But 13 years after its creation, Space X hasn’t even placed a single human being into orbit. But that hasn’t stopped its billionaire CEO from asking for more tax payer money for his efforts while suing the Federal government in order to gain even more access to tax payer funded government contracts.

The primary problem with NASA is that its a government program that actually works!

Many on the left don’t like this because of their innate feeling that human space travel is a wasteful folly that strays away from helping the poor. And many on the right don’t like NASA’s human space program because– they just don’t like any government programs– with the exception of the military of course:-)

So over the past 40 years, these political forces have managed to dramatically slow the technological progress of NASA’s human space program while continuing to perpetuate the myth that human spaceflight is a largely– unaffordable economic burden to the American economy– when exactly the opposite is true!

Fortunately, there are still many in Congress– and sometimes even in the Executive Branch– who believe in the benefits of a progressive human space program.

NASA’s human space program is good government! And private commercial space companies are some of the biggest beneficiaries of America’s government space program. In fact, these private space companies probably wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the tax payer investment in NASA and DOD space programs.

Marcel

a swindle in which the victim is persuaded to trust the swindler in some way.”

Whether it is called commercial space or private space or NewSpace, this swindle has persuaded the public that a couple hundred miles up is the same as a million miles away. It is an order-of-magnitude scam. The “edge of space” is actually 22,236 miles up and the Moon orbits less than one order of magnitude farther out. Low Earth Orbit is not really space, which begins a hundred times the distance NewSpace is calling the great beyond.

Cislunar space encompasses the quarter million or so miles around the Earth- the first step for the human race into outer space. This domain starts at GEO and on the other side of this minor sea is the Moon. The majority of revenue presently generated from commercial activity comes from geostationary telecommunications satellites.

“A confidence trick is also known as a scam, a hustle, a flimflam, or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as “marks”, “suckers”, or “gulls” (ie, gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills.”

LEO has about as much in common with outer space as a duck pond does with the North Atlantic. The NewSpace flimflam is to sell this duck pond to the gullible and uninformed as the new world. The only information the public is seeing is infomercials endlessly regurgitated from a legion of paid and unpaid deluded shills.

“Confidence tricks exploit characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté and greed.”

Taking these in order, the NewSpace scammers and spammers are dishonest in their portrayal of the flagship company as a free market miracle. It is in reality the poster child for corporate welfare. The public (the suckers) honestly believe this all-American hype. When NewSpace ideology is questioned the shills portray any such criticism as incredible and “communistic.” The irresponsibility is found in our public servants who are in key positions in the space agency as two faced double agents of the NewSpace flagship company. The public is naive concerning this corruption and last there is the promise of something for nothing- of going into space on the cheap- the eternal appeal to greed.

There is no cheap.

Historically, drinking the sweetened Kool-Aid has not been a good idea.

It’s not “commercial” (all of their funding comes from government contracts, one way or the other) and they are not “doing something” that hasn’t been done continuously for the last 50 years. But keep believing what you do and have another sip of the Kool-Aid.

Is this true and why is it true.
One could say the same with earth and sub-orbital flight- and it has been said.
The main reason it’s true has to do with gravity loss.
Hovering at one moon gravity of 1.62 m/s/s for 60 seconds is 97.2 m/s of delta-v
Add with steering one easily have 100 m/s per minute.
And hovering goes nowhere unless you are already going fast.
And with earth hovering 9.8 over 60 seconds costs 588 m/s.
So roughly a minute on earth or the moon is 1/15th the delta-v needed
to reach orbit.
So if going to hover for 5 mins one is getting close to cost to reach orbit.
Next part is there is speed limit to orbit Moon or Earth. Obviously the escape
velocity is highest possible/practical speed limit. But to make a simple approx,
one can say 1/2 escape velocity is about as fast as possible for sub-orbial travel.
So faster you go more distance travelled with less hovering.
So half of earth escape is 5.5 and with moon it’s 1.2 km/sec.
So in a minute at 1.2 one travels 72 km
and with earth at 5.5 it is 330 km.
So you might conclude that further than about 500 km on Earth and 100 km on the
moon becomes less practical.
One could just say that going just 100 km on the Moon is what you want- as the
polar region is quite small- 30 km per degree of latitude. If had depot in middle and
traveled 90 km out from this focus point, you covering that polar region.

But anyhow say you want to go further than 500 km on Earth and further than 100 km
on the Moon. So to do this one needs something that reduces the gravity loss.
And one of the function of two or more stage rocket is to reduce gravity loss.
Or one could flip this around and say, the Moon and Mars because they low gravity
world don’t really need a two stage rocket to gain orbit, whereas with Earth with it’s
higher gravity it’s more of a necessity to use 2 or more stages.
But this does not mean you can’t use two stage rockets on Mars and the Moon.
And would say if you doing something which involves gravity
loss on Mars or the Moon, you should use a second stage [or something like it].
The problem with something like it in regards to the moon- is it could get complicated/risky.
With Earth something like it, can be using a mothership, at Virgin Galactic is doing and has
future plans of going further than 500 km. Or first do the up and down but later go for lateral
distance, starting with perhaps going a far as 500 km.
But with moon a similar mothership is impossible, but simplest solution is using a first stage rocket which may or may not be recoverable. Next simplest solution could involve using something like a cannon as the boost stage. Or modern artillery, fires a shell which can use rocket propulsion. Or simply use a mortar with a “second stage” rather than the warhead. So a mortar can go 5 km on Earth and goes much further on the Moon, and second stage makes it go further and possible have landing which is soft, or crash, or hard landing [resembles a crash but intended to survive the landing]. So obviously an advantage of cannon/mortar is you can easily re-use “the boost
stage”. And advantage of rocket is you go slower, lower, and change vector of the trajectory.

And you can combine mortar, first stage rocket, and “spacecraft. So instead firing mortar at 45 degree for max distance, you angle it at say 30 degree, first stage continue at 30 degree, and ends up burning at say 45 degree before separating with “spacecraft” and spacecraft continues to hover and/or lands.

Agreed. But there have been many good research activities done on this subject:

At the risk of sounding like I am complimenting our host the best of the most recent can be found here:

http://spudislunarresources.nss.org/

I have also reviewed work on the subject done in the 1960s/1970s by Krafft Erhicke. Unfortunately have never found links to on-line copies.

The trick is to get the people with the power to take them seriously. The VSE was a big step in that direction, then (with a change in administration) it was abandoned because:

“Buzz has already been there.”

So here we are trying again.

I cannot speak for Joe but in my view what his statement equates to is that once the objective is identified, that, in effect, identifies the booster. The fundamental deception being propagated by NewSpace is that inferior lift boosters can take us to anywhere we want to go by way of the “depot miracle.” Their objective is NOT the Moon.

Setting up a depot and filling it with propellents and then sending up the spacecraft to be re-fueled to actually go to the Moon- that is a horrible mess that is never going to accomplish anything.

Any realistic program to develop the Moon will in fact require a launch vehicle several times more powerful than the Saturn V- which was in reality just barely capable of landing people on the Moon due to LOR (lunar orbit rendezvous).
SLS is the minimum first step.

After years of screaming at the top of their lungs that any such vehicle or any increase in the Human Space Flight budget is a sin against the human race, NewSpace propaganda has conditioned the public to favor their approach- the worst possible path.

Reminds me of what was said in 1970s each Shuttle vehicle will have two week turnaround and deliver 65,000 lbs of payload. Though never met those goals, there were some people asked, “to launch what?”

Getting back to the Moon, if it is to become an economic development then some clear objectives and benefits need to be understood. And good note we have been spending too much time arguing about boosters.

The second piece of the puzzle is the Ehricke/von Braun “wet workshop.” I have commented in the past on placing empty stages in lunar polar frozen orbit and filling them with moon water. This seems (to me anyway) the most efficient way of establishing a long duration human presence Beyond Earth Orbit by constructing true space stations and space ships. The ascent engine on the reusable lander might even be used to insert the workshop into lunar orbit. This robot lander might land on ice deposits, manufacture methane propellent using the trapped volatiles, and thus ferry water-as-shielding up to the workshop.

The third component may or may not be a hydrogen engine module that after the TLI burn separates from the wet workshop, flies around the Moon on a free return trajectory and reenters, parachutes into the ocean, and is recovered (maybe just the turbopump/s) for reuse. Of course I understand it is not as simple as that but variations of this scheme are my ACME slingshot.