Spectacular Incompetence in Space
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Why have we suddenly become so useless at flying in space?
One Mars probe ends up either wrecked across half of the Utopia plains or lost in transmartian deep space, while another enters the atmosphere, all working fine, and is not heard from again. The Russians run out of money and bring space station construction to a dead halt. The Hubble repair mission slides further and further towards the next century. What is going on? It all looked so hopeful not so long ago.
I think it all went rotten in 1986. The Shuttle mission STS-51-L was meant to be a major media coup for NASA, instead it ended up a burning wreck in the Atlantic. Since then it seems that America has lost heart in the whole affair.
Meanwhile the Soviet Union collapsed, so their magnificent Buran spacecraft remain on the ground due to lack of funding, while the cosmonauts fly in Soyuz spacecraft that were inferior even in the 1960s.
And ESA seems quite happy to send the occasional German on an American shuttle, launch the odd robot, and briefly make headlines by blowing up their expensive new rocket (which admittedly has recently made a successful flight).
When will we ever get anything done in space? Probably an efficient fusion reactor is a necessary prerequisite. Then we could become comet nomads, hijacking a passing comet, ripping out the interior for water and organics, living in it for a while, then grabbing another when supplies run out. We could grow exponentially, filling the Oort cloud like a virus. With a fusion motor that water could provide nuclear fuel, chemical rocket fuel, oxygen, and (of course) water.
But for the moment, we could at least get some major manned programmes going. The Space Station is a good start, but the politicians have well and truly screwed that one up. We might build a radio telescope on the Moon's farside, or perhaps a landing mission to an Earth-crossing asteroid. Perhaps we could try to divert a comet into orbit, for study at leisure.
Or possibly we could spend the money on yet another aircraft carrier instead.
Future candidates for the Bermuda Triangle of Space (Mars)
- Mars Surveyor 2001
- Beagle 2 (the Blur probe)
One Mars probe ends up either wrecked across half of the Utopia plains or lost in transmartian deep space, while another enters the atmosphere, all working fine, and is not heard from again. The Russians run out of money and bring space station construction to a dead halt. The Hubble repair mission slides further and further towards the next century. What is going on? It all looked so hopeful not so long ago.
I think it all went rotten in 1986. The Shuttle mission STS-51-L was meant to be a major media coup for NASA, instead it ended up a burning wreck in the Atlantic. Since then it seems that America has lost heart in the whole affair.
Meanwhile the Soviet Union collapsed, so their magnificent Buran spacecraft remain on the ground due to lack of funding, while the cosmonauts fly in Soyuz spacecraft that were inferior even in the 1960s.
And ESA seems quite happy to send the occasional German on an American shuttle, launch the odd robot, and briefly make headlines by blowing up their expensive new rocket (which admittedly has recently made a successful flight).
When will we ever get anything done in space? Probably an efficient fusion reactor is a necessary prerequisite. Then we could become comet nomads, hijacking a passing comet, ripping out the interior for water and organics, living in it for a while, then grabbing another when supplies run out. We could grow exponentially, filling the Oort cloud like a virus. With a fusion motor that water could provide nuclear fuel, chemical rocket fuel, oxygen, and (of course) water.
But for the moment, we could at least get some major manned programmes going. The Space Station is a good start, but the politicians have well and truly screwed that one up. We might build a radio telescope on the Moon's farside, or perhaps a landing mission to an Earth-crossing asteroid. Perhaps we could try to divert a comet into orbit, for study at leisure.
Or possibly we could spend the money on yet another aircraft carrier instead.
Future candidates for the Bermuda Triangle of Space (Mars)
- Mars Surveyor 2001
- Beagle 2 (the Blur probe)
