NASA's Original Post-Apollo Plans Were INSANE | Answers With Joe
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In 1969, President Nixon created a commission to set the course for NASA's Post-Apollo years. What they came up with was a bold, ambitious vision of the future. One with multiple space stations, moon bases, regular travel to and from space with airline-like frequency, and people on Mars in the 1980s.
It was overly optimistic and naive to say the least. But many of their ideas stuck around and shaped everything that's come since. It's an interesting look at a wild future that could have been.
Here's the full Task Group report if you'd like to read it:
history.nasa.gov/taskgrp.html
And here's Werner Von Braun's Mars Projekt book:
www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/...
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LINKS LINKS LINKS:
space.stackexchange.com/quest...
www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall...
www.nasa.gov/directorates/spa...
www.energy.gov/ne/articles/6-...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_...
www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years...
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - Werner Von Braun's ideas
5:02 - The Space Task Group Report
6:25 - The Mars Goal
8:50 - Program Objectives
11:43 - The Space Stations (plural)
13:19 - The Space Transportation System
16:28 - The Budget
17:40 - What Parts Of The Plan Came True
18:50 - What Might Have Been
21:14 - Sponsor & Close - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
My favorite sci-fi show in the 70's was SPACE:1999 and i was in love with the idea of having a Moon Base Alpha and flying around in an Eagle Transporter. In the first episode it made a trip to the moon as common as flying from Toronto to Calgary. For a show made in the mid 70's it gave its fans a "tour" of what it might be like in the not so distant future.
Always thought the Sikorsky like design of the Eagle would make an excellent design for a space tug. Perhaps designed around lifting typical 40' shipping containers as the unit of transport.
When I was a kid (80's) I had a toy version, absolutely loved it to bits. Discovered the show more recently and discovered I had some vague memories of the show. Binge watched them all 😂 it's still a great show, even with Alan (who would have been wearing short shorts if he could in space 😂)
Agggh...beat me to it.
Much of what we see on television that is debuted as fiction, in fact contain inherent truths that decision-makers would like to expose the public to over time. Though the "real" human space program has been run as a series of US and UN classified projects since about 1950, with NASA acting as a civilian space agency mostly utilizing rockets, one day soon governments and corporations will be encouraged to introduce the rest of mankind to the realities of space. This process has begun already.
Loved it and a big shout out to Blake's 7
Can you imagine if they kept NASA's funding at 4%? That is the version of reality I'd like to live in.
Yeah. That'd be very cool.
If only NASA had the Pentagon's budget.
Even 1-2% !!! Mind blowing!
Unfortunately, 3.8% of that 4% would still be funneled to the SLS (and IMHO it still would be Delayed to this day).
@@ShelburneCountry We would never have the SLS if they had a decent budget, and the SLS still is the most capable heavy lifter under development.
I was five years old when my mother kept me home from school to watch Armstrong and Aldrin on our little TV in New South Wales, Australia.
I turned 58 four days ago, and the path that was taken regarding space travel post-Apollo has been far and away the greatest disappointment of my life.
At the time of Apollo science pundits predicted we would be shuttling tourists to and from the moon routinely by the year 2000.
I thought we should go to mars in 1980-85.
Indeed, I too once thought we would go to Mars in the 1980's!
My grandfather worked as a consultant for NASA in the Apollo era and retired in 1972. I just googled his most famous published paper. He wrote it the year before I was born, while my parents and siblings were living with my grandparents and both my parents were working to save up for a buying a house. I sometimes wondered why my grandfather would always mention its topic when he talked to me. The paper was published in May, 1966, just after I was born. He must have had an association of that paper with my birth. It is behind a paywall, but heck, for $35, I might just have to get myself a copy. My dad worked as an engineer for Westinghouse Defense and Electronics at the same time, which was bought out by Northrop Grumman in the 1990s. Westinghouse made the TV camera for Apollo 12. To this day my dad is still pissed off at Al Bean for pointing their precious camera at the sun, burning out the tube, and spoiling their moment of glory. My grandfather worked with lasers and worked on the Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflector Array and the laser that shot to the moon and was reflected back by the retroreflector array. I remember sitting in class in the second grade in 1973 or74 and listening to a classmate's dad talking to us about the future plans for NASA that included going back to the moon and to Mars. The one thing I remember asking him is if women would be included in the missions. He told me that yes, they would. I think that if the US government had chosen to fund NASA at anything close to the Apollo level, I expect that we would certainly have run into all of the same technological limitations that we face now, but we would have had the resources of the finest minds and institutions attacking them. I definitely think that we would have seen more accidents and deaths related to space exploration, which might have had a limiting effect, but only time would have told how much more of that ambitious plan would have come to fruition.
That’s amazing. And you definitely need to spend the $35 on that paper, for a multitude of reasons.
My father worked for NASA as a physicist in the 1960s and lost his job in the post-Apollo 11 cutbacks. He moved on to the solar power satellite project in the 1970s until _that_ went the way of the dinosaurs and ended up teaching physics at the University of Texas.
As a child of the space race, the "today Moon, tomorrow Mars" was a real thing we were conceptualizing - even expecting. Yes, the idea of a manned Mars landing was known to be a 1980s vision, but I recall commentators saying that the 1990s was more realistic for such a venture! Naturally, as kids, we felt depressed at such a delayed timeline.
Watch "For All Mankind" Apple TV series about alternate history where human space flight doesn't stop with moon. It's a little slow, but goes cool places. Also cold war is still a thing in the series so there's that.
@@jirinaforever well, if you take in consideration the last dew months of our time-line
Cold war is still going fine
@@jirinaforever I enjoyed it.
@@matheussanthiago9685 Everything seemed to be going so well but now we might all get blown to smithereens in a few weeks. One guy. One sick Dude can erase all history. That is so vain.
Imagine the emotional damage at finding out not even before 2050
I was sold this vision as a GenXer growing up in the 1970's. As a geeky, tech fascinated kid watching Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. and then seeing these visions from NASA, I was convinced that was the direction for me, and I decided to become an Aerospace Engineer. Of course, by the time I got to college in the 1980's, a lot of those visions had already been scaled back and/or militarized under Reagan and "Star Wars" and related systems. Of course it was great that we defeated the Soviet Union, but that led to a collapse in the Aerospace industry in the early 1990's. I did find gainful employment as a satellite engineer, but it was far from the visions NASA had planted in my mind in the 1970's.
My point? The loss of those visions not only "set us back" from where we might've been, but it also robbed many of us of dreams that we'd built. Aerospace technology, despite what some would have you believe, isn't easily achieved alone, in your garage (show me the nuclear rocket that someone is working on in their garage and I'll gladly eat my words). So we lost a generation of talented, motivated people as well.
Those visions were nothing more than hallucinations, not reality based. It's funny that you mention "defeating" the Soviet Union when after all they beat you to all those space firsts. If they were that good at space, why did they collapse? The other funny thing is that all these space visions come from Russian Cosmism, essentially a space religion.
@@8BitNaptime TROLL - go back to spreading lies about Ukraine.
Another GenXer, I'm still disappointed I got only "Android" on my phone and not an actual android!!!
@@squirlmy Millenials: drama queens of the post apocalyptic world, wah. The bubble was burst for GenX a long time ago, we’re nostalgic about it. You just b^tch when you don’t have a safe space to drink your latte.
I'm a very young GenX-er, or an old Millennial. Growing up in the late 80s.and early 90s a sci-fi future seemed inevitable. When the Cold War ended, and the 90s kicked into high gear with the adoption of the internet and cellphones, it seemed like my generation and the ones to come after would use technology and hard won knowledge to right the wrongs we saw everywhere and unite the planet for the new millennium. Now I think back to that time and marvel at how naive and hopeful I was. There was something great the world lost when Bush2 got elected and then the towers fell. I don't see anything like that in the decades ahead.
I think that one of the reasons the Apollo program was so successful is that the bureaucrats and administrators were forced out of the way by the insane timeline, allowing science and engineering to happen rapidly. Not sure that could ever happen again
Unless another Space Race Happens 😉
One of the more common monikers used when comparing past (moon landing) vs present technologies involves the networked capabilities of past NASA computers being roughly equal to what can be accomplished with a single current cell phone…
This makes me wonder if the “Space Task Group” included the development of the internet as an assistive technology usable towards reaching their long term goals?
In the interim, we have Musk and Besos, one the recipient of an enormous inheritance, the other not so much (although arguably affluent roots). Both were in the right place at the right time to generate BILLIONS using the early World Wide Web (PayPal and Amazon), and both are now getting their proverbial feet wet in the space industry…
Just a thought…
@@user-jd1kc9xw1x I am not sure what your point about inherited wealth is getting at. Most recipients of inheritance either set it aside for retirement/house, or squander it.
Anyone that takes an inheritance and uses it to build companies that contribute to technological progress, is alright by me.
I remember the Space Race of the 1960s as a kid, and watching Kubrick's 2001 as a sort of preview of what was to come. Then came Skylab, and then the Viking and Voyager missions, and then ... the Space Truck (boldly going where we had already gone before). It really couldn't be called a Shuttle until the beginning of the 21st century, since there was no place in orbit for it to shuttle to (before the ISS). In the 1985 PBS documentary seies Spaceflight, host Martin Sheen warned that the US might become "the Portugal of space," meaning it had blazed the path to space, but had abandoned space after a few early successes. Since that aired in 1985, that warning has tended toward becoming more and more correct.
Space truck!!?😂more like space Pinto😢 Yes THAT Pinto😮🔥🔥🔥💀
Yeah, the timeline got screwed and so much more could have happened. My grandfather had expected to see us go to the moon. Now I'm a damn grandfather. I was born in 1966 and I grew up with Star Trek and NASA showing us the way. But the military industrial complex got the money, not science and exploration that actually advances humanity. Ok, I may be a bit disgruntled. I do feel like we slipped into some weird alternate universe these last couple of decades. Thanks Joe for always showing us a great perspective. And most of all, for your humor and intellect. You really do make my world more interesting and bearable.
I agree with that sentiment also, that we are now living in some alternate universe of dystopia. Back to the Future 2 got so many things right. Guy goes back in time screws everything up in the pursuit of greed and the world changes from a vibrant forward thinking society into one populated with pawn shops, porno theaters and casinos. Does Biff win in our reality too? Some juncture along the way got totally perverted. The Gipper ripping all the solar cells off the White House kind of has me thinking conservative politics hold us back as a species.
@@ricknoyb1613 lol. damn Biff.
@@ricknoyb1613 Didn't Biff win in 2016?
Any of us are damn grandparents.
@@ricknoyb1613 the irony is that current conservative politics happens to be pushing the free market. The most successful economic system in human history.hold us back? You're fooling yourself.
The series "For All Mankind" is an incredible series about if the funding had kept going on Apple TV
All crewedkind
Wonder how many people that title angers? Remember misogyny is bad but misandry is always ok.
@@MrSimonw58 🤣 that was a belter of a joke! love it
The technology in FAK has little to do with the real stuff they planned.
Why we aren't on Mars yet? It's because big companies like Microsoft, Apple... Holding the country hostage.
As an analogy I remember when I was 14 we did a 100m dash in my athletics class and my time was a horrible 15.6 sec. And my teacher demanded everybody should be running below 15 sec at years end. I worked very hard and my time improved to 14.5 sec and I foolishly thought wow at this pace I'm gonna break the world record in like 5 years LOL. Pretty much the space program prediction.
Exactly. There are hard physical limits that were hit early on and that finished the space religion right there.
sadly, this is not about training your muscle
you're comparing something even more complicated than that
so this analogy doesnt work, sry
@@blacktigerace6687 Sadly, it's exactly how real systems work, and if you think a stupid rocket is somehow more complex than muscle, you are a lost lamb at the South Pole.
@@8BitNaptime Space religion? What are you talking about?
Excellent analogy!
When I was a kid in the 80s, I thought that Space Shuttle launches were moon-bound. Then I was told that we stopped going to the moon before I was even born. That was incredibly disappointing. I just couldn't understand why we'd walk away from a massive achievement like that. I'm 42 now, and I'm still waiting on the government to correct that.
I think we’ve been there and are still there just it’s not for the public to know. I’m thinking a moon military force.
I'm in the same age range. I guess I was so disappointed in the 70s that when the shuttle came around it kept my attention. The Columbia landing was the first time my family recorded anything on our new VCR. I was also in 8th grade and watched Challenger explode. Both events, made me more determined to keep going into space.
That said, I was also really really into Cosmos (remember that VCR). Segan had set the stage so well in the depth of space and challenges of human spaceflight, I moved away from Human spaceflight in reality and pushed those thoughts to Asimov and Herbert. Usually my mind was on the technology. Still is. I find the machines more interesting than the floating humans.... Not to say I wouldn't' want to be one.
Need a reason to go there, not just political "showing off". Sure there may be minerals on the Moon, but unless you have a whole infrastructure on the Moon to use them, too expensive to cart back to Earth.
@@StrongerThanBigfoot
I still wonder about that UK kid who hacked into government computers and found a list of “off world officers.” There’s also a video on YT that shows a supposed video of training military guys about aliens, some of whom they talked about fighting. The sheer informality of the video, with lots of swearing and interrupting the trainer, made me think it could be real. Someone faking it would likely make it extremely serious and formal in tone to try to make it seem real. Makes one wonder.
@@CubicSpline7713
Helium 3 would make moon infrastructure worth it.
Joe, how did you write this script without ever watching For All Mankind?
You literally plugged a series of we kept the space race going- it’s the premise of the entire series. It’s really good!
It honestly baffles me how people praise this show even after the second season. The whole space stuff became secondary and it's poorly thought out. NASA had a bunch of plans they could have used in the show to really improve the world building but instead they crammed things like the shuttle in it because it's one of those cool 80's things. Building a shuttle when you have Sea Dragon makes no sense.
@@littleponygirl666 What second season? I prefer to live in the alternate reality where they quit the show while it was good.
Aaahhh! You mean "For All Womankind". Yes, I watched that series. I think it was a joke.
@@freddyzdead1 Lol, sad little man
@@erikabloodaxe2581 He's not wrong lol
Excellent take on the faltering stop / start space program. I think you nailed it Joe when you said that progress can't automatically be sped up by just throwing money at it. The 100's, if not 1000's of minor and major developments across a wide range of disciplines from IT to materials science, data processing to biological systems.etc needed to make long term space travel and space building possible can only be accelerated so much. I think there was little or nothing wrong with their vision, it was just their timeline - Keep up the excellent work Joe!!
Thanks for this video! There's a whole sub-genre of science fiction devoted to exploring what might have happened if NASA had kept going after Apollo. "The Tranquility Alternative" by Allen Steele is a great example of this kind of alternate history. Although he goes even further, and imagines a timeline where the first manned spaceflight happens during WWII in 1944.
I'm not certain they could have landed on Mars by 1981, because the technical challenges of building self-sustaining enclosed biospheres that can support human life for 6-12 months at a time are considerable. It's something we're still working on now, despite all those years of living on the ISS. When there's absolutely no resupply coming, just living in space becomes a very difficult challenge. Still, they had the right approach, starting with space stations and using the same components in later space ships. Each step teaches you how to make the next one.
I've read the novel, and if I remember correctly, that 1944 flight was suborbital.
As a 10 year old, I fell in love with the idea of space when I got a close up photo of the moon at a home show event. Now, a lot of years later, I am disappointed the space program never moved forward as hoped. I really, really wanted to see all the things that were planned come to fruition. It will be something I regret not getting to see in my lifetime.
I was between my freshman & sophomore years of college when Armstrong took his small step, and as a physics major I was really excited about the possibility of building a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, in the shadow of earth's EM interference.... still waiting.... and age 72, I doubt I'll ever live to see it.....
I feel you on this.
I don't know how old you are (I'm 62). I, too had despaired of seeing humans on Mars before my death - before SpaceX was founded. Now, I have hope again of seeing humans on the Moon again in the mid-late 2020s - and maybe the first steps on Mars before the end of this decade. I HOPE we will not be disappointed again!
@@lesnyk255 I hope you feel good. I was about 15 then in 1969. Do you feel that a year feels really short now? Like 5 months? I really wish you all the best! I got another birthday coming up. Oh darn.
@@stuartyoung4182 I am no youngster either. Mars is really unlikely for us. No matter how you think about it, it is too bloody far. If it was a nicer place, it wouldn't be too bad. My hopes before I'm gone are new Moon missions with real people that can come home when they feel like it.
Stay Stuart, Stay Strong and Stay Young!
All the best!
Joe, I was 13 years old in 1969, lying on the living room floor watching Neal Armstrong's first steps on the moon. I had a Saturn V / Apollo model (and still do) and was really into the space program of the 60's. I watched the news for any stories on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights. I was deeply sickened by the deadly Apollo I fire and feared that that could spell the end of it all.
I had just turned 18 in 1974, registered for The Draft, then breathed a deep sigh of relief when my draft number was something like 250. The Viet Nam war ruined SO much for everyone in the world, killed 10's of thousands, and did an effective job of halting what could have been the greatest achievement of mankind - space exploration of our solar system. As a young man, I was left with a ''What's next?" feeling. Although my outlook on life is my responsibility, the end of the Apollo program was a contributor to my feeling rather aimless.
But in the early 80's, my youthful excitement for the space program found a resurgence with the STS program. I really thought we had a GREAT thing going there, regardless of the two STS tragedies. It broke my heart forever when the STS program was allowed to die without a replacement. I will never forgive our national leaders for their short-sightedness regarding space exploration at that time and the surrendering of the leadership of the USA in space. The STS was a great idea that just needed some technological improvements. Expensive? Yes, but worth it? Undoubtedly!
As I get older, I am hesitant to get excited about space exploration now, especially since we STILL have insane oligarchs who want to dominate the world and threaten world peace, or refuse to even look at evidence of hanky-panky in an election. Where are THEIR priorities? Those people are ESPECIALLY short-sighted because they focus on the things of this world instead of joining with the rest of us more sane people who want to look to the stars, exploring our potential as the Human Race. But oh, how I WANT to get excited about space exploration again! I welcome such developments as the Webb telescope and the efforts of private companies to develop launch vehicles, both ''crewed'' and ''not crewed''. :) I believe a Mars Manned Mission is fraught with risks, but on the other hand, so was the Moon Manned Missions. And our available technology today eclipses that of the 1960's and '70's by a long shot!
Thank you for the humor-injected video presentations. I appreciate your views!
Best regards,
Russ H.
The solution is simplistically elegant, and yet no one doesit. We need to all collectively march on our governments with a list of demands. These are *our* priorities. You have one year to show progress or else.
when I was in high school, around that age, classes were gathered in front of TVs in classroom and we witnessed the space shuttle Columbia blow up. The teachers went into panic mode and didn't really know how to handle it. You might imagine how very different my generation experienced space exploration than you did. More tragic than the Apollo fire, with none of the moon landings.
@@squirlmy Yeah, the two shuttle tragedies were like kicks in the gut. I cried in disbelief watching the Challenger explode live. Then to watch the Columbia break up on reentry over Texas...gut wrenching for millions.
But to say they were any more tragic than the Apollo fire, I think you meant to say that it was more tragic for you, as you may not have been born yet for Apollo I.
@@TheMsLourdes If all the marches started the day you wrote this, you would be 359 days from disappointment. I can save you the wait - it will never happen. Real people tend to get in the way of "simplistically elegant" solutions. Worse yet, your idealism isn't shared by the rest of the world's population. Covid-19 was just the beginning of our modern woe.
Remember "Space Stix (sp?)"? Chocolate, peanut butter, etc...Yum! And I was a loyal "TANG" Drinker.
I always learn some really great stuff from your videos! I thought I knew a lot about the early space program but now I see that I barely scratched the surface of the plans that they had for our space travel. Thank you for all the amazing things I learn from your videos!
That was a really good summation of the report and fascinating look at what could have been, great video
In 2011, I was in high school, picking a career path to follow. I knew I wanted to go into engineering, and living on the space coast of Florida, I wanted to work for (or at least with) NASA. But, as you may have guessed, the STS program was cancelled in 2011 and at that time, Space-x wasn't something well known, so the future of space flight looked bleak. I personally decided there wouldn't be much of a future in space programs, so I chose to pursue a career in Civil Engineering. I love it and it's fulfilling, but this video was all about what could have been, so It got me thinking, "what if?"
Never too late
You can always chase a dream.
You can shift over, NASA is short of civil engineers to help conceptualise space habitation.
You could be the person who designs the toilets on the moon.
@@DoctorProph3t "So we have a pump. That's it!"
Nice little disclaimer about Starlink launches there, but am I the only one who thinks it's absolutely amazing that all the Apollo launches were within 6 years? Every 6 months to build an entire rocket capable of traveling into space, and even landing on the moon. That's INSANE, ESPECIALLY when you consider this was all taking place in the 1960s.
It was impressive for sure. Back when Boeing was a model for engineering excellence.
Yes it’s amazing what can be done with a nearly unlimited budget
I thought it was even more impressive when I saw a video on the risks taken in the Apollo program, how many catastrophic things could have happened but didn't, there wasn't enough technology even for risk assessment, let alone risk management. Amazing.
Add to the speed of the construction the reality that these vessels were all hand crafted. They were not and could not be considered mass produced objects. This seems especially astonishing.
As already stated: unlimited money.
@@bmobert funny how you say unlimited money as a bad thing, as stated, 1 buck spent makes > 1.3 (8 in the video) in return, how much businesses can you say can make more than 30% yearly income. You can have unlimited money, you just need to put half that money in first, or 1 buck and a billion years of compound interest. I personally want my solar powered gold creating fusion plant in low solar orbit. To make gold for the computer chips used in the AI aiding Cure for aging research, so everyone could see the death of the last star in the sky, and everything before that.
18:53 Joe it already is a series somewhat. It’s called “For All Mankind” features some great actors and is based on an alternate reality in which the Soviets get to the moon first.
Fueled by the knowledge that we went to the moon and amplified by the dreams of discovery when I watch Star Wars, I changed my major right before attending college from music to engineering (yes, I love math l;ol). These influences had a positive effect on me over-all. I just retired after 30+ years as an engineer and loved my job till the end :)
The old shuttle concepts have always fascinated me. Thank you, Joe, for covering this.
Joe please watch the series on Apple TV called For All Mankind. Great show and pretty much exactly what you were talking about here.
I'm so privileged to be part of the reinvigoration of space travel. It's a once-in-a-civilization opportunity.
The original plan for a Venus mission was part of the plans to re-use Apollo hardware (I forget the name for the program) which was to use Apollo tech to do a Venus flyby
EDIT: remembered, "Apollo Applications Program" I think
No. They didn't want the Apollo hardwares of disposable space capsules and expendable heavy lift rockets! They want to use space shuttles, space tugs, space nuclear ferry of the space transportation system!
Okay, with the "Vision of Hindsight", of course 10 years to a manned mission to Mars was "overly optimistic." However, I could see it from their shoes. In nine years the US went from nothing in space to being the first (and still only) nation to put humans on the surface of the moon. To them, it kind of made sense. They came off a 10 year ride where the (EDIT) department had both the political and social will to do this thing. It was "Us versus the Commies", and we weren't going to let Russia beat us to the Moon like we had been beaten to space so many times.
The problem was they hadn't foreseen the change in the landscape. By the time we reached the Moon, the Soviet space program was mired in so many problems they basically conceded the Moon to us. They weren't going to the Moon anymore, so they certainly weren't going to go to Mars. Without that driver, a lot of that will that drove us to the Moon fizzled. The military wasn't interested because there would be little gains for them at the time. We won the race that mattered with the Soviets, and since they king of dropped out to focus on "their thing" (Militarization of space), there was no more race. And no race meant no more interest from the public at large. And when the will of the people evaporated, so did the political will. That meant that while the race to the Moon was a "We must do this", the race to Mars became "We'll eventually do this."
I suspect if the Soviet Union had not caved on the space race to the Moon, we'd probably would have reached Mars by now. I don't think 1981, but maybe the 1990s. Our nation does so well when there's someone else to challenge us. Having a "hated other" seems to light a fire under us like nothing else.
Sadly, the 'hated others' are now fellow countrymen. Watching from outside America, I am gutted by how much you have allowed political partisanship to destroy your country and its culture.
@@HTtwentyten To be honest, I agree. But our politics has always had some degree of tribalism. It makes it hard to argue that the party system is broken and both parties are to blame when a large percentage of the nation has tied their identity to "what color handle do you pull in a voting booth". People don't want to hear that they may be part of something horribly corrupted, so they plug their ears and shout that it's the other side that is the big bad.
And, sadly, I have absolutely no answer for this. I doubt having their own leaders exposed for the corrupt, self-interested pigs as they are would have any effect.
"the company had both the political and social will to do this thing."
The "company"?
Yours is the best explanation. Because there was no more race to beat our hated Soviet enemy, the incentive for spending a lot of money sending people into space was gone.
Aerospace grad here, my impression is that apollo was lucky to achieve as much as it did. imo we are right on track with progress, all we need are some inspirational leaders to help people understand why its worth the money
Wish I could downvote this twice.
There's also the affect of the acceleration of the moon program to consider as well. There were plans to do a more incremental approach to lunar exploration before Kennedy's proposal, but his deadline required everything be sped up, preventing more sustainable options from being pursued at that time.
the depth of these videos are amazing. love the manned/crewed breakdown. nice. i'm not even mad.
Watch "For All Mankind" on apple TV!...it has EVERYTHING you just mentioned and how it would be applied to the space program!!
- nasa gets to profit from their patents.
- nerva engine for 2nd generation space shuttle.
- combat on the moon and in orbit.
- and about 90% of the things you've mentioned Joe, are all on that show seasons 1 and 2.
I really couldn't tell if he was refering to this show or not with the winks. I mean, it would be weird if Joe didn't watch that.
The show is awesome btw.
My dad got really frustrated try to get a free trial. We seem to have to buy a new TV or an AppleTV to get it working. It's a little ironic that we don't have the tech to get AppleTV+, never mind a vision of a space program.
Interesting concepts! Thanks for sharing this with us! And I’m in that ballpark of “space travel has been disappointing”, I wish this stuff could’ve happened and I hope it can get started with Starship.
I'm in the ball park ⚾ .. No one ever landed on the moon.. but then i see they turned the camera at everything re; everything they are doing, the astronauts, but not at the hexagonal mountain they checking out, and then later on the shallow creator with red iron soil in it (oxygen) and half a face sitting right there .. rolls eyes . ;-) but I know nothuung ;-) pretty sure nasa knows or do they.. hey can i use that reel of tape i need to record over that moon landing ... (lets not forget the British lady living in Perth ..WA ..saw it live, a coke can roll under lander . then next day replay.. no coke . guess not thirsty...
@@franksomeone2793 Well, you kinda-sorta got one thing right.
You know nothing -- and you even spelled *that* wrong.
@@franksomeone2793 what a strange way to say that you have brain damage
Thank you for posting the two links! Always increasing my knowledge by visiting your channel. Keep up the wonderful work!
Just discovered this channel today and i love the content, the comedy, and the overall vibe, thank you for the hours of entertainment!
Shout out to Amy Shira Teitel, aka Vintage Space, who has been covering these topics for years and has several excellent videos on it. Plus 2 "Amy's soapbox" videos about why she's not a fan of the Space Shuttle (the fact that it's the deadliest spacecraft in history is one)
Hear, hear! I second the nomination.....
She was 100% right about the Space Shuttle. Very overrated vehicle, and it's disappointing to hear it referred to here as "one off the most successful space vehicles of all time"
@@tippyc2 I was thinking that, too - that there are the families of 14 astronauts who might disagree....
I am constantly reminded that it *seems* like hardly anyone has ever read Zubrin's The Plan For Mars. He does the math, the physics, the chemistry and the engineering: at the end of the Apollo era, we had the tech we needed to colonize mars. We just need to choose to do it.
Minor correction: It's "The Case for Mars". Otherwise I agree completely. Rob is a visionary and the book is absolutely critical for folks who want to understand interplanetary programs.
@@instinctroller yep. I think I conflated the book with "the Mars Direct Plan".
I'm offended that the missions where dogs were sent to space weren't called Dogged Expeditions. Also, where's my damn flying car? 🥲
I remember watching Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time. Even though I wasn’t quite 12 at the time, it’s one of those events that sticks with you for a lifetime. And to think we did it with computers that are laughable by today’s standards. My only question about a Mars mission is what about cosmic radiation and the long term consequences of exposure. Do they have ways to shield humans from cosmic rays of that magnitude?
I understand they will line the walls of the spacecraft with bagged poop to increase the radiation shielding.
@@rtqii source? And what's most likely to happen is they'll end up digging then shoveling a couple feets worth, or anywhere between .5-1.5 meters of dirt around the base and that'll shield it from most of the cosmic radiation.
@@nerdyguyD679 Oh god, this was an interview on Mars mission technology I watched several years ago.... But they focused on radiation shielding for the crew, and they clearly explained that human fecal waste, which contains lots of hydrogen, would be bagged up and attached to the inside of the spacecraft hull for radiation shielding.
I was 6 when we landed on the moon and always thought we dropped the ball on the space program, but as time has passed I've realized how insane and ahead of its time the moon landing was
Joe, the world is a shitty place right now, and your videos always take me to a different place, even for just a moment. Thanks.
Agree 100%
"Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department." said Werner von Braun.
One came down on my great grandfathers home in London - killed 6 of my family
Would love to hear more about the Nerva engine, and the new startups working on the tech. Could be a great method for human space to space transport
I remember going to Houston and visiting NASA. I saw a titanium space suit that was meant for a trip to Mars. I am an engineer and I am rarely impressed but that blew my mind. In fact, my tour of the facility blew me away and I met some great people. Truly, it was something else.
I grew up with these dreams. I ended up with a PhD on it, dreaming on work on nuclear space propulsion.
Turns out it is a military technology, and foreigners are not allowed security clearences for that.
And now, it turns out, they don't really know what are they doing in the first place.
After all the budget cuts and redesigns of the Space Shuttle, and mainly NASA management at the top level at the time of the programme, the Space Shuttle has the record for costing the most lives of any space vehicle.
More lives than all the other space related deaths combined.
Also has the most flight hours of any space program. 135 flights over 30 years with thousands and thousands of hours in space.
Also vs Apollo the record is like 10 dead vs 8... So considering how many more flights space shuttle had, relatively comparable.
Also i have my doubts that space x will continue to have such a low accident rate if they actually did as much as nasa.
This one isn't just food for thought: it's a whole 5 course meal of informative ponderances. Bravo sir... But I'd like to add, that declaring ourselves (the United States) the winner of the space race, had a massive negative affect on the public interest in the pursuit and achievement of the goals in space.
I love your editing style of this video. Great job
Nice work. This type of science and exploration always brings innovation for everyone.
The trouble was if they’d gone to Mars in the 1980s it would’ve been an absolute disaster and probably a big loss of life. They didn’t realise at the time how dangerous it would’ve actually been travelling to Mars and living in space, we had the international space station to learn how to live in space
If they'd used the artificial gravity created by Werner Von Brauns rotating space station, the muscle wasting effects etc of being in space may be different. SSP? We'll never know for a while at least it seems
Many of the Mars missions were failures, Russian and American probes were sent to Venus and Mars and only a minority of those missions were sorta successful.
But still, the Moon mission were going very well, a bit too well as people became bored, so a disaster might be terrible, of course, but it could inspire for better attempts.
@@Games_and_Music for one thing, the Russian Venus probes wildy underestimated the harshness of conditions. That's a setback that couldn't have been anticipated, and can't really be described as a "failure". I think "boredom" is a rather childish way of looking at the programs, these weren't created for the amusement of the public. It's just that military issues in the Cold War were over-riding importance. And the Cold War didn't end because of "boredom" either.
@@Games_and_Music No, most were pretty successful, the Venus ones just didn't last long because it's Venus. We still don't have technology that could make a Venus probe last more than a couple minutes.
This acts like we've needed 30+ years to learn how to live in space, which is total nonsense. Just because our space program stalled and we've been stuck with one pile of junk floating in LEO for forever doesn't means that's what's necessary to learn. In fact, I'll argue that when it comes to the effects of zero G on astronauts, we haven't learned ANYTHING new in the past 25 years. Not a single god damned thing.
I love your videos. Factual and pacted with information. Enjoysble and easy to digest. THANKS for all your work .
Thanks for all your hard work Joe. I really enjoy the variety and style. Keep it up!! 🇨🇦🏴☠️
Apple TV'S For All Mankind touches on alot of these subjects. I guess this is where they got it.
Great, very imformative and exciting video, Joe - thank you! If you get a chance, I recommend watching the excellent series "For All Mankind" on Apple TV+ to get a glimpse into a future in which plans for space travel never slowed down, and how that affects society, and the course of history.
Just discovered this channel. So good. Thanks Joe.
Just want to mention I love your "tangent" cam.
This is one of my favorite videos on (in?) this channel. Excellent summary full of hope and optimism.
If we have kept that level of space spending the speed of technological advances would have far exceeded what we have today. But I fear that since the world is not a safe place, the lessened defense spending would invite attack from the outside.
Who would dare attack us with all the nukes we have? From silos to bombers to submarines we have enough nukes to destroy the world. We spend more than enough for defense, we also want to display force projection around the world. While other major countries have one or two aircraft carriers we have eleven and are building more as we speak. We spend so much on F35s and F21s but in the conflicts we enter F15s and F16s are more than a match for what the enemy has, if they even have an air force. I've read articles where the military is considering upgrading F15s instead of buying more F35s as they are overkill. My point is if we would have just upgraded our existing fleet we would have saved billions while still having a formidable air force. I am sure that goes for many other military projects.
We've come a long way! Great video man!
Really? Do tell!
Hey Joe, you make learning fun. Man, that almost sounds like the titles of two popular 70s songs! At any rate, thank you; I appreciate your sense of humor!!
Your content and execution is the gift that keeps giving
I have a great "what-if" in my head right now:
What if we pledged 5% of the fiscal budget to civilian space exploration for the next 50 years? No fussing, no asking questions, the top 5% of every FY goes to NASA or it's future equivalent, for fifty years.
That's a wonderful thought, to me.
If Americans got off their -- quite literally -- fat asses and started eating properly and getting some exercise, imagine how much money the U.S. health care system would eventually save. There's your 5% right there.
@@davidanderson_surrey_bc your government has poisoned their people with fast food and corn syrup. Corruption is the cause of your obesity. All the 7 deadly sins are related.
The space program wasn't universally supported back then. It was viewed as a big waste of money by folks concerned with things like hunger, poverty, and housing, etc. The same debate would happen today. We should have set up mines on the moon, a base on Mars, and started mining asteroids. The space station was checking feasibility of manufacturing in zero G. Post a return on investment and the objections will be easier to overcome.
@@davidanderson_surrey_bc We don't have a health care system.
There would be 'shooking' results if that were the case.
The first step to going anywhere is the ability to get into space with people quickly and easily as a matter of routine and NOT be tied down to expensive infrastructure to get there.
Get Dream Chaser man rated, put it on a Falcon 9 and you have most of that. Don't send people up along with tons of cargo. Send cargo up on unmanned flights.
Keep it Simple.
I was about to suggest The Expanse but you did it for me 😂 Great video as always. I’ve been getting my childish excitement back in recent years with all the private space flight happening. I’m so excited for the near future!
I love your content. It’s just plain truth. No bullshit. Information for people who keep an open mind, and see well beyond the trees. Never stop 🤘
My dad was an engineer. And now, having just graduated from Coding bootcamp, I am now also an engineer. So, yes, your cloned room full of engineers is exactly right on. Never stop killing. This is now my favorite video of yours. Plus, all the Saturns ordered for the Moon were finished by 68? Damn. Didn't know. So, I guess they HAD to do the shuttle. And I just thought Nixon was an idiot... Anyway, SPACE TRUCKS FOR ALL!!!
No. They didn't want the Apollo hardwares of disposable space capsules and expendable heavy lift rockets! They want to use space shuttles, space tugs, space nuclear ferry of the space transportation system!
Apollo style technologies of expendable heavy lift rockets and disposable capsules are just not sustainable!
I have to agree, we really were in over our heads with Apollo. That was the equivalent of the Viking crossing the Atlantinc in rowboats. Only possible through insane determination, skill, and luck. I think our space program could be more advanced, but probably not waaaay more. I feel like we needed the computer tech, and it has advanced about as afst as we could push it.
America was in over their heads with MERCURY .. nevermind Apollo or Gemini.
It was only after the Avro Arrow was cancelled and Jim Chamberlin and his team became unemployed that the 'American' Space programme did anything meaningful.
Jim fixed Mercury which did not work until he and his team arrived.
Then HE built Gemini from scratch,
And he gave Owen Maynard (Canadian Engineer on his Avro team) the OK to build the Lunar Lander system. Of which Jim thought a follow up programme should be 2 but he did build Gemini to make it to the moon and back and was confident it could do the job if needed.
Following Owen's design, the rest of the Avro team under Jim focused on the Command module half. And Jim focused on mounting and launching it from that SaturnV with his non-Avro (American/German/British) employees who were building that.
After he chiefed the entirety of Apollo and oversaw specific command of Apollo missions following the 13 disaster that made clear expert knowledge was required in the mission command chain.
(Members of the team would go onto work in the Shuttle, B-2, skunk works, etc)
@@Boeing_hitsquad This is some fine fiction that you're spinning.
If you truly believe this, you should seek medical attention.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. This space stuff really makes me think.
The control center full of Joes will always crack me up.. take my thumbs up.
One of your best so far.
Imagine if they had given a tiny percentage of the military budget to NASA, like 4 %.
That would have been 3 billion and change in 1970's money.
Spend the world's one month military budget on the people, hospital food clean water and education and let's see what happens
@@juanzero5398 hahaha. That will never happen, though. Not while humans are in charge.
@@squirlmy Not while americans are in charge.
@@AndrewManook not fair at all to blame them like that.
@@kiwibob223 Why not? How much is spent on military and how much is spent on health care?
I agree with the phrase "A lot of the advancements needed for the Space Task Group Plan to happen probably wouldn't have been solved by throwing money at it"
Great walkthrough of the Visions of the 70's
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with all of us 👍😀
Would love to see a video on the Nerva engine! Great video as always.
The 1950s and '60s was just an insane time for all things air, space and flying. It was like the world was teenager drunk on aerospace keeping the buzz going. Of course people who lived through that era figured it was just going to keep going. I was born in '67, so I'm the Skylab/Viking/Shuttle generation. I remember when the Concordes started their flights. I remember when Voyager reached the ice giants. I was late to the party, but I sure thought people would be walking on Mars by now.
I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again: you and your team provide such great content! It makes science and other topics that make things interesting and fun. It frankly reminds me of how I felt when I watched bill nye the science guy in school.
Fascinating stuff. Very inspiring to think about.
Happy to see "Robot B-9" behind you on the shelf!
17:45 - You most definitively need to make a video titled "How military ruined STS project, and then bailed out when the first trouble struck".
But, yes, we did a good part of those visionary goals.
I maintain that nothing in those plans was ACTUALLY overly optimistic, and it absolutely represents a failure. Given proper funding, the right minds, and a national will to see it through, we could've landed people on Mars in the 80s. That doesn't sound silly to me at all. If we hadn't blundered our way into a wildly irresponsible and reckless series of proxy wars, if we didn't have backwards thinking politicians who treated the government like a corporation that needed to make a profit when that literally makes no sense, if the military didn't have most of congress in its pocket, draining minds and resources away from proper scientific progress...then yes, we would've been well equipped to reach Mars and beyond.
@notfiveo " We don’t even have the technology to go to mars today."
Also nonsense. The only reason rovers are difficult to land on Mars is because humans aren't there to do it in real time. A human flown rocket could've used Apollo technology and worked fine, the only hurdle was making it big enough to fit the necessary fuel. It was never technology stopping us, just money.
Keep'em thinking Boss 🤘🏼
Thank you for putting this video together, I really love the space and What If style speculation. It really shows how we have lost that spark of ambition, that we no longer want to do the hard work (as a society, not individuals) and pay for government programs to build impressive things and push science and technology forward.
Concerning the economics aspects of this, the 1960's saw a huge period of economic growth, quite likely due to the kind of spending we did on the space program. Not mentioned in the video were all the precursors to the Apollo program, such as the Mercury and Gemini programs. That was a lot of spending, too.
I believe the next phase we did follow through with was the right path. Finding out the effects of space travel on humans, as we did with the various space stations and shuttle flights. Also, the long range probes we sent out told us a lot about the conditions of space, such as the radiation present.
Also, when we look back at computing power during the Apollo program, we tend to be amazed at how undeveloped it was compared to today. Our current capabilities are far and away much more of what we would have needed to explore more of the solar system, so putting off that exploration can be looked at as a wise choice. We had to bring our technology up to speed in so many ways before we should have taken that step.
Also the result of WWII. WWII is what set the stage for a lot of this "space" stuff, putting people and dogs and chimps on top of ICBMs.
@@8BitNaptime I'm really skeptical of spending on the space program having much of any impact economically. A lot of American prosperity had to do with Europe bombing the crap out of each other, til there was nearly nothing left, And America (and a certain extent the Soviet Union) in good shape to pick up the pieces. Before WWII, the British Pound was the world's reserve currency, after, the US dollar, and then specifically the "petro-dollar" Before WWI, the sun never set on the British Empire, after WWII, America had economic ties everywhere the Soviets didn't.
What is sad is NASA had a multitude of patents for sell. American businesses were too short-sighted to understand their implications and passed. The Japanese weren't as myopic and scored big with our patents.
Personally, I find it much more likely that we would have overcome many of the technical challenges with money and research. I doubt we would have overcome the biological challenges though. This is the biggest problem with space exploration at the moment. We can send things to Mars but we don't yet know how to send people there.
We do, it's just costly. Two ways are to generate an electrical field around the ship and the second way is to use a water shield. The first would deflect solar radiation and the second way would block it. I think the major issue though is psychological since almost every psych test we've done on the concept has come up to "failed". There is a possibility that VR could be used to help in this regard, or we could automate the craft and have the crew go into a medical-induced coma for the trip.
@@FinGeek4now What about the 0g problem? Even with exercise, spending months in microgravity requires recovery. There will be no one on Mars to help them recover and assist them.
@@drewharrison6433 Centrifugal force can be used to constantly simulate gravity (this would be likely in the induced-coma scenario). As far as using exercises like we do on the ISS, recovery is a problem but not a mission killer. Remember that Mars has lower gravity, so the recovery wouldn't be as hard as it is on Earth.
edit: I don't think we would use the centrifugal force method during the initial stages of planetary exploration with crew that are awake, for the simple fact that the spacecraft would need to be so bloody large and therefore, way more expensive. There have been ideas floated with using a three-starship approach, where the Starship in the middle would be for cargo and spin, while two other ones would be tethered to it and on each side at a set distance.
@@FinGeek4now All of what you're saying is theoretical. We don't have a way to build a ship big enough to make centrifugal gravity, much less shield it. We can't put people in hibernation and we don't know what that would do. We really are just beginning to discover all the effects of space travel and as of now, don't have the technology to solve it all.
The other thing that struck me in the video was the shear number of launches they were planning. Even the biggest rocket has a max capacity. To build this very large ship with centrifugal gravity would require many launches and each launch is very expensive.
@@drewharrison6433 An interesting thing to put out there against the "very expensive" argument is that we spend billions of dollars on the goal of killing each other on this planet. Not being political about this, I believe that we as humans are going to kill each other and defense is something that has to exist, but if we flip flopped the military budget with the NASA budget.......
In the end this is not what happened so everything is theoretical and hypothetical.
Great work as always!
I was at NASA with the Scouts maybe 10 years ago and Jack Louisma was there. I was on the kick that the Space Shuttle was a dangerous experimental program and diverted us from exploration and I asked him his thoughts about that. He of course flew STS-3 and gave a positive answer about the shuttle and the technology it enabled, etc. But then he opined what could have been if the shuttle didn't change NASA's trajectory. His estimate if I recall correctly was a Mars landing by 1984 in the long term plans so close to what you found in your research. Wild stuff.
I'm impressed with how much of the plan was actual brought to reality. The crewed aspects are really the only thing (that you discussed) in which we kind of put on hold. I don't think Elon Musk as a genius, just a billionaire who regurgitates stuff he finds on the internet, however he is responsible for reigniting the publics interest in exploring those crewed objectives & space overall!
Agreed. I can see him as being more intelligent than the average person, but genuis level is absolutely stretching it. Some of his more recent speeches, absolutely stupid moves *cough X*, and eccentricity gained by his wealth seems to call that into question more and more. And I’d argue he may be losing some intelligence in non-academia measures.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things"
That has to be one of the worst lines in a monumental speech.
But somehow the weird lumpiness makes it unforgettable. And bluntly poetic. Resonant.
I love you're content I've been wacthing you for years!...
Want that Nerva episode. Great job Joe and Team
I remember they had high expectations of the Nerva engine. Not sure if it could have been SAFE for human space missions. i believe the program got scrubbed when atomic energy engines in space were forbidden by some international agreement in the 1970s.
EDIT: Nixon cancelled it in 1973 because of high costs of other space programs however several of those programs were deemed more important. Not sure where i got that ''agreement'' stuff from. I believe the US and the Soviets came to an agreement not to use nuclear weapons in space?
is there a reason rotating spaceships need to be so large? i understand that there's the coriolis effect to account for, but couldn't the rotating part have ridiculously short ceilings so you just crawl inside as a place to sleep? if you're laying down then surely the coriolis effect wouldn't matter. if crew spent 8 hours a day in there then i'd imagine it'd prevent many of the long-term side effects of spending the rest of their day in zero G.
The way centrifugal force works on distance, so say you had a 50 ft when instead of a 200ft ( which is still way too small btw) you'd have different 'gravity' at your head than at your feet and would pass out. At 200' you can get very low, but stable gravity. Ideally you want something about 1km across.
You need the resistance across the muscles around your whole body in addition to just having the gravity. We can't really pull off faking it with bands on a treadmill for these durations. The resistance of blood flow keeping the heart strong for example. You don't get the same effect laying down. It's why you sometimes get light headed standing up too quickly. Blood pressure drops in the brain. This is one of many issues low G living conditions represents.
"Coriolis" always rears it's head in the comments section.
Several potential problems. 1) Material resistance. To provide 9.8m/s^2 at "ground level", a cilinder that's, let's say, 5 meters in diameter needs to spin 4x as fast as one that's 10m. Which means you put a lot of stress on your materials, which induces metal fatigue in the long run. Hence, it's better if you go as big as you can, so you can spin at a ridiculously low rpm and still get the desired pseudo-gravity. 2) Diff. "gravity" by your head, chest and feet. If you had a 4m wide cilinder rotating at required rpm, your head would be very close to the geometric center and thus would be experiencing almost zero-g, your chest would be in Moon' or Mars' gravity, and only your feet would experience 1g - none of this is good for your health. If your rotating body is several dozen meters wide, the diffs. are negligible. 3) finally, Coriolis forces - the smaller the rotating body's diameter, the stronger they are. The Soviets did a series of very interesting experiments in the 60s putting cosmonauts in rotating habitats here on Earth (check out Scott Manley's superb video on the subject) and it was demonstrated yes, human bodies can get used to the Coriolis forces, but it does take training, lots of training and lots of time to get used to it.
@@JosePineda-cy6om Good point, however the OP mentioned lying down.
18:55 Sounds similar to the show "For All Mankind", which is truly an amazing show!
The 1981 Mars landing was the fastest of three options - I think the idea was for the President to pick the middle option with a much more reasonable 1986 - it was the option Vice President Agnew said he personally favoured. The “Lego” approach with six bricks (Saturn5, Shuttle, Tug, NERVA stage, Habitation module and Mars lander) might not have been quite as easy to implement as they anticipated. While it was a sensible approach, I think they underestimated the system level effort required to design and test each combination.
Other interesting facts - the habitation module was going to be nuclear powered which is why none of the artwork shows solar arrays. - Rocketdyne made a prototype of the Tug’s engine called the Advanced Space Engine. - Initially Europe was going to contribute the Tug and did a lot of study work in it before the USA decided it was too strategically important to have partners in control but then never built it (and Europe ended up with Spacelab instead).
HOLY CRAP! my grandpa was a nucleat engineer on the NERVA Project. I haven't heard this name since I did a biography project on him for a college English class (he was 87 years old at the time). AMAZIN' life that guy had.
"Imagine you're Richard Nixon..." This transported me back to Watergate and it came with a side order of GERD. Hey, thanks, Joe.
I can't imagine the shame of being Richard Nixon. He's the reason that nobody shortens that name to Dick any more.
@@SofaKingShit That, and it's a euphemism for swinging male body parts.
If the NASA budget had remained similar to the Apollo program, a lot of this would have been more likely to have been achieved.
I have wondered the same thing since I was a child, About the focus of NASA and spending
Is that a Ken Roczen bike I see back there?? Keep up the good work Joe, my girl and I love your videos!!
I would never be pissed at you for acknowledging that the term "manned" is a problem, I just politely disagree.
I grew up loving space, and space travel...now at 52, I mostly see it as a waste of money that otherwise could be used to do little stuff here on Earth....like feed people, house people, build better roads, better bridges, better water treatment systems...all of which are woefully lacking today.
But if that report were actually half feasible, then those problems would somehow be solved by now, though there would still be a problem of human nature as per usual, it would actually progress humanity more than what we currently had right now.
Hi Scott!❤ Been watching you for sometime and I wanna see something on induced hibernation.
The Task Group Report was not entirely over-optimistic, as it was based on an assumption that funding for NASA could/would be about the same as funding for the Apollo program. The engineering issues could have been solved by keeping in place the infrastructure created for Apollo with follow-on developments in new technologies. Such projects had been accomplished in the past, such as the Manhattan Project, or even the Apollo program itself. It all came down to the will to accomplish it and a dedicated source of funding. If history is any indication, money is what makes these things happen.
I remember an interaction I saw on television of former US Senator Barbara Boxer, during funding hearings for a NASA program, asking a NASA official about how much the particular program was going to cost and he couldn't give her a straight answer because they were inventing new technologies to complete the mission. The official (I can't remember who it was) finally said, in exasperation, "If you want to fly in space, you don't want a budget, you want a blank check." He went on to say something to the effect that if a nation wants to win a war (like WWII) or the Egyptian pharaohs building the pyramids, you don't ask how much it costs, you just do it.