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Back to Moon in 2015?
Mistress.Erin writes "NASA has announced they may send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2015, and may build an international base once they get there. From TFA:"The next mission to land a man on the moon will take place in 2015 at the earliest, the new chief of the United States' space program said on Monday, adding the mission could be followed by the construction of a multinational space station there. But NASA has not yet decided what vehicles will be used to reach the moon, or what will succeed the aging space shuttle fleet, which is due to be retired in 2010.""
Kennedy: "We will go to the moon in this decade..."
NASA today: "We will go to the moon in this decade... at the earliest. Maybe. But hey, don't hold your breath."
For real, how can it possibly take longer to do it again, if we already did it before? The R&D phase is over. We know what to do.
1) Build Saturn V
2) Put spaceship on top
3) MTV Flag
What, did we lose the Saturn blueprint or something?
If they are talking about working on a permanent base, why wouldn't you want to start with the moon? Any sort of extra-terrestrial base, be it a space station, moon base or planetary colony - is going to require a lot of supplies from Earth on a regular basis. The proximity to Earth is a big plus here.
If things go well and a Luna base becomes well established, it becomes a much easier launching pad to form other bases/colonies elsewhere. The gravity well on the moon makes regular launches much less cost prohibitive.
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
If the moon was developed as a jumping off point for Earth, exploration of the system would be much much cheaper than it is today (especially for the outer planets). That is because the Moon could build all of the space hardware and refine the fuel so we would not have to lift that mass out of the Earth's gravitational well. Plus, the Moon would be a much better location to train astronauts (lower gravity and easier access to no grav conditions). And, it would be a much cheaper source of some very expensive stuff on Earth, such as helium 3.
It is a shame that we've waited this long to even consider it.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
There is a saying, get to low earth orbit and you are halfway to ANYWHERE in the galaxy. It's true. The velocity requirement (delta-v) to hit low earth orbit is about 7.6 km/sec. It's actually a little more than that when you consider you are fighting gravity the whole way up, and drag, but once you are in low earth orbit you are going 7.6 km/sec. Escape velocity from earth is about 13 km/sec. At 13 km/sec you can point your rocket any sane direction and just coast to where you want to go.
... to escape. Slightly more delta-V than from LEO, you lose a little by landing on a moon, you now have to fight it's gravity well, but you gain something - solid ground. It's nice to be able to have a lab to work in. To be able to stand. That's one potential line of thinking for a moon base. And it's a valid one. There's also moon resources. Silicon, metals. Tons of oxygen in the regolith (moon rocks). If we can figure out how to get it out. There's actually a contest sponsored by NASA with a cash prize to do exactly that.
Building a base on the moon is similar to that. It takes a little more delta-V to get to the moon. Don't have my notes in front of me, think its on the order of 11km/sec. But leaving the moon is only like 2-3 km/sec
My opinion? Rendezvous in LEO and shoot from there. Screw the moon. But that's just me. I like the brute force method.
-Philski-
There are some serious answers, but they're all long-term. Pretty much everyone can see the benefit in having a solar-system-wide civilization, I think, but we have to do things one step at a time.
...
... Eventually, I can see the Moon becoming a giant retirement colony, a kind of mega-Florida for old people who want to live out their days in comfort.
Off the top of my head
- Manufacturing and heavy industry should really be moved off Earth; low-g doesn't offer quite the same cool possibilities that zero-g (okay, microgravity) does, but it's still possible to build things cheaper (locally) the less they weigh; more generally, pollution is less of a concern because, you know, the Moon has no air, no water, and no life. You can dump stuff in an empty crater and it either sits there if it's heavy, or sublimes off into space if it's light. And, of course, there's plentiful solar power.
- Various types of medicine and surgery, again, would benefit tremendously from low-g. Of course, for this to work, you have to find a way to move sick people off Earth that doesn't involve the crushing g-forces of current space flight
- Astronomy: the far side is just about the best possible place to build telescopes. Yes, better than L-5, because (again) the gravity is light enough to allow huge delicate structures, but it's still a planet, and building a long-term support base with local materials is a lot easier than hauling everything off into the middle of nowhere.
- Way station for future voyages. Other posters have mentioned the relative ease of building and launching interplanetary spacecraft on the Moon as opposed to Earth. Here's another benefit: the Moon has the lowest gravity of any place people are likely to live, which means that not only could visitors from Earth go there and be comfortable, so could those from Mars, the Jovian and Saturnian moons, etc. I can easily see the Moon becoming the Solar System's busiest hub for trade, diplomacy, and tourism.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I was under the impression that the reason we don't currently have nuclear outfitted space technology (not counting decay powered satelites i.e voyager) was that if the Challenger/Columbia thing happens again it sprays the planet with refined nuclear material.
Aside from that how exactly would you use a technology that doesn't rely on combustion to produce the needed thrust to enter orbit.
Not saying that it couldn't be done but it seems like it would still be easier to burn something to get into orbit. Once you're clear of the atmosphere you either need to expel a gas (combustion rocket for speed or pressurised gas for fine orientation) or you rely on impact (solar sails). If you had a nuclear powered vehicle you would have plenty of power but I can't think of any way to direct it. Unless you could derive thrust from a neutron stream?
If anyone knows of a way to get thrust from fission I'd love to hear it.
Baldrson writes "Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."
Seastead this.
See that little blue dot next to my name? I was into nuclear engines long before I ever found slashdot. However, I don't trust NASA to complete what it starts. I've lived near the Cape for too long.
I realize that we both want the same thing, we just disagree on the approach. Most of the NASA issues I've seen go way back to the moment that Nixon effectively shut down the space program. Any and all money was channelled into the Shuttle program, which was subsequently screwed up by Nixon's demands for a "jack of all trades" vehicle. The engineers did an amazing job on the shuttle, and by all rights its technology and power outstrips that of the Saturn V. The problem is the amount of crap hard-bolted to that technology, and the Carter administration's demands to "stretch out" the costs. The result was a half-rate craft that was unable to complete any mission effectively.
Regean tried to build on the existing investment by supporting NASA's plans for Space Station Freedom, a Lunar Transit, and eventually a Lunar Base. He also pushed NASA to complete the National Space Plane to provide for cheap access to space. But between the Shuttle's downtime after Challenger and Clinton's cutbacks to the space program (which resulted in that piece of shit in the sky known as the ISS), all the original goals of Regean's program have been missed.
Now we're scrapping all of our super-fancy technology and doing it the way we know it can be done. I see this as a *good* thing because it's the only way our space program will progress. Remember, NASA's current budget is being sucked dry by flying and maintaining the space shuttle. At $500 million per launch, it's anything but and effective method for getting to space!
The CEV program (even if only Spiral One is completed) will free up NASA's coffers to do more interesting stuff than sending 104 metric tonnes up and down the gravity well. (Yes, the Space Shuttle weighs that much.) We don't have figures yet, but even at $100 million per launch the CEV will be 5 times as cost effective as the shuttle is today. My guess is that realistic launch costs will settle somewhere closer to $50-$75 million per launch. A significant savings.
Unfortunately, it seems like the capital, either political or monetary, to build them isn't easy to find. To me, that says that the designs aren't really that great. Building prototypes is the most important step of R&D - and I was saying that we need to build better engines before spending $umpteen billion in space.
Now slow down a moment here. Quite a few prototypes *have* been built. The NERVA program was considered successful, and was ready to fly prior to the cancellation of pretty much all space programs. The Orion was prototyped in many forms (you've seen the Put-Put video I assume?) but finally died in the cancellation of the Saturn V program. The linear aerospike engines and hyrdrogen slush technologies were key to the X-33. That program was underfunded and undercommitted to by NASA (as was the Delta Clipper). Most of these engines are developed enough to take a risk on, but the only one you're likely to see in the near term is the Nuclear Thermal Rockets. The rest will wait until we again have aerospace companies fighting to create the best hardware. (They were pretty disillusioned after their treatment in the 90's.)
Other engine concepts:
- Nuclear Salt Water Rocket: Must be tested in space due to the radioactivity of the fuel.
- Gas-Core Nuclear Rocket: Research is progressing, but no working prototype yet exists.
- Antimatter catalyzed engines: This is related to the Orion engine, and cannot be used on Earth due to the nuclear test ban treaty. A mission is already planned, however.
- Ion Engines: These are already used.
- Solar Sails: These have been used on a few test missions.
- M2P2 Solar Sails: Under development. Could be useful for a more powerful Orion design.
- Deadalus: Excellent solution for travel beyond our sol
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