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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.""
I've also decided to go on a huge roadtrip in 2015, but I too have no idea how I'll get there... Nor do I know what I'm going to do with my current vehicle (a 1975 Honda civic) once it is scheduled to be retired (2010 at the latest). But don't you worry, I'll manage to pull it off somehow... ;)
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
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?
But still, is there anything on the moon that we can use/do that would be cool
The coolest thing would be that everyone can do the moonwalk. Awesome!
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"Today the moon, tomorrow the universe"
Or
Today the Moon, 45 years from now the Moon again...
Hmmm... you got me thinking of the perfect person would could send to the moon
Though it pains me to ask this (I'd love for us to be doing more space exploration), is building a base there really a good idea? From what I've read, the lunar dust is incredibly hard on mechanical things (gears, seals, etc)...that would make maintenance of any lunar base very difficult, and prohibitively expensive.
For all of that effort (both in the initial build, and in the launch/materials costs for maintenance)...what do we get? Not much, even in terms of science.
I'd love for us to do more space exploration, but honestly, I think a really big station at L4 or L5 would be a much better idea. Locally stable gravitiational point, but not a deep gravity well, far less dust, very low g environment, etc.
It's not as sexy as the moon, but really...L5's the place to be, not the moon.
To paraphrase
We don't know how we're going to get there or do what we want to do once we get there, but by god, we're going.
Great., NASA is run by PHBs.
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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.
This whole "To the moon" thing reeks of nothing more than a plan by our good buddy Jr. Bush to:
a) Distract everybody from the fact that his economy is crumbling and he's not doing so well in a very unpopular war, and
b) Develop an excuse to justify the weaponization of space.
Mod me flamebait, but all political discussions are flame wars and this announcement is way more about politics than it is about science.
Why the moon?
Babysteps. Since the 1960s we've lost the capability to send anything large on an interplanetary cruise. In fact, we shelved most of the technologies that would allow us to perform such cruises quickly and efficiently. As a result, we need to rebuild our space infrastrucutre. Part of that rebuilding is an inexpensive method for getting to and from the moon. CEV Spiral two will most likely use nuclear engines for moving passengers to and from the moon. As we gain real world experience with those engines, we can begin contemplating the task of sending a manned mission to Mars.
The key thing to remember about the current CEV program is that it's built on real technology we have today. This is a big change for NASA which has always expected some sort of miracle technology for their next vehicle. The bright side of this change is that we'll have the CEV completed in a relatively short period of time, and it will cost a reasonable amount compared to the $$$ that went into the Shuttle program.
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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-
That fine powdery moon dust turns out to be ridiculously abrasive. The moon happens to lie outside of the major influence of the Earth's magnetic field, so high energy charged particles are a big problem. Considering the setbacks to the shuttle program recently, I wonder if NASA has the budget to start new designs of this sort. Especially considering the fact that we spent enormous amounts of money sending men to the moon Kennedy style.
Even more, mention of setting up a base on the moon brings thoughts of even greater engineering, construction, and financial burdens. Sending a lander and a few go-karts to the moon is far easier than building a habitat that must withstand the dust, temperatures, and high energy particles. The maintenance required to keep things working on the ISS is tough enough, but throw it a quarter of a million miles away from the Earth on a ball of sandpaper and see how long it lasts.
This isn't to say I'm not optimistic. I truly hope that we go to the moon and begin building clusters of human life off of this rock we call home. We have all of our eggs in one basket, and the moon seems a good place to start diversifying. I just think that 2015 may be a bit overly optimistic with current budget restraints. (At least in the 60's we had some competition to try to bankrupt, and even then it took us until Reagan to finish the job)
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.
That impression is quite wrong. Nuclear technology has not been used because:
1. It hasn't met the mission profiles. (It was even considered for the Shuttle upper stages.)
2. People are afraid of nuclear.
In the case of CEV Spiral Two, the engines would be used for pure orbital work, so there would be little to no concern of any materials reaching Earth.
If anyone knows of a way to get thrust from fission I'd love to hear it.
Man, I thought I'd gotten everyone around here trained in how Nuclear Thermal Rockets work. Here's the short of it:
Most nuclear reactors derive their power production from the thermal aspect of the reaction. As the core heats up, the heat is pumped into a generator where a turbine is turned. During the push to reach the moon, some enterprising engineers figured that if you could heat a propellant using a nuclear reactor, you could dump as much thermal energy into a working fluid as the materials could withstand. The result is that massive amounts of thrust can be obtained by simply heating a stream of hydrogen, oxygen, or even plain old air. (See: Project Pluto; rather nasty weapon that was.) Since hydrogen and oxygen can't become radioactive, there would be little issue of spreading nuclear materials. Unfortunately, there was a Graphite Ablation problem from the heat, but the modern TRITON engine fixes that by utilizing Tungsten cladding.
Does that answer your question?
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Why by 2015 we'll all have hover cars, and space travel will be commen place. We'll also have Robot slaves that will strike us down and enslave us later that year. Or Monkeys... Either one.