What has happened To Space Travel Since 1969?

Question

Well what the hell has happened to it.
Men have landed on the moon in 1969.
They did and no conspiracy theory's please.
I watched it live on tv.
There is one experiment that proved they landed and that is operational to this day, it was a reflector that had to be done by hand which still reflects laser light to this day..
But that is not the issuse here.
what have nasa really acheived..?
Nothing..I mean nothing in 40 years ,yes 40 years, think about it we went to moon and back with no more power than a pocket calculator.
Yet what have we today super computers..A home pc has millions of times more power that that of the moon landing
So where is the problem here..we should have been on mars at least 30 years ago.
and all we done was send probes.
All those billions spent on what.
A space shuttle that looks like a flying chicken..
A couple of probes sent to mars jupitor etc..so what.
when you consider what they done in 69 with shear courage.

Oh and how many lives were lost landing on the moon and how many were lost in the space shuttle..?

oh dear its taking 40 years getting to mars when it took a quarter of that to get to the moon
we already have had the tech ..20 yearsago to make the trip.

Answer 1

Well, the technology has, of course, vastly improved since then. Unfortunately the public and political will has vastly decreased. The challenge now isn't so much getting into space, but staying there, and doing so without breaking the national piggy bank.

First off, while the technology has improved, actually getting into orbit is, and will always be, a tremendous physical hurdle. Today's rockets still require about 150 to 300 pounds of fuel and cost up to a million dollars, for every 1 pound of payload placed in orbit. You can improve the wheelbarrow all you like, but it won't make carrying rocks up a hill much easier.

Secondly, we still haven't developed the technology that will allow humans to *truly* live and work in space for long periods; not without considerable support from the ground. Right now, if you the astronaut need anything at all, like living supplies, tools, housing, equipment, building materials, etc, it *all* has to be made on the ground, and lifted into orbit at a million dollars a pound.

This being the case, lifting huge spacecraft, and enough equipment, fuel, and supplies for a *single* year long journey to Mars and back, seems like a bit of a pipe dream. This would probably require at least 10-20 times the investment of money and resources as the ISS, or the space shuttle, and for what? For prestige; just to say we'd been there?

What could we learn scientifically, by sending humans to mars, that we could not learn by some other, cheaper method?

Until we can develop truly "space-based industries", and until we can bring the cost of launching down to around $1,000 - $5,000 per pound, we aren't going anywhere soon.

Now, argue all you want; but when we went to the moon, more than anything else, it was about beating the USSR pure and simple. It wasn't really so much a matter of science, human exploration, or technical achievement; those were important aspects, but they really played second fiddle to politics.

Third, I find it hard to justify the enormous effort of sending things into space, merely for political or sentimental reasons.

Not when many Americans don't have basic health insurance, when the US infrastructure is shot through with holes. Not when we are still incurring huge international debts, stagnating wages, and inflating prices. When we are still sending soldiers to die in pointless counterproductive foreign entanglements.

Hope that makes sense,
~W.O.M.B.A.T.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

To be absolutely blunt, the Apollo program was a Democratic Party program. When the Republican President Nixon was elected he began to de-fund NASA as early as 1968. Since the country was committed to some landings, the flights went ahead because most of the equipment had already been made and the money had already been spent.

On top of that the public got tired of watching astronauts bouncing about on the Moon. Funding dried up even more and only unmanned planetary probes were practical from then on, with a few manned orbital launches. Skylab was mostly based on Apollo hardware. NASA were also committed to developing the space shuttle which itself was not cheap.

According to some aerospace engineers, NASA has been barking up the wrong trees for years in planning a Mars mission involving a very large spacecraft which would be enormously expensive.

As for "all we've done" you should look at the knowledge of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and their satellites that existed in 1975 and that which exists now. And you should look at the phenomenal discoveries by the Hubble Space Telescope. The addition to the sum of knowledge about the Universe as a whole has been phenomenal.

Answer 4

Welllll....we went to the moon to prove nothing other than it could be done, and by the by the astronauts did what they could fit into the short time they had there.

Now, take it as given that we're going further. We don't want to waste time and money proving AGAIN that we can go far. We want to be ready to do as much as possible while we're there, and maybe even stay. So we have to learn bit by bit what's required.

The shuttles and space stations are valuable for learning this. It doesn't matter that they're not as far as the moon; how we need to live in space will be the same regardless of whether the Earth fills the window, or the nearest galaxy is a point of light.

It's quality they're thinking about, not quantity.

Answer 5

I think the main problem is an apathetic public. We already saw this begin with Apollo 13, when the live broadcast from Odyssey wasn't picked up by any of the networks.

The avg. Joe out there has the attention span of a hyperactive chiuahua on crack, and if there's not sex, blood, scandal, style, or 'bling' then the TiVos don't get set to grab it, and the program guides scroll right on past it. I've answered too many "What do we need the dumb ol' space program for, anyway?" questions here.

To say we have the technology to go to Mars is a bit hasty / misleading. We HAVE the technology, but it's not in a form that we could actually build a rocket to go there. There are so many unknowns with a trip to Mars, and all of the space program's work to date has been in filling in the blanks, just like Gemini before Apollo.

For starters, to take a 2-year supply of water into space for 3 people - THAT would take many heavy-duty launches alone. What about health care in space? The effects of longer term flight than just a few weeks? What sort of conditions do we need to plan for upon arrival at Mars? Can we get valuable resources while we're there or do we need to bring it all with us?

Frankly, our propulsion technology is VASTLY too weak to let us throw such questions aside. It takes a lot to launch everything we'd need to go there, and alas - when you get there, you can't just free-return trajectory from Mars as you would from the Moon. By the time you get there, Earth's too far away unless you have a LOT more power than it took for you to get there to begin with.

So once you go, you're gone for about 2 years, so you'd BETTER have your homework done, even more so than a trip to the Moon. Apollo 13 showed us about the limits of surviving critical failures...

All that said, I'm with you though. I think we could get off our collective *** and get things done much faster than we have been. I just wish people didn't think space exploration was a waste of money or too boring to be supportive of. We as a species do best when we push ourselves, and sadly, we're not doing that anymore, at least with regards to travelling into space.

Answer 6

Well, for one thing, the cost of a round trip ticket (per person) has gone up rather sharply, and not many people can afford it.

Second, the Shuttle disaster put the skids to a lot of plans NASA had for further manned space flights. Only just recently did they resume some flights to build, staff, and maintain the ISS, and Hubbel Space Telescope.

Other than planning for a future mission to Mars, I don't think there are any budgeted manned missions out into space beyond the ISS on the books yet.

Answer 7

Space exploration has become more sophisticated and less dramatic, so that the achievements are not as obvious at a "6:00 News" level of understanding. More scientific knowledge is required to understand the more recent discoveries and advances.

The Apollo moon flights were among the most visible and dramatic events of modern history. But we learned what we could learn from them, at stupendous cost, and now we are less inclined to spend money on that sort of thing.

The space shuttle is not the most graceful design in the history of aircraft, but it is very efficient and very flyable. The safety record is astonishingly good, considering the magnitude of the risks.

It just takes a more sophisticated attitude than it once required. Spend some time on NASA's web sites.

Answer 8

After winning the "space race" with Russia, the popularity of space travel, due to the astronomical costs, waned.
Without the backing of the people the US Senate would not finance any more space flights.
So NASA was scaled down, and nearly died.
But for what has happened -
There are plans for a hotel in space, only for the rich because it is estimated to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a room.
And forget the image of the traditional space station, a giant wheel in space, - it looks like a couple of shacks bolted onto a coke can!
So you are right, and Star Trek may never happen.
The dream has been lost.

Answer 9

Don't you ever watch the discovery or the science channel? NASA is launching space probes all the time and people go to the space station regularly. That is space travel even if it is not to another planet. All the emphisis is on getting a manned flight to Mars-----they are sending tons of probes there for that reason. NASA is very busy with the space program.

Answer 10

Like totally, what is your question?
Is your issue that they didn't check with you for an agenda or schedule?
We are boogieing around on Mars, dropped probes into Jupiter, sent man-made stuff out of the solar system, seen into the distance millennia of the past, and we have tested an ION DRIVE (that is a big deal).
We have been getting ready to colonize the moon in order to step off into the solar system.
Somewhere in California, a prototype of atomic engine is already in its infancy, which will, within 2010 decade, drive us anywhere in the solar system within a few months... if you are less than thirty, you have a chance to see Pluto - first hand.
But other than that, I guess we haven't done much...