Am I the only one who's getting far more stoked about space than I've been in years?

[backscatter712]

Lots of people are a little down because of the Shuttle's retirement, but let's face it. The Shuttle was a white elephant. It was a ridiculously expensive hangar queen. It didn't live up to its promise of being a reusable space truck that could be turned over and reflown as easily as an airliner. We lost two out of five shuttles in accidents, killing 14 astronauts because it was extremely demanding as far as safety concerns go. I'm amazed the Shuttle kept going as long as it did. It had a rich career, a full lifetime of achievements including the Hubble and the International Space Station, but now it's time to let it go.

But what do we have coming up? We have SpaceX about to do the second launch of the Dragon capsule. We have a group of entrepreneurs talking about asteroid mining. For those two reasons alone, I'm stoked! This is our future in space.]

The Dragon, and the Falcon 9, have the potential to be the Model T of space vehicles. Sure, everybody thinks of the Model T as antiquated, but it was the first automobile that was accessible to regular people. Previous cars were hand-built, very expensive, and merely toys for the rich. Thanks to the assembly line, the Model T changed the world. And the Falcon 9, while not being cheap enough that a middle-class Joe could buy a ticket to the International Space Station, does promise to cut the price of launches by an order of magnitude, because of its design and its manufacturing processes (a huge amount of commonality between engines and stages, for example.)

Inexpensive, reliable access to space is what's going to make things like asteroid mining possible. And once there's money to be made going up there, just watch - the space industry will explode and change the world!

But that's just my look at things.

[Warpy]

1. I was turned off to most of it for years, including the ISS

and shuttle programs, because the military always came first and foremost.

Civilian use of some of the military stuff has come slowly, first in communications, then entertainment, and finally we have Google Earth from the spy satellites. Still, most of it was turned over to us only when the military no longer found it that useful or they had so much junk up there there was extra capacity.

While corporate stuff is likely to be just as elitist as the military was, the focus should change enough for it to be exciting again.

[Uncle Joe]

2. I've always been excited about space and yet at the same time

tried to maintain an even keel about it, viewing our space endeavors whether through the government or private ventures as a marathon designed to stretch out humanity's chances of long term survival.

Thanks for the thread, backscatter.

[southernyankeebelle]

3. I guess many people feel there are more important things the citizens need now;

[backscatter712]

4. What we need are resources and a way and place to industrialize without trashing Spaceship Earth.

What if instead of fracking, spilling oil in the oceans, strip-mining, spewing pollutants into our air and water, etc., we could move some of that activity into space, where we don't have to worry about wrecking a biosphere?

We're also running out of resources - oil & gas among them, so we need new sources of energy, and new sources of mineral resources that we can access without trashing the planet. One word. Space.

If we can learn to develop, exploit and settle in space on a large scale, we can have all the resources and energy that humanity needs for millennia.

[southernyankeebelle]

8. Your right. Wouldn't it be nice that all these millionaires and billionaires instead of

paying for superpacs they would invest in the country by paying off the national debt with that money. Maybe we could afford to do the great things this country is known for again.

[Bill McBlueState]

5. I wonder if we'll get those things now,

or if the money that had been going into the shuttle program will just disappear into some defense-spending hole.

[southernyankeebelle]

6. I wouldn't be surprised.

[backscatter712]

7. The fact that a lot of the new money going into space is private might help with that problem.

If there's money to be made in asteroid mining, and someone can find a way to bring, say platinum and iridium to Earth in a cost-effective way, I think we have our ticket to space!