Move over NASA II -- US private commercial spaceflight

[Ben Kenobi]

It's only carrying 520 kg on this mission, but its capacity is 6000 kg.

To put it in perspective, that's about a quarter that of the best rockets we have today and similar to the early Apollos. I'm not pooh-poohing it, but still a ways to go before they will match the Atlas V.

[Lorizael]

Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and Nazis. Everything else is refinement.

Also, the Nazis were a government.

[Berzerker]

As pies in the sky go, some asteroids do look pretty tasty. A lot are unconsolidated piles of rubble left over from the beginning of the solar system. Many, though, are pieces of small planets that bashed into each other over the past few billion years. These, in particular, will be high on Planetary Resources’ shopping list because the planet-forming processes of mineral-melting and subsequent stratification into core, mantle and crust will have sorted their contents in ways that can concentrate valuable materials into exploitable ores. On Earth, for example, platinum and its allied elements, though rare at the surface, are reckoned more common in the planet’s metal-rich core. The same was probably true of the planets shattered to make asteroids.

Platinum, iridium and the rest are expensive precisely because they are rare. Make them common, by digging them out of the heart of a shattered planet, and they will become cheap.

I guess they're loosely defining planets again (Pluto isn't one any more), I'd like to know how big a planet must be to differentiate heavy elements. The current theory for the asteroids was a failed planet - a planet failed to form due to Jupiter's gravity (why Jupiter formed first is another matter), now they're saying a massive collision occurred at the asteroid belt between planets? Is it possible the "Earth" was one of those colliding planets and was pushed here with its plentiful water?

[The Mad Monk]

The Soviet and American space programs were qualitatively different from those three. Human spaceflight is a different beast altogether, even if the underlying physics are the same.

I'm sorry, at what point is this human spaceflight?

[The Mad Monk]

Also, the Nazis were a government.

Just not ours.

[The Mad Monk]

Private industry taking up the mundane activities pioneered by Nazi government

FTFY

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm sorry, at what point is this human spaceflight?

After they get the Atlas Heavy, human spaceflight will be possible again.

[The Mad Monk]

Hence the use of the present tense.

[Lorizael]

I'm sorry, at what point is this human spaceflight?

The American and Soviet space programs pioneered human spaceflight. SpaceX and others are successors to NASA's manned space program, but they haven't quite succeeded yet.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and Nazis. Everything else is refinement.

Johnie come latlies, the bunch. 13th century Chinese FTW!

[The Mad Monk]

I thought about that, but they weren't actively trying to get something off the planet -- the others were.

Lori, at what point did aircraft cease to be pioneering?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I thought about that, but they weren't actively trying to get something off the planet -- the others were.

Too busy avoiding the mongols at the time.

[Lorizael]

I thought about that, but they weren't actively trying to get something off the planet -- the others were.

Lori, at what point did aircraft cease to be pioneering?

/me shrugs. Like rocketry, there were different stages of pioneering. A number of different innovations have been pioneered in the field of powered flight: jets, supersonic jets, helicopters, VTOL.

[The Mad Monk]

I think you're abusing the term, much like Humpty-Dumpty over in the other thread.

[Lorizael]

Perhaps. I don't hold strongly to any particular views about aviation, but I stand by my original statement. Yes, Tsiolkovsky and Goddard are the fathers of rocketry, but the US and the USSR pioneered the field of human spaceflight.