What's NASA Up To And Other Space Stuff

[ar81]

I suspect you are right DW.

I remember when NASA started the commercial partnership when they announced the end of the Shuttle program and at the time I was not pleased. But even though the US still can't put an astronaut in orbit, the success of SpaceX in particular is nevertheless exciting, especially in a time when hardly anyone gives a fuck about space anymore.

Private space era is quite important to keep space exploration alive. During cold war, only governments were customers of aerospace. It makes space activity too dependent on politics, and you saw what happened after Apollo. After inflation adjustments, NASA budget went to 25% of Apollo era. If it was about political support, ISS will die between 2020 and 2023. But private companies see a chance to make commercial use of it.

You may think that in space, everything is already researched, but no. There are 3 key areas that still have gaps. You can make a difference if you have a startup.

* SMS: Space and microgravity science. Research challenges that microgravity pose. Normally microgravity is seen as a problem, but you may find creative ways to tur it into an advantage.
* HSE: Human space exploration. To shape the future of human trips to other planets. The final frontier is not about rockets, but how to keep humans alive. When you are able to simulate a human body during 40 years in space or other planets, then you have all the information needed for deep space exploration. Notice it involves not only understanding human body changes and countermeasures, but also to design the necessary infrastructure and processes to keep humans alive.
* CSA: Commercial space activities. To shape the future of the private space era. The key is to find creative ways to have revenue.

You can make a difference, as you do not need to be a rocket engineer. You may need to be more like Andy Weir, author of The Martian, to figure out solutions to problems.

Without private activity, taxpayer funded space activity only remains withing 3 areas:
* Science (gather data and remain expectator, not going places, taxpayer paid CAPEX)
* Military (defense purposes only, taxpayer paid CAPEX)
* Commercial satellites (paid by companies, requires high company CAPEX)

As space activity depends on politics, a political tide could end space activity forever. We should be landing on Mars routinely, but politics stalled it for 40 years. Russia kept space alive, but stopped innovating, in such a way that they rejected Elon Musk 3 times, who wanted to buy an ICBM to send a small greenhouse to Mars at the beginning of the century. Musk came with cheap reusable rockets, and Merlin engines now compete with Russian RD-180 engines.

What we may expect is more Russian rockets exploding due to modifications and research to remain up to date. In aerospace, innovation often means more rockets exploding while bugs are solved.