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This is the end
Regrettably this is the end of US manned spaceflight - though I would love to see a powerful resurgence.
The snag is the people with the skills and the retaining of the good technology are leaking away. With the successful return of Atlantis another 3,000 workers will lose their jobs and those too old to hang on for a new launcher and capsule will simply retire or move to other industries if the US has any left to move to.
Even the generation of space-enthusiastic entrepreneurs are getting old; most if not all like myself were entranced by the Apollo flights - but they were several generations ago. How many US children have grown up in the meantime without seeing US astronauts on the Moon?
In essence, if NASA, or some private enterprise doesn't get the ball rolling again within five years, then the game is over. Anything after that will require a return to a Gemini-type program of missions; with the whole learning experience of how to perform orbital operations, EVA and rendezvous having to be relearned all over again, simply because the skilled staff able to do such things will have long gone (and perhaps even passed away).
What the US needs is an innovative approach to getting into orbit. And innovation is a problem, because US firms have spent the last decade giving their technology away for free to India and China, in a process called 'offshoring'. In the next decade most if not all US corporations will be finding their major competitors will be gunning for them, having been established using given-away tech' and business knowledge. In such an environment what chance does a resurgent US manned space program have?
And can the US mount such a program in the future? What attraction will there be for a budding aeronautical engineer have in going to a US university? Better surely to go to Europe, or even China? How will the US keep and maintain skilled workers when it already has a reputation for letting its industries fade away, its manned space program to wither, its most skilled people to be made redundant?
To get restarted again - and it will be a 're-start' the American public has to demand the money to be spent on a manned space program. That public showed little or no interest in the recent or event distant pass - most of us know of the complaints received when an episode of 'I Love Lucy' was interrupted by a broadcast from an early Apollo mission! Before the explosion of a pressure tank, Apollo 13 already typified how the US public saw the missions; uninterested in the main, and bored.
The Apollo Program was easily the greatest thing America has ever done - something no other nation could do. It was the culmination of generations of American (and German and British-born) engineers and scientists working at the very top of human ingenuity. All that was sacrificed to the whims of politicians, and that sacrifice has continued year-after-year. Even the Shuttle was a compromise, and that compromise ran for 30 years. If Americans are going to be seen going into space on anything other than in a Russian rocket, the nation has to make the collective desire to actually do something about it.
The snag is the people with the skills and the retaining of the good technology are leaking away. With the successful return of Atlantis another 3,000 workers will lose their jobs and those too old to hang on for a new launcher and capsule will simply retire or move to other industries if the US has any left to move to.
Even the generation of space-enthusiastic entrepreneurs are getting old; most if not all like myself were entranced by the Apollo flights - but they were several generations ago. How many US children have grown up in the meantime without seeing US astronauts on the Moon?
In essence, if NASA, or some private enterprise doesn't get the ball rolling again within five years, then the game is over. Anything after that will require a return to a Gemini-type program of missions; with the whole learning experience of how to perform orbital operations, EVA and rendezvous having to be relearned all over again, simply because the skilled staff able to do such things will have long gone (and perhaps even passed away).
What the US needs is an innovative approach to getting into orbit. And innovation is a problem, because US firms have spent the last decade giving their technology away for free to India and China, in a process called 'offshoring'. In the next decade most if not all US corporations will be finding their major competitors will be gunning for them, having been established using given-away tech' and business knowledge. In such an environment what chance does a resurgent US manned space program have?
And can the US mount such a program in the future? What attraction will there be for a budding aeronautical engineer have in going to a US university? Better surely to go to Europe, or even China? How will the US keep and maintain skilled workers when it already has a reputation for letting its industries fade away, its manned space program to wither, its most skilled people to be made redundant?
To get restarted again - and it will be a 're-start' the American public has to demand the money to be spent on a manned space program. That public showed little or no interest in the recent or event distant pass - most of us know of the complaints received when an episode of 'I Love Lucy' was interrupted by a broadcast from an early Apollo mission! Before the explosion of a pressure tank, Apollo 13 already typified how the US public saw the missions; uninterested in the main, and bored.
The Apollo Program was easily the greatest thing America has ever done - something no other nation could do. It was the culmination of generations of American (and German and British-born) engineers and scientists working at the very top of human ingenuity. All that was sacrificed to the whims of politicians, and that sacrifice has continued year-after-year. Even the Shuttle was a compromise, and that compromise ran for 30 years. If Americans are going to be seen going into space on anything other than in a Russian rocket, the nation has to make the collective desire to actually do something about it.
Posted by tigerIII
21st Jul 2011