First Images of Russian-European Manned Spacecraft

oliderid writes "The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation.The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivaling the US Ares/Orion system. This project is the Plan A for the European Space agency. The plan B is an evolution of the ATV proposed by a consortium of European companies led by Astrium."

Comments

just plain cool

[Presto Vivace]

I can't wait.

Re:just plain cool

[capnchicken]

It's not that cool. If they named it Plan 9 for outer space, that would be cool.

Go Europe!

[xpuppykickerx]

They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.

Re:Go Europe!

[rvw]

They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.

Yeah they claimed it, but we're going to take it! Muhahaha!!!!! :-P

Re:Go Europe!

[el_coyotexdk]

If we go there, who is going to stop us from removing the flags and claiming they never were there. All the conspiracy theorists would blieve us anyway. And the US doesnt have anything at the moment that can go to the moon :)

Re:Go Europe!

[Lord Lode]

[not serious] No they didn't really place flags there, because it was fake! Here's the proof [/not serious]

Re:Go Europe!

[4D6963]

All the conspiracy theorists would blieve us anyway

You mean all the 0.003% of the population they represent? Hmmm.. indeed, you don't want that...

Re:Go Europe!

[Ihmhi]

Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon? That's something I've always wondered.

It would shut a lot of people up pretty quickly.

Well that, or talk about how we just tied the thing to a missile and shot it at the moon like a javelin...

Re:Go Europe!

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

I would love to believe that 0.003% number. However, I'm afraid, from personal experience, that the number of people not believing men were actually on the moon is freeking HUGE! I know some (otherwise) intelligent and educated people who are "sure" the moon landings were faked.

The world sometimes *is* a scary place...

Re:Go Europe!

[el_coyotexdk]

they are the minority by far, i give you that. But at the same time they are the ones yelling the loudest. a bit like the trolls on /. ;)

Re:Go Europe!

[megaditto]

You know who else could be in the minority?

1) Honest politicians
2) People with over 140 IQ
3) Anti-slavery whites in ante-bellum 19th century South
4) People voting against Bush and Obama

Just because someone is in the minority doesn't mean what they believe isn't true or at least valid at some level.

Re:Go Europe!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could never, ever see the Apollo flags on the moon through a telescope. Partly it's because they are very, very small. But, mostly it's because they were not left behind. What is left behind on the moon are the LEM descent modules, plus miscellaneous equipment like those rover buggies from the later missions. Those are still too small to be seen from a telescope. However, once the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches later this year, it's LROC camera (a close cousin of the HIRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) should be able to see evidence of the Apollo missions.

Re:Go Europe!

[MaWeiTao]

I'm not sure what sort of people you know, but I don't know a single person who believes the moon landings were faked. And more than that, they think its ridiculous anyone would suggest otherwise.

Re:Go Europe!

[Tetsujin]

People voting against Bush and Obama

Oh, I hadn't realized Obama had chosen his running mate...

Re:Go Europe!

[kayditty]

wut

Re:Go Europe!

[kipman725]

we can't do that (no suitible telescope) but we can reflect signals off the dishes left on the moon by Apolo using radio telescopes. I don't know why nasa dosen't publisise that more as it does rather ruin the conspiracy argument.

Re:Go Europe!

[EchaniDrgn]

"No flag, no country, you can't have one! That's the rules that I've just made up, and I'm backing it up with this gun that was lent from the National Rifle Association."

Re:Go Europe!

[Lord Apathy]

Yeap, we are going to get brother jeb in the whitehouse. May god have mercy on us all.

Re:Go Europe!

[teh kurisu]

I know people that would question anything that the government says. If the government says crime is down, they'd refute it. If the government says that man has been to the moon, they'd give it a healthy dose of scepticism. If the government says that the moon isn't, in fact, made of cheese, they'd still pack crackers in their rocket ships.

Re:Go Europe!

[camperdave]

The Apollo astronauts left retroreflectors on the moon. These are devices that reflect a laser beam back in the direction it came from. If you were to shine a laser beam at the moon, you would see its reflection (given a powerful enough laser).

Re:Go Europe!

[hjrnunes]

Indeed. I would even say that it wouldn't surprise me that it's more probable for a minority to be right or true than the majority.

Which is great for democracy...

Re:Go Europe!

[nevillethedevil]

Best use of a random Eddie Izzard Joke ever.

Re:Go Europe!

[budgenator]

I remember seeing an actual video of the command module orbiting the moon taken through a big ass schmidt-cassegrainian camera telescope, you could just barley recognize the CM and it as on the ragged edge of the usage resolution. To image the flag from Earth or LEO is probably impossible but the Hubble would be the tool of choice to find out for sure.

Re:Go Europe!

[Tubal-Cain]

That'll be fake, too. In fact, there will always be conspiracy theorists on this until they can reach the moon without the benefit of a capsule and space suit. Because even if we took them to the site, they'll claim a hi-res screen/VR system is on the inside of their helmet or some other similarly futile argument.

Re:Go Europe!

[oni]

the US has already claimed it

"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind."

I wonder if China or Russia would make such a profound and inclusive statement.

Re:Go Europe!

[turgid]

I refute your refutation. Where is the blue string pudding?

Re:Go Europe!

[Fred_A]

On the other hand you can see the cheese has clearly melted where the lander thrust has hit. And the mounse infestation is consistent with current theories on moon composition.

Re:Go Europe!

[Fred_A]

Thanks to an ongoing education project, you can see the kinetic crater left by the first batch of conspiracy theorists there. There should be another batch sent around 2011 I think.

Good riddance I say.

Re:Go Europe!

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

I'm afraid I don't see the connection between my posting and your reply. Where did I say a minority must be wrong? I would even say that more often than not, it's the majority that has it wrong.

Could you plese elaborate?

Re:Go Europe!

[megaditto]

Sorry I meant to reply to the parent post here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=623203&cid=24304477

My appologies if I have besmirched you somehow.

Re:Go Europe!

[lsldesign]

Hang on, I thought that flag was in a studio somewhere in Nevada! 8)

Re:Go Europe!

[turgid]

Mouse infestation? They're Clangers!

the hell?

[jollyreaper]

Looks like a goddamn iCapsule. Damn you, Jobs!

Anyone else getting depressed with the space race? We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years, or in America's case, a 30 year wasted effort and then we come back to capsules. Repackaging the same old shit, up the price and call it a new version for the future, where have I seen this before? Oh, right, Microsoft. Apollo would be something along the lines of Win9x, better than what came before but not great. The shuttle would be like WinMil, we skipped XP and went straight to Vista with this Constellation debacle, and once that fails the next next shuttle successor will be something like Windows 7, a looming future failure.

*sigh*

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.

We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years

I wouldn't expect it to look like anything else. Like airliners or submarines the design is driven mainly by aerodynamics (hydrodynamics) and engineering constraints, not by the need to 'look' different in order to be fashionable or meet the expectations of someone who expects it to look.. I don't know, modern? Science fiction-y?

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that

Re:the hell?

[jollyreaper]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.

We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.

Indeed. I always thought space elevators seemed so fantastic as to be beyond belief but damned if that might become practical before the seemingly less-challenging Buck Rogers rockets.

I always liked the idea for the old Orion drive ships. "We're not going to be building these things like dainty tinfoil creations, they'll be welded together in drydocks like navy destroyers and weigh about as much. Float 'em out to see, light off the a-bombs, they can handle the weight." Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge? Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity, I'm wondering how bad the gamma flashes would be. Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean? How much ocean water would it take to block the rays? Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?

I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants.

It just seems like we're rehashing the way things were done before instead of coming up with something new. Is it that the technology is so bleedin' difficult to invent, is it a lack of money and political will, or would the danger of the technology be so great that there's no way in hell anyone would sign off on it? I mean, we could have built Orion in the 50's, we could crash-build one of those things in the event of some planetary emergency (i.e. needing to get Bruce Willis up to an asteroid to blow up), but nothing short of that would convince people to use nukes for go-juice.

Re:the hell?

[Wiarumas]

Perhaps they design it way because they know its a working model. While I agree that diversity and innovation might bring about positive change, let evolution bring about change rather than forcing it.

Re:the hell?

[Squapper]

Yeah. Where are my s-foils?!

Re:the hell?

[kestasjk]

Google the Orion project; space launches with nukes, payloads that could carry the entire ISS up in one go, along with a few spares, large enough to make inter-planetary colonization realistic, and it's not science fiction.

The problem is the fallout from the bombs of course. But if you take that radiation in perspective it does make you wonder if that would be a show-stopper for an important enough mission.

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... The real problem is that it's really hard to get into orbit. Launch loops, elevators, etc. have a lower marginal cost per launch but HUGE, GIGANTIC capital costs. Even if we bring costs per kilo to orbit down to one tenth of what they are now, (certainly not impossible IMHO) nobody but the super-rich will be vacationing in Earth orbit.

Re:the hell?

[WhiplashII]

Um, no. It costs $20 per pound delivered to orbit for rocket propellant. Since only, say, 1/4 of that is payload, say the true cost of propellant is $80 per pound of payload in orbit.

The vast majority of rocket launch expense is human salaries. The next largest expense is the expendable hardware. The propellant costs are down in the noise, approximately the same price as the celebration pizza party.

If you want to lower the cost of space access, don't bother with the engine technology - launch more often (so those salaries can be spread across more launches and people can get better at there jobs), and don't throw so much away (the shuttle throws away almost as much hardware as an expendable rocket).

Re:the hell?

[NiceGeek]

"I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants."

Isn't that the description for the Enterprise's impulse drive?

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

Orion is not feasible in the current political situation. Risk of hijacking of a space vessel fueled by _nuclear_ _bombs_ is too high.

Also, I don't really care about "important missions". I want a sustainable continuos space program.

There are projects of nuclear rockets (where a nuclear reactor heats gas to very high temperature), however. Maybe one day something will come out of them.

Re:the hell?

[sexybomber]

Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean? How much ocean water would it take to block the rays? Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?

Uh, I always thought that the Orion system was intended to be used in space (where fallout isn't exactly a problem), rather than for getting the vehicle off the ground. That said, and I digress here, it would actually be a decent answer to the whole nuclear proliferation problem:

1. US and Russia draw up specs for nuke-propelled ships.

2. US and Russia point all their remaining ICBMs straight up, instead of at each other (I'm sure that's where they're still aimed), and launch them into orbit. Maybe dock them at the ISS or something.

3. When we need to launch a mission, we send up the ship either on a conventional rocket or via a space elevator. Ship maneuvers to the ISS, picks up a bunch of ICBMs. Ship then maneuvers away from ths ISS (and everything else) and lights one of the ICBM payloads behind it.

4. BOOM. (Yeah, I know, in space, nobody can hear you detonate your nuclear weapons. Bear with me here.) Ship is now traveling very fast away from point of detonation.

5. ???

6. Profit?

Re:the hell?

[vlm]

Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity,

Yeah, other than that, magic pixie dust would be even better

Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean?

In summary yes as it would be far less polluting than the numerous above ground nuclear tests that were done.

Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?

Mostly no. The components would probably not be heavy metals that fission into terribly radioactive substances. Why use anti-uranium when anti-hydrogen is probably easier to deal with. Also nukes throw tons of neutrons out making massive neutron activated fallout problems whereas the antimatter reaction throws out lots of gammas which are ultra short wave electromagnetic radiation (light).

Would probably be pretty hard on the local whale, seagull, and fish populations due to the noise alone if nothing else.

Re:the hell?

[moosesocks]

Actually, I think it bears an uncanny resemblance to E.V.E.

Re:the hell?

[dreamchaser]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. As long as we are stuck using chemical rockets launched from the Earth's surface the basic capsule design works.

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

$20 per pound is WAY too small.

Let's calculate. The kinetic energy of 1 kg moving at 8km/s is 3.2*10^7J. The enthalpy of H2 combustion is 286kJ/mol but if we take O2 required for this reaction into account it'll be just 15.8kJ/g=1.58*10^7J/kg

So we'll need to burn at least:
1/2(m+Mf)*v^2=Mf*Jc where m is payload, Mf - mass of fuel and oxidizer, Jc - specific heat of combustion per 1 kg of fuel and oxidizer.

1/2(1+Mf)*6.4*10^7=Mf*1.58*10^7
(1+Mf)*3.2=Mf*1.58
Mf~=5.5kg of stochiometric fuel and oxidizer mix in the _ideal_ case.

That's more than $40/kg in real life (you can use the rocket equation for more precise estimation, I'm too lazy) and I did not took the weight of tanks and engines into account.

Re:the hell?

[ducomputergeek]

NASA went on the Single Stage to Orbit pipe dream throughout the 1990's. What Spaceship 1 got right was a Dual Stage to Orbit platform where you have a large conventional aircraft haul the orbiter to 60k feet, drop it, then let the orbiter boost from there. It's still expensive, but far cheaper per pound than the current systems and it could be done with current technology.

Basically SS1 did what Mercury/Redstone did in the 1950's. Granted we didn't have the unknown factors that they faced back then, but still, they did it for $25M. That's R&D, construction, and successful flights for $25M. Even if it took $100M to scale it up, that's still cheaper than anything thing else going.

Re:the hell?

[ianare]

4. BOOM. (Yeah, I know, in space, nobody can hear you detonate your nuclear weapons. Bear with me here.) Ship is now traveling very fast away from point of detonation.

a. it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.
b. it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.
c. how do you control direction ?

then there's the political issues ...

Re:the hell?

[WhiplashII]

Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!

Here are the real equations:

delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)

delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s

Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)

OK, so let's do some numbers:

9000 = 9.8 * 350 * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)

ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass) = 2.62
launch_mass/orbit_mass = 14

So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.

Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.

But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.

Re:the hell?

[Born2bwire]

Wait a second here. So we go from Gemini, to Mercury, to Apollo. We go from actually putting a man in space, to tinkering around with keeping a man up in space, to landing on the fucking moon. The ability to land on the moon rates something along the lines of Win9x, better than what came before but not great. If you can't get more enthusiastic about that then you're the Woody Allen of space enthusiasts.

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

Thanks for correction!

I really should have used the rocket equation rather than simple energy balance.

That's really interesting, if we can cut launch costs to about 3x fuel costs (as in airplanes) then we'll have a pretty viable space transport system.

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

"Spaceship" 1 is garbage. It's not even close to orbital speed (its maximum speed was 3518km/h while you need about 29000km/h to enter the LEO).

The whole "two stage" system is also mostly junk it just gives an extra 1000km/h which is totally lost when compared with the orbital speed.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

yup, eight engines and the same firing order as a small block chevy engine.

Re:the hell?

[WhiplashII]

True that - it is often said that we dream of having fuel costs matter in this industry!

(Actually, right now the airline industry launch costs are almost entirely fuel!)

Re:the hell?

[AJWM]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets.

Your second sentence doesn't quite say the same thing as the first. Current chemical rockets suck. NASA seems enamored of solid fuels which are low-powered (low Isp), require ridiculously heavy structure (the whole thing is combustion chamber), and messy. They claim they're "reusable", when what they mean is they crash them in the ocean and then salvage them. The H2/O2 liquid fuel mix ain't bad -- except that LH2 has such low density (water contains 50% more hydrogen per unit volume, plus all that oxygen) that the tanks have to be huge, again wasting structure weight. The usual "rocket scientist" answer to that is "oh, we'll densify the hydrogen", ie hydrogen slush. An engineer's approach would be "okay, use liquid methane".

The problem is that both NASA's and Russia's rocket technology is still heavily mired in 1950s thinking. Chemical rockets could be a lot better.

All that said, though, there is a limit on just how much energy you can get out of chemical reactions. Personally I like gaseous fission -- Max Hunter shows a design for an integral, reusable spaceship where the propellant tank is only about half the volume of the ship. Now that's a spaceship. I hear DUMBO isn't bad either. (DUMBO is a similar idea to NERVA -- heat the propellant by passing it through a reactor -- but with more and finer fuel channels to get more thrust. NERVA has high Isp but couldn't generate enough thrust to lift its own weight, DUMBO could.) We really need to get over our irrational fear of a little radiation; there are plenty of things that will kill you just as dead either faster or even less pleasantly that we don't have the same phobia about.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

The blast is deceptive, it is generated by the released gamma radiation being absorbed by surrounding matter rather than by the contents of the bomb absorbing energy. On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst and a in-ground blast is down-right disappointing. In space there is no practically atmosphere so there is little to expand due to the energy release except for the ablative coatings in the engines themselves. Eventually we'll be pushing asteroids around by detonating nuc's near them which will vaporize the surface facing the release and generating the expanding reaction mass.

Re:the hell?

[ianare]

Interesting, thanks for the correction.
However, wouldn't it make more sense to have a controlled output rather than a big blast ?

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

A lot of Russian rockets actually use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsymmetrical_dimethylhydrazine and NO3 as an oxidant. And Methane + O2 is a bit worse than UDMH+NO3 mix.

Personally, I like the idea of nuclear rockets. But they are just too far from reality.

Re:the hell?

[jedie]

1. Drag asteroid or other rock into geostationary orbit.

2. Dangle carbon nanotube based ropes onto planet surface

3. ????

4. Profit

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

But of course throwing stuff away saves on labor costs. One of the difficulties with the shuttle is the expense of inspecting it, refurbishing it, and testing it to get it ready to fly again. Many of those man-hours won't go away with more flights. People often think that "reusable" means something like your car; sure you do regular maintainence, but for the most part you just turn the key and go. The reality is much more like racecars, where the vehicle is dissassembled and tweaked between each race. To some extant the space shuttle is like NASCAR: the exterior resemblence to an aircraft (family car) is only skin deep.

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the description for the Enterprise's impulse drive?

Actually, it's the description for an inertial confinement fusion drive, an advanced type of a fusion drive, with theoretical exhaust velocities going up to 10,000,000 metres per second. Still on the drawing board, but could be made workable in about 50 (70?) years.

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

no.
they blow

Re:the hell?

[Gonzo The Gr8]

However, wouldn't it make more sense to have a controlled output rather than a big blast ?

Why do you assume that the blast will be uncontrolled? By varing certan variables in the 'bombs' it's a (relatively) trivial matter to vary their output. The most sensible way to build a so-called orion drive is to use directed bombs. You simply put your nuke in a radiation reflective casing that is open at one end, which is pointed at the spacecraft. Even if you are not using Dial-a-yeild nukes, you simply have to vary the aperature on the casing to change the amount of energy deing directed at the craft, which varies the thrust. Alternatively, you could just delay detonation, allowing the bomb to drift further from the ship, which would also, crudely, vary the thrust it recieves. This wouldn't exactly be cherry bomb under a trashcan.

Re:the hell?

[AJWM]

NO3? I think you mean NO4 - nitrogen tetroxide. At least that's what the US Titan uses and is used in the reaction control systems on eg Shuttle. The advantage is that mix is hypergolic, the disadvantage is that both components are highly toxic and corrosive.

I'm not sure by what criteria you're evaluation CH4+02 as "worse" -- it's less toxic and has a higher Isp.

Re:the hell?

[Cyberax]

Yes, of course it's N2O4 (I need to to write less posts after 20h coding session...).

Yes, and UDMH/N2O4 has a much bit worse Isp - about 330 seconds against 350-380 for LOX/CH4.

Re:the hell?

[yoprst]

There's no such problem. Chemical rockets are well tested and relatively cheap (unless their designers have screwed up). You can't get out of the gravity well for $10, live with that. The problems are mostly with what we lift - some space programmes are just pointless. Like project Constellation or ISS, for example.

Re:the hell?

[TheSync]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

Nuclear thermal rockets are the only way we can expect to efficiently become a space faring people. The problem is that there are some risks...

Re:the hell?

[AJWM]

Whoops, you're right, N204, not NO4. D'oh. I need to go get more coffee, I don't even have your excuse. ;-)

Re:the hell?

[rrohbeck]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that

They blow.

Reminds me of the woman at HP Germany where I gave a training many years ago. When we talked about a cooling fan, she asked: "Does it suck or blow?" Yes I was able to control my face, but it was hard.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

Oh yeah, Bussard Ramjets rocks as long as the Syncrotron Radiation doesn't fry your ass.

Re:the hell?

[Red Flayer]

Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge?

The problem is storing and transporting the antimatter. It can't be done reliably. So instead, you'd need to create the antimatter on board the ship. That'd need to be a pretty damn big ship.

Re:the hell?

[khallow]

There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets.

Sure there is. High launch frequency and reusable vehicles. Rocket propellant isn't expensive.

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.

That's why Orion pulse units have focusing systems to focus more of the blast in the direction of the vehicle being propelled.
 

it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.

Nope, pusher plates mounted on shock absorbers absorb the blast and deliver it smoothly to the main vehicle.
 

how do you control direction ?

Stop tossing bombs, use ordinary RCS systems to turn the vehicle, start tossing bombs again.

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst

What, you don't think water absorbs the energies from the bomb (gamma and x-rays) in the same way that the atmosphere does?

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

Google the Orion project; space launches with nukes, payloads that could carry the entire ISS up in one go, along with a few spares, large enough to make inter-planetary colonization realistic, and it's not science fiction.
 
The problem is the fallout from the bombs of course.

Well, Orion becoming practical was always predicated on cheap, clean (nearly pure fusion) bombs becoming practical - which never happened. The 'cheap' part is important too, as with the current cost of the bombs Orion is so expensive per lb as to make the Shuttle look like a bargain by comparison.

Re:the hell?

[oni]

a. it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.

Inefficient compared to what? An orion drive has the highest ISP of any propulsion system possible with our technology. In other words, it's *still* more efficient than a regular rocket.

b. it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.

false. Shock absorbers would be used. See project orion. This has been studied by engineers a lot smarter than you or I.

c. how do you control direction ?

This question shows an incredible ignorance of how space travel works. You seem to be imagining a need to turn a corner.

then there's the political issues

Only because we're all pansies. An orion drive operating in outer space wouldn't harm the "environment" such as it is up there. What it would do, by making space travel affordable, is to bring incredible wealth to our civilization. One moderately sized asteroid has more iron (or, for that matter, pick any metal you need) than has ever been mined by humans. And these orion drives are powerful enough to lift whatever equipment you need to mine and process an asteroid.

Imagine a future where there are no factories and no power plants on Earth. Earth is a place where people live in comfort. All the difficult and polluting stuff is done elsewhere. The difference between life for the average person today and life in the dark ages is very simply, a difference in the total wealth of civilization. That's what we're talking about here. Increasing total wealth by opening up access to space. Your ancestors stood on the coast of (for example) northern Europe and said, "gee, wouldn't it be great if we could get oil from the bottom of the ocean" and I'm sure some people lacked the vision and foresight to understand that getting the oil would make everyone's lives better - I'm sure they scoffed, said it was too hard or too expensive. Fortunately, better people made it happen. Today, our whole society is powered by oil. Without it, we'd be living like the Amish. When the oil runs out we will be like that again.

So today, we look out at space, and some people talk about getting to the wealth that's there. But other people just recoil in fear at the very mention of the word nuclear. The difference between us and our ancestors is that today, the pansies rule. We wont go to space, except aboard $20,000 per lb chemical rockets. We wont mine the moon or asteroids. We wont get much, if any, benefit for what we do in space. And when the oil runs out, we'll descend into dark ages again.

But, people like you who have an irrational and uninformed fear of nuclear power, will feel warm and fuzzy. Hope you enjoy it.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

3 drag carbon nanotube cable through a thunder storm
4 light up like Uncle Fester

The electric potentials on Earth often get pretty extreme during an electrical storm and carbon nanotube are conductive. I've seen videos of carbon nanotubes exploding when irradiated with a flash of light, that's a bad combination! If they shoot rockets into the sky to bring down lightening trailing a thin conductive wire or even a conductive contrail imagine what something massive like a space elevator cable will do!

Re:the hell?

[jedie]

what if your cables do not touch the earth but are rather holding up a floating base/platform at a certain height that could be helicoptered to?

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

That would have no practical benefit, any point on the cable or gondola would start a corona discharge that would eventually arc over, even airplanes get hit with lightening.

Re:the hell?

[jedie]

and isolating the carbon tubes?

Re:the hell?

[soldeed]

If you want to leave earth orbit you need a capsule. It is the only technology we have to survive re-entry at lunar return speeds. The shuttle would burn to a crisp coming back from the moon, if it could go. What does the shape matter anyway? You should'nt love a spaceship. you should love the going and exploring and adventure.

Re:the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbelievable. How can this tripe be labeled informative?

I don't think I've ever seen a bigger pile of excrement on /.

Nuclear explosions produce a large blast because there is a release of a large amount of energy over a short period of time.

Atmosphere absorbing gamma rays? I don't think so. Do some research in the the relative penetrating power of different types of radiation. Sure 100km of atmosphere will absorb some of the gamma radiation, but in my own experiments in the physics lab, it took 1cm of lead to significantly shield against even low energy gamma rays that my sample was producing.

An explosion in outer space will expand more rapidly and further than it does in the atmosphere due to the fact that some energy from the explosion is used up to do work (in the physics sense) against atmospheric pressure.

You sir/madam, have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and clearly do not even understand the basic principles involved.

sir fer

Re:the hell?

[bitrex]

On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst

What, you don't think water absorbs the energies from the bomb (gamma and x-rays) in the same way that the atmosphere does?

Indeed it does. I'm not sure which tests the grandparent poster may be referring to, but in the Operation Crossroads test two Fat Man designs were tested; Crossroads Able and Crossroads Baker. Crossroads Able was an air burst over the target fleet, Crossroads Baker was hung from a moored barge several hundred feet underwater (footage of the second test has been widely used in the media). While the Able air-drop caused moderate damage to the fleet, the underwater shot was judged to be far more powerful, completely wrecking a dozen vessels and severely damaging and contaminating many more.

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

I suspect he's confusing the visual effect with the blast effectiveness.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

An average bolt of lightning carries an electric current of 40 kiloamperes (kA) (although some bolts can be up to 120 kA), and transfers a charge of five coulombs and 500 MJ. The voltage depends on the length of the bolt, with the dielectric breakdown of air being three million volts per meter; this works out to approximately one gigavolt (one billion volts) for a 300 m (1000 ft) lightning bolt. With an electric current of 100 kA, this gives a power of 100 terawatts. Properties of lightning
I don't think it's possible to isolate from 1GV, that will rip atoms apart.

Re:the hell?

[budgenator]

the water absorbs the gamma too quickly which results in a smaller "fireball" and a smaller blast, dirt even more so. The "fireball" is the point where the color temperature of the radiated photons drop out of visible and into the IR spectra. Remember even a small nuclear blast is a big blast

Re:the hell?

[khallow]

Anyone else getting depressed with the space race? We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years, or in America's case, a 30 year wasted effort and then we come back to capsules.

No. Because while the technology may look the same, it is cheaper and better than it was before. Meanwhile the overall economy is bigger. So more money to throw at more capable vehicles and infrastructure. My take is that the problem isn't technological progress, but the economic viability of what we are doing in space. That's a lot harder problem to fix and I think we're finally making some serious progress towards it.

Re:the hell?

[DerekLyons]

I see, you are confusing gross visual effects with the power of the blast. (Hint: Water is more dense than air, dirt or rock is more dense than water.)

Re:the hell?

[M1FCJ]

The main point is using a slow but a powerful vehice to lift you outside the thick bit of the atmosphere, where normal rockets spend most of the fuel (i.e., first stage) to accelerate the whole lot through that thick, resistive column of air in front of you. That's why they can use a tiny amount of fuel (compared to any orbital rocket) to get a relatively large vehicle to 100km. When you think about it, the mass of fuel used in Alan Shepard's first flight into space is way more than what the X-15s used to burn, even including the carrier. SS1 is a natural extension of the same idea (with more people on board, slightly better performance).

Re:the hell?

[KlausBreuer]

> Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge?

Sure... let's use something even more dangerous and violent.
Using a couple of hunderd nuclear bombs to push a very heavy payload into orbit is an, um, strange idea. Makes very little difference (except in rquired size) if these are antimatter or not.

Using a nuke or AM will blow a LOT of very unhealthy stuff into the atmosphere. Doing about a hundred of them would be suicide, pure and simple.

Re:the hell?

[nasor]

Or use a rocket that's both really big and really cheap.

Re:the hell?

[WhiplashII]

Throwing stuff away saves on labor on current designs, because (as you say) the current designs are extreme cutting edge.

What we need to do is take a 1960s design, cut the rated payload in half, update all the materials to more recent stuff, and use the mass savings to make it reusable - as in old truck reuseable.

Why are we trying for a minimum mass solution when mass has no bearing on cost?

Re:the hell?

[bloodninja]

Reminds me of the woman at HP Germany where I gave a training many years ago. When we talked about a cooling fan, she asked: "Does it suck or blow?" Yes I was able to control my face, but it was hard.

I once heard a small child ~1990 (before such fowl language was commonplace) say "This wind sucks". His mother answered, and I can still hear her, "No, it blows".

Lunar?

[Amorymeltzer]

The choice of words "towards the moon" is very well done. Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface. Why not just go for broke? At the very least it'd be a huge PR coup.

Re:Lunar?

[GigG]

At the very least it'd be a huge PR coup.

Sure it would be. I can see the slogan now. "All of Europe did what the US did over 40 years ago."

Re:Lunar?

[Amorymeltzer]

And can't do now.

Re:Lunar?

[MaXMC]

Well all of Europe is now called EU so it's just the same thing. Only we have a lot of different people in charge you only have one idiot. I wonder what's best... :)

Re:Lunar?

[meringuoid]

Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface.

Not a bit of it. It's a question of fuel.

Having reached the Moon, you have to fire engines to slow down into orbit. Otherwise you loop around the back and head straight back to Earth like Apollo 13. So you need to carry fuel for this.

So now you're circling the Moon like Apollo 8. Good. To come home, you need to fire engines again to speed back up. More fuel.

But wait, you want to visit the surface? Then you need a lander. Those things are heavy. And it needs fuel: fuel to land, and fuel to take off again.

That's the trouble with spaceflight. It's all about fuel. Every manoeuvre burns fuel. Every kilogram of fuel means you need even more fuel at the start, just to carry that fuel into space with you. It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth. All the rest? Fuel tanks.

Re:Lunar?

[Amorymeltzer]

It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth.

As you so correctly state, fuel is the key. Except, the Saturn V only got them to the moon. Getting into orbit, landing, coming back up, and getting back to earth was the job of your minibus and tiny capsule. Clearly, it is quite possible to pull off the whole shebang by throwing a huge rocket at the back of it to get it off the planet (by far the hardest part). Using a system like the Saturn V or current boosters is by no means a far reach for them. It sure as hell wouldn't be easy, but if they're already getting to the moon, orbiting, and back again, I'm quite sure they could find a way to pop down to the surface for scientific rock-and-flag purposes.

Re:Lunar?

[GigG]

I used the term all of Europe because TFA said Russia was involved.

And you could be more wrong. We have lots of idiots in charge over here. Just like the EU.

Re:Lunar?

[GigG]

"Can't" and "do not have the public support to do" are two very different things.

The US has proven we can do it. The EU/Russia mission is still a theory. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they can't do it. I just doubt that the EU has any more political will to do it than the US does. What's the driving force behind them doing it? We had the Cold War.

Re:Lunar?

[meringuoid]

Except, the Saturn V only got them to the moon. Getting into orbit, landing, coming back up, and getting back to earth was the job of your minibus and tiny capsule.

Saturn V got Apollo to the Moon, with the fuel and equipment necessary to stop and land there and to come home again.

Let's see: the service module, the lunar excursion module, all the fuel for both of them... that's got to be three or four times the mass of the command module, which was all that got back to Earth (I haven't looked it up so this is probably well off). A rocket whose sole purpose was to send a crew around the Moon, but not to land, could have been a whole lot smaller than Saturn V.

Look at it this way: suppose that bringing along a lander and fuel supplies for a Moon landing doubles the mass of your spacecraft at the Moon. Then clearly, that must require that you at least double the size of the rocket on the pad.

I don't actually know what the plan would be for a Moon landing with this vehicle. The fact that it has its own thrusters for landing suggests to me that it might have a direct-ascent mission profile: no separate lander, just bring down the whole ship. NASA considered this approach when planning Apollo: it has the benefit of simplicity, but would have needed a more powerful rocket even than Saturn V to bring enough fuel. Perhaps with modern materials and engineering it could be done this way: but as the article says, no rocket powerful enough currently exists.

Re:Lunar?

[Urkki]

Alternative: have ability to refuel on orbit, so you can send the fuel with separate rocket or two, and fuel the landing capsule on lunar orbit (probably twice, once for landing and takeoff from the Moon, second time for the trip home).

Then you can cope with much smaller rockets. But of course refueling in lunar orbit is probably quite a complicated operation, and fatal if something goes wrong, and might be very hard with some rocket fuels... I guess all these complications are why it wasn't done with Apollo missions. But I bet we have a bit more advanced technology by now, and it might be easier now.

Re:Lunar?

[animaal]

"Can't" and "do not have the public support to do" are two very different things.

The US has proven we can do it.

Yeah, well, ten years ago I proved I can see my toes. Doesn't mean I can now.

Re:Lunar?

[Anonymous Coward]

And can't do now.

Firstly: wrong. Secondly: Can you people possibly get any more pathetic? Americans rule and Europeans drool. Get used to it.

Re:Lunar?

[tirerim]

Yeah, that's definitely the ticket. I think what you actually want to have is sufficient fuel to make it to lunar orbit and back again, so if anything goes wrong with the refueling, you're not stranded. Other possibilities include refueling in LEO, at the space station, say; since getting to orbit at all is by far the biggest fuel cost, this could work pretty well.

Of course, at that point you're talking about establishing infrastructure in lunar orbit, so the next step is to establish infrastructure on the moon itself, and refuel on the ground as well. This is especially effective if enough water can be found to be a fuel source (via electrolysis), though it's not clear how likely that is.

Re:Lunar?

[shimmyshimpson]

The Russians could have sent men to the moon too, years ago, but they didn't ?..why ?... not cost effective.

They sat back and thought "Let the silly Americans spend zillions on landing men on the moon. We will save our money and use it to send out unmanned probes to the Moon, Mars, Venus and gain more REAL knowledge at a fraction of the cost. It's not like we have anything to prove anyway, we were first into space......."

They were sensible. Let the US take the lead on flashy show-pony one upmanship while they got on with the job more effectively.

Re:Lunar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absent lunar resource utilization, there's NO reason to refuel in lunar orbit. The delta-V to get that fuel from Earth Orbit to Lunar orbit is the same whether you send it there in one or two vehicles. You should instead refuel or dock in Earth orbit, where home is a simple de-orbit away in case something goes wrong. Now there might be some advantage to dropping tankage (staging) after LOI.

Its going to land how?

[__aarcfd8085]

I'm not sure I'd be too happy if I was being put in that, the booster landing thing sounds like its asking for trouble if you get low on fuel, or they get knocked out of alignment or a floating point error messes up their servo controllers....

At least with a parachute or wings you know that so long as they are they they will work. Also I imagine that it will require a huge amount of fuel to turn it around and then slow it.

Or have I got the wrong idea and they're going to parachute in and then just use these at the end at which point again you have to ask - why bother?

Re:Its going to land how?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I thought this at first, too. But if they're using the thrusters for deceleration, rather than a "soft" landing, then it makes more sense. It would lessen full reliance on fragile tiles or replacing ablative shielding.

Re:Its going to land how?

[__aarcfd8085]

I suppose so but thats going to be a LOT of fuel to keep it controlled all the way in even just for deceleration its going to be a significant amount of the fuel (in fact I would imagine it would be the majority of the mass of the pod)

That being said it is a lot more sensible than just letting it drop. It'll certainly be interesting to see if it can get to the moon.

Re:Its going to land how?

[sznupi]

I'd guess the thrusters are used only during final touchdown to soften the landing...JUST LIKE SOYUZ DOES (and if they fail, the touchdown will simply be a little rough...JUST LIKE IN SOYUZ)

Re:Its going to land how?

[dreamchaser]

Exactly. Any other way would be prohibitive in terms of the amount of fuel you'd need.

Re:Its going to land how?

[zbharucha]

Good luck using a parachute to land on the moon!

hmm

[lampsie]

...but the greatest advantage of Soyuz is that its simple (well, as simple as spacecraft can get), which this craft looks to have missed.
Including thrusters and stuff for landing seems a bit, well, superflous - oh don't get me wrong, I can see the advantages, but I'd rather have to deal with a parachute and explosive bolt than a bunch of complex thrusters.

KISS should apply for any Soyuz replacement (er, the philosophy, not the band)
Just my 0.02c

Re:hmm

[sznupi]

But Soyuz DOES include thrusters for softer touchdown... (which is simply a little rough when they fail)

Re:hmm

[budgenator]

Actually the Russians are the de facto masters of hybrid parachute-thruster technology, not only do they use it for their spacecraft their military use the same technic for parachuting heavy cargo in military airdrops.

Why thrusters?

[kipman725]

Why land on a planet with a thick atnosphere like earth using thrusters causing you to have to waste spcae and launch weight on alot of propelant. I understand that this thing is also meant to land on the moon so requires some landing thrusters (no atnosphere) but the moon has a mere fraction of the earths gravitic attraction and so if the capsuale use parachutes aswell as thrusters there would still be a weight saving. Even probes that land on mars usualy use parachutes aswell as thrusters even though it has a much lower density atnosphere than earth.

Re:Why thrusters?

[WindBourne]

Almost certainly, they are thinking mars and the moon. But I consider this a backwards step. It seems that all of the initial steps should be specialized rather than generalized in the same fashion that the shuttle was. The Orion and Dragon are highly specialized. I suspect that we will see other countries heading in the right direction, by specializing rather than making it the end-all.

Re:Why thrusters?

[Anonymous Coward]

If youd RTFA, thrusters are for "soften its landing". Russian Voschod used same system to slow down from "sucessfull, but bonebreaking" landing to something more healthy. Whole thing went off in one big puff, in less then a second. And although Voschod's were flying coffins in many aspects, this feature certainly worked.

Parachutes are still used, but sometimes weight-needed-to-withstand-stress factor is to high.

While you're at it...

[stretchpuppy]

...swing by Cape Canaveral and pick up the US astronauts holding their thumbs up.

All things aside, think about what they went to the moon in, and landed with, for the Apollo missions.

I'd sure as shit rather be in a capsule and lander from 2008 than the 60s.

Towards the Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

They forgot to mention that there isn't any rocket capable of sending that capsule to Moon orbit.

Re:Towards the Moon

[trongey]

They forgot to mention that there isn't any rocket capable of sending that capsule to Moon orbit.

Unless you count the part that says, "But if the agencies want a manned craft capable of reaching the Moon, they will need to develop new, more powerful rockets than those on the drawing board today."

Re:Towards the Moon

[meringuoid]

Actually, they did say that. Reread TFA.

The lack of a Saturn-class booster does pretty much kill the idea though. Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster, not when there's no commercial use for it and no guarantee of continued political backing for manned Moonshots.

Hence the first related story linked from TFA, which discusses the prospect of an ATV-derived spacecraft to launch on an Ariane 5. Much cheaper, and using existing kit. Funding for it might require political change in Britain, however, which has so far refused to get involved in manned projects.

Re:Towards the Moon

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

> Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster

They don't need to fund the development, they can just dust-down the plans for the Energia launcher ( and rebuild the jigs, and recast the parts etc etc )

Even in its basic, twice-flown configuration it can loft 95 tonnes to LEO. Strap-on derivatives were proposed for 170 tonnes.

And as it was designed to lIft Buran, it is designed to be man-rated.

http://www.buran-energia.com/energia/energia-desc.php

In Soviet Russia....

[loafula]

...spacecraft fly you.

or an iPod

[ryanscottjones]

Looks like a goddamn iCapsule. Damn you, Jobs!

"Open the iPod bay doors, Jobs!"

What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

This is not deliberate flamebaiting, but can somebody tell me why it is exactly that we're spending so much money on this stuff?

Come on, people have been to the moon. There ain't much going on there. People can't go to Mars, because it would be a one-way trip.

It's just too expensive and there's nothing to do up there that we couldn't do with robots. I blame science fiction shows. I think everyone has it lodged in their heads that we will all be flying around in spaceships within a few hundred years. Trust me, we will not. Much better to spend the billions and billions of dollars on lots of probes, better very-long-range telescopes and hell, poverty relief for those left on Earth? /rant

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[Amorymeltzer]

You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?

It's human nature to see something you can't do and then try to do it. Why bother scaling Everest? It served no purpose, but it was there and we did it. There should be no area of human existence where we refuse to advance ourselves - whether poverty relief, musical innovation, or space exploration. Mankind needs to do more, it needs to search higher. Knowing more about the universe is never a bad thing, and while cost-analysis should be taken into consideration, it borders on inhumane to deny our basic instincts for discovery.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[carlc75]

The point is exploration. Having a robot doing it isn't whats human. And theres only so much initative a robot can implement.

Remember 200 years ago we were still fighting each others with bayonettes and muskets.

Who knows what the future hold?

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[vlm]

You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?

A much better question is what's the point of yet another anti-human space exploration rant, when there's already too many uncreative ones whining for yet more money for programs that are already recognized as miserable failures, more than enough for a lifetime of reading. So, why not close up shop, stop posting anti-human space exploration rants, and redirect all that effort into poverty relief?

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

All your metaphors are stupid! Music is art and costs nothing. Mountainering is a sport and costs nothing. Well, not much.

I take your point about human exploration but there should be some hope of discovering something useful, or at least interesting.

There is not a chance of humans finding anything like that in our solar system. Robots might, therefore lets send more robots.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[JWW]

Ok.

1) Permanent Moonbase, with benefits of
a) Research opportunities in microgravity (I know ISS has this but you could do bigger scope projects on the moon).
b) Mining. Finding rare minerals would be key.
c) Platform base for building missions to other planets. Sure going to Mars can be done without going to the moon. But it might be a good launching platform for missions to Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Also the aforementioned atomic methods could be usable from teh moon.
d) Expand Scientific knowledge of the moon. Expanding mankind's knowledge is a good thing.
e) Building/Testing a Space Elevator. Building and testing of a space elevator would be much easier on the moon.

There are lots and lots of reasons to go to the moon. To send the argument back the other way, why the hell should the American taxpayer be bailing out people (and banks, really mostly banks) that got in over their head with their mortgages? We should spend THAT money on space exploration!!

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

I apologise profusely for being politically incorrect. And I already acknowledged I was ranting. But tell me - what is the objective of human space exploration?

Providing star-trek based w*nk fantasies for Slashdotters? Or is it something useful? If the latter, please do fill me in.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[Anonymous Coward]

...There is not a chance of humans finding anything like that in our solar system...

There were times when "there was no chance of humans finding anything useful or interesting outside old continent". At least according to some similiarly shortsighted people.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

a) Bigger? Are you sure? How big could a moonbase be?
b) Robots.
c) We are not sending people to Mars. We cannot get enough fuel across to escape Martian gravity, so it would eb a one way trip. Please stop this.
d) It's a dry, dusty rock. It may be useful, but it ain't very interesting. Also, robots. e) Oh come on.

I do agree with you about bailing out ridiculously risky mortgages though.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[rally2xs]

Well, perhaps you've heard that we may be able to mine our last available Gallium ore in about 10 years? Copper in 100 years? Zinc is on the endangered species list, too, so if you like galvanized anything that doesn't rust, well, you may be out of luck without moon-visiting tech. We better develop the tech to disassemble the moon for its natural resources, and launch them back to earth (electrically, with a railgun powered by solar, hopefully) and then maybe we can pave the Mojave with Gallium-consuming solar cells and run the country on solar. But without more Gallium... its going to soon come to a screeching halt.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[wasted]

...Music is art and costs nothing...

...until the RIAA lawyers show up.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[AJWM]

Now I wish I hadn't already posted so that I could mod you down to oblivion ;-)

You have no soul, and even less imagination. I'd accuse you of being an AI but I'm not sure the second word applies. No doubt you feel (not think) that Isabella should have fed the poor instead of funding Columbus -- and five hundred years later we'd be far worse off. Voyages of exploration and discovery both raise the technology level, and thus the overall standard of living, and lift the human spirit.

Besides, it's not an either/or. We spend far more money on "poverty relief" already than on space exploration -- just look at the federal budget.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[Oktober Sunset]

well, there's this thing called science...

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[budgenator]

It shouldn't be that hard to send a cache of fuel to fuel a return trip.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[VanillaCoke420]

I'm tired of this attitude. How about humans never going anywhere? After Leif Ericsson landed in the North America, what was the point of going there again? Why did we ever leave Africa? Sure, once or twice, that's cool. But you know the most insightful and not at all casually and mindlessly used saying; "Been there, done that".

We could and should do exploration in two stages, reconnaissance and field study. Robotic missions can be used to orbit new worlds to get the big picture, and to do some exploration on the site. But it's not enough. After you've done that, send in the scientists and the explorers, together with equipment, labs, rover vehicles and robots. They would stay on the ground, see things from a new perspective, be able to do real field science by seeing the landscape in the right context, to study rocks and formations that they find more or less by luck or from predictions based on robotic reconnaissance missions in combination with their observations from the ground. The science return would be immense.

And that's just one reason to go: Good science. There are other reasons to extend a human presence in the Solar System. One is the survival of our civilisation.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

to get to escape velocity you'd need a big rocket. Think maybe half the size of the Saturn V. Getting off the moon is comparatively easy.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

Bullshit. Another moonshot would be a flag mission and nothing else. They are not spending money like this for science.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

Well done for assuming everyone is an American like you. Speaking of the US; your annual foreign aid budget is a disgrace, minuscule.

So yes, I think you should feed the poor a bit more and try to look big a bit less.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[AJWM]

Who said I was American? Okay, TFA is about Russian-European programm - s/federal/European national/.

As for you telling other people how they should spend their money -- how rude.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[jambox]

Wow, got some abuse there. OK, this time with references:

There ain't much going on there.

Apologies, the Apollo mission did do some great stuff for science but most of it could be done by robot these days. That is progress.

People can't go to Mars, because it would be a one-way trip.

Read this in the NY Times.

It's just too expensive

With $55 billion you could feed, clothe an educate every man women and child in Rwanda for a decade, assuming their GDP is about $3bn.

and there's nothing to do up there that we couldn't do with robots.

Sample return would be much easier and cheaper without bulky, fragile humans.

Much better to spend the billions and billions of dollars on lots of probes, better very-long-range telescopes

Are we alone in the universe? Manned missions won't tell us, bigger telescopes might.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[Captain Nitpick]

a) Research opportunities in microgravity (I know ISS has this but you could do bigger scope projects on the moon).

The Moon does not have a microgravity environment. If you let go of a feather and a bowling ball, they fall.

b) Mining. Finding rare minerals would be key.

No more likely there than on Earth.

c) Platform base for building missions to other planets. Sure going to Mars can be done without going to the moon. But it might be a good launching platform for missions to Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Also the aforementioned atomic methods could be usable from teh moon.

Where are you going to get the fuel? Launching fuel from Earth to the lunar surface just to burn it to get back off again does not save you any effort. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress.

d) Expand Scientific knowledge of the moon. Expanding mankind's knowledge is a good thing.

This is a question of whether using the resources to expand knowledge elsewhere or accomplish something else entirely would be more useful.

e) Building/Testing a Space Elevator. Building and testing of a space elevator would be much easier on the moon.

It's not that much easier. The Moon may have a sixth the gravity of Earth, but it also rotates very slowly and orbits an object much bigger than itself. This means that a lunar space elevator has to be twice as long as one on Earth, and will have an unstable counterweight that requires active rebalancing.

There is one major advantage, existing materials can be used due to the lower stresses.

To send the argument back the other way, why the hell should the American taxpayer be bailing out people (and banks, really mostly banks) that got in over their head with their mortgages? We should spend THAT money on space exploration!!

If, hypothetically, the economic system collapses, what money would we have to spend on space exploration?

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[Melkman]

Two fold anwser:

a) What is the objective of you existing ? (Yeah, I know it's lame but we do things because we are here. Why did Colubus sail the Atlantic ?)

b) Earth will not be able to sustain humanity. It may stop doing so in a relatively near future or in millions of years but it will stop one day. So being prepared to take a hike and live somewhere else is probably a sensible thing to do. Getting prepared will take a long time though. Better start now.

Re:What's the flippin' point?

[VanillaCoke420]

You really believe that, don't you? Of course it will be a flagship. Doesn't mean real science is out of the question. Did you really dismiss what I said about the science return being great? The Apollo project was a flagship ofcourse. But it's impossible to say that it didn't contribute tremendously to our understanding of the Earth-Moon system... unless you're ignorant or have intentions of misleading the ignorant. Which is it?

A scientific Lunar base will be a place of exploration and science. It can be a national flagship or whatever, but you really should not say that it can't therefore do real science.

Re: The Summary

[RealErmine]

The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon

Apparently the ESA / Russia are ushering in a new age of "close enough" space exploration.

News Report, 2021:Today astronauts from the ESA will begin a new chapter of space exploration by first going up really high, and then kinda drifting off in sort of a that way direction. The mission captain was interviewed recently concerning the importance of today's historic flight.

"We are confident that the up portion of the mission will go smoothly. We then plan to transfer to the next stage where, God willing, we will be the among the first humans to end up somewhere over toward the Moon." He commented, waving vaguely off toward the sky.

Is it just me...

[ngdbsdmn]

Is it just me or is that thing shaped like a giant eu-ru dick head? Just imagine it with a long booster attached on the launch ramp. What would the TV comment sound like? And now 3, 2, 1... woooowww yeah baby!

Same shit....

[Lord Apathy]

Okay, it looks cool, I'll give you that. An it is much better design than that repackaged Apollo wanna be that nasa is going to put up. But you know what? It's still dead end technology. It's the same crap we've been doing for the last 40 years, just in a shinny new package. The landing thrusters are something new, I'll give you that.

But it's the 21 century now. Time to do something new. Why don't we build a fucking space ship? Not capsules or orbiters but a honest to god ship. We've got most of the technology on the shelf now and what we don't have is almost finished. Time for most space fairing countries to end the space race and lets work together and build a Discovery or Leonov.

We've got nuclear power plants used in submarines that are small enough to power the bitch. There where plans and tests for nuclear rockets in the '60s. There are test phase plasma rockets being tested now. There are still some issues to workout. Active shielding using magnetic fields is still in the test but looks good. And long term life support is still and issue but that to is looking good. But these are not unsolvable problems.

Re:Same shit....

[misterzero]

They may not be unsolvable problems, but by and large, they are problems that have to be solved by throwing money at them. A lot of money.

As it is, an actual ship would probably have to be built in orbit, because building it down here and then sending it into orbit, assuming it could even get off the ground, would be expensive.

So, you're right; it's not necessarily a problem of technology, but one of logistics; and the fact that most nations are not really willing to work together to accomplish this.

Re:Same shit....

[Tablizer]

Okay, it looks cool, I'll give you that... much better design than that repackaged Apollo wanna be that nasa is going to put up.

That image is just a pre-prototype. The production version will probably have lots of doo-dads and panels on the outer surface and look more like Apollo/Orion, but with a bulge. I guess it's male, eh?
     

Re:Same shit....

[Lord Apathy]

Ships are always supposed to be female, but it's part Russian so that must count for something.

It all comes down to money is what it does. I hate to use examples like this but you know what type of ship we could build if we had the $$$ they spent on the Iraq war?

Re:Same shit....

[Tablizer]

you know what type of ship we could build if we had the $$$ they spent on the Iraq war?

An even bigger cone-shaped capsule, perhaps.
           

Re: The Summary

[ACDChook]

And my legs were designed to propel my body towards the moon - all I have to do is jump. I may not go a huge distance towards the moon, but (at least when the moon is overhead) I am definitely propelled towards it.

How do we know it's manned?

[Illbay]

I don't see a man in there.

After Soviet Russia, suspicion is hard to allay.

Re:Go black budgets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Being able to see hardware on the moon is technically not proof a human landed there and placed it. We have stuff on Mars now that was remotely delivered.

Just a nit picky point.

What I think is more interesting as space conspiracies go are the unusual photos of black budget orbiting space craft and speculation that some of them might be manned. Along with the reports of advanced flying machines, some of which might have at least minimal exoatmospheric/ sub orbital or LEO potential, as in, they aren't admitting to anything newer or much better than the sr-71 or like B-2, which are freeking decades old now. I think a good rule of thumb is, first take whatever they admit to, going by past history, then extrapolate they have three generations more out there, first, totally wild stuff just being developed, second, limited prototypes in good working condition, and third, very small fleets of deployed full production runs of secret craft. And I don't consider the f-22 to fall into any of those categories. I would consider the big black triangles that a whole lot of people have seen to be somewhere in those categories though.

Rover?

[Illbay]

Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?

Well, our esteemed Houston (Democrat) Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that the Mars Pathfinder could do that for us.

But I guess then they'd claim Pathfinder was fake.

They don't suck they blow

[threeturn]

The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.

If you've built a rocket that sucks you are doing it wrong. They need to blow!

Dear Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay off our moon.

Sincerely,
The U.S.

Go Yerp!

[Tetsujin]

Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?

Flag on the moon. How did it get there? Secret data. Pictures of the Moon. Secret Data, never before outside the Kremlin. Manâ(TM)s first rocket to the Moon.

Re:Go Yerp!

[Lord Apathy]

There is plenty of proof that we went to the moon with out looking for the flags.

The first if the radio signals themselves that the moon mission used. Those messages where on an open channel so anyone could listen in. You bet the Soviets where listening in to every word said. They would have went over those communications with a tweezers and microscope. If they found anything specious they would have screamed bullshit. Plus you know they had spies inside nasa watching everything.

The only people with reason and the technology to question the moon landings never has.

A Better Way

[DesScorp]

When I meet a lunar landing skeptic, I tell them about the LLRE laser ranging program. In short, during Apollo, we put a bunch of reflectors on the Moon, and to this day, we shoot lasers at them to gauge the precise distance from the Earth to the Moon. Kind of hard to fake that on a soundstage.

Re:A Better Way

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed a couple of critical steps in the process, JockTroll. After the loserboy is on the ground, unconscious and yet still screaming in his comatose state, place the base of his spine on the edge of a curb and jump on his stomach until his back cracks and he becomes paraplegic.

But even that is not enough. You must then make certain that his man-boobs grow larger, and his already desiccated frame becomes flabbier and weaker. Rip off his pants, which are most assuredly bargain-bin due to his inability to hold down even a Target cashier job, thus revealing his stained tighty-whities. Reach in them and grab his shrunken peanut-balls. Twist them and twist them until the artery servicing them with blood is completely closed off, and then punch the scrotum. Within a few hours, his unused balls will die, and the weak testosterone that they had been pumping into his cholesterol-clogged veins will be no more.

It is only then that the full defeat of the loserboy nerd is realized.

Curious.

[camperdave]

I'm curious. What is your take on the NERVA/Nuclear Light Bulb style rocket?

Re:Curious.

[WhiplashII]

My take:

Really cool technology. Totally impractical, mainly for political reasons.

If you gave me one for deep space missions, I would use it. But I wouldn't pay for it - and it really does nothing for the real problem, going from Earth to LEO.

Re:Curious.

[camperdave]

It seems plausable as an Earth to LEO system to this guy. I haven't verified any of these figures, but it sounds very promising. A million kilos to LEO is nothing to sneeze at.

Re:Curious.

[WhiplashII]

If you ignore the political ramifications (and you want to spend several billion anyway), it is good for LEO and out. Up to LEO, it could do the mission, but the environmentalists would eat you alive - probably with good reason. Containment just isn't likely to be very good in a minimum mass engine, especially if something goes wrong.

Personally, I think there are better ways to spend a billion dollars to improve space access. I'm currently spending my own money on one - we'll see how that works out, but there are a lot of other smart people working on the LEO problem; one of us is going to solve it.

A wise man once said: "You cannot decrease the cost of space access by spending a lot of money." I believe there is a lot of truth to that - you need a cash conservative organization to make it cheap.

I wouldnt

[Technopaladin]

I wouldnt mind being the SECOND person up in that capsule. I am cautious a person by nature.

big difference between CAD drawing and working one

[peter303]

Orion is already five years into design, testing, and production, despite being behind schedule.

"Official Images"?

[Tablizer]

I like the unofficial images better.

Question

[pragma_x]

This poses an interesting concept: how to destroy something on the moon?

Say you're an astronaut tasked with removing a non-US flag from the lunar surface. What the hell do you do with it?

* You can't hide it in your return vessel - someone might find it.
* You can't "space" it once on your return vector since it might be spotted, plus the airlock activity would show in the mission log.
* Burning it is out of the question.

I guess that leaves "put it under a rock" as your only option, but someone could stumble upon it later anyway.

Re:Question

[Melkman]

Easy, you put it on the outside of your craft during reentry. Preferably on the heat shield.

Re:Question

[el_coyotexdk]

someone might find it? who? it might not be only the astro/cosmonauts that are in on it. they could just bring it back and bin it. or stick it in a bag to the outside hull - it'd get incinerated on reentry. with the government being in on it, they could "space" the flag in the general direction of the sun, no need to worry about logs. Rutine external maintenance happens. Lastly they could feed it to the sharks with lasers on their heads that all space craft are required to bring on space flights lasting longer than 10 standard days!.

Re:Question

[Fred_A]

* Burning it is out of the question.

Why ? Is it because of rule 42 ?

Oops, sorry, I've said too much already !

Very cool

[thedistrict]

I don't have a problem with this. I think it's great that other countries are getting up there. We don't have the money to get up there right now, but eventually we can get back into it and maybe make some sort of ISS or something effort ot go to other planets. I think this is a big step for our future of seeing or colonizing (or mining) other planets in the solar system.

Uh, you do realize a kg is 2.2 pounds, right?

[tlambert]

"$20 per pound is WAY too small." ...
"That's more than $40/kg"

Uh, you do realize a kg is 2.2 pounds, right?

Did you work on the Mars Climate Orbiter mission by any chance?

-- Terry

we left a bit more than flags

[aepervius]

IIRC we left mirrors which are used regularly by pinging laser onto their surface. So.... It might be a bit obvious if we remove them than removing a flag. By the way, I do wonder how the conspirawcy theorist "we never went to the moon" do explain away the mirrors. Maybe santa & rudolf placed them for christmas as a gift for the Nasa ß

Re:we left a bit more than flags

[el_coyotexdk]

Or they've just been pinging a very shiny rock all this time ;)

Re: The Summary

[KlausBreuer]

The worst thing about this is that, given our trust in gouverment and media, by 2021 we expect to see that kind of vague information...

Looks like a dog!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it only me, or does it look like a dog with blue eyes and straight ears?