No microchip = mass industrialization of space?

With the recent landing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage, there is the potential that (rapid, economical) reusability will revolutionize spaceflight. There are some who doubt that, believing that reusable rockets would not affect the market enough to enable the large-scale utilization of space. There are also some who believe that it will be a major "game-changer" that will make Elon Musk's ambitious Mars colonization plans possible.

Also, when discussing the economics of space launch vehicles, the term "flight rate" tends to come up - people say a high flight rate reduces per-launch costs by amortizing development costs and operating overhead. This is either thought to be achieved through high-flight-rate reusable launch systems, or mass produced expendable rockets. But there also needs to be demand for that flight rate. It's highly cliché, but "chicken-and-egg" is the phrase used to describe this situation, in which low launch costs need high flight rates, and high flight rates need low launch costs.

But could large-scale space activity have been possible years ago, if not for certain advances in electronics?

The Atomic Rockets website by Winchell Chung, and a person by the name of Isaac Kuo, has suggested that:
Isaac Kuo said:
It just occured to me...why didn't we have large scale commercialization of space already? And I had a strange answer:
The microchip and the fiber optic cable.

One of the few killer apps for space satellites was the communications satellite. But the microchip allowed multiplexing many voice streams onto a single high bandwidth signal, and the fiber optic cable made cheap long range high bandwidth communications possible.

What might have happened if the microchip and fiber optic cable weren't developed for another few decades? We might actually have needed hordes of communications satellites to keep up with global demand. That means a solid customer base for launchers, and that means mass produced launchers and/or big dumb boosters.

Without the microchip, these communications satellites suck up all sorts of juice. Thus, there's a huge incentive to develop efficient solar cells. With advanced space rated solar cells and cheaper launch technology, space based power may even be practical.

The result? Large scale industrialization of space, and sufficient economies of scale that launch costs are relatively cheap.
 
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Well it's a possibility, but equally the much greater cost might well mean that space travel doesn't take off at all. See, valves are fickle things, push them too hard (say, as during a launch), and they might decide to break internally, which would screw you up badly, not to mention the massively increased cost per rocket for even the simplest launch (every launch has to be manned), would lead to many more politicians criticising the cost and calling for better investment in ground-based communications, and so spaceflight might well not even get to Gemini levels.
 
Well it's a possibility, but equally the much greater cost might well mean that space travel doesn't take off at all. See, valves are fickle things, push them too hard (say, as during a launch), and they might decide to break internally, which would screw you up badly, not to mention the massively increased cost per rocket for even the simplest launch (every launch has to be manned), would lead to many more politicians criticising the cost and calling for better investment in ground-based communications, and so spaceflight might well not even get to Gemini levels.

Both the first fiber-optics usage and microprocessors were used in the Apollo Program from what I recall, so I wouldn't really expect any of that to occur since we already know how to get into space.

The transistor on the other hand would be a much more different issue, which might be what you are thinking of?
 
If we don't develop solid-state electronics we have to do with valves, which are finicky, bulky and short-lived. Faced with such issues it might be that space-travel doesn't even get properly established before it gets dropped as a money-pit.
 
What exactly is there in space to use that can't be gotten more easily on Earth?
The whole problem with state funded space travel is that it's kind of a money sink. There needs to be something up there to get in the first place and it needs to be pretty valuable so that it doesn't get abandoned when the monetarists come calling in the '70s.

The Paradox game mentality of conquest/expansion for the lulz just doesn't exist with real world governments.
 
What exactly is there in space to use that can't be gotten more easily on Earth?
The whole problem with state funded space travel is that it's kind of a money sink. There needs to be something up there to get in the first place and it needs to be pretty valuable so that it doesn't get abandoned when the monetarists come calling in the '70s.

The Paradox game mentality of conquest/expansion for the lulz just doesn't exist with real world governments.

Human travel to space has thus far been just for glory, but you forget the really important stuff performed by satellites, such as GPS, weather satellites, tons of scientific research. Not counting the military use of space which has been crucial.

State funded space travel for robots has been one of the most succesful examples of states acting as key innovators. Now, when technology is mundane it's up to private companies to make it better.
 
If we don't develop solid-state electronics we have to do with valves, which are finicky, bulky and short-lived. Faced with such issues it might be that space-travel doesn't even get properly established before it gets dropped as a money-pit.

no chip doesn;t automatically equal no solid state ...
 

Archibald

Banned
Most of the 60's launches were of Key Holes spy satellites - around 150 KH-4 Coronas for broad mapping, and 150 KH-7 / KH-8 Gambits for pinpoint accuracy. These satellites were short lived, barely three month each, hence the large numbers.
Then the National Reconnaissance Office went for huge, long-lived birds (KH-9s and KH-11s) and the numbers dropped.

I don't think the Coronas and Gambits used any microchips.
 
Which does nothing for spaceflight, because apart from satellites it's too expensive, and satellites that are in fact space-stations simply aren't going to work.
 
Booster Gold said:
What exactly is there in space to use that can't be gotten more easily on Earth?
How about unlimited energy with no pollution? How about massive amounts of mineral resources, accessible with (again) no pollution? How about the ability to manufacture materials that can't be made in gravity (ultra-lightweight, high-strength steel, frex)? How about materials that can be made cheaper than on Earth (again, like steel: solar energy is much easier & cheaper to collect in space than burning fossil fuels on Earth)? How about places to build factories that won't pollute the biosphere? (I'll leave off the pure science; you can't make a profit on it.;))
 
Except you have to get all of that stuff into space in the first place, so the cry of "no pollution" rings rather hollow, especially as, for a fraction the price of the space program you could probably come up with a process to detoxify the outputs of most factories anyway.
 
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MattII said:
Except you have to get all of that stuff into space in the first place, so the cry of "no pollution" rings rather hollow, especially as, for a fraction the price of the space program you could probably come up with a process to detoxify the outputs of most factories anyway.
You're not wrong on the first point. For a fraction of the price? Do you know how little is spent on spaceflight, total, right now?:rolleyes:

I maintain it should be done, to the point of cost be damned, just so we can get industry, & people, off the planet. It's time to get out of the cradle.:rolleyes:

Beyond that, I'd say the benefit of orders of magnitude increases on power delivery to everywhere, especially Africa, without adding a gram of CO2, which orbital power can do, is worth even exorbitant cost. Too bad the green Nazis would rather condemn us to destruction with "only one Earth" & "smaller is better" & "sustainable development".:rolleyes::confused::mad:
 

Vahktang

Donor
Safety.
If an extinction level event occurs and everybody is on Earth, then, no more human race, it's works, etc.
 
You're not wrong on the first point. For a fraction of the price? Do you know how little is spent on spaceflight, total, right now?:rolleyes:
You're using valves, not microchips, so satellites will last a couple of months tops, and will be rather limited in what they can actually do. If you want anything to last longer than a couple of months you need a permanently manned station, which in the local equivalent of the Gemini era will get bloody expensive.

I maintain it should be done, to the point of cost be damned, just so we can get industry, & people, off the planet. It's time to get out of the cradle.:rolleyes:
Much easier to do that with rockets that can be expected to perform as asked most of the time, and which will continue to work for years.

Beyond that, I'd say the benefit of orders of magnitude increases on power delivery to everywhere, especially Africa, without adding a gram of CO2, which orbital power can do, is worth even exorbitant cost. Too bad the green Nazis would rather condemn us to destruction with "only one Earth" & "smaller is better" & "sustainable development".:rolleyes::confused::mad:
You still have to get the power down to the ground, which is a task just as difficult as getting the collection equipment up.

Also, getting a dozen people to another world means crap if you screw up this one for the other 7 billion humans.

Safety.
If an extinction level event occurs and everybody is on Earth, then, no more human race, it's works, etc.
It would be a century or more before any off-Earth colony was even close to self-sustaining, so any ELE that occurred before that time would spell curtains for humanity anyway. And no microchips don't help with developing space infrastructure, in fact they slow it down, because each ship has to huge to contain even the most basic computer capable of working out interplanetary trajectories, so each ship is much more expensive.
 
Solid state (transistors) are pretty much necessary if you want to control your rockets - as pointed out, vacuum tubes are finicky. They're also heavy.

However, if fiber optics never caught on, all most TV and transoceanic communications would be by satellite (ya, there'd be some telephone calls carried on copper cables, but they're pretty low capacity).

The demand for satellites would skyrocket (hmmm... pun there), and you'd probably get massive geosynch orbital antenna farms to deal with the demand, which would require LOTS of launches.
 
Solid state (transistors) are pretty much necessary if you want to control your rockets - as pointed out, vacuum tubes are finicky. They're also heavy.

However, if fiber optics never caught on, all most TV and transoceanic communications would be by satellite (ya, there'd be some telephone calls carried on copper cables, but they're pretty low capacity).

The demand for satellites would skyrocket (hmmm... pun there), and you'd probably get massive geosynch orbital antenna farms to deal with the demand, which would require LOTS of launches.

Actually you don't NEED solid state devices to control your rockets, use the 'old-fashioned' method and have pilots, well, pilot them into space :)
(Ignore for the moment the fact that the USAF found out in order to make this work you had to have a sophisticated electronic (solid state) system to give the pilot visual cues to carry this out, maybe we can assume they learn with enough training? :) )

Randy
 
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