The space age isn’t over. It hasn’t yet begun

Kevin Dunn

You really expecta great daring enterprise like this from the decadent, worthless, broken society that Britain has become? The best of British luck to you!

N

I disagree. "Truly astonishing space travel"? Not so much. If we were able to fly to the moon or somewhere else than maybe it would be incredible and astonishing. Also, who but the rich and famous have an extra $200,000 lying around for a space ride?

Space is indeed a new frontier, but do you remember what happened when North America was a new frontier? Wars broke out. Already the US, Russia, and China have programs in operation for future mining on the moon, how long until we start shooting ships out of the sky to protect our moon interests? How long until we go to war on the moon?

MoonBaseASAP

Excellent article - we need the spirit of Barnes Wallis NOW to get us out of the hole we're in.

Hawkeye

Something not mentioned is the "inspiration factor".

Big science and technology projects such as space exploration inspire many children to take an interest in science and technology - it really engages their interest. Although few of them wind up in the space program, society benefits from a steady stream of technically minded people. It is something we need a lot more of.

At the minute the "gateway to science" is astronomy. There is a general interest in the wonders of the universe and astronomy pushes a lot of buttons for a lot of people. Even the govt is afraid to cut astronomical programs because it generates a public backlash whenever they attempt it.

The revitalisation of the space program would lead to a general revitalisation of science & engineering and we all would benefit from that. In the article Mary Wakefield mentioned a colleague who "couldn't see the point of it all" but that is because he was thinking in very narrow terms. Space related technology has a lot more to give us than Teflon and Papermate pens.

The comparison with Columbus can be taken one stage further. Columbus and others opened up the New World with a small band of people - a mere fraction of a percentage of those alive at the time - and it took a considerable period before any real benefits flowed from the exploration and exploitation of the Americas. Space will not be any different in that respect but the resources are there to be tapped and this time there are no locals to be abused by the explorers.

Martin C

fantastic news - but still only a start. Alan Bond and Richard Varvell reckon that it'll take a couple of billion to make the Skylon a reality. That may be less money than, for example, the amount lost in overpayment by Brown's too-complex taxcredits scheme, but still hard to justify in these austere times.

Kevin Dunn

Thank you "N", for reinforcing my point - go on snivelling that it's all too difficult But let me be wrong!).

amanfromMars

Crikey, that earlier English translation left a lot to be desired. IT should read ....And we haven't even Ventured into CyberSpace yet. But there are Launched AIMissions Running..... Preparing Virtual Seeds for Live Feeds.

Now it makes more Sense.

And who's Master Piloting the Controls of the UK Office of Cyber Security, I wonder. Are they XXXXPerienced Flight Officers or Representative Officials ..... Wannabes?

KPar

I grew up with the NASA space program, and I loved everything about it.

(As you might notice from my spelling, I am an American.)

After the Apollo missions ended, I awaited the next great steps- a permanent space station and a return to the moon- not just a reckless "crash program", but a methodical, planned system that built inexorably to economic exploitation of the (literally) unlimited resources off planet.

Instead, we withdrew, scaled back, lost the dream. Thank you, Richard Nixon.

NASA was an efficient and effective government agency, but when the Germans retired, NASA lost the dream and the discipline. It became just another gold-plated bureaucracy, run by rent seeking politicians, avoiding any kind of risk, and not doing a good job of that, either.

(I don't mean to say that there aren't good people there, but the good ones don't run the place.)

(I'll spare you the trouble of coming up with your own joke, here, "Ve haff vays of dealing mit scheisskopfen like you!"

So with what have we ended up? A Skylab that we couldn't even keep up, two space shuttle disasters, a phenomenal cost in pounds-to-orbit, the ISS (described by Arthur C. Clarke as a ridiculous piece of "space junk"- Hell, it's not even a wheel!"), and a space future that looks anything but rosy.

The simple fact is, government will turn anything into a piece of crap- only free enterprise can resurrect our hopes and dreams.

Will government give it up and get out of the way? I'm not holding my breath...

Mike Walsh

Spaceflight will never be cost-effective (apart from some LEO apps); there is no extra-terrestrial El Dorado to make it worth our while. There's no 'there' there. The basic motivation for space enthusiasts is essentially religious: the fallacy of misplaced transcendance.

GK

The belief that space travel can be safe is false. It will always be a high risk enterprise.

Darkside of the Sun

hello. bravo, the interest is looking up. travelling into space regularly and safely will develop living in space by people dissatisfied with human behavior on Earth. an industry similar to hotels in space being constructed from materials from the lunar surface will develop islands floating in space for occupation. human behavior will evolve to meet the requirements of space survival. not utopia, just people getting along.

Joan Vernikos

A British Space Agency needs to exist as long as it facilitates the entrepreneurs rather than overregulates and hinders as bureaucracies are wont to do.Let British creativity and daring discovery flow exploring new horizons and taking life-threatening risks as they did in polar expeditions, climbing the highest peaks and crossing new continents. Let NASA be a lesson. Immobilized in bureaucratic cement, it is, short of a revolution, heading nowhere. A startling turnaround saved the Russian space program by dismantling it in 1989. Then a handful of dedicated government scientists, engineers and cosmonauts, all unpaid for six months, kept the programme alive while their space station Mir was orbiting away from political turmoil on the ground. They rebuilt today's vibrant Russian space programme where necessity forced them to foster commercial enterprise. Yes, the Space Age is ready for another launch. Those who succeed will not imitate but rather build on the errors and successes of the first 50 years.

anothermanfromMars

@ Hawkeye
"...this time there are no locals to be abused by the explorers."

Are you quite sure about that?
Where is your philosophical leap of faith? Life is very easy to form. But yes, it does take a while to evolve.

Dixon

I endorse your enthusiasm Mary, but I think your examples are out of whack.

"Spaceplanes" have been "coming off the drawing board" since 1938 ( the Sanger Bredt bomber project funded by Hitler ). Grants of a few million here or there have been keeping the fantasy alive throughout that period. From the EU as elsewhere. In the nineteen Sixties, every major European aircraft company had a spaceplane project, or several. remember the BAC "Mustard"? Yet it takes billions to go from drawing board to hardware and the only such project to cross that gap, the space shuttle, has been a disaster. Literally. Twice.The real disaster being that it costs an astonishing half a billion dollars each and every time to launch!

Any prospect of a reusable replacement to the shuttle now looks EXCEEDINGLY REMOTE. Especially after the debacle of the X43 project. Billions down the drain.Again.

The fact is, the engineering hinterland of spaceflight has actually gone into reverse. Hence the new American spacecraft, Orion, is a rehash of the 45 year old Apollo. Its engines will be...hard though this may seem to believe it is a fact, the FIFTY year old Pratt & Whitney J2", updated as the "J2X". It will be boosted by a vehicle, the Ares, which is a stretched version of a single Shuttle solid rocket booster.

Everythings going backwards. Great hoopla about a six foot drone that flew at 5 times the speed of sound for less than a minute, but forty years earlier the X15 routinely flew into space with a man aboard at half as fast again.

Yes, all the big projects COULD come to pass. But only if we can find a way of overcoming the biggest stumbling block. Not money. But the risk averse culture, the threat of liability lawyers and immense insurance and health and safety requirements. Dont take my word for it, Sir Martin Rees, astronomer Royal said exactly the same on TV recently. Space work is inherently dangerous. Unless this is accepted, we will pooter about with little phut-phut space capsules and robots doing sod all of real magnitude until the day a meteorite strikes and Humanity wakes up to the fact it squandered its opportunity to escape beforehand!