> What happens if US and Russian relations break down?
Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets?
I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper to launch with the Russians" rather than "we can't do it" problem to me.
So no, we really can't send anyone to space right now.
And the Soyuz is actually pretty safe, relatively speaking. Aside from two notable failures early on, Soyuz hasn't had a fatality in 27 years.
Dragon has all three. The reason there are not people it right now is just that there is not enough experience with it to rule it safe. If the risk was ruled worth it, the very next CRS mission could take people up to the ISS.
The decision to go for a lander with wings and wheels looked so progressive then, and looks so misguided from today's point of view. NASA could build upon decades of expertise with Apollo-like spacecrafts today in order to build their Orion. Having switched to a shuttle, now they have to begin from scratch.
The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.
Months? We're fucked.
What China is doing right now, the USSR did in the 1960s, and the US did in the 70s (it had a ten year detour to go to the moon first).
While NASA hasn't done anything innovative in manned space-flight since 1980 (sunk costs, politics, no _real_ need, etc), they've done crazy work with unmanned spacecraft.
Think landing a _car_ on Mars (and then driving it around), launching routine missions to outer planets (and beyond!), being the only agency to get a probe out of the solar system.
Honestly, if Congress ever feels it necessary to launch someone to the Moon, they'll get it done in less than a decade.
That's because manned orbit is motivated by prestige, not rational economic behavior.
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/09/01/nasa-oig-report-delay...
I also have customers who have been sold slots for their satellites on Falcon Heavy which is now 4 years behind schedule (the first demo flight was originally meant to be 2012, with the first commercial flight in 2013, as yet nothing has flown, with the current estimate being 2017). It's frustrating for these customers.
I point this out here just because HN can have too many credulous website designers saying [to the effect of] 'No but Elon will be on Mars in 10 years so we should just fund private companies' and the reality for everyone in the industry is somewhat different. The Indian Government is currently about the cheapest and most reliable commercial satellite launcher in the world with its PSLV vehicle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle
It's only commercial in the sense that say there's say commercial manufacturing of ballistic missile submarines. It's just an implementation detail of how the US (v.s. say China) does manufacturing for purely state-sponsored projects, not something indicating that there's an economic incentive to put people into orbit outside of government sponsored programs.
As for studying long term space flight the only thing it really doesn't provide a model for is radiation which we can model on the ground pretty well. You still get the other health impacts from microgravity that we're still trying to figure out how to effectively combat.
Russia loses the ISS, because it can't be maintained without USA ground facilities.
Essentially, it will be the end of Russian manned space flight, until they build themselves a new space station.
The only difference is that you now have a window out of your propaganda bubble.
There's a reason that Chinese space progress is barely reported, if at all, in the west. It's embarrassing, and doesn't tie in with the deluded "west is best" worldview.
The reason we don't hear much about China is because that don't do much:
Launch a man into space once a year? Land a rover on the Moon? That's 1960s news.
If it would be more serious, there would be a "Sputnik scare" like in the 60s, not silence
The US on the other hand built an impractically large moonshot rocket that was too expensive to keep on producing. Then the US moved on the the Space Shuttle, which overpromised and underdelivered (e.g. did not serve the air force and get funding from there) and didn't provide a contingency into the future and had to be retired leaving the US with no manned space launch capability.
We should keep telling ourselves that. It may also help us convince ourselves that our arsehole is indeed the best place for our head to be.
- First probe to reach Jupiter (Pioneer 10)
- First probe to reach escape velocity needed to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10)
- Arguably, first probe to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1, depending on the definition of "leave the solar system")
- First probe to orbit Jupiter (Galileo)
- First probe to fly-by an asteroid (Galileo) -- passed by 951 Gaspra
- First probe to reach Saturn (Pioneer 11)
- First (and only) probe to visit Uranus (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Neptune (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Pluto (New Horizons)
- First probe to reach Mercury (Mariner 10)
- First probe to orbit Mercury (MESSENGER) -- also, to date, these are the only two probes to visit Mercury
- First probe to orbit two different celestial bodies (Dawn) -- it orbited the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Also, the first time either body has been visited by a probe.
- First photograph of Earth from orbit (Explorer 6) -- not a particularly good image by modern standards, but a pretty significant first given the importance spy satellites have played in international relations since then (You can see the image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_satellite_photo_-_E... )
Somewhat less significant by modern standards, but still interesting:
- First probe to send back data from Venus (Mariner 2) -- the USSR had a fly-by before this (Venera 1), but lost contact with the probe and so couldn't get any data from the fly-by, unfortunately. Mariner 2 didn't have a camera though.
- First probe to successfully return images from Mars (Mariner 4) -- the USSR had the first fly-by (Mars 1), a few years earlier but they lost contact with the probe before it actually reached Mars.
- First probe to orbit Mars (Mariner 9) -- also the first to orbit another planet. Only just barely beat the USSR Mars 2 probe by about two weeks though.
Some other interesting links on space history:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration
