Originally published at: SpaceX Polaris Dawn is a historic and risky mission - Boing Boing
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Weird to me that this article just posted a minute ago, when the mission was already officially postponed by at least a day…
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four people, exposed to [pigs in space voice mode on] spaaace radiation, now where in the pile of moldy old comics does that ring a fantastic-al bell?
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That doesn’t bode well, based on the fact that all recent attempts to reboot that franchise have been failures. Maybe this time they’ll get it right?
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One problem with privatizing space is any important discoveries could end up proprietary. Not enthused by any of this even if flawless.
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. . . passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly, part of the Van Allen Belt, where the crew will be exposed to high levels of non-ionizing radiation.
Ionizing. Wikipedia (South Atlantic Anomaly - Wikipedia): " Measurements on Space Shuttle flight STS-94 have ascertained that absorbed dose rates from charged particles have extended from 112 to 175 μGy/day, with dose equivalent rates ranging from 264.3 to 413 μSv/day." An example from Randall Munroe’s Radiation Dose Chart at https://nrl.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/xkcd%20Radiation%20Dose%20Chart.pdf in that range is a mammogram at 400 μSv.
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That’s true, but at least at this point in time the private missions are tourist flights with very little in the way of new science being performed. The missions that are making real discoveries right now are all government-funded and mostly don’t involve putting humans in space. Space telescopes, Mars landers and other deep-space probes are all government-backed projects and, at least in the near-term, it doesn’t seem likely that greedy corporations will have a profit motive to do that kind of basic science.
Other than the environmental impact and the gross misallocation of resources that should be spent in better ways, I don’t really care that much if some thrill-seeking billionaires want to do these pointless stunts.
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I can think of a few I’d like to encourage to tour the Van Allen belts.
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Charlie Stross commented last year that his attempts at predicting for the near future were getting distorted by billionaires trying to recreate science fiction from the 50s.
This guy seems take inspiration from 60s’comics instead.
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I’m actually a big fan of science in space. I do think we should start actual long term plans for colonization, slowly and carefully, if only so we have humans somewhere other than here on Earth. (There’s always “we don’t know where this will go, but it will be an interesting trip.”)
This? Yeah, this is just another rich scum bag buying his way to glory. I’ll concede it’s historic that this will be “the first-ever extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or spacewalk by a private crew on a commercial spacecraft” but it’s not like they’re actually accomplishing anything worthwhile.
Those Darn Accordions predicted this over twenty years ago in their song There’s Another Dumbass on the Mountain:
But these Knuckleheads with all their high tech gear
Look ready to be walking on the moon
They throw around some cash and a good amount of trash
Then go looking for another place to ruin
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I dislike this quite a bit as well. Reading the details of the capsule really makes me question the whole mission more and more
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So what’s the history they’re making? First time a private flight goes a bit further but still not quite as far as a real NASA mission seems pretty weak to me for historical interest. As to risk, people have died in space before…but I guess nobody’s been murdered in space, or left corpses in orbit yet. But hopefully we aren’t expecting anything like that, even with SpaceX, are we?
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This will be the highest crewed mission since the moon landings. This gives a chance to test medical and capsule equipment.
They are testing new EVA spacesuits which is a big deal. New suits are going to be needed in the future so someone needs to test them.
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That’s cool I guess. I don’t really think of testing new suits and medical gear as making history though. Like, off the top of your head, do you remember when they tested the previous ones? But maybe I’m just kind of checked out from the final frontier being handed over for rich people to enjoy, I don’t know.
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Space flight is 60 years old and NASA hasn’t made any new EVA suits since the Shuttle era. The ones they have are increasingly having issues and they don’t fit all the astronauts (so not everyone can do an EVA).
So the limited pool of people who manage to direct their career for decades to finally get to the point of being selected as an astronaut is a better system than allowing private enterprise to get involved and open up the door to more people being able to access space?
Space flight is like the early days of aeroplanes, we are moving from miltary only, to rich people but the path is clear, the cost will come down and the opportunities will open up for more ordinary people to get involved. I wish it would happen in my lifetime but not likely.
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The Titan Submersible was testing a new design for deep diving subs. I sure hope the rich dipshits going up on this flight have better plans than that did.
Sorry, I’m just very dubious about the claim that this is all that great. Something about rich dudes throwing around cash and acting like they made an accomplishment just rubs me the wrong way.
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Are they just coming up with mission parameters based on old Simpsons episodes now?
Perhaps the next mission will bring along an experimental ant colony to answer the question of whether ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space.
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Straight-up, I don’t care how spaceflight gets to the point where it’s safe and cheap enough for the average person to afford it, I just want it to get there yesterday.
If people halted the private investment in airplanes and airplane tech, we’d very likely not have that infrastructure today.
If billionaires want to regift some of their money finding ways to make this accessible to the common mutant, please do.
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There are some parallels but that comparison only goes so far. The potential benefits of affordable, safe airplane travel were obvious to everyone from the earliest days of aviation. But what’s the best case scenario for opening up spaceflight to anyone who can afford a ticket? Other than the tourism angle (which at best will eventually be a resource-intensive novelty that regular rich folks can afford rather than super rich folks) I’m just not seeing it. Unless you actually believe that Mars colonization is a good idea?
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The amount of raw kinetic energy it takes to put a human being (plus associated life support apparatus) into orbit and beyond will always be several orders of magnitude higher than the amount of raw kinetic energy it takes to move a human being through the air.
“Spaceflight cheap enough for regular people to afford it” isn’t on the menu for any generation soon. It’s not just a matter of engineering, it’s a matter of basic physics.
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