At risk of crassness - human lives are pretty cheap and there are plenty of people willing to take the hit for a chance to be in space for an extended timeframe. Meanwhile building something with enough spin and shielding is a huge ask

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maxerickson 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

If manned stations aren't doing any particularly unique research, especially research that couldn't be done with automation, why spend huge resources on them?

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kjkjadksj 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Maintain american capacity to put technicians in low earth orbit. People forget a big part of the shuttle mission for example was to capture and put technicians not just on your satellite but any satellite the shuttle was capable of intercepting and getting into the bay. Consider the fact that the shuttle didn’t really die, in fact the airframe form is still flown but its mission is now classified.

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maxerickson 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's cheaper to launch replacements than it is to do maintenance (at least, if you plan it that way).

There are not classified shuttle equivalents launching, not sure what you are talking about there. The X37 has the capability to land, but it is not manned and is tiny compared to the shuttle.

	▲	kjkjadksj 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		X37 is what I am talking about. Same form: big flying satellite workshop. Just reduced footprint, and obviating the human so it could spend years in orbit and maximize cargo. But if they decided they needed a bigger X37 for larger bay space seems it could be done pretty trivially given shuttle experience. Or one stocked with a couple of those robots that just goosewalked with Melania Trump contorted into some packaging.

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mikkupikku 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If the shuttles ever tinkered with any satellites they weren't meant to, it was relatively boring ones in low inclination orbits, not the really cool ones in earth observing polar orbits. We know this because the shuttles never went to those orbits.

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Havoc 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd be very surprised if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space. If that is actually true then humanity has a problem.

>research that couldn't be done with automation

I'd think there is room for both. Automation makes sense, but don't think the versatility of meatbags is entirely there yet.

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gus_massa 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> if they're genuinely out of research ideas to test in space

A bigger problem is lack of expertise. Astronauts are not specialist in whatever is the topic of the current experiment. You need probably like 5 years of training (assume the second half of the undergraduate degree, and perhaps the first half of the PhD). So experiments must be fully automated except for a button to turn they on and off.

	▲	maxerickson 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Lots of research has technicians doing the actual experimental tasks, your argument would benefit from even a short list of experiments that have not been done because astronauts couldn't be expected to handle it.
	▲	Gud 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		We don't really need to send "astronauts"(highly trained operatives) to space anymore. SpaceX has made that happen.

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jfengel 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Meatbags are versatile but really, really expensive. They require a really vast support system, and it has to be highly redundant because the cost of a loss is so high.

You can send up a lot of less versatile bots for the price of one meatbag.

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pennomi 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

An entirely different form of research could be done by sending large quantities of normal people into space. Astronauts are such a small sample size (and so thoroughly vetted) that you get a different statistical view.

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__patchbit__ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Horses for courses micromanagement business administration and lobbying gravy train.

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mikkupikku 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We don't even know how much spin we'd need, and this is an important question to answer if lunar or martian habitats are something we're serious about. Maybe enough spin to match lunar gravity is enough, maybe less, maybe a lot more.

	▲	adrian_b 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Due to research done on mice on the ISS, we have some idea: "0.33g mitigates muscle atrophy while 0.67g preserves muscle function and myofiber type composition in mice during spaceflight" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12985678/ Obviously, we know that the gravity of Earth is sufficient. But the results make probable that two thirds of the gravity of Earth might be enough, while the gravity of Mars may create some problems and the gravity of the Moon is very likely to be insufficient, so the time spent on the Moon must be limited, though not so much as on the ISS. I agree with the previous poster that any spaceship designed for carrying humans to Mars or even farther must be designed to spin and anyone who accepts to go on something else is stupid. Making a spinning spaceship may be cheap if dual bodies or one body and a counterweight are used. It is likely that the safest solution would be to have 2 identical spacecraft, which could also be used independently but which could be coupled with cables to spin around the common center of mass at a distance big enough to create enough gravity at a low rotation speed. The problem is not the price but the fact that nobody has tested how difficult is to control such a configuration (avoiding oscillations and instabilities) and how difficult is to solve problems like docking in a manner that does not waste energy (i.e. without changing the rotation speed of the more massive spinning spacecraft, which can be done by having 1 or more docking ports on the rotation axis, like on the hub of a wheel; in the case when the rotating spacecraft would be made with 2 bodies or a body and a counterweight that would be linked with cables, one could have the equivalent of an elevator for transporting crew and equipment from the docking port to the main body or bodies). But someone must build and test such a spacecraft, otherwise we will never learn how to do it right and which are the real problems that are hard to predict in a simulation.
	▲	Havoc 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>We don't even know how much spin we'd need, Forgive my ignorance on the topic, but surely "same as earth" would be the starting point? With everything less being a trade-off that is suboptimal

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ramblenode a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm sure there's plenty of people who say that (on earth), but how many are going to have buyer's remorse after the first month? We tend to only send the most exemplary humans to space because you have to be in excellent physical and mental health just to weather the difficult conditions.