NASA Unveils Strategy for Return to the Moon

mknewman writes to tell us that NASA recently announced plans to build a permanent base on the moon by 2024. The (still tentative) plans call for building the base on one of the moon's poles, which constantly receive light from the sun and have less temperature fluctuation. This base will start small in 2020 and grow over time with the hopes of eventually supporting 180-day stays and providing a jumping-off point to Mars."

Comments

Re:Nice... but...

[hondamankev]

I'm excited about this announcement. However, how many other "NASA Initiatives" have been announced, and due to funding, have never materialized? How many times by how many different presidents has used space exploration purely for political gains with no intention whatsoever to follow through?

Like the OP said, I'll believe it when I start seeing it built. If they really do it, I'll still be alive and senile enough to appreciate the monumental and technical achievements not seen since (then) 55-60 years ago.

It will never happen

[WindBourne]

This is WAY too slow of a schedule.

I suspect that by 2015, we will be back on the moon due to Bigelow. Even now, the sundancer is a nice small module for launching as a good way to carry to the moon, as well as land on the moon for a station. Combine that with 2 launch systems, one for earth and one for the moon. By 2010, there will be at least 5 human rated systems (Russian, China, Space Shuttle (probably will not be fully canceled until we have orion going) or Orion, and the 2 cots system). By 2014, the Sundancer will have been in orbit for at least 3 years. That will make it acceptable for taking to the moon and landing on its surface. All that is needed is a landing system for it, a connection module, and a true lunar transport. Finally, the BA-330 will be available by 2015 (I would guess by 2011) and that will be used for the real transport to lunar orbit.

While I like the Ares V (love the capacity), I think that the only real chance is the direct launcher. It is the true safer, faster, cheaper approach.

Such a shame Sergei Korolev died.

[QuantumG]

He was the Russian space program. It all went downhill after that. The US had no way of knowing, of course, but his death signalled the end of the space race and the US had won. The fact that they got a man on the moon at all after that is a massive acheivement - a political one as well as a technical one. Even without a heavy lift vehicle, I think Korolev could have beat Von Braun to The Moon. He had the contingency all planned out. This is the plan that the Russian space agency announced last year: take a Souyez up to a space station, refuel it, do a flyby of the Moon. With another refueling in Lunar orbit, you can land and takeoff. You don't need a heavy launch vehicle to do a Moonshot.. it just makes it a lot easier.

The other big breaking news...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a rumor that NASA will announce the discovery of liquid water at or near Mars' surface.

God I hope that's true.

And I hope the aquifer is substantial.

Fuel depots in orbit.

[Anonymous Freak]

If you want to run a moonbase, how do you get lots of fuel into Earth orbit? And into lunar orbit? Doesn't sound terribly efficient. You get fuel into Earth orbit with heavy lifters. That carry enough fuel for multiple moon trips. You then use a light-lift rocket to get the actual spacecraft up. You can then do multiple light-lift spacecraft up to use up the previously launched fuel more cheaply than putting each spacecraft on its own heavly-lift rocket. If we had used a Saturn V to put a refueling station up (Skylab sized, without the 'space station' internals,) we could have used Saturn-IBs to actually launch the moon-ready pair. (The IB was used to launch Apollo 5, an unmanned CSM/LM pair.) Refuel in LEO, then head off to the moon. That would have saved a lot of money, and could have kept us going to the moon. The main reason this wasn't done was to save development time. It would have required longer to develop the orbiting refueling depot and related procedures.

As for putting a fueling station in lunar orbit, yeah, that's more difficult. The moon's gravity is low enough that 'wasting' the fuel to do direct lunar launches all the way back to Earth orbit would probably have to do until we come up with a 'cheap' way to get mass quantities of fuel to lunar orbit.

But, again, it might be cheaper to launch one big 'fuel depot' to the lunar surface and cut down on the need to carry return fuel out (from Earth) and down on the actual landing craft.

All right, I will take a shot.

[WindBourne]

Speaking of "first things first", why not focus on, oh, I don't know, AIDS. Or maybe homelessness in America. Or shitty public schools. Or a better trained (i.e. not shooting a drunk, black guy 50 times) police force. Or clean water. Or more energy efficient cars.

1. Aids: The simple answer is that more money is going into aids research, prevention, and life sustinance than into NASA. Funny thing though, is that AIDS is not even #3 killer in America, let alone the world. Throwing money at it will NOT make this happen. In fact, if you are going to solve a major bio killer, then solve heart problems, cancer, or even influenza.
2. Homelessness in America? You kidding? the best way to solve it is by job creation esp for the middle class. As it is, the middle class is being quickly wiped out. What will get it back is simple job creation. And where does that come from? By start-ups and by high tech. And where does the high-tech for this come from? Well, DARPA is a good source. So is, wait for it, NASA.
3. shitty public schools. First, our schools are not that shitty. The problem is that other nations are simply catching up. Due to our high labour costs, we need to figure out how to teach more efficiently esp since we are losing our middle class (the true tax base). But where does all that high-tech education come from? Various sources including .... NASA.
4. a better trained police force: This will not change until society changes its mores. Unless you want American to force everybody to think the same (it failed in NAZI Germany, totalitarian USSR and China), then this will take time.
5. Clean water: this is doable today. The problem is that it is an issue of politics. Bush has been gutting the EPA and its rules (including on clean water). As it is, the new dems will at least slow down the rape and pillage. But now it is up to the dems to win the next election as well as make sane laws. For starters, they should allow more oil drilling. Just hold the companies and their officials truely responsible. Require that drilling in environmentally sensative areas require BEST AVAILABLE tech, as opposed to simply setting minimum standards. If we did that, then the drilling would happen as tech improves and oil prices go up, but it would be safe. Basically, they need to use some reason.
6. Energy efficent cars: Worse idea yet. The simple answer is that the gov. has no business trying to figure out how to solve this. As it is, Bush is busy giving oil major tax cuts, which skews the market. In addition, he is pushing hydrogen which is 20 years out. OTH, v.c. money is going into electrical systems esp. super capacitors. If Bush (including clinton, bush I, and reagan) had stayed out of playing with support for Oil, then we would already have efficient cars. BTW, who else is spending money on good super capacitor? NASA. Why? because most of the sats have power cycles due to solar cells being blocked by planet shadows. In addition, batteries really have a limited re-charge cycle on the order of a 1000x, where U.C. are rechargable 100-1000 K x.

I will take the idea of spreading our risks around rather than trying to solve just one or several issues, thank you very much. NASA is acutally some of the cheapest insurance that our society has. As it is, a bunch of new jobs are about to come on line in aviation and aeronautics, due to NASA.

Re:Beancounters and budgets

[nido]

There is plenty of time before an actual landing for Congress to cut that part of NASA's budget, saying "The money could be better spent here on Earth," leaving out the last part of the phrase. ("The money could be bettter spent here on Earth getting pork for my constituents so I get re-elected and/or my party gains more seats.")

Just because that's been the modus operandi for most of the 20th century doesn't mean that it will be forever. I expect in the (very near) future it might go something like this: "after 100 years of pork, our once-noble republic is now bankrupt, and we have no resources to spend on moon shots."

See the St. Louis Fed's Is the United States Bankrupt?:

CONCLUSION

There are 77 million baby boomers now ranging from age 41 to age 59. All are hoping to collect tens of thousands of dollars in pension and healthcare benefits from the next generation. These claimants aren't going away. In three years, the oldest boomers will be eligible for early Social Security benefits. In six years, the boomer vanguard will start collecting Medicare. Our nation has done nothing to prepare for this onslaught of obligation. Instead, it has continued to focus on a completely meaningless fiscal metric--"the" federal deficit--censored and studiously ignored long-term fiscal analyses that are scientifically coherent, and dramatically expanded the benefit levels being explicitly or implicitly promised to the baby boomers.

Countries can and do go bankrupt. The United States, with its $65.9 trillion fiscal gap, seems clearly headed down that path. The country needs to stop shooting itself in the foot. It needs to adopt generational accounting as its standard method of budgeting and fiscal analysis, and it needs to adopt fundamental tax, Social Security, and healthcare reforms that will redeem our children's future.

(emphasis added)

This means no more big expensive chemical-rocket-powered moon shots. If someone figures out antigravity (I'd bet that it shares as-yet undiscovered principles with Cold Fusion) in the next couple years that'd be an option, but Apollo is simply fiscally unrepeatable.

Don't mean to be too harsh on GWB & his co-conspirators (coupsters? - whoever killed JFK never let go of the control they gained) - other countries are bankrupt too. But if you can find the United States on this ordered list of Current Account Balances, and compare its number to, say, Germany or Japan, you might begin to understand the U.S. economy's problem. Even though such industrialized countries as Spain, the U.K., Australia, France, Italy, etc are in close proximity on the list, if you compare the actual numbers you will surely realize that that certain 'empire' (military bases in 130+ countries) is in a class all by itself.

Recall that the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is probably somewhere around 12% (according to the Shadow Stats guy), and that the rich have been screwing the masses ('us') for most of the last 150 years, concentrating 'our' wealth in 'their' pockets. Even if this moonshot thing was fiscally possible, it'd just be another way for the corporate class to concentrate the working stiffs' ('our') tax dollars in their pockets.

(I look at the positives of the situation - the end of this economic system will mean the end of the masses' ['our'] current state of Wage Slavery, where many spend 40+ hours/week slaving away at two jobs to make someone else ['the corporate class' or 'the bankers'] rich.)

Re:Beancounters and budgets

[1u3hr]

"The money could be better spent here on Earth," leaving out the last part of the phrase. ("The money could be bettter spent here on Earth getting pork for my constituents so I get re-elected and/or my party gains more seats.")

The money IS all spent on Earth. It'll be a while before it can be outsourced to Mars. As for pork, why do you think NASA is based in Houston? Answer: LBJ.

Earth to the Moon

[D.A. Zollinger]

As someone who finished watching "From the Earth to the Moon" earlier tonight, I can say that I can't wait for humans to return to the moon. We do need a permanent presence on the moon, for many reasons, such as; separation of the human species in case of global tragedy, explore moon's geology (where did that thing come from?), explore theories about colonization, biospheres, and self-sustenance, launch point for future missions to distant worlds (if we could build a manufacturing center on the moon, its 1/6th gravity would be very beneficial to launching new craft), and many, many, many more benefits both seen and unseen.

Returning to the moon is in humanity's best interest, and is clearly the path to the future. Focus on the space program will push development and inventions to help push the edge of what is capable. I see space travel as one of the grand challenges we will face in our lifetime, and it would be a shame to hesitate when we have already taken so many steps toward that goal. As someone who was born prior to the last Apollo mission, I feel it is a crime that we have abandoned the moon for the majority of my lifetime.

Unfortunately, the political winds have not been blowing favorably towards NASA, and it may take another visionary like JFK to take us back to the moon and beyond.