NASA's Plans for the Future

FleaPlus writes "ABC News, Pasadena Star-News, and Space Politics report on a recent statement by NASA chief Michael Griffin on NASA's plans for the future and how it will be reflected in their annual budget. Griffin has ordered preparations for one last shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. He also plans to greatly accelerate development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle to have it ready when the Space Shuttles retire in 2010, stating that the CEV 'needs to be safe, it needs to be simple, it needs to be soon.' Some other highlights include $34 million for the Centennial Challenges prize program and the possibility of completing the space station with unmanned rockets after the shuttles retire. However, due to budget limitations, the cost of returning the Space Shuttles to flight, and over $400 million in Congressional earmarks, a number of other areas will see delays, including space station, aeronautics, and exploration research. NASA also plans on restructuring Project Prometheus to focus on developing space-qualified nuclear power systems for use in human and robotic surface operations, instead of a probe to Jupiter's moons." The Washington Post has a look at NASA's future as well.

Comments

They could do worse

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not too bad a plan, athough I'd like to see more unmanned missions in the works.

Re:They could do worse

[The Snowman]

It's not too bad a plan, athough I'd like to see more unmanned missions in the works.

Manned Shuttle missions are much more expensive than unmanned missions (e.g. using rockets instead of the Shuttle to launch ISS modules). Since somebody would rather fight a war on the other side of the planet, it looks like NASA has a lot of unmanned flight in its future. While I would rather privitize or flat out eliminate most of the federal government (yes, I am one of those crazy Libertarians), NASA is one of the areas where I think the government needs to increase spending and have more explorations and missions.

Re:They could do worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually as someone who has worked at JPL - NASA's unmanned missions are getting screwed (and along with it JPL) in order to make way for a mission to mars. When it comes down to it unmanned space missions produce A LOT more science and are cheaper than manned ones do, and thus it would make more sense to focus on those when the budget it tight. The opposite is happening though it seems and I really fear for the US space program because of it.

Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

Chemical rockets are just not cost efficient enough.
also people are studying nuclear engineering all around the world . its better these people are kept busy designing power plants for on earth and off earth applications than nuclear bombs. Just my opinion.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ziggamon2.0]

Nukes are the way to go

Nah... Nuclear propulsion is just standing in our way of getting to the Improbability Drive!

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

so when Earth gets demolished will the wreckers run on nuclear on improbability propulsion

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

Let me modify that to troposphere and above propulsion. For Lanch and landing some kind of Ramjet based engine should be fine. That should take care of the worries about an active nuclear reactor bursting open if a crash happens.

Ideally I would like to see a commercial 747 type airliner takeoff on jet engines,accelerate to the upper atmosphere and use the nuclear engines to reach escape velocity.

We could call the 2 different kinds of engine warp and impulse.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Richard_at_work]

Chemical rockets also have a limited practical top speed, research into nuclear propulsion is definately required if we are to make travel to the outer reaches of the solar system a regular occurance without waiting years for the results (how long did Cassini take to reach Saturn? How much more science can be done if we launch a probe a year and they get their within 6 months?)

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[sznupi]

My opinion is that the ones working on it should coin a name NOT including the word "nuclear". The public is so brainwashed on the matter that whenever they hear ir red lamp in their mind turns on :/

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

"these people are kept busy designing power plants for on earth and off earth applications than nuclear bombs"

And how many people are involved in designing spacecraft power plants compared to how many work at Los Alamos, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere on bomb projects?

Sure sounds good, though, for the uninformed.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[khallow]

Chemical rockets are just not cost efficient enough.

The key bottleneck is Earth to orbit. It really doesn't matter what technology is used to get into orbit as long as there is high launch volume. Chemical rockets are good enough to fill that need and the real obstacles here are economic and political.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

Thats true. The conventional bombing raids killed far more and destryed much more property than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fircrackers(relatively speaking) Also a lot more people died in the Bhopal Gas leak in India from a fertilizer factory than from Chernobyl but people are shit scared of Nuclear plants. I think its a kind of hysteria created by the nuclear powers to scare the non nuclear powers. Frankly I think nuclear weapons are overrated. They are really useless for war as when used they irradiate the territory so you can make no use of the territory. Thats only marginally better than the enemy holding the territory. Wars will continue to be fought with conventional weapons. Only terrorists would ever think of using nukes (Hmm wonder what that says about Truman)
Nuclear power is on the other hand the road to freedom from oil dependence as well as the key to space. Take the example of a country like India which imports 70% of its oil. If even 40% which is used in power plants is replaced by nuclear power India would become a developed country instead of a developing one. Witness the French. As most of their electricity is nuclear generated they are not hostage to oil and dont need to get sucked into the middle-east. This gives them the advantage of taking the moral viewpoint on these issues instead of the national security viewpoint. People blame the neocons for starting the Iraq war but given the state of the US economy there really was no other option than to get control of some oil reserves. The same liberals who blast Bush about going to war in Iraq are the one shouting NAMBY when nuclear power is discussed

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Ravenrage]

" Chemical rockets are just not cost efficient enough." ok that is true.....but"also people are studying nuclear engineering all around the world . its better these people are kept busy designing power plants for on earth and off earth applications than nuclear bombs. Just my opinion" are the two exclusive we didn't have nuclear power plants til after we had nuke bombs right?

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[sznupi]

While I agree on general matter, I think the details about France are incorrect a little. Because, for example, where I live practically none electricity is generated from oil...but we still are dependant on it...
So I think they are still hostage... (who knows if opposing the war wasn't precisely part of it)

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[L0C0loco]

I had the chance to talk with Griffen this past Friday. He is just the breath of fresh air NASA needs. I'm looking forward to what he is going to do with NASA in the comming years.

Forget the Ramjet, I think you meant Scramjet ala the X-43.

As for Nuclear power, the problem is getting a nuclear power source that does not have tremendous shielding mass requirements. Something that produces gamma radiation only would be best (like positron/electron reactors). There are a few out there, but they need a lot of development. The real key to cost effective space access is not to have to launch all of your fuel (reaction mass - f=ma) just the energy (m*v*v/2).

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[L0C0loco]

How about antimatter - as in positron/electron or other more interesting positron-based fission reactions?

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[L0C0loco]

Oops, That was Griffin, not Griffen.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Dog's_Breakfast]

No, nukes are evil! What we need is wind power, biodiesel and hybrid engines. If NASA wants to explore Europa, then a Toyota Prius is the way to go. Now excuse me while I get back to my home energy project (I'm building a windmill, driven by an electric fan - why did nobody else think of us?). cheers, DB

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Uruk]

We are just completely spoiled in terms of expected turn-around time in R&D. The timetables you are suggesting are inconvenient and bad, but not impossible to deal with. We're just used to faster in other areas of technology.

There are plenty of concerns to be taken care of with nuclear propulsion. I think it probably can be done safely and effectively in the long run, but having a Columbia or Challenger type incident with lots of radioactive material onboard is bound to make some people a bit queasy...

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Richard_at_work]

Why are the timetables inconveniant? Surely instead of sending off what are essentially one off probes that cost many millions each time, it would be more cost effective to develop a cheap adaptable frame, with a set propulsion method, a set guidance system, and custom packages on board. Send off one every 6months to a year, have them get there within 6months, that way you know there and then if your probe has failed for whatever reason, theres no waiting around 8 years just for the probe to fail as it unfurles an antenna or whatever?

Space exploration should be cheap, disposable, mass produced probes, the space equivilent of sonar bouys or weather balloons. We should be able to say 'Hmm, we need a closer look at titan, this pictures a bit blurry', and dispatch a probe with hardly a second thought of the matter. We should be able to pull a probe out of storage when we need one, rather than wait years for the damn thing to be built. There should be a base standard for scientific packages to interface with the probe itself.

Probes should be customised after they are pulled out of storage, not one offs.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it's funny...neolibs blame the neocons for going to war for oil, yet NOT going to war and allowing Saddam to remain in power would have been much a much better way to ensure a good oil supply. He ruled that country very closely, and if we wanted to we could have fairly easily (and cheaply) secured sole import rights to Iraqi oil (albeit at the loss of international prestige...which the neolibs claimed happened anyway with the war (ie: "allies? what allies? there are only Americans in Iraq right now!"))...

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Matt Edd]

The fact that we are using chemical rockets is irrelevant to the time it took the Cassini space probe to get to Saturn. It did not take a direct route. It used a gravity-assisted flight path where it hardly used its rockets. They where mainly used just to get off the earth. These flight paths are minimum energy paths that use the gravity of the Sun to guide it and the gravity of the planets to push it.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Martin Blank]

Probes should be both. While we get a great deal of useful information from buoys and balloons, we get a great deal more from full-fledged weather research stations. There are reasons to send out small, inexpensive probes, and reasons to send larger, robotic observatories like Cassini.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Goonie]

I like the euphemism noted in the Wikipedia article on the topic, External Pulsed Plasma Propulsion. Cute :)

As far as the merits of the idea go, statistically each launch would give a few people cancer. You're not going to sell people on that idea unless there's an absolutely compelling need (the Big One is about to hit us, for instance).

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[UnrefinedLayman]

Also a lot more people died in the Bhopal Gas leak in India from a fertilizer factory than from Chernobyl but people are shit scared of Nuclear plants.

That's because when nuclear plants have accidents they don't just kill in the initial explosion. They can kill every day for hundreds of years.

It's estimated that it will be six hundred years before it is safe for people to live in some areas around Chernobyl. For a sense of scale, six hundred years ago people didn't know there were continents on this side of the Atlantic. People are scared of nuclear power for a reason, and it's their right to be.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Bhopal Gas leak in India from a fertilizer factory

Minor nitpick: it was a pesticide plant. MIC was an intermediate that was stored in large quantities. Following Bhopal, the process was modified worldwide to make MIC "just in time" for the next stage, so no storage tanks would be needed.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[thermopile]

Similar to a comment posted above by Matt Edd ...

As currently designed, nuclear engines in no way enable faster travel to the outer planets. They just allow a lot of energy packed into a small space.

Voyagers 1 and 2 made the trip to Jupiter in a handy two years. Galileo did it in a little over 3. Cassini took about 4.5 years to get to Jupiter.

As planned now, the Prometheus reactor, if one is ever sent to Jupiter, is not allowed to use gravity assists. This means it will take about 8 to 9 years given current ion propulsion thrusts to get it to Jupiter. Using a nuclear reactor to provide high voltages to spew xenon out the back end does not provide a whole lot of thrust, but it sure can be efficient.

The biggest advantage of putting nuclear reactors in space is the availability of lots of power on station for a fairly long period of time. It enables things like high-gain antennas, wide aperture arrays for surface mapping, or who knows what else -- if you build it, they will come. Give a scientist 200 kW (electric) to play with on Europa, I'm sure he'll find a good use for it.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[twiddlingbits]

There are "bus" designs for sattelites that are used primarily by the Military and they just hang different packages off them. However, science probes tend to be more specialized with one-of-a-kind instruments that need special treatment and are usually built scientists NOT engineers so conformance to standards (such as data bus, power, processors, etc) tends to not occur which make the idea of a cheap, mass produced "probe" practically impossible. The idea was tried in the 1990's by the then NASA Head Dan Goldin and it didn't work, in fact several of the missions just flat didn't work (google the Contour mission). Scientists put years of thier life into designing the experiments and their reputations on the results, and they don't want the type of vehicles you wish would happen. Ideally there is room for some compromise but with scientists running the development program that is kind of hard. But conversely we don't want the programs run by nothing but accountants either! It's a BIG challenge for NASA and it's going to take some changes in culture (read people) to make it happen.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhhh do you even comprehend the distance these probes are traveling. Do you know the amount of fuel needed to get them there in 6 months would be to expensive and large to even launch. You talk about making them cheaper but with the amount of fuel you would send you would increase the price by a 100 fold. See it works like this:

more speed = more fuel
more fuel = more weight
more weight = more money
more weight = a ridiculus amount of money to launch

thus to get more speed means a hell of alot more money. So it is gonna take along time to send probes great distances unless you want to spend a hell of alot more money. Thus your idea of cheap and really fast probes is not possible. THey ae either cheap and slow or fast and expensive.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[AKAImBatman]

Forget the Ramjet, I think you meant Scramjet ala the X-43.

I'm still not so sure about the Scramjet. The engine itself is a great idea, but the structural requirements are terrible. Even a minor flaw in the surface of the vessel would lead to catastrophe.

The grandparent probably has it right. If you use Jet engines to get to a higher altitude, the efficiency of nuclear thermal engines can take you the rest of the distance without having to go hypersonic in thick atmosphere.

Interestingly, the "best" solution may even be a ramjet engine. Since a nuclear engine can run on any fluid, what more efficient method exists than pulling oxygen from the atomosphere? And if you afterburn with hydrogen, you're going to get one hellva kick in the pants. (Alternatively, you can turn it around and heat the hydrogen while "burning" the oxygen")

Amazingly, we already have the engine to do this. Pratt & Whitney's TRITON engine is the perfect solution. As a "tri-modal" engine, it's capable of three modes of operation:

1. Low atmosphere afterburning for high powered launches.
2. Upper atmosphere and orbital transfer propulsion using pure hydrogen fuel.
3. Low fission rate "idle" mode which produces ~200 kW of power. (More than enough for onboard systems.)

The implications of this engine are staggering. Thanks to the tungsten clad design, it can be used anywhere without polution. Which means that we can have a single engine type that can not only produce massive thrust on takeoff, perhaps even produce the much covettd and highly efficient ramjet. (Rocket scientists love the idea of taking oxygen from the atmosphere, but don't normally want their rockets spending enough time in the lower atmosphere to make it worthwhile). But also an engine type that is highly efficient in upper-atmosphere and "space" areas. Plus, the craft can ditch heavy batteries and fuel cells in favor of drawing all its power from the engines. That power would even be available for electrical manuvering thrusters so that the amount of propellant carried can be reduced. Thus some of the weight you pay for in heavier engines can be regained in reducing redudant systems.

If we're going to get a bird in the air in the near future that can get people to orbit cheaply and safely, nuclear is where my money is.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[flyingsquid]

My opinion is that the ones working on it should coin a name NOT including the word "nuclear". The public is so brainwashed on the matter that whenever they hear ir red lamp in their mind turns on :/

NASA GUY: Today I'm unveiling our new manned space vehicle, powered by the Happy Fluffy Bunny Reactor Drive.

PRESS: Wow! That's pretty cool! How does it work?

NASA GUY: The Happy Fluffy Bunny Reactor takes radioactive elements and splits them, releasing radiation and large amounts of heat, which drives reaction mass out the exhaust nozzle.

PRESS: So its a NUCLEAR reactor!!!

NASA GUY: No, of course not! It works exactly like a nuclear reactor, but it's called the Happy Fluffy Bunny Reactor. All the bad news about nuclear radiation, nuclear waste, and nuclear contamination can be forgotten because we changed the name!

PRESS: Oh, well, that's perfectly okay then. I'm sure nobody will mind!

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Tumbleweed]

Yeah, ground-to-LEO is the killer. Perhaps use large railguns to get the pieces in orbit, and assemble there?

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Edmund Blackadder]

Seeing as how all newly designed rockets have at least a couple of midair explosions before things get straigthened out, I don't think nuclear propulsion should even be considered in the Earth's atmosphere.

It is however an option in space, if the nuclear fuel is brought up to orbit in a rocket with established safety.

As far as the nuclear engineers -- that is a non-issue. If you think nuclear engineers are per se dangerous, then we should pay them to retrain themselves for other (hopefully physics related jobs). If we try to create more nuclear engineering jobs just to keep them busy, then we will also be creating more nuclear engineers which you will have to worry about again.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[AKAImBatman]

His point is that more powerful engines built and launched in space would drive the price down while simultaneously decreasing travel time. And he's right. If we had probes coming off of a moon or asteroid-based assembly line with standard science packages and engines, they would be WAY cheaper to launch. Right now we're wasting some ungodly amount of money on fragile little devices that could be whipped together by any half-competent engineer for a few thousand bucks. But the fact that the probe *must* absolutely work right the first time and *must* meet very light weight specifications and *must* be designed by scientists (not engineers) drives the price astronomically high.

As someone pointed out, the primary issue to deal with on assembly line craft is the tremendous amount of customization done by scientists. What we need is a few crack engineers to talk with scientists and figure out a few expandable designs that can have all the necessary sensors mounted onto the post-assembly line vehicle. The only trick is that you MUST have powerful enough engines to accomidate the extra mass of the generic design. (A bit like how software had to be very streamlined back in the DOS days, but can be very generic and reusable on today's modern hardware.) The way I figure it, a 900+ Isp engine with a 1 G or greater thrust ability should do the job nicely. :)

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

ok I am a mechanicle engineer and some of the things you said definetly show that you have no experience and are not qualified to make those comments. Sure having an assembly line in space would be nice but we still have to launch the materials to produce these things from earth. Unless you plan on haivng a mining colony too. Plus I don't think you understand the amount of fuel and the size of the engine required to send something from earths orbit to Saturn in 6 months. The engines and gas tank would have to be friggin huge. Thats expensive no matter how you put it. In addition, it is engineers designing these things with scientists so your point is mute. Plus, you don't understand the requirements for some of these things. The electronics all have to be specially designed and treated to withstand the radiaiton in space. There is also not enough demand to mass produce satalites so no one would ever do it. Your suggestion are either not economical or can not be technically backed. I know you think it can be but it can't. Sure NASA does have some ridiculus rules and sure it could be done cheaper but not with the same success rate that NASA has had. Maybe one day in furutre when demand has gone up and we have come up with a cheap way to get into space will your suggestions become doable. However at the current time they are not.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

You said "Since a nuclear engine can run on any fluid, what more efficient method exists than pulling oxygen from the atomosphere?

Amazingly, we already have the engine to do this. Pratt & Whitney's TRITON engine is the perfect solution."

I didn't see anywhere in that article linked where it said that the oxygen would be pulled from the atmosphere. As long as no air is sent through the reactor, there will be no problem (and in the design linked LOX is sent downstream of the reactor). Once you send air through a reactor the radiation released from the rocket will go up by orders of magnitude due to neutron activation of Ar-40 to Ar-41.

It should be noted that just because it is tungsten clad doesn't mean that no radioactive material will be released. Very small uranium impurities very close to the edge of the cladding in the reactor will allow fission products to travel into the effluent hydrogen stream. This will not allow a significant amount of radiation released (nowhere near what a air cooled reactor would generate--around 2000 rem/hr on contact at full power not including radiation from the reactor), but it will be detectable.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's estimated that it will be six hundred years before it is safe for people to live in some areas around Chernobyl. For a sense of scale, six hundred years ago people didn't know there were continents on this side of the Atlantic. People are scared of nuclear power for a reason, and it's their right to be."

Thats a biased statement. The government went apeshit and secured a large area. They could have secured a couple hundred feet around the reactor and all would be good. You are basing your irrational fear on more irrational fear (see, it feeds).

Its amazing that the anti-nuke people never remember that radioactive materials have half-lives and that the most damaging radioactive material has the shortest half-life (emits the highest energy radiation). The radioactivity of the Chernobyl site now is trivial compared to what it was when the accident occured. Only radionuclides with half-lives greater than roughly 4-5 years remain. The most dangerous nuclides (with half-lives of second, minutes, hours, and days) are long gone.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[wft_rtfa]

Give it time.

Just think, people are starting to be comforable with Hydrogen engines and Hydrogen in general and the Hindenburg disaster was only about 68 years ago. The three mile island accident was in 1979, so in about 2025 (this being a lesser accident), the red lamp in the minds of people will be very dim.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[wft_rtfa]

Only terrorists would ever think of using nukes (Hmm wonder what that says about Truman)

Truman used the Nuclear bomb not so that the US could occupy Japan, but because he wanted to end the war with fewer US casualties. But, nowadays a country using nukes like that will make the rest of the world very angry.

Nuclear power is on the other hand the road to freedom from oil dependence as well as the key to space.

While Nuclear power definately helps reduce oil consumption, oil is not burned in power plants as much as fuels like coal and natural gas. Most plants that do burn oil also burn gas. Probably one of the best ways to reduce our dependency on foreign oil is to build more Nuclear power plants and buy more electric cars, and don't charge your electric car during on-peak hours, as most gas and oil plants are off line during the night.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[novakreo]

Thats true. The conventional bombing raids killed far more and destryed much more property than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fircrackers(relatively speaking)

Yeah, but when conventional bombing raids stop, people stop dying. The 'firecrackers', as you so blithely describe them, have far more long-lasting effect.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[FleaPlus]

Yeah, but when conventional bombing raids stop, people stop dying. The 'firecrackers', as you so blithely describe them, have far more long-lasting effect.

But which kills more people overall?

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

The basic science is the same. Its more the case that once nuclear scientists are trained the country which trained them is going to use them. If not for nuclear power they will be used for nuclear weapons as weapons development is actually much cheaper and can be hidden more easily than testing nuclear engines in space. This is why it always struck me as funny the US demanding Saddam dismantle his nuclear program. what was he going to do ? Shoot all his nuclear scientists? Given that he had almost 5000 trained nuclear scientists and engineers he could very well dismantle every bit of nuclear infrastrucutre (which he seems to have done) and still rebuild everything given the required money.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Ravenger]

That's so true. Ever had an MRI scan? Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Used to be known as NMRI - NUCLEAR Magnetic Resonance Imaging. They had to drop the Nuclear because of the stigma surrounding the word. Probably couldn't get people to go anywhere near the scanner otherwise.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[aarku]

I'm optimistic about being able to reverse brainwash people in regards to the word "nuclear." If the Bush administration could convince the mass public about Iraq, then they can do this too. They just need to set their minds to it.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[m50d]

The world should be very angry. They were a war crime, plain and simple.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[rodac]

nah
It was the failures at the Sellafield, Harrisburg, Chernobyl kraftwerks that scared people off.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[imsabbel]

Not to forget that 6 years of conventional bombings killed more than a week of nuclear bombings, with only 2 drops in that time...
Hardly a fair comparison, isnt it?

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Cally]

I was going to compose a careful rebuttal of the garbage in the last paragraph... but look let's keep it simple.

• Countries with nuclear power will tend to get nuclear weapons. Countries without one or the other are likely to feel that it's none of the USA's damn business if they decide to build a bomb - indeed that's what all the nuclear non-proliferation / IAAA hoohaa about N Korea and Iran is about. How many countries do *you* want to have the bomb?
• You comments about Iraq would be funnny if they weren't so tragically misinformed. You are aware that the Iraq situation has (according to oil market economists) been soley responsible for keep the world oil price 20% higher than it would otherwise have been? Reference today's The Business - www.thebusinessonline.com .

Given the state of the US exconomy there IS no alternative: you will have to face a severe recession, with mass unemployment and poverty, deflation and very possibly a big dollop of inflation too. (Anyone else here remember the word 'stagflation'?) Sorry to break this to you, but all the manufactured wars, facile plans for going to Mars and shouting about gay marriages isn't going to change the laws of economics - only divert your attention from them.

An unpopular opinion here, I know, but I really believe the US will be rapidly dropping down the economic and political league tables in the next half-dozen decades.

See you in the soup line...

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[jessemckinney]

Witness the French. As most of their electricity is nuclear generated they are not hostage to oil and dont need to get sucked into the middle-east

What? Oh yeah, in my last trip to France I was amazed at the nuclear powered peugeots and renaults driving around. It was practically like to Jetsons (not). And the french fertilize their fields with nuclear waste not petroleum fertilizers.

The French are arguable one of the countries most economically integrated to the middle east. Don't you remember that brouhaha in the United Nations security council over Iraq? That is because the phone system in Iraq and many of their plants were French run and the French did not want to lose their investments. And the French are heavily invested in Iran as well. This is a globalized, integrated world. All of the industrialized world is pretty much held captive to the middle east for oil and petrodollars, including France.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[AKAImBatman]

I didn't see anywhere in that article linked where it said that the oxygen would be pulled from the atmosphere.

It's an engine, not a complete vessel. You'd need to add additional intakes to obtain the oxygen from the air, and then feed it to the afterburner.

Once you send air through a reactor the radiation released from the rocket will go up by orders of magnitude due to neutron activation of Ar-40 to Ar-41.

That's why I suggested that they could be switched around. Not only will fewer engine changes be required, but you avoid irradiating any materials contained within regular air. ;)

This will not allow a significant amount of radiation released (nowhere near what a air cooled reactor would generate--around 2000 rem/hr on contact at full power not including radiation from the reactor), but it will be detectable.

The question is, is this sufficient to be concerned about? As long as we're not posing a threat to humans on the ground (or water more likely), I'm not concerned. If your only concern is that the craft can be detected, then I'm not all that worried. Although I wouldn't want to be standing directly behind a 33 REM/Minute engine, I assume that proper precautions would be taken to make sure that people are *not* standing directly behind the engines. (That would be bad for more reasons than just radiation. :)) A cement breakwall or a water filled tank might be a good way of shielding things beyond the runway from excessive exposure to the temporary radiation. On the ground, then engines could be capped.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[argStyopa]

Please let me make it clear: I *entirely* agree with you on the need for nuclear power, and the value in removing the leverage the Middle East has on the world.

That said...."Witness the French. As most of their electricity is nuclear generated they are not hostage to oil and dont need to get sucked into the middle-east. This gives them the advantage of taking the moral viewpoint on these issues instead of the national security viewpoint."
The shoveling of barrelfulls of kickback money on the oil-for-food program probably doesn't qualify as the "moral viewpoint" to most observers.

Re that, why is/was there such outrage and certainty that "Bush did this for his oil buddies and to enrich Cheney/Haliburton" when there is NO concrete evidence of this, yet here where there is a documentary trail of French officials and UN officials/children getting oodles of boodle - doesn't seem to bother anyone?

I just don't get it, I guess.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[Retric]

~40,000,000 - 70,000,000 people died in WWII now there where many causes but on this scale wiping out to minor city's is not that huge.(http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/How_many_soldiers_w ere_killed_in_World_War_2)

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in _World_War_II to see how many people a single non nuke air raid killed.

Out of 28,410 houses in the inner city of Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. An area of 15 square kilometers was totally destroyed, among that: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings. In total there were 222,000 apartments in the city. 75,000 of them were totally destroyed, 11,000 severely damaged, 7,000 damaged, 81,000 slightly damaged. The city was around 300 square kilometres in area in those days. Although the main railway station was destroyed completely, the railway was working again within a few days. The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Estimates are made difficult by the fact that the city was crowded at that time with wounded soldiers and refugees. The fate of some of the refugees is not known as they may have been killed and incinerated beyond recognition in the fire-storm, or they may have left Dresden for other places without informing the authorities. Earlier reputable estimates varied from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000-35,000 as the likely range[14](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_ Dresden_in_World_War_II#endnote_Bergander2)%5B15%5 D(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_ in_World_War_II#endnote_Evans2) with the latest (1994) research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert pointing toward the lower part of this range.[16]

VS.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip29.htm

In Hiroshima, of a resident civilian population of 250 000 it was estimated that 45 000 died on the first day and a further 19 000 during the subsequent four months. In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174 000, 22 000 died on the first day and another 17 000 within four months. Unrecorded deaths of military personnel and foreign workers may have added considerably to these figures.

So Hiroshima was a big deal but less so when compared with the death totals from WWII.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[ghoul]

I dont particularly care if a few Bush buddies get rich . Somebody or the other does get rich from every political decision. I also dont disagree with the basic Bush principle that the maintenance of the Iraq embargo was taking up too much time and money with no returns so it was better to go in and get things cleared up once and for all. I even agree with the principle that having a pro US democratic and strong Iraq would be a big stick to keep Saudi in line on the oil issue. Even the fact there is an insurgency is a big plus as that means these crazies are fighting American soldiers(trained to fight) in the streets of Iraq instead of American civilians in the streets of New York. As a diversion and play for strategic oil security the Iraq war cant really be faulted. What really is disgusting is that Bush didnt have the guts to be honest about his purposes and made all that hulaboo about WMD. Also his using a war of choice to really squeeze the American reserves is also a bad decision as it weakens the forces in the long run.
But given the hole the US is now economically there really is no other way then getting a few overseas colonies to help out. Just wish Bush would be honest about it.
And no I dont think any Democrat would take any different decision. As long as American consumers expect to have an unreasonably high standard of living supported by cheap imports colonies are needed

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[imsabbel]

Did i claim anything else?

But its still an average of >0.1 megadeaths per plane/dropp, whereass the other bombings that killd half or less the people were coordinated attacks using 100s of bombers.

I just want to dispell these "ah nukes arent really bad" myths in this thread. Yeah, you can kill 100.000s people with normal bombs just fine. You can also kill them with 1000 soldies with machetes.
But never its as easy and quick to annihilate parts of the landscape as with nukes.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[cybpunks3]

Would you like to move within a few hundred feet of Chernobyl?

Didn't think so.

Re:Nukes are the way to go

[khallow]

Yeah, ground-to-LEO is the killer. Perhaps use large railguns to get the pieces in orbit, and assemble there?

Even just boosting the speed of existing rockets would be a good help. The ratio of fuel to payload is so low that any speed boost improves your payload substantially. That's why lauches from the equator are so desirable.

But volume is the key. Putting the first man on the Moon is incredibly expensive, but putting the 1,000,001st person on the Moon won't be. Even stupid, inefficient technology can work, if the volume is there.

IMHO, the really cool technologies will need an existing market to exploit before private industry will seriously invest in them. So IMHO we'll see growing investment in the tried-and-true technologies like big, dumb, expendable rockets first.

Project Prometheus

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Prometheus really needs to be renamed to something that better describes its likely outcome. Project Icarus would be a far better name.

Some, not work safe, pictures I know you will like.

Re:Project Prometheus

[uberdave]

Shouldn't that be Daedalus? Icarus was the one who had technical problems and crashed back to Earth.

Re:Project Prometheus

[GotenXiao]

No, Prometheus from Stargate SG-1. The big ship made by the USAF. Mweeehehee.

Re:Project Prometheus

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Prometheus from Stargate SG-1. The big ship made by the USAF. Mweeehehee.

I think it's more a reference to the Greek myth that a titan named Prometheus taught human beings the knowledge to ignite and use fire.

Re:Project Prometheus

[uberdave]

NASA already has a big ship designed (in part) by the USAF, it's called the shuttle.

Re:Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have done better in the first place, but evil Bushitler prevented me.

Man with a plan

[DARKFORCE123]

Griffin sounds like a man with the kind of aggressive plans we need to make things like the shuttle replacement finally a reality and make US space efforts relevant and significant again.

Wonder who in the US bureaucratic nightmare pool is going to put a stop to his plans ?

Re:Man with a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

kind of aggressive plans we need to make things like the shuttle replacement finally a reality and make US space efforts relevant and significant again.

I think that another shuttle crash is more likely to get that job done. Griffin is more like a brown-nosing CEO, which is very strange. He can't decide whether to abscond with the money or suck up to his superiors.

Re:Man with a plan

[sznupi]

OTOH I would tend to call decisions to service Hubble ANYTHING but agressive. (unfortunatelly)
"Licking ass of general public" is perhaps too much...but you get the idea :/

Re:Man with a plan

[samnice]

The issue isn't who is going to put a stop to it as much as who has the vision to implement it. Griffin may have a plan, but without leadership on the executive level to champion the cause, there will be no real progress in space. blame the enemy as well (or lack thereof). when Kennedy launched the US into the space-race, it may have been genuine zeal for the cause, or maybe the fact that somebody else got the jump on us had more to do with it (and the subsequent groundswell of support). so keep your spaceboots on for now, there hasn't been much promise of leadership from either political party recently and last time i checked Osama wasn't hiding out on Mars. hey, now there's an idea . . .

Re:Man with a plan

[L0C0loco]

When I spoke with him this past Friday, it was pretty clear that he supports getting beyond the Shuttle as quickly as is practical. He definitly knows that he works for the president and has to respond to the directions of congress via the funding they provide. If you do not like the way things are headed, vote in 2006 and 2008 based upon the candidate's vision - not Griffin's.

Re:Man with a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

No Osama isnt hiding on Mars, he is in a film studio in the desert faked to look like Mars.

Re:Man with a plan

[SySOvErRiDe]

...stating that the CEV 'needs to be safe, it needs to be simple, it needs to be soon.'

They're going to have to choose only two of the three.

Re:Man with a plan

[tmasssey]

That was my first reaction as well.

But really, that's not how the saying goes. They've made their choice: Fast and Good. The one they *don't* get, then, is cheap! :)

Re:Man with a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEV that is required for near earth operations can be the basis for one that eventually goes to Mars. The math basically tells you that it has to be relatively light - like 7 to 10 tons at most and should be just an oversized apollo command module in concept. If they restrict weight and don't insist on long duration operation autonomously then they CAN get to first flight in 2010 and do it with limited dollars. The safety is principally driven by the lifter and that MUST be made of high rate, proven devices and it should be no larger than required to lift that 10 ton CEV. This means that shuttle hardware- which apparently is high on Griffin's list as good for space flight is a poor choice. It is heavy, expensive, low rate and complicated beyond reasoning.

If they insist on a complicated and heavy CEV then the rocket equation will eat their lunch as they schlep a 20T monstrosity all over the solar system. Simple is not just a good idea for CEV -it is mandatory.

Re:Man with a plan

[FleaPlus]

They've made their choice: Fast and Good. The one they *don't* get, then, is cheap!

Ah, but with these sorts of things, doesn't "Good" typically mean "Full of features"? It seems that by going with simple they're trying to reduce the number of features. It seems quite possible to have something which is simple, cheap, and quickly developed.

Re:Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

you also forgot the everyday google story

Let's get this straight.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Best part of a century after the rocket was invented by Goddard, and NASA still have no plans to send up any significant numbers of ordinary people?

Atleast the Russians will send you up if you're fit enough and loaded, NASA doesn't even do that.

So why would this plan be a good one?

Re:Let's get this straight.

[Rakishi]

Why does it matter? So you get to spend a week on a largely-US funded space station for $20mil? Humanity doesn't gain anything and most people can't afford it anyway. Hell the launch costs alone are probably around $300k+ per person, and that won't go down without either a space elevator, nuclear rocket or a lot more space travel (and I mean a lot). And the only reason Russia is even sending ordinary peopel into space is because they're broke.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[khallow]

Best part of a century after the rocket was invented by Goddard, and NASA still have no plans to send up any significant numbers of ordinary people?

If I understand correctly, Goddard invented the liquid-fueled rocket and developed the first true modern rockets, but China used rockets for a long time (many centuries) before that.

Second, why should it be NASA's job to send ordinary people into space? This sounds like a job for private industry (eg, the Virgin Airlines and Scaled Composites partnership).

Re:Let's get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia isn't broke -- in fact, they have the problem that they have way too much cash currently. They just paid back 12 billion early that they owed, and have over 100 billion burning a hole in their pocket.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

So you get to spend a week on a largely-US funded space station for $20mil?

Yup. Everyone that has gone thinks zero-g is a blast; and the Earth looks pretty whizzing past at 8km/s. Facile? Maybe. Unique- definitely.

The more people that launch to there, the more facilities are needed, and the cheaper it becomes to use lunar resources than launch everthing from the Earth- it turns out that that is cheaper, but the startup costs are high.

Humanity doesn't gain anything and most people can't afford it anyway. Hell the launch costs alone are probably around $300k+ per person, and that won't go down without either a space elevator, nuclear rocket or a lot more space travel (and I mean a lot).

Actually, the space elevator probably doesn't work for humans because of the Van Allen belts, (but it might be good for cargo); but simply launching a LOT probably does.

Why does it matter?

Cheap energy (Solar Power Satellites), colonisation of other planets, reduction of CO2 production, exploration of the solar system. Basically launching a lot reduces the costs, and opens up space so that we can actually use it and go places other than the Earth. Is that bad or wrong?

And the only reason Russia is even sending ordinary peopel into space is because they're broke.

So what you're saying is that Russia is doing it to make money, and there is a market. And this is a problem because?

Re:Let's get this straight.

[tftp]

And the only reason Russia is even sending ordinary peopel into space is because they're broke.

Russia actually has plenty of spare money - so much that it decided to prepay its debts to the Paris Club ahead of time: Kudrin said Russia would transfer the first tranche of $13 billion to Paris Club members in June.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[Rakishi]

The more people that launch to there, the more facilities are needed, and the cheaper it becomes to use lunar resources than launch everthing from the Earth- it turns out that that is cheaper, but the startup costs are high.

"high" is an understatement. The ISS is around $100 billion in cost and has a weight of 1mil pounds. Quick calculations put the cost of sending the ISS into orbit at $10billion (and probably less), which is only 10% of the cost. Consider that for a second, launch costs aren't the biggest thing we have to worry about right now and the other costs will not go down on the moon. It'll be a long time before lunar based construction can match what is possible on Earth, and until it comes close the lower launch costs may not mean much.

Actually, the space elevator probably doesn't work for humans because of the Van Allen belts, (but it might be good for cargo); but simply launching a LOT probably does.

Yeah, we'd still need rocket for people as shielding against radiation would probably raise the costs too much.

Cheap energy (Solar Power Satellites), colonisation of other planets, reduction of CO2 production, exploration of the solar system. Basically launching a lot reduces the costs, and opens up space so that we can actually use it and go places other than the Earth. Is that bad or wrong?

Yes, launching a few people won't lower costs however the costs are still high. If lucky we can get down to $1k per pound which is still very high. I'd prefer for NASA to research new technology than to deal with this sort of crap, which right now won't accomplish much.

So what you're saying is that Russia is doing it to make money, and there is a market. And this is a problem because?

A small one all things considered and one that is very limited, as it relies of massive initial costs which cannot be paid of by the market (ie: the currently underused Russian space program). Trying to make it anything larger makes you suddenly slam straight into those limits (ie: you need to build your own space station or add extra launch facilities, training facilities, etc.). Also it's in Russia; it's questionable if such a venture would even be profitable in the US.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[Rakishi]

...because it will save them $6 billion in the long run. I should have worded my statement as: the Russian's underfunded space program which is probably one of the places where the goverment is trying to pull funds from to save money.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Trying to make it anything larger makes you suddenly slam straight into those limits (ie: you need to build your own space station or add extra launch facilities, training facilities, etc.).

Well, Bigelow has cheap space hotels in the pipeline, and there's a fair amount of capacity if the launch process can be streamlined.

Also it's in Russia; it's questionable if such a venture would even be profitable in the US.

So, are Nike shoes; they're profitable because they don't make them in Russia. That's why NASA doing manned flight is so bad- it helps prevent launching using cheap Russian kit. Also, there's no reason why Russian stuff couldn't be launched from America; they already have deals with ESA.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the space elevator probably doesn't work for humans because of the Van Allen belts

If you have the tech to build a space elevator, dispersing the Van Allen radiation belts is a cinch.

Even dispersing just the inner belt would be helpful: the Space Station could be then pushed into a higher orbit so it needs less frequent reboosting.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[khallow]

"high" is an understatement. The ISS is around $100 billion in cost and has a weight of 1mil pounds. Quick calculations put the cost of sending the ISS into orbit at $10billion (and probably less), which is only 10% of the cost. Consider that for a second, launch costs aren't the biggest thing we have to worry about right now and the other costs will not go down on the moon. It'll be a long time before lunar based construction can match what is possible on Earth, and until it comes close the lower launch costs may not mean much.

The ISS is an epically terrible example since due to politics and corruption the cost of the project has ballooned considerably. NASA should have been able to put up 5 to 10 copies of the station for the price.

For legimitate projects, launch cost is the big obstacle. Not only does it reduce the cost of putting something in orbit, but it drives up the costs of everything. Eg, you're not going to spend $100 million to launch a $1 million satellite. Finally, volume grows as you reduce launch costs.

Yes, launching a few people won't lower costs however the costs are still high. If lucky we can get down to $1k per pound which is still very high. I'd prefer for NASA to research new technology than to deal with this sort of crap, which right now won't accomplish much.

If lucky, we can get launch costs down to $10 per kg long term. I'm not optimistic that we'll get that far, but I think we can beat $2200 per kg easy. That's just using existing expendable rocket technology.

But here's one area, I agree on. Launch vehicles whether for cargo or people from Earth to orbit shouldn't be NASA's job. Just pay private industry to do that. NASA has better things to work on.

Re:Let's get this straight.

[DerekLyons]

Best part of a century after the rocket was invented by Goddard, and NASA still have no plans to send up any significant numbers of ordinary people?

And why should they?

Err..

[cuteseal]

However, due to budget limitations, the cost of returning the Space Shuttles to flight, and over $400 million in Congressional earmarks, a number of other areas will see delays, including space station, aeronautics, and exploration research.

Isn't that the whole of NASA's portfolio being delayed? What else do they do, sell pies? :D

Re:Err..

[Monkeman]

Sure! Space pies, though! They could spend $50,000 trying to develop a pie for eating in space, then abandon the project but sell the result on the retail market, then make millions! Just like the space pen!

Re:Err..

[Nilmat]

One area of NASA that didn't even get a mention in these stories is Earth science research. A whole bunch of the U.S. money going into research on climate change, oceanography, terrestrial hydrology, and atmospheric science is coming through NASA at the moment, but NASA's earth science budget is under serious threat. Virtually all future earth science missions now planned will face serious delays, and in the face of growing pressure to focus on manned missions, current satellites essential to understanding earth processes are recieving relatively little support. While they aren't as sexy as moon missions or manned flight to Mars, earth observing satellites are relatively inexpensive and are exceptionally useful in improving our understanding of Earth. In particular, deep cuts to NASA's earth science budget would hamstring efforts to understand climate change, a goal that even those sceptical of anthropogenic effects (ie the current administration) agree is reasonable (at least in public). For more info, check out recent editorials in Nature (April 29) and Science (April 22 and May 5). I would provide links, but they require paid subscriptions.

Re:Err..

[DiamondGeezer]

Good. The climate science program is overstuffed as it is.

Ten million climate model runs doesn't equal a single empirical data point.

Re:Err..

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude did you actually read what you replied to? Nilmat was referring to satellites doing actual measurements. Cutting funding because the scientific output might not agree with your political viewpoints is just dumb. Climate science is very interesting (IMHO, since we're dealing with a very complicated system) and useful because after-all we do all live on earth. The beneficiary of those budget cuts (manned space exploration) is, from a scientific point of view, a lot less useful - tough I admit a lot cooler in other ways.

Re:Err..

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, you hit it on the head. that is the real agenda: the anti-global warming bullshit of the right-wingers who hijacked our government can't stand the light of day, the actual climate facts as determined by earth science satellites.

so they get the next best thing, which is to shut off all the good data.

No Hubble Mission Decision

[reallocate]

Griffin has directed NASA to consider how a Shuttle mission to Hubble might proceed. He has not actually directed that the mission take place.

Re:No Hubble Mission Decision

[Monkeman]

So? If you're a nerd, and you ask a really hot girl out, would you rather she say "no" or "maybe" with a wink and a blush? The latter is clearly the better option, to which all nerds will attest.

Re:No Hubble Mission Decision

[EpsCylonB]

She is goning say no.

Re:No Hubble Mission Decision

[JJ]

I commend any decision to reconsider servicing the HST and not de-orbiting it.

power

[gaanagaa]

I say Nuke the rockets... Errrr I mean Rockets with Nuke: To the infinity and beyond....

The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

Cost efficency has nothing to do with it.

The real reason we need to use something else to move about the solar system is that chemically fueled ships can't go fast enough.

We need to go from LEO to the Moon in well under a day, and to Mars in less than one month. Chemicals can't do that.

Chemicals are fine for launch to LEO, and there is no particular reason, I think, to launch nuclear ships from Earth's surface. Build and use them in space.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

No particular reason? How about beeing able RIGHT NOW with our current technology to launch an object that weights at least 8000000 tonns? (wikipedia: project orion). How loung would it take to launch such mass on chemicals and assemble it on orbit (plus: needed connections between parts = waste of mass)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[grumbel]

While those numbers sound truely cool, this little sentence from the Wikipedia article sounds a little less nice:

### There were also ethical issues with launching such a vehicle from the surface of the earth; calculations showed that between 1 and 10 people would die from each takeoff from fallout. ###

Unless they got that problem solved you won't see those 8000000 tonns launch anytime soon.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

That calculations involved "dirty" weapons. It's entirely possible to build a warhead specifically for this use (well, it wouldn't be a "war"head anymore...), without fission stage, that would give practically no nuclear fallout.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the people who handled depleted uranium for stronger shell casings to penetrate armours.

They know for a fact its not safe even without fission.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

And could you enlighten us why would you put uranium in a device that relies entirely on fusion?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> No particular reason? How about beeing able RIGHT NOW with our current technology to launch an object that weights at least 8000000 tonns?

Well, first, because we have no current or forseeable missions that require putting 8000000 tons into LEO.

Second, Orion is all talk. We have no way of knowing the damn thing would work as advertised.

Third, we'd have to abrogate several treaties, including the one that bans open-air nuclear explosions. Unless a hostile alien craft the size of the Moon has passed Neptune, no President would commit political suicide by embacing that notion.

Fourth, if you wanna use Orion, build it in orbit or on the Moon. You can't seriously be arguing that exploding hundreds of nukes in Earth's lower atmosphere is a good thing?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

We don't even have a mission that would require 1000 tons. Nobody is planning such because of lack of booster. If booster would be present, missions would follow. Second - tests were conducted (using chemical instead of nuclear expolisves) that proved feasability of the concept and correctness of calculations Third, yes, unfortunatelly. Not the first time politics interferes with humankind development. Fourth, if the nukes are designed to produce no nuclear follout (it's possible - read the article at wikipedia for example) I don't see a problem.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[grumbel]

### Tell that to the people who handled depleted uranium for stronger shell casings to penetrate armours.

As far as I know the problem with the depleted uranium wasn't that its radioactive, but simply that it is toxic. So shooting around with it and producing lots of uranium dust is not to good for health, while simply handling the stuff itself shouldn't be to much of a problem.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[Colonel Blimp]

Between 1 to 10 people per launch would die? Just tell the public that the Baldwins would be the ones dieing and it sells itself.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[the_bard17]

Gee... when you look at how many people die from automobile accidents each day (An average of 114 people die each day in car crashes in the U.S.), 1-10 deaths per launch, caused by the resulting fallout, doesn't seem all that much.

I suppose it depends on what kind of spin the media puts on it...

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to start thinking THROUGH the problem of spaceflight before making such clearly blinkered statements. Placing stuff in LEO is part of the task. It is not even the biggest problem. You must do it accurately, then perform burns to achieve an accurate trajectory towards the moon- then inject and circularize at the moon. Then accurately deorbit and presumably land at either a new site or a preexisting base without threatening it. Then you must reinject to LLO or go direct to earth. There is then the issue of deceleration- either via aerobraking or direct propulsion- and this has to be done with high precision. I suspect that blowing up a half dozen bombs per mission and convincing the crew that it is just fine to do that and is totally safe will be a bit of an uphill battle.

If you do insist on a transit on the order of a day you will have some interesting problems in case there is a malfunction.

Designing an architecture that is affordable, extensible and useful for real exploration is not trivial. Most people focus on one thing and ignore the rest since their solution doesn't cut it in some other regard. Griffin is falling into this trap too- mainly because he is an academic that has never managed a real hardware program of anything like this complexity. His own writings show his lack of insight into the overall complexity of the issues. if he doesn't listen to others who have thought this problem COMPLETELY through he will go down as yet another money-wasting NASA egghead and NO exploration will get done.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[CaptainAvatar]

Yes, but those 114 fatalities result from millions of individual car trips. When you drive to work there is only a tiny chance that you will be involved in a fatal accident, and you can decrease that chance by driving sensibly. If you were on the crew of Orion, you'd have to live with the knowledge that no matter what you do, you'll kill 1-10 innocent people every time it lifted off. Could you live with that? I couldn't. It would do my head in very quickly.

Perhaps on a cost-benefit analysis, a case could be made that those deaths were worth it, just as (basically implicitly) the same is done for any other sort of risky activity, including car travel. But that ignores human psychology. While 1 trip = 1+ deaths, Orion won't fly, not from Earth's surface anyway.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

We need to go from LEO to the Moon in well under a day, and to Mars in less than one month. Chemicals can't do that.

No, chemicals can't do that. Niether can any other form of transportation that follows the rules of physics as currently understood.

The real question is: Why do we need to go to the Moon in one day? And to Mars in a month? (And you do understand that the distance between the Earth and Mars varies by orders of magnitude on a regular basis...)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[ozmanjusri]

Do you know how fusion explosions are triggered?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

can't you really imagine that somebody came up with different method (totally impractical for use a sweapon, so nobody build it). RTFA (at wikipedia)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

"While 1 trip = 1+ deaths, Orion won't fly, not from Earth's surface anyway." I agree with conclusion, but not the cause of it. orion could be build to not produce nuclear fallout (read my other answers in the vivinity). The real reason it won't fly is the red light I mentioned that turns on when people hear nuclear...

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

Of course Orion isn't for everything, I haven't stated that. Given some types of missions, Orion is perfect; for others it's better to use something else (but also exagerrete problems a little - precisions is possible; most would think that blowing stuff behind you for propulsion is destabilizing, but it was proved that the effects would tend to cancel out) And I wasn't the one who insisted on day transit - there are better means to go to the moon than orion. "I suspect that blowing up a half dozen bombs per mission and convincing the crew that it is just fine to do that and is totally safe will be a bit of an uphill battle." - the crew wouldn't have a problem if enough research and testing went into it. But public always will.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

It isn't politics. People don't want nukes going off, fallout or no fallout. Maybe that's rational, maybe that's not rational. But, it is certainly reality. So, stop whining that politicians are blocking "development" and get busy convincing 6 billion people that you're right and they're wrong. The politicians will follow.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> Why do we need to go to the Moon in one day? And to Mars in a month?

Because human exploration and exploitation of the inner Solor System cannot take place as long as it takes months and years to complete missions. Space travel isn't a mission of pure science and research; it isn't analagous to 19th century expeditions to the poles.

Even if that were the case, shorter missions dramatically reduce life support requirements, permitting additional cargo and payload, including research personnel and equipment.

In other words, like other forms of point-to-point travel, the sooner we get there, the better.

And, no, the rules of physics do not prohibit a one-month trip to Mars.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

And all what you've desribed is exactly politics in my book.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[grumbel]

### 1-10 deaths per launch, caused by the resulting fallout, doesn't seem all that much.

Given the weight that they could transfer it really isn't that much, every once in a while people blow semself up with chemical rockets too. The problem is who dies? Surly not the once that are doing the launch, but some innocent people to which the wind ends up blowing the fallout and that is the real problem. And beside from the dead people you would surly do a lot of havok to a wide area and cause illness for lots of people, not just those handfull that die in the end.

If we would need such a launch to save humanity from a big astroid or so, I would say go for it. But as long as it would only be used for some USA PR-trip to mars there is no way such a thing would ever happen.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> ...all what you've desribed is exactly politics in my book

What's your point? That you have a problem with reality?

When politics expresses the will of the people, that's called democracy. Got a problem with that?

Or do you think we should all bow down before the wisdom of the elite who agree with you?

Convince enough people to agree wth you and then "politics" will be on your side. That's how the world has always worked, and always will.

Stop blaming "politics" for your lack of persuasive ability.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

Are you serious? You really confuse making politics with democracy? (I don't know, maybe I should assume that there are slight differences in meanings of first word between our first languages...)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

To clarify, just in case...
Blocking development & research isn't democracy. It's purely political agenda.
Blocking use can be democracy. But research will far preceed use. Perhaps in the meantime, due to advance, public opionion would change...but they don't have a chance, they can't be presented with real conclusions, etc. That's democracy?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

I'm not confusing democracy with politics. Democracy is politics, legitimate politics.
(I don't see "politics" as some kind of dirty game to be avoided. Politics is simply the way we all bargain, maneuver and compromise to advance our own best interests. That's the way people behavem because we all honestly disagree about what is good and what is right.)

So, if the majority of the people in the U.S. don't want atmospheric nuclear explosions, that's exactly what should happen. It's not someone's "purely political agenda".

Yes, blocking research is usually (not always) wrong. Many people oppose research in areas I support. Many other's agree with me. But, the right of the people to express their will democratically always takes precedence over a single individual's opinion.

Note, too, that I've not expressed my own opinion of Orion. I've only said that testing it and launching it from Earth's surface is a political impossiblity for the forseeable future.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

Why do we need to go to the Moon in one day? And to Mars in a month?

Because human exploration and exploitation of the inner Solor System cannot take place as long as it takes months and years to complete missions. Space travel isn't a mission of pure science and research; it isn't analagous to 19th century expeditions to the poles.

That's an unproven assumption, not the fact you treat it as.

In other words, like other forms of point-to-point travel, the sooner we get there, the better.

Again, that's an assumption/opinion, not the fact you treat it as.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

The thing is: why they oppose it?
If it is because of misunderstanding...why politicians agree with this misunderstanding, even if personally - not necessirily? It isn't exactly about democracy (well...not to mention that US isn't democratic in its nature), will of majority as you see (even if the outcome is precisely the same)...you get the idea what I mean by politics (yes, by definition it includes democracy, socialism, and so on...but dictionary definitions doesn't show niuanses). Probably it's also very local thing, influenced by our
And I fully agree with your final conclusion...(however depending on interpretation of your first opinion it isn't exactly the same as what you've said back then)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

Of course, they're both my opinion. So what? Have you got a "fact" that says we shouldn't go?

It is irrelevant to look for "facts" in this arena. There was no "fact" to compel Europeans to migrate to the Americas, but they still migrated.

People are free to do what they choose. We don't need to find "facts" to motivate us.

If people like you were running the show, we'd all still be hanging around the Olduvai Gorge chasing game because no you wouldn't see any "facts" justifying going somewhere else.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> If it is because of misunderstanding...

Misunderstanding isn't the issue. People are scared to death of nuclear weapons. That's a reasonable position to take. They're also very afraid of nuclear fallout; also a reasonable position. No misunderstanding there.

No politican dependent on the good will of the people is going to support something that scares them to death.

Orion, then, requires the atmosphereic detonation of a very large number of nuclear weapons. Even if someone believed they could build a nuke that would produce zero fallout, it would remain a treaty violation simply to test it to see if that claim were valid. So long as the U.S. is attempting to quell the spread of nukes, it will not violate that treaty and resume atmospheric testing. In addition, the political climate in the U.S. is much different than it was years ago when we were doing atmosphereic testing. The odds that testing could resume without political uproar and a long series of court cases is effectively nil.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

Of course, they're both my opinion. So what? Have you got a "fact" that says we shouldn't go?

I need not supply facts saying we should not go... Because I never said we should not go. I asked you to support your opinions in re speed of travel, and you reply with an attack based on something I never said.

This says much about you.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

You put valid points, however I'd still argue it's misunderstanding - of the fact that safe methods can be build. And I'd guess that initial testing (to check if there's no fallout) could be made underground...or in a sarcofag - like container, so no treaties violated (and as a side note: last time I checked the violation of treaty forbidding building defenses against ICBMs didn't result in curt cases; the public support is everything)

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[Anonymous Coward]

The people aren't going to have obviously died from that cause, so there won't be a human face on those deaths. People can easily deal with a lot more death than that if it's just a figure written down somewhere.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

How did I "attack" you? You challenged my earlier post because it didn't contain a "fact". I simply pointed to the impossibility, and lack of need, to back up statements like mine with a "fact". There will never be a "fact" to justify going to Mars at any speed, just as there was never a "fact" justfying migration to the Americans. We do it because we want to do it. That's sufficient.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

The Test Ban Treaty of 1963 prohibits nuclear weapons tests or any other nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water.

I didn't mean to assert that lawsuits would be premised on this treaty. Rather, the suits might well come from the states in which the testing might occur, especially if the governors aren't of the same party as the President at the time.

Personally, I'd welcome a reexamination of the basic Orion principle. I'd like to see a focus on using an increased number of much smaller nukes, or non-nukes, appled to propulsion. We should consider other means of repeatedly generating massive explosions before we write off the Orion idea.

Even at that, I still think such a craft is politically viable only if it never see's Earth's surface.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

And, don't forget, understanding something doesn't always lead to agreement. We often think: "If only they'd understand why this is so important, they'd be on my side." Not necessarily.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

(and as a side note: last time I checked the violation of treaty forbidding building defenses against ICBMs didn't result in curt cases;

That would be because we (the US) didn't violate the treaty - we pulled out of the treaty, as allowed by the treaty.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

How did I "attack" you?

And I quote from this message: "If people like you were running the show, we'd all still be hanging around the Olduvai Gorge chasing game because no you wouldn't see any "facts" justifying going somewhere else." That Sir is an attack, and an entirely unjustified one. (As well as an attempt to divert discussion away from the topic at hand.)

You challenged my earlier post because it didn't contain a "fact". I simply pointed to the impossibility, and lack of need, to back up statements like mine with a "fact".

Your original statements were made in the context of supporting your claim that chemical rockets cannot go fast enough to support exploration. If you cannot support those statements with facts, then your original claim was nothing but noise.

There will never be a "fact" to justify going to Mars at any speed,

However the need to go to Mars is not under discussion here. The engineering requirements to do so are under discussion. You made a claim regarding those requirements, and have subsequently done everything *but* discuss them.

just as there was never a "fact" justfying migration to the Americans. We do it because we want to do it. That's sufficient.

Another claim [1] that has nothing to do with the topic under suggestion, followed by meaningless slogans.

[1] A false claim I might add - there are many facts that supported each of the individual decisions to emigrate to America. In the case of my Great-Grandfather there was the simple fact that he was starving in Ireland - and his uncle in Cleveland wasn't. A careful study of history reveals that there were many reasons large and small why people came to America - and the reason for very few, if any at all, was as simple as "because they wanted to". Almost universally they had a reason to want to.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

Personally, I'd welcome a reexamination of the basic Orion principle. I'd like to see a focus on using an increased number of much smaller nukes,

Smaller nukes means less thrust, which means longer in the atmosphere (for ground launches) and more nukes overall (regardless of whether you start from the ground or in orbit) for the same payload.

There's no need to reexmine anything, the rocket equation (which applies to Orion as much as it does to the Shuttle) is well known to all.

or non-nukes, appled to propulsion. We should consider other means of repeatedly generating massive explosions before we write off the Orion idea.

Non-nukes are a non-starter, there simple isn't enough energy in them to move any significant mass efficiently. Orion works with nukes because nukes have so much energy that capturing only 20-30% of the energy still results in a useful amount of thrust.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[sznupi]

Larger number of smaller nukes is more effective in such desing.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> The engineering requirements to do so are under discussion.

No, they aren't. I simply stated that the speeds possible with chemical propulsion are not sufficient to allow the human race to efficiently expand into and exploit the inner Solar System. Of course, that's not a fact, since it cannot be a fact. It is only my considered opinion. Even if I'm starving on Earth and there is food on Mars, it remains an opinion.

>> ... there were many reasons large and small why people came to America...

Reasons aren't facts. They came because they wanted to come, not because some "fact" existed.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

>> ...ground launches

Will never happen.

>> Non-nukes are a non-starter...

Only if we don't look for something new.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[iminplaya]

So, if the majority of the people in the U.S. don't want atmospheric nuclear explosions, that's exactly what should happen.

I personally don't believe anybody should be allowed to contaminate the air like that even if they had a majority that approves of it. It's a clear cut place where democracy has no place. We can't let 51% put the other 49% at risk just for the sake of democracy. Especially since they would be voting without sufficient information. All that silliness aside, I absolutely agree that we must move to a space based launch system. It is clearly the most efficient and economical and logical way to do it in the long run. All the raw materials are there. We don't need to risk any more damage to ourselves or the planet to do this. The simple fact is, when it comes to propulsion(motivation) and physics in general, we are as primitive as the earliest cavemen.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[iminplaya]

n other words, like other forms of point-to-point travel, the sooner we get there, the better.

Again, that's an assumption/opinion, not the fact you treat it as.

Actually, under a steady one "g" acceleration/deacceleration, I believe you could get all the way to Jupiter in as little as 3 weeks...the moon in several hours. I do believe these are actual facts, though I don't know where to verify them. As I was telling him, our methods of propulsion are extremely primitive. There's no need to explode nukes in the atmosphere for this. We do need to work on space based lauches. LEO and the moon should serve as our base camps.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

The engineering requirements to do so are under discussion.

No, they aren't. I simply stated that the speeds possible with chemical propulsion are not sufficient to allow the human race to efficiently expand into and exploit the inner Solar System.

That statement is an engineering requirement. Period.

Of course, that's not a fact, since it cannot be a fact. It is only my considered opinion.

Having a 'considered opinion' means that you have considered the facts of the situation - and come to an opinion. Where are your facts?

there were many reasons large and small why people came to America...

Reasons aren't facts. They came because they wanted to come, not because some "fact" existed.

I noticed you snipped the facts behind my Great Grandfather decision... Because my facts fly in the face of your opinion.

Why do you keep claiming that facts don't matter - and dodging the plain truth that they do?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

Non-nukes are a non-starter...

Only if we don't look for something new.

Well, here we run up against those pesky things called facts again. Nobody is looking for anything new, because the search is fruitless. No chemical allowed to exist by the laws of physics and chemistry (and at this level they are intertwined) can come within 3 orders of magnitude of storing as much energy per kilogram as a nuke.

You can postulate the discovery of new (atomic/molecular) physics... But it's about as likely as the moon being made of green cheese.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

in other words, like other forms of point-to-point travel, the sooner we get there, the better.

Again, that's an assumption/opinion, not the fact you treat it as.

Actually, under a steady one "g" acceleration/deacceleration, I believe you could get all the way to Jupiter in as little as 3 weeks...the moon in several hours.

The problem is - to do so requires fantastic amounts of energy, beyond what even a nuclear reactor or an Orion could generate.

As I was telling him, our methods of propulsion are extremely primitive.

Not particularly - not if you don't confuse what passes for 'science' and 'discovery' on Star Trek with the real thing and have an attention span longer than a typical MTV video.

We do need to work on space based lauches. LEO and the moon should serve as our base camps.

Proof positive that you have engineering knowledge of a gnat. How do you think the material will bloody well get to the base camp?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[iminplaya]

Proof positive that you have engineering knowledge of a gnat. How do you think the material will bloody well get to the base camp?

Thank you for your respectful reply. The moon has lot of material that we aren't aware of yet, much less know how to extract. There's plenty of time to figure all those little details out before the planet is consumed by the sun, but that's what we should be doing anyway for all our interplanetary, stellar, galactic needs. We can use our present systems to achieve this. It is silly to attempt all this nonsense without creating a certain amount of infrastructure to make it at least possible, if not routine. Part of that infrastructure will have to be built out in space. It's a perfectly logical way to do things. It seems that you want to do the equivalent of building and paving a beautiful street just to tear it up to lay the sewer pipes, then re-pave it, then tear it up again to put in the electrical cables and water mains, etc. Don't try to jump the gun here. You gotta make the bricks and mix the cement before you can construct the building.

(reallocate)
We need to go from LEO to the Moon in well under a day, and to Mars in less than one month. Chemicals can't do that.
(you)
No, chemicals can't do that. Niether can any other form of transportation that follows the rules of physics as currently understood.
(me)
Actually, under a steady one "g" acceleration/deacceleration, I believe you could get all the way to Jupiter in as little as 3 weeks...the moon in several hours.
(you)
The problem is - to do so requires fantastic amounts of energy, beyond what even a nuclear reactor or an Orion could generate.

I do believe you were doubting whether it's possible at all. The amount of energy needed was irrelevent to the discussion. And it's really not that much. You just have to have it for a very long time. Like one of those fancy ion engines. They use that very principle. You might even be able to harvest some during the trip. It still only proves to me how primitive we are when it comes to propulsion. We completely fail to look beyond chemical and nuclear. Might not be anything else. Nobody knows. Not even you, oh great wise one. The fact is that it's possible. The math proves it so. It still is only good for interplantary travel as beyond that is simply too much time. Interstellar and intergalactic will require something completely different. Even somebody with more than the engineering knowledge of a gnat should understand that. In real, absolute terms we(even you), at best, have the engineering knowledge of an iguana.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

All I've said is that it is both unnecessary and impossible to point to "facts" to justify going to the Moon or Mars. We go because we want to go, which was also your grandfather's motivation.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[reallocate]

Who said the energy has to come from chemicals?

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

All I've said is that it is both unnecessary and impossible to point to "facts" to justify going to the Moon or Mars

Incorrect. You made a statement of engineering requirements.

We go because we want to go, which was also your grandfather's motivation.

No, actually he didn't want to go. He stood to inherit a farm that had been in the family for generations, and he was (like most rational people) afraid of departing to an unknown land with uncertain prospects. But the fact was - he was starving.

Facts matter.

Re:The Real Reason Chemical Ship Can't Cut It

[DerekLyons]

Who said the energy has to come from chemicals?

If it isn't a nuke, then chemicals are your only other option - and, as I said, they haven't the energy.

NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[reallocate]

Because NASA is in the exploration business, not the charter bus business. My tax money should not be spent to figure out how to send fatcat millionaires on joy rides.

Meanwhile, don't forget the Russians are doing the tourist bit because they need the money, not because they're blazing a new trail for "ordinary people".

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[Anonymous Coward]

Because NASA is in the exploration business, not the charter bus business.

The problem is NASA doesn't want anyone else in the charter bus business. It's just... too hard... for ordinary mortals.

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Because NASA is in the exploration business, not the charter bus business.

Really? I have no problem with genuine exploration, but I have extreme difficulty in understanding what exploration the ISS was all about. It's not like there's been thousands of new discoveries from the ISS. On the other hand check out Cassini.

Basically, for human flight, to put it extremely crudely, NASA should piss or get off the pot. The evidence of the Shuttle and the ISS is that NASA is not as good at it as the Russians. Russia launches for a fraction of the cost, even allowing for the lower wages, and with better than half the deaths per person launched.

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[Anonymous Coward]

...because the Russians are doing such a great job keeping the ISS in a fully staffed and working order. The reason the ISS has done jack shit is partly because without the Shuttles they're unable to keep enough people onboard to do anything but keep the tin can togother.

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[FleaPlus]

I have no problem with genuine exploration, but I have extreme difficulty in understanding what exploration the ISS was all about.

Replace "exploration" with "foreign relations and keeping Russian rocket scientists from going to hostile nations," and it'll make a lot more sense.

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[reallocate]

The ISS and the Shuttle were not about exploration. But, there's been a bit of a mission change lately, or haven't you heard? You know, that Presidential directive a couple of years ago about returning to the Moon and exploring the inner Solar System. Pay attention.

Meanwhile, let's explore the "exploration" the Soviets did before they went bust: build smaller and cruder version of ISS; use same 3-man capsule they used snce the 1960's to staff and supply that space station. ISS/Shuttle or Mir/Soyuz: no difference.

Of course, the Russians can't afford to do much of anything these days.

Re:NASA Does Exploration, Not Charter Bus Services

[iminplaya]

...use same 3-man capsule they used snce the 1960's to staff and supply that space station. ISS/Shuttle or Mir/Soyuz: no difference.

C'mon now. You know the old saying, "If it aint broke..." I have to admit that I would feel safer taking a ride on Soyuz than the shuttle.

Re:Slashdot Reports Release of OS/2

[Monkeman]

In other news, Steve Jobs buys Apple. Also, Jesus is executed.

Wait one darn minute...

[xeon4life]

Weren't slashdotters recently getting huffy-puffy over the Hubble not getting it's last servicing mission...?

You mean we trolled for no reason!?

If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[sqar]

... they could have a new type of spacecraft much earlier. Russian engineers are pretty advanced in their plannings for a soyuz replacement: Kliper

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kliper.html
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/kliper.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliper

the maiden flight was originally planned for 2007-2008 if I remember that correctly (read it in a German aviation magazine (Fliegerrevue) some time ago), but as usual with such projects and russia: sadly they have no more money to complete it. Relatively little american money could have a huge effect here. But I guess national pride on both sides will prevent this from coming true.

regards, sqar

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[greypilgrim]

Instead of building an International Black Hole (ISS), the world's space faring nations should join forces and build one common launch vehicle. The combined knowledge and experience of all of these space faring nations could build a new ship far superior to the space shuttle. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, national pride on both sides will prevent this from ever happening.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[HermanAB]

Russia never has any money. Somehow, they don't need money to get things done.

However, Russia is paying off its loans at a rate in excess of about 10 Billion Dollars per year, while the US is getting deeper in debt at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars each year.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Not arguing about the ISS being a waste, but I'm not sure it's a bad idea that different space agencies are all developing their own launch vehicles. A small amount of competition in terms of engineering will be better for everyone in the long run, right? Obviously everyone should still share science data and results, though.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[FleaPlus]

the world's space faring nations should join forces and build one common launch vehicle

I'm sorry, but that makes about as much sense as saying that the nations of the world should join together and build one common airplane. Design by committee generally doesn't work too well, especially if the design has to be made such that it siphons an appropriate amount of money into each of the involved countries.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[DerekLyons]

Instead of building an International Black Hole (ISS), the world's space faring nations should join forces and build one common launch vehicle.

Why? First off design-by-comitte rarely (if ever) works. Secondly, we no more need one type of launch vehicle than we need one type of car, plane, boat, or train.

The combined knowledge and experience of all of these space faring nations could build a new ship far superior to the space shuttle.

Heck, right here in the US we already have a rough idea of how to do that, no need for any international consortium.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[sznupi]

Both sides? I dunno, Russians took funding from US before (for ISS)

And anyway I think there should be more than one effort/one vehicle

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[Anonymous Coward]

First off design-by-comitte rarely (if ever) works. You can look at the space shuttle or the Freedom space station for examples ;)

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[greypilgrim]

The difference is, we already know how to make a cost effective airplane, we don't know how to make a cost effective shuttle. Russia can hardly afford its existing space program. NASA's budget is stretched across dozens of programs. Combined though? I just think that space travel should be something shared by the peoples of the world, not limited to one nation and to the richest members of the world. I think that all the combined engineering talents of the world could build a vehicle that could do it faster, cheaper, and easier.

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[ThankfulJosh]

Yeah! Let's make a rocketship with the same efficiency and effectiveness as the U.N.!

Re:If America and Russia only would cooperate ...

[danila]

Even though it would be extremely beneficial for all, large scale co-operation with NASA or ESA is out of the question. It requires the "go" from the government and some $$$, but this isn't a priority for the Russian government. They simply don't care about science, spending about 1% of the GDP (as opposed to 2-3% most countries spend and 4% that USSR spent). The number of scientists in Russia more than halved in the past 10 years. Sadly, you can't expect to get much from the Russian space industry. :-(

Two out of three at best

[meckardt]

"the CEV 'needs to be safe, it needs to be simple, it needs to be soon.'"

Any bets on whether a NASA produced CEV will meet even two of these criteria? As for all three, I only will expect it when there isn't any government involvement.

Going UP

[Doc Ruby]

What about space elevators? Or are they too poor a cover for subsidizing military contractors?

Re:Going UP

[Martin Blank]

Technological issues. Unless and until someone can demonstrate carbon nanotube-based cables, even Congress won't buy into it.

Re:Going UP

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy enough to get around that with congress. Just call it the anti-terrorism space elevator, or call it the anti copyright infringement space elevator and throw in enough election cash to make it worth while.

Cliff Notes for TFA

[tmortn]

We want to get out of Low Earth Orbit but that can't be done until the CEV is operational and Shuttle is dead and Station declared completed. This is because Shuttle represents a 1/3 to 1/2 of NASAs bottom line budget and ISS another 1/5 or so. Short of a major budget increase, NASA cannot throw real money at a new program until Shuttle is axed and ISS is down to support mode rather than construction. Most every thing else in the budget is penny ante in comparison and the political fallout of axing them is not worth the gain of re-allocating the money.

Key points.

Shuttle Dead in 2010. Before if possible.

ISS final configuration from a shuttle launch standpoint is being re-considered. This is perahaps the biggest driver of a 2010 retirement date. Current requirements mandate that pretty much as a minimum. Robotic launches being considered for completing delivery of components.

CEV developement cycle drasticly reduced. Operational no later than shuttle retirement. Translation: Sounds like if they can get CEV ready Shuttle will die then if a new final config is confirmed for ISS.

Step up Space Nuclear Power. It is a must for manned sapce exploration beyond earth/moon and for any kind of permanent moon outpost of any real scale. If we don't have it ready by the time the CEV is we will have to wait on it before doing much more than flags and footprints again.

Re-evaluate the decision to not service Hubble after RTF missions so that a more informed opinion on the safety risks invovled can be made. Key here really is the decision not to kill budgeting for keeping the service mission an option. (ie the cost is mostly in the parts development and testing, not launch). Thus NASA can't re-appropriate that money for use elsewhere in the budget until the decision is re-afffirmed after return to flight... OR they decide it is a reasonable risk after all at which point all money for anything other than de-orbit will be re-apportioned in the budget. Smart move for money by Griffon. Regardless it keeps the money in for FY 06 as we will most likely not complete analysis of the two RTF missions till after the end of FY'05. So that means the money can't simply be axed off the NASA budget, it can go somewhere else. At 350 million it isn't chump change to a budget starved program.

Keep some other political programs on life support (education etc...) to keep some senetors happy.

Rob Peter to pay Paul. In order to do anything NASA has to cut somewhere. The only major areas of funding are space science, manned space operations and ISS. Already covered that two are pretty secure. Space science fundign is increasing but existing programs are largely getting the shaft for now with a promise to get picked up on the back end. IE thats what it means to delay some programs till after meeting exploration goals in the short term. So my guess is the telescopes are going to take a hit and that is why they are going to re-consider Keeping Huble limping along to possible keep a gap from happening or at least moving the gap already planned a few years farther along.

NASA will bug congress to allow purchasing more Russian launch capacity. Nasa paid for Soyuz missions are about spent and right now we can't give the RSA any more for launches. Not played very large in the statement but that is a big issue in current ISS operations and one that needs to be addressed.

3rd Shuttle Blows up: What happens to Priorities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked on half a dozen Space Shuttle Safety projects for the late great Rockwell International Space Transportation Division, and found each of them dysfunctional to the point of criminal fraud; and having given testimony to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board; and having spoken at length to the NASA Inspector General's office -- when the 3rd Space Shuttle disater strikes, what happens to all these objectives?

The CAIB gave clear direction on how to reform NASA. But their only Nobel Laureate Physicist (Feynman being long buried) gave a press conference to say that he does NOT believe that NASA can effectively change its "corporate culture."

I've praised Mike Griffin in slashdot, but he can no more change NASA's style than Eric Raymond can change Microsoft.

-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post

Considering...

[Run4yourlives]

that a lot less folk can't even agree on a single flavour of linux, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Funding is a Joke

[mysterystevenson]

Current funding for space exploration is a joke. We should be talking in Trillions of current US dollars. I know that sounds like an incredible amount but if it was spent now the return in profit would soon exceed the entire value of all the world's economies put together. New research needs to be done in all arenas of space; propulsion, energy, and environmental. Space offers the last potential for humanity. The Earth is running into a log jam of population and industrial production / food production. If money is not spent for the expansion into space now, we will melt down. Industry can be moved to space, but it won't come cheap, still the profit potential is quite literally astronomical. Environmental restrictions for industry on Earth are soon going to skyrocket, and that is needed if we want to survive. If new technologies are developed to increase efficiency for space travel, then industrial costs in space may actually turn out to be cheaper there in space than here on Earth. MYSTERY

Re:Funding is a Joke

[Buckaroo Bonzai]

You need to supply a better business plan on the profit there bud. I think you are suffering from the "Field of Dreams" syndrome -- 'If you build it, they will come.' Doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

Re:Funding is a Joke

[Erwos]

"I know that sounds like an incredible amount but if it was spent now the return in profit would soon exceed the entire value of all the world's economies put together."

I'd like to see some sort of theoretical figures for this. I _suspect_ you are talking out of your ass, but let's be sure, shall we?

There's nothing out in space that's going to magically bring in tens of trillions of dollars. Even raw minerals are not anywhere near the sum you're describing.

But, please, educate me.

-Erwos

Re:Funding is a Joke

[tmortn]

Actually the raw materials in space are indeed worth that and quite a bit more besides. Not that it matters, we don't have the appetite to use them on that level. The other problem of course is that right now it would cost too much to get at them... IE dosn't matter if there is a trillion dollars worth of iron in an asteroid if it costs 2 trillion to harness it.

Though if you want a potential real source of money? He3 is probably the best current candidate. Extrodinarily rare on the Earth it is by comparison plentiful on the moon. It is important becaues its Fusion byproducts when fused with deuterium create a charged result which is then easily contained and harnessed by magnetic fields. H - H or H to other isotopes of He don't. Reduces shielding, raises potential conversion efficiencies etc. If the powerplant can be made to harness it the potential reward for He mining will probably make Middle East oil proffits look paltry by comparison. Though being able to build the ractor is a pretty big stumbling block.

Re:Funding is a Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm shocked to hear such pessimism from a celebrated test pilot/rock musician.

Re:Funding is a Joke

[grumbel]

### The Earth is running into a log jam of population and industrial production / food production.

How about pumping all that money into fixing up earth? Heck, if we don't get it right on the earth, how to you expect to get it right on some mars colonnie, generation spaceship or whatever with much harder constrains?

The earth is good enough to serve mankind easily for a few million years, I have little doubt that we would even surrive a astroid hit without much problem, sure not all of us, but enough to not let humanity die out. Space is 99.9999999 (insert lots for 9s) dead empty space, there is little reason to go there, since earth will be a MUCH better place to live on for a long time, no matter what happens.

Space is boring

[couch_warrior]

There were two original purposes for NASA: 1) Test ICBM hardware for the cold war in the guise of civilian research 2) Create thrilling TV footage in the days before CGI NASA is now dying because both purposes have been made obsolete, and space itself has become boring and mundane. Unfotunately, AT&T doesn't need NASA to buy satellites from hughes anymore. The only things that can save NASA are: a) The discovery of sentient extraterrestrial life, and the consequent rush to reach it. b) A lifter technology so cheap, it makes space a viable tourist destination, creating a profitable industry Let's face it, you don't get $10s of billions in funding with blurry pictures of frozen mud from Titan

Chernobyl is the largest man-made disaster ever.

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Also a lot more people died in the Bhopal Gas leak in India from a fertilizer factory than from Chernobyl but people are shit scared of Nuclear plants.

Holy shit! How can you say that? Chernobyl is the largest man-made disaster ever-- even the low estimates put the death toll well above the Bhopal Gas leak estiamtes.

By some estimates, Chernobyl killed hundreds of thousands of people. There are no official death estimate because the government never released any figures and no other entity could go into the area and verify the numbers.

However, the lack of an estimate doesn't mean that the numbers are small.

Bhopal Gas disaster was a big disaster that killed thousands of people. There are offical death estimates.

I vote you for the fallout zone....

[kaladorn]

Sure, in the grand scheme, a few people doesn't matter much. I'm sure 1-10 people get killed on any given day by far more bizarre things than a little fallout - dwarf tossing, cow tipping, bull-baiting, terminal internet addiction, etc.

Yet at the same time, the automobile accidents are something we try to reduce and we don't just shrug and say 'Hey, those 114 deaths don't matter! Let's tack on another 10!'

Oddly, I think that 1-10 more deaths in what most folk would percieve as an unnecessary event would be particularly unwelcome.

And doubly so when there may well be other alternatives to avoid this fate. Don't know about you, but I'm not real interested in being one of the poor saps who has the bad luck to die from fallout. Plus then again the chance that something worse goes wrong and a lot more folks die... or that (lord forbid) the data is wrong and it affects more folks.

This seems like the kind of downside that not only can be avoided but should be avoided. We should go to space for a variety of reasons, but this whole phobia about us being wiped out is a panic of the last ten to twenty years. We've inhabited this burg for a few thousands or tens of thousands years (and the other species that precede us for far longer) and that's a blip on the cosmic timescale. We should get out to space, but we should do it in a sustainable, sensible, and environmentally sound fashion.

Re:I vote you for the fallout zone....

[Breakfast Pants]

"Yet at the same time, the automobile accidents are something we try to reduce." Wait a minute. If you wanted to try and reduce automobile accidents as much as you are suggesting we reduce the deaths from fallout from this thing... well you would ban the automobile. Bam, 0 automobile accidents. There is a problem with this logic. Yes, you no longer have as many automobile accidents. You also no longer have the infrastructure which has played a huge role in all sorts of tangential aspects of human life. Likewise with this nuclear technology there would be many changes. For instance, we would be a hell of a lot closer to being able to spread out humanity to more than one little planet. All it takes is one big asteroid and the entire human race is gone; hmm entire human race, 1-10 people--I just can't decide.

Re:I vote you for the fallout zone....

[sznupi]

"This seems like the kind of downside that not only can be avoided but should be avoided."

Od course. And the ones working on eventual future Orion can do that - it's entirely possible to build nuclear explosive that won't rely on fission at all (but it would be completely unpractical to use as a weapon, therefore nobody done it) - so practically no fallout.

L5 in '95 (1995 that is)

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of their plans involving killing more astronauts? NASA still hasn't learned the proper lessons from either Columbia or Challenger.

Nature can't be fooled but we mere mortals seem to have a penchant for being fooled. Interesting how both missions had a high profile passenger, one a schoolteacher and another an Israeli war hero.

The L5 in '95 bumper sticker mantra was a libertarian fantasy of having big government build them self-sufficient space colonies in orbit near the Moon.

that rabbit's a killer!

[Tumbleweed]

Look at the _bones_, man!

I say rename it the 'Vorpal Drive,' and have at it. Tally-ho, to the stars!

Nasa's future plans...

[Anonymous Coward]

lemme guess a good photo studio WITHOUT a fan?

Re:Americans are dumb...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you refer to those who voted for President Carter. He pronounced the damn word nu-cu-lar.

Near future?

[flamingnight]

Personally, I hope that NASA's plans for the future include getting that rover out. Then they can focus on world domination.

what we really need...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is a launch vehicle that does not need everything to be perfect before a launch takes place. Build something that can take off in rain, and land in snow. How is it that in 40 years space craft are still so fragile that you can't even fart in thier general direction?

Re:what we really need...

[TheBurrito]

Some level of fragility is inevitable when you fill buildings up with explosives and make them go 18,000 miles an hour.

Re:Chernobyl is the largest man-made disaster ever

[Anonymous Coward]

"By some estimates, Chernobyl killed hundreds of thousands of people. There are no official death estimate because the government never released any figures and no other entity could go into the area and verify the numbers."

Your linked article states:

It is difficult to tally accurately the number of deaths caused by the events at Chernobyl -- estimates range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands.

The issue of long-term effects of Chernobyl disaster on civilians is highly controversial. The number of people whose life was affected by the accident is enormous. Over 300,000 people were resettled because of the accident; around 600,000 participated in the cleanup; millions lived and continue to live in the contaminated area. On the other hand, most of those affected received relatively low doses of radiation, there's little evidence of increased mortality or cancers among them; and when such evidence is present, existence of causal link to radioactive contamination is uncertain.

The hundred thousand dead comes from greenpeace. It is vastly overestimated. Based on other cases of low level exposure and high level exposure (in particular Hiroshima and Nagisaki), there is no significant increase in cancer deaths. In fact, the Hiroshima study was inconclusive. You would think that there would be a significant increase in cancer deaths (other than deaths within 5 years) from dropping a nuclear bomb, but there was no evidence that this was the case. Hiroshima was a big case study on the effects of high and low level radiation. The reason that the effects of low level exposure are debated are that noone is certain that it is harmful. If it is, then the effect is very small. Chernobyl will not kill hundred of thousands or even thousands of people. People were evacuated and only a select few received high level exposures.

Great Expectations

[Anonymous Coward]

Just yesterday I read about the objectives of the newly founded NASA in 1958. A committee stated:

"By using clustered boosters, with first flights beginning in 1961, the committee estimated a manned lunar landing in 1965-1966. The clustered vehicles would also support the deployment of a 50-man space station in 1967, and the fifth generation of boosters would support sizable moon exploration expeditions in 1972, set up a permanent moon base in 1973-1974, and launch manned interplanetary trips in 1977."

Somewhat amazing.

Project Prometheus...

[GotenXiao]

...aka BC-303. All welcome the [false] gods.

Van allen Belts

[willCode4Beer.com]

I'm going to venture slightly off topic. Your post brings up another question.
I wonder what effects the radiation from the van allen belts will have on the carbon nanotubes and the polymers to bind them in the "ribbon" for the space elevator.
It seems to me that having a sensive molecular structure getting bombarded by high energy particles is not a good thing. OTOH, if they put a big collection plate up, and hooked it up to a cable running down the ribbon, you'd have some zero pollution electricity ;)

Wow, I went from offtopic to wandering.

Visionary Science or Good Politics?

[north.coaster]

On first reading, it sounds like the new NASA Administrator has some visionary ideas. But one has to wonder if some of these proposals are really intended to keep key members of the House and Senate happy by preserving jobs in their districts. Take a look at what effects these changes would have on the employmene tsituation at some key NASA installations, and then be your own judge on whether science or politics is at work here.

Fix the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that we're going to run out of space on earth and need to expand.

The problem is that we aren't controlling our population.

This is a way better use of our funds because we will NEVER find a better place to live than Earth. Why not? Because evolution has assured that we were PERFECTLY designed to live here.

Cut some nuts off and put all this space money back into earth and we will ALL benefit.

Re:Fix the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neutering males in the mid east used to be common, the shieks could impregnate hundreds. If we choose to go the middle eastern way that won't work, there are more of them now than there are of us.The Chinese are expanding with laws that allow murder of babies, and women.We have a situation that is out of our hands. we will expand, or we will be dust.

Re:Chernobyl is the largest man-made disaster ever

[malsdavis]

I don't think you can conclusivly say Chernobyl caused more deaths than Bhopal.

Sure, taking the higher estimates of chernobyl (and there are some wild and improbably high estimates for Chernobyl) and the lower estimates for Bhopal would mean Chernobyl killed more. But then again doing the vice versa says that Bhopal killed more.

Wheras its true the Soviet cover-up probably means a larger actual death toll than the official estimates (which I am always surprised at how low they are considering the notoriety), in Bhopal it is still simply unknown how many people actually lived their in the first place and so the figures for that incident have always been considered an under-estimate.

Most best estimates almost always place the death toll estimates for both incidents at between ~10 - ~50 thousand. Only the vested interest groups have placed figures in the 100's of thouands (I have seen estimates for Bhopal which also claim 100's of tousands died).

One last note: The lasting legacy of the 100's of thousands of people which were definatly injured at Bhopal is undoubtably causing more suffering than Chernobyl (which raised cancer rates in the region by an estimated ~3%).

Of course it must be remebered that both these figures pale in comparion to the millions who have died around the world due to air pollution, much of which is generally estimated to be due to electricty production. This makes changes in energy production policy based on the Chernobyl incident extremely naive and deadly.

Re:Chernobyl is the largest man-made disaster ever

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Most best estimates almost always place the death toll estimates for both incidents at between ~10 - ~50 thousand.

Interesting. I've never heard of estimates that high. I'll research this stuff a little more, if I can stomach it.

So long as they fix the Hubble

[WillAffleckUW]

Which is what 90 percent of the American public cares about the space shuttle anyways ...

So long as that is done, all else will be forgiven.

Sigh: remember when NASA actually had realistic priorities?

Outsource Nasa's works to China

[benpark22]

To cut cost, Nasa should outsource the works to China. With the same money nasa receives, workers in China can do ten times more.