Russia Seeks Cooperation With U.S. in Space Effort

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

RUSSIA TO INVEST IN NUCLEAR SPACE

John · Senior Member

This would be an interesting development. Certainly the development and testing of a nuclear thermal engine would be much easier in Russia than inside the United States. Once the engine was developed and flying on Russian boosters, NASA might make use of this system for its own space program.

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

The U.S. is broke plane and simple, it's sad but legislative continuing resolutions will not advance space and I doubt LEO ballon motels will make space any more commecial than it is already.
Until the U.S. gets it's economic house in order and carves out 'markets-of-scale' to manufacture for I see a set of diminishing returns typical of an extreme service based economy.

Serving up Chicken McNuggets will not get you to the moon.

John · Senior Member

Don't forget that some of the greatest advances in space technology occurred during some very bad economic times known as the Great Depression. Also, the payoff could be 20 years or more ahead so what would the ecomomy of 1935 say about what my be done in 1955? My point is that just as we are now using Russian RD-180 for our Atlas V rockets. But, given the U.S. envirophobia about everything nuclear and in particular that would impact the test and development program (regardless of the facts). However, this should be no problem for the Russians.

-- Edited by John on Tuesday 21st of December 2010 12:10:35 AM

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

John, Great Depression ver.1.0 is not the same as what some see as happening in 2 yrs. My bent is the Austrian School opposed to the social welfare, war, inflation big gov't Keynesianism. I think Americans seem to be growing tied of the heavy unemployment numbers that never seem to go down. THE FED only generates the unintended consequences of Inflationary Depression there is still the unsettling consequence of a another economic contraction and the collapse of the U.S. dollar and the bond market.
The difference between what you state and the minarchist market driven economy is history. One of the main faults of big gov't statists is the FED (central bank concept)

"As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation's experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed's full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed's establishment. (2) While the Fed's performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago." [link]

The real difference is back in the day human emotion, innovation energy and achievement was very unrestrained and there was a huge scientific landscape that needed discovery competition was NON-EXISTENT and the investment philosophy was that of, "the authority of discoverable natural law trumped the authority of ideology" in research and development.

This is not the case now.

There is far more regulation and restraint and gov't manipulation in most human activity the least of which is fiscal and monetary policy which drives the warfare/welfare state. In Tsiolkovsky & Goddard period there was no advanced support for their work it took a German manufacturing base to place into practice propulsion science. The same will happen again as the SMART manufacturing society trumps the warfare/welfare service based society. Dead beat corporations would have been eliminated by now if it hadn't been their crony gov't buddies in Washington DC to TAX-PRINT-SPEND their way out of bankruptcy and the economy would have seen a retool & reduction in unemployment since 2007-2008 economic Great Recession.
A positive change was the appointment of Ron Paul as head of the finance subcommittee on monetary policy to educate the public on the different issues and maybe the START TREATY unless there is a settlement I don't see how another arms race round will help the U.S. since this time around the U.S. is in a much more vulnerable position similar to fall of Soviets circa 1991.

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Monday 20th of December 2010 08:56:32 PM

GoogleNaut · Guru

I really don't want to think of a collapse of the United States--but I think we are skirting a depression very, very close--almost too close to call. So many things could still go wrong; so many things have already gone wrong; where is the tipping point?

Personally, I am totally struggling with my own financial situation: I barely make ends meet, I work full time, and I live with my wife-in-training and seventeen year old daughter in a 960 square foot hourse. Just in the last ten years, as my total earnings have risen, my costs have risen to the point where I am just barely making it. I have thought about switching off my phone, my cable, and my internet, but this will only save $140 per month (and i don't make any long distance phone calls.) Fuel is killing me. Energy--Geez, I won't go there. I don't really want to spend a winter without heat and light, I know some do...and that just plane sucks.

The point is, I am in better shape than a lot of people--I am employed---but Christmas is a distant memory of happy times long ago. I don't even have a tree up, and presents? Hell, I just want to have food on the table.

This country is headed for severe disaster---we have to make changes, or this great nation will perish.

John · Senior Member

I hope that my comments weren't taken to be callous but I was just pointing out that in spite of the depravations of the great depression, Goddard's work progressed along with the German's. Also, I think that under current political conditions it just might the Russians who could develop a nuclear thermal engine where we would be hampered by environmentalists.

I don't expect the U.S. economic situation to be permanent. Japan and Germany were bombed into rubble by 1945 and look were they were by 1965. We aren't in anything like the defeated Axis countries were in 1945.

NUKE ROCKY44 · Senior Member

Immediately post war U.S. threw in some seed money (Marshall plan) for Japan, Germany etc. both manufacturing countries before & after the war had no problem adapting to a manufacturing market economy the U.S. had a 'hands off' policy approach as long as Japan and Germany were not engaged in armament building.
Again, all three nations were busy MANUFACTURING and creating markets.

Did you ever notice in recent post war period one country out of the three (U.S. Germany, Japan) power houses dominate all global manufacturing like China does today?

No, because each country found markets.

What we are witnessing today is a huge economic imbalance caused by policy that has been allowed to play out for the past 38 yrs. Now, it has simply reached its peak exhausted.

-- Edited by NUKE ROCKY44 on Tuesday 21st of December 2010 03:03:02 AM

Russia Seeks Cooperation With U.S. in Space Effort

[link]Russia, U.S. may jointly develop spacecraft engines[link]

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Russia, U.S. may jointly develop spacecraft engines

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