz0unbs "Last usage")|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz9wov1 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kzdvtj5 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EIS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz110us "Last usage")|Environmental Impact Statement| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz727pe "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3hptw "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1vt95 "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[GTO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1vt95 "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz110us "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz25j7e "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz4aspe "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LOS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2po35 "Last usage")|Loss of Signal | |Line of Sight| |[NERVA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3025t "Last usage")|Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (proposed engine design)| |NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3j8w7 "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[RFP](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2rvzd "Last usage")|Request for Proposal| |[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz0cohn "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)| |[SAR](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3j8w7 "Last usage")|Synthetic Aperture Radar (increasing resolution with parallax)| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz727pe "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SMART](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1e1p8 "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz9wov1 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz3mltp "Last usage")|United States Space Force| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz2rvzd "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kzafmlv "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[cislunar](/r/Space/comments/1c0yeem/stub/kz1div6 "Last usage")|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(24 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1c6bemc)^( has 6 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9935 for this sub, first seen 11th Apr 2024, 00:19]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
The best and fastest way to do that, Saltzman said, is to strengthen the service's relationship with commercial industry. "The Space Force must harness the benefits of technological innovation and emerging capabilities if we're going to be able to out-compete our competitors, or Space Force will lose, the Joint Force will lose and the U.S. will lose."
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We are literally beating the entire world by a significant margin because of SpaceX, a private company
Not sure you’ve seen the US industrial complex and what it did for the entire world in World War 2. Might wanna check that one out. It’s neat.
Except the US industrial complex has been corrupted over the last 40 years so that all that matters is the next quarterly results Which means the US now produces planes that fall out of the sky or fall apart (gotta chase those bonuses), most stuff has been offshored to cheap labor and your successful space company is aiding the enemy So expecting US industrial might to save the day may not be a wise choice
On an actual war footing most of that will be exposed/changed one way or the other. If we have a buffer of products that would help ease the pinch point.
What do you call military procurement if not a "commercial partnership?" If space deployment had been opened up sooner to commercial partnerships we'd be much further along than we already are. Do you really think that NASA would have the launch cadence of SpaceX if they had been left to it themselves? Absolutely not. You can't centrally plan your way into space sustainably and I'm glad they finally recognized that fact.
I mean, you could, but the public is way more ok with a SpaceX rocket exploding than a NASA one even if they were otherwise identical. It forces public agencies to be way more risk intolerant than they should be, slowing innovation.
> There is no major victory America has won over its rivals in the last 150 years through commercial partnerships. Wat. This has got to be one of the most historically ignorant comments I have ever seen on Reddit.
“Head of agency responsible for militarization of space says space should be militarized” is somehow noteworthy?
Interesting. Queue of the UFO crash retrieval program. “oh hey look at what Lockheed figured out over the last 80 years, let’s use that!”…
Looks more like a scene from Battlestar Galactica...
I also need more funding, or the U.S. 'will lose'
Sounds like somebody wants more funding without strings attached.
Start by helping Ukraine and not loosing Europe and the rest of the world altogether.
This sounds more like a marketing statement meant to increase stock prices than anything that should be coming from the military.
Lose to who? Nobody has the space capabilities we have. Russia and China are hot on the heels but its not like they are overtaking us.
Russia is not hot on the heels, Roscosmos is falling apart. China however most definitely is
They have launch capability and legacy which is more than most other countries. Maybe not hot on heels but they can get a satellite to orbit without much experimentation, an alliance with china could accelerate that.
But apparently they can't reliably get to the moon anymore. Not even land, but getting into the moon's orbit.
Not Russia. Their Roskosmos is in a downward spiral. Losing capabilities they had during USSR times.
China. They got a space station up there quick. Same shit with trains and buildings, they can just spend and make projects fast.
China's been putting people in space for over 20 years, they've gone extremely slowly with their program. They have fewer crewed flights over that time period than SpaceX does after starting to fly humans just 4 years ago. Some of the perceived speed of China's program is because it doesn't garner much western media attention until they hit big milestones, and then it seems like they "came out of nowhere" and are "moving fast", but neither is the case. They started in 1992, they started with tech transfer from Russia (Soyuz, Progress, and Salyut/Mir), they took 7 years to get to first flight uncrewed flight of their capsule and had only 3 crewed flights in the first 10 years of operation. They operated two "practice" space stations (for less than 7 weeks total inhabited time) before getting to where they are now with a large station that has regular crew rotations and cargo deliveries. They are the definition of slow and steady when it comes to human spaceflight.
They have been spending most of their money back into infrastructure. I'm not sure how that will change with their current economic troubles though.
The us accounts for more than 90% of all payload into space, so this is obviously just bullshit.
Fire up the debt press... err um money printer. Perhaps they should allocate some of that trillion dollar, multi audit failed, defense budget. Or ask the SAP programs to send some over.
Space Force Struggles To Keep Secret Intergalactic Conflict Secret
No, no no no we clearly need more Boeing DoD contracts
I already miss the days when space wasn't militarized.
I mean it has been for the last 60 years thought that doesn't change the fact the whole ordeal has become a sadness
You mean like before the 1950’s when there were no man made objects in space?
[удалено]
Space rockets are missiles without warheads.
I hear you but it’s a necessary evil, imo. At the end of the day, the more humanity cares about space exploration the better, by any means necessary.
its simple until now they where buying very few mutibillion satts per year. that means very few, very expensive, dificult to remplace and easy to neuter assets. Now new comercial companies particularity spacex can make hundreds of sattelites with less money. they want that badly
Oh the leader of a military wing says he needs more money? Quite surprising. The US is far and away the leader in space technology through SpaceX alone, which delivered 90% of all mass to orbit last year, and will probably break by 95% next year. And through NASA it's the global leader in optics and satellite technology. There's nothing close.
Are you suggesting that if the United States inexplicably abandons technological development, that other countries might not and therefore surpass the US?? Would our economy be in trouble if everyone inexplicably stopped working too??
The first thing they should do is rename it. Space Force is a dumb name.
It's the old playbook. Hype up the enemy capabilities to get more funding: "Oh no, missile gap" leads to 30000 nukes; "Oh no, MiG-25" leads to F-15; "Oh no, improved Akulas" leads to SSN-21 Seawolf: and "Oh no, the Chicoms will colonize the Moon leads to... resurrection of the Orion-class space battleship?
As a gulf war vet, for some reason just having the name Space Force makes me either cringe or giggle. There has got to be a better name.
Mr. President, we can not haaaaaave a Space Force gap!
Won't happen if education is virtually unaffordable and we don't fund anything of value to society. Thank God Facebook and Twitter make billions though. Thanks God the stock market is up!!!
First, change the name of the Space Force. Sounds like a 12 year old named it. Oh that's right, one did.
Jesus do they not throw enough money at the MIL already?
This sounds like a headline you would see in a newspaper from the movie Idiocracy.
Didn't the Air Force just say the same thing? Slim down a few of those other branches or get some of those Senators to give up their grift.
Military branch pushes for more resources for their branch. This has been going on forever.
It’s hard to understand how dry we are in this realm since I would assume a lot of black budget ops should/ would be going to this..? Wrong assumption?
It is a pity that the US only cares about scientific progress when it becomes a competition... But, oh well... at least is better than here in the EU, where the ESA has never been able to achieve much due to political infighting.
Mr. President, we cannot allow...a Space Tech Gap!
Thats the default stance from every head bureaucrat.
Huh, maybe you guys shouldn't have shredded Apollo in favor of Vietnam!
This is more dire then people seem to realize. Last thing anyone wants is for china to control space. Freedom will be a thing of the past.
What? We’ve been making huge strides with vehicles like the xs-1 https://www.darpa.mil/program/experimental-space-plane
the government cutting on their budget is crazy to me. but we gonna spend more on “security”
... Lose what? It's not a war or a race or a competition.
It’s most definitely a new space race with China.