I mostly agree with this, there's huge potential for science & engineering out in the void, but I still have serious doubts human exploration missions will ever be more than publicity stunts.
Sending even a single human to Mars orbit for tele-operation would easily cost the same as scores of Perseverance probes for dubious benefit. Sending a human touchdown & return mission could easily get you hundreds of probes for the same cost. You may not get as quick or as through of a test, but you can afford to throw a half-dozen specialist probes at basically anything that catches your fancy.
I also fear this too, is here to stay. Tesla's done some nice work blowing the dust off granpap's test models, and getting really nice results on a concept we should have perfected 60 years ago, but you'll forgive me if I yawn a bit.
Like fuuuuck. We could have had ground-laser propulsion stations and rotovators and Verne guns. Refurbing the first stage of an explosive beercan tower is just disappointing for me I guess. We've done this. It sucks. Shit, we can't even get a NTR approved for a Mars-transfer orbit.
Just give me one measly little Orion launch. You could lift so many goddamn bootstraps into orbit...
EDIT: I got kind of rambly there, guess I'm trying to say as long as our idea of a "heavy lift" vehicle is a ~100 ton payload, we're already ceding everything outside HEO.
I mostly agree with this, there's huge potential for science & engineering out in the void, but I still have serious doubts human exploration missions will ever be more than publicity stunts.
Sending even a single human to Mars orbit for tele-operation would easily cost the same as scores of Perseverance probes for dubious benefit. Sending a human touchdown & return mission could easily get you hundreds of probes for the same cost. You may not get as quick or as through of a test, but you can afford to throw a half-dozen specialist probes at basically anything that catches your fancy.
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I also fear this too, is here to stay. Tesla's done some nice work blowing the dust off granpap's test models, and getting really nice results on a concept we should have perfected 60 years ago, but you'll forgive me if I yawn a bit.
Like fuuuuck. We could have had ground-laser propulsion stations and rotovators and Verne guns. Refurbing the first stage of an explosive beercan tower is just disappointing for me I guess. We've done this. It sucks. Shit, we can't even get a NTR approved for a Mars-transfer orbit.
Just give me one measly little Orion launch. You could lift so many goddamn bootstraps into orbit...
EDIT: I got kind of rambly there, guess I'm trying to say as long as our idea of a "heavy lift" vehicle is a ~100 ton payload, we're already ceding everything outside HEO.