Is now the time to get into fields which will play a role in advancing commercial space exploration and colonization?
Will the industry be starting to advance rapidly in a few decades from now if not taking off (excuse the pun)?
My interest is in planetary geology, and I can see this being one of the crucial fields. But if the industry doesn't start to take off then going into planetary geology could be a major dead end.
No. 50-60 years from now, yes.
Asteroid mining is a thing right now.
Commercial space exploration means dick right now. The only area where private industry can capitalize is low earth orbit.
>>7670170
no it isn't.
>>7670151
Fusion rockets and single stage to orbit space planes will probably drop costs by a factor of 10 by 2025.
Asteroid mining will become economically feasible for certain asteroids; spiderfab will advance dramatically within the next 30 years allowing for non terrestrial construction sites on large scales using non terrestrial sources of materials.
Enter launch loops.
Increase in demand for space accessibility will lead to the construction of launch loops since they are compatible with most current and future forms of propulsion systems, the loop just aids in escaping earth's orbit.
Planetary geology will be needed late in your career, especially for mining. Early on it may be a bit dead unless you are a master in the field.
>>7670455
>Fusion rockets and single stage to orbit space planes will probably drop costs by a factor of 10 by 2025.
In some parallel dimension.
>>7670151
Yes, absolutely. The time is now. We are the cusp of a revolution in launch costs thanks to SpaceX. When launches go down to a few million a pop, asteroid mining will suddenly become a VERY profitable enterprise.
>>7670469
>We are the cusp of a revolution in launch costs thanks to SpaceX. When launches go down to a few million a pop, asteroid mining will suddenly become a VERY profitable enterprise.
Is this satirical or do Musk fanboys actually believe that?
>>7670553
Where is your supporting evidence that landing Falcon 9 will not soon work and star being mass-used?
>>7670659
Landing that first stage (not the entire rocket as you seem to assume) is the easy part. Making reusability commercially sound is the hard part. The europeans and the russians have conducted studies on reusability for a long time (the idea to reuse rockets is *far* from being new). Long story short, their conclusion was that it's cheaper to mass-produce parts than build a few and refurbish them. Designing a rocket is hard. Mass-producing a worked-out concept isn't. The analogy with aircrafts that musk always makes is retarded, basically because both vehicles are made with the same kind of materials but one has to sustain incredibly larger thermal and mechanic stresses than the other. I am largely oversimplifying here, of course, but that's the idea. Now given how one of the aforementioned countries makes the most reliable rockets in the world while the other has conducted more launches than anyone else, it should be telling that both reached the same conclusion about reusability.
But I like how spacex fanbois automatically assume the newcomer must be correct, and agencies which have been launching stuff in space since rockets exist must be wrong.
>>7670834
This. Rockets are just glorified ICBMs, and you can only push a old concept so far. If a "revolution" is to happen, that'd be SSTOs
>>7670839
Meh I'm not too optimistic about that either 2bh. But in theory, yeah, using radically different engines is at least better than reusing a first stage.
>>7670834
>Landing that first stage (not the entire rocket as you seem to assume)
You seem to be misinformed. They want to reuse the second stage as well. The third stage is obviously out of the equation as most of it is the actual payload.
Please don't say it is the easy part as it has failed already three times.
>it's cheaper to mass-produce parts than build a few and refurbish them
It isn't cheap, it is extremely expensive. Most of the cost is in the launcher, the first stage.
>Mass-producing a worked-out concept isn't.
Yes it is, hard, the proof is the SpaceX rocket exploded, because many parts are not tried and true yet. This was a small detail that made a huge impact, the largest possible impact, the accelerated deconstruction event during the launch.
>one of the aforementioned countries makes the most reliable rockets in the world
yes the Russians make the Soyuz, but that is only one vehicle they make, many Russian rockets keep failing, that design just happened to be a great one, and their space effort is now dead.
The Falcon 9R tests are the most real at the moment if we consider people getting together and designing systems, then testing them, while validating some good technologies in the process, regardless of full success of the test (i.e. coming back to landing barge nearly perfect, landing almost successful)
