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Comment by krapp

4 days ago

We're redoing things we did before most people in this thread were even born, how would any of this "push the frontiers of human technology?"

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krapp

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WaterRun  4 days ago

The Space Shuttle’s technology is indeed quite old, but by today’s standards it is not exactly outdated. What matters is that we have lost the ability to carry out that technology — or even the ability to organize and coordinate a project like that. Otherwise, the price of the SLS as an “off-the-shelf product” would not be so outrageous, and it would not keep getting delayed again and again. Technology gets forgotten and capability is lost as people and suppliers disappear. The fact that we could build the Saturn V half a century ago does not mean we could still build it today; even the fact that we could build the F-22 twenty years ago does not mean we could still produce it now once the production lines are gone. Restoring that capability is always a good thing, considering the indirect effects.

mulmen  4 days ago

Because we have gone backwards so any advancement requires some repetition.

  • p-e-w  4 days ago

    Strange that SpaceX doesn’t seem to be suffering from that limitation. Could it be that the real problem is pork barrel spending and government wastefulness?

dirasieb  4 days ago

>We're redoing things we did before most people in this thread were even born

oh really? show me a picture of the dark side of the moon then

not a reconstruction, not touched up crap based on data like that black hole pic that went viral a few years ago, an actual photograph taken by an astronaut of the dark side of the moon

  • krapp  4 days ago

    The first orbit of the moon by a manned spacecraft was Apollo 8 in 1968.

    The first photos of the dark side of the moon were taken by the Soviet Luna-3 probe in 1959.

    Nothing being done here is revolutionary.