Hadfield talks about how great spacex is but then talks about what a big problem space junk is. Ridiculous. He then goes on to talk about space tourism being the next big thing and how it will “free up NASA to explore.” Ridiculous.
The ISS never should have been built. Of the many paths Human Space Flight could have taken the most efficient, in terms of Low Earth Orbit, would have been to use the space shuttle to better advantage. The shuttle orbiters could have stayed up for close to the standard 6-month tour by either loading up on life support or being resupplied or a combination of both. The orbiter would have had to be landed by remote control or by a pilot transferred to the orbiter from another orbiter…or a combination of both. The fantastic sum of money squandered on the ISS should have been spent on semi-expendable robot lunar landers. This, however, is after the fact that the shuttle program itself was a mistake.
The best course, in hindsight, would have been modifying the Saturn V into a reusable system over the course of several decades. The first stage, capsule and tower being the first reusable components, followed by different iterations of the second and third stage. With a reusable, or partially reusable Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SHLV) sending robot landers to the Moon the key piece of hardware would have been next. The critical missing piece of the puzzle was the “Fat Workshop.” This double hulled wet workshop would have been the basic crew compartment for everything to follow.
Before continuing, a review of the terms used on this blog concerning space-
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Humans in LEO or below Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) are not technically engaging in Human Space Flight (HSF) but instead Orbital Flight. Space is generally defined as in or beyond GEO and below this as simply Earth Orbit.
- Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) This is catch-all term applying to any craft that flies above LEO and even above GEO but is still in Earth Orbit, often in an eccentric orbit.
- Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BLEO) This is the “cislunar sea” found between GEO and Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) and generally refers to transits between the Earth and the Moon. This is where Lunar Cyclers operate.
- Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO) This generally refers to interplanetary flight.
There were many possible paths to establishing a permanent human presence in space. At every opportunity the U.S. went cheap and sabotaged any prospect of a successful program.
My comment on this YouTube video: “I was writing about this in 2015 on my wordpress blog “Ice on the Moon” and wrote an article for space science magazine titled “Water and Bombs.” I have since refined my view into what I call the “Parker-Dyson-Spudis-Continuum” (PDSC). This states that a massive water shield derived from lunar ice and Nuclear Pulse Propulsion (bombs) is the only way we are going Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO). The best first destination is NOT Mars, which is a dead end, but Ceres. That is, after we have created a cislunar infrastructure to support constructing “true” spaceships providing a Near Sea Level 1 Gravity environment (NSL1G). Along with the PDSC I believe the critical piece of missing hardware is the “Fat Workshop” which is a double hulled wet workshop to facilitate shielded crew compartments for spaceships, lunar cyclers, GEO telecom platforms, etc. and…I am not a Musk fan.”
Ice on the Moon 