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NASA Policy Includes Mars, Moon Missions
TopSpin writes "The US House of Representatives passed a bill establishing NASA policy for the next two years. The bill is seen as an endorsement of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, including returning man to the Moon and eventually Mars. The House struggled with compromising other NASA initiatives against new manned exploration, eventually deciding to expand the budget enough to accommodate both prerogatives. The bill also endorses a servicing and repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope."
I also think NASA ought to prepare the american people by making it clear human lives will be lost in this endeavor. With the last two disasters (Columbia and Challenger) each time it setback their mission years. In an industry such as this people must be made to understand it's not an accident, rather a probability.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
The way I see it, in order to get to mars, we are going to have to use the moon as a sort of launchpad. (Yes of course we could do it otherwise, but not as efficiently or as often, assuming we want to make it into a regular thing.)
Right now the USA is teetering on the brink of complete disaster. China has just stopped propping up the US economy by revaluing the yuan. The US infrastructure facilities built in the peak years like highways and the electrical grid are falling apart. There's no moon or mars shots in the future, just empty promises.
I must admit I am an angry American. Why don't we first fix our health-care, education and economic systems before we tackle the moon and Mars? As our infrastructure crumbles, and our schools decline, and we continue to export [manufacturing] jobs, not forgetting senseless wars we are fighting abroad with mounting casualties, it saddens me to see that our president and his administration do not see what needs to be fixed first. Do not forget that he once mentioned "...bring them on...they will soon hear from us...our only option is victory...we want him dead or alive...mission accomplished...! Mind you, this was more than 18 months ago! Some think we are bogged into a senseless war with no end! But we are spending US$ 1 billion per week on war while we have tax paying citizens without health-care coverage, and China is financing our spending by buying out bonds and T-bills.
I suggest the following: Let's explore the oceans looking for new life. Maybe that way, we might find sources for new drugs. I know my call is falling on deaf ears, but I am glad I said it.
It saddens me that our companies like Kodak, Ford, GMC and Boeing are becoming more irrelevant by the day, while Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and others are eating our cake. Our companies are already not as relevant in the electronics field. Where will our grandsons be?
Our planet cannot support 6.5 billion people all living at the consumption rate of the USA. We need to find new places to colonize BEFORE we greatly increase the standard of living for the world's poor.
Federal, legislative support of NASA is refreshing given the saddening decline over the past decade. What I, however, would most like to see, is a collaborative effort between NASA and the fledgeling private sector space initiatives. Scaled Composities of X-Prize fame has some wonderful, far-sighted ideas. A collaborative effort might truly be the impetus for progress.
On another note, who here feels that there is a place for community-based, (OSS??) space projects? Precedent shows that grassroots efforts can and do work.
I am truly interested: what do slashdotters think?
Pete Conrad, commander of Apollo 12, made a bet with a reporter who thought that Armstrong's words had been written by PR flacks. He told her exactly what he was going to say months before the launch:
"Whoopee! That may have been one small step for Neil, but it was a big one for me!"
He was also the shortest of all the Apollo Astronauts.
fsh
"Even the ISS program, which has been criticized extensively for poor science, has provided invaluable engineering experience on how (and maybe how not) to build a vehicle to go to the moon/mars. For example, we've had serious problems with the gyroscopes on ISS"
Who says you need to use gyros on a Martian spacecraft in the first place. Rockets work just as well for attitude control and are a lot more reliable at this point. I think I would rather carry the fuel than the thousands of pounds of spare gyros. Rockets are KISS, gyros are gold plated NASA, complex and unreliable.
Also hate to point this out but you could have learned the same lesson on gyro reliability from Hubble at a fraction of the price.
Problem with NASA is every lesson learned costs more than its weight in gold.
From Mike Griffin's congressional testimony before he became administrator. I hope he keeps such a level head now that he is adminsistrator and a political and bureaucratic punching bag. Here he is talking here only about the remaining ISS cost not the 100+ billion already squandered to learn about bad gyros and the fact that our spacesuits still suck after 40+ years:
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"If we do Exploration right, we're going to leverage an aerospace workforce that has learned lessons from Shuttle and ISS, and use the moon as a proving ground. That experience is going to allow us to tackle the greater challenge of going to Mars."
Unfortunately it is a workforce that has learned to the point that its ingrained, to do things inefficiently, uneconomicly and which is consistently failing to succeed or deliver promised results. If you take that same workforce, that has been runined by decades of excessive spending and underperformance, and just transfer it wholesale to CEV, return to the Moon or on to Mars what assurance does anyone have that it wont fail as badly as it has on the ISS and Shuttle.
The important thing about teams is not so much the years of experience as it is their proven ability to succeed when faced with challenges, and overcome adversity. The Shuttle team has, in the face of adversity, just become ever more cautious and less capable to the point that now it is nearly useless. The only lesson the ISS team has learned well is how to spend money year after year and never deliver a working space station. Those aren't characteristics you want to carry forward in a team if you want to succeed on the next challenges.
@de_machina