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The Fight Over NASA's Future
swestcott writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about the transition to the Obama administration and NASA's transition to the new Orion."
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NASA will last exactly as long as the American people are willing to keep spending money that we don't have and adding to the U.S. national debt. Coincidentally; that is also the exact lifespan of medicare/social security without income limits, the Iraq military budget, the government bailout packages, and the budgets of a wide variety of unnecessary pork projects.
Sadly, NASA is a drop in the bucket compared to most of this other stuff and is doing important research, but it is still money spent that we just don't have. And if we don't get the deficit under control soon, the U.S. government is probably going to be looking at bankruptcy somewhere around 2020. And if that happens, it's going to make this current financial crisis look like a sunday school picnic (we're talking Germany in the early 1920's bad).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
TFNYTA seemed head and shoulders above what I've read of Aries before. This quote struck me:
TFS wasn't nearly as good; the transition team was barely mentioned. Actually I was glad; there was more discussion of the actual Aries project itself and the problems with abandoning space for a few years while Aries is being finished.
Free Martian Whores!
Troll biter's rehab. Damn but it's hard to ignore the clueless trolls. I guess I'm off the wagon again, I have to respond.
"Pork"? WTF??? Do you have any idea how many technological advances, especially in medicine, that have come from the space program?
Do you have cable TV? A cell phone? GPS? None of these would be possible were it not for the "pork spending" on space. All of them rely on sattelites.
"physics"? What kind of drooling anti-nerd can't understand that launching a heavy machine into outer space doesn't use physics?
"Chemistry?" You realise how much chemistry work is involved in fuels?
If I were modding I would be undecided whether to mod the parent as "troll" or "funny". Who let all these clueless MBAs in here anyway?
Free Martian Whores!
I'd like to see a move away from the Ares-Orion stack and a move towards the more versatile Jupitor plan.
I'd also like to see us make serious use of the press and make our move back to the Moon and eventually to Mars as much as an event as the original Mercury-Gemini-Apollo missions. You have to make it romantic for the public so they feel like writing their Congresscritters to support funding.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Quit whining about budgets and work on cutting edge projects?
HELLOOOO
Why do you think they are not? Simple because their budget isn't there. They can't pie in the sky because they aren't getting money. They don't generate enough votes.
Politicians look for votes. Our money buys them votes. As such they will put the money to where it gets the most votes for the least investment. NASA is a large investment for a small return, 10 billion spent at NASA doesn't cover nearly as many votes as 10 billion on a new bridge or entitlement program. I am quite sure they have lots of CE projects on file, they just know they will not even get a hearing because the politicians are more concerned about feeding the greed of America's new looter class because that class keeps them in power.
Science and Math will become a priority when they generate votes. Just like your child's education, when those kids can vote then education will become a priority, they don't worry about the parents because every parent thinks their school is fine - its just those other schools. Hence education gets dumbed down, kids don't learn, instead of wanting to become a scientist they want to play ball and space sits out there waiting for a nation driven by pride and hard work will be the one to exploit it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
NASA is being set up to fail, because of the prevailing pro-corporate attitude in the US. The idea is that private entities are efficient, responsible, and capable of long-term planning and technological development. So nobody wants to be accused of being 'socialist' by giving more money to a government agency.
The original Apollo program cost $135 billion in modern(ish) money over about 10 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_costs_and_cancellation
Whereas Constellation is being given $3 billion a year for about 20 years, or about $60 billion in current money.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10004394.2006.html
So the US government is expecting a great deal more, for a lot less money, when there has been no real development in interplanetary manned travel since Apollo.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
i worked for a government agency in partnership with NASA, and unfortunately we were told last year that our budget was stagnant for 3 years in a row and wasn't going up (possibly down).
it is pretty ridiculous to keep budgets stagnant or to lower them and then expect the same output or better. inflation, hardware price increases (we used a lot of legacy systems that were very expensive), annual raises (believe me, not much), and everything else make up the shoestring budget that we were running off of. i don't understand all of the NASA budget cuts. it is an investment into science and our future. and a lot more goes on under NASA than just rockets and spaceships.
"I don't frankly know what the answer is," [Dr. Crowley, of MIT] said, "but I know it's a lot closer and a lot more complicated answer than the one playing out in the media and the blogs."
I think they're talking about us.
===
But in all seriousness, the cost of running the shuttle for 5 years is $x and the cost of developing the Constellation program in 5 years is $y. Meanwhile, NASA's budget is not x+y and if they wanted to try to develop Constellation in 3 years its cost would be closer to $y^2.
It seems like people can't grasp the rudimentary guideline of engineering development: you've got limitations in quality, cost, and timeliness, and on any challenging project you need to pick one of those limitations that you won't particularly worry about.
I do like the articles conclusion though... NASA's budget is way too small for the amount of good that it can do for the world and for the amount of high-tech science jobs that it can create. As long as everybody in the nation has food, shelter, telecommunications, and power... there is no reason NASA's budgets shouldn't balloon.
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If you want to die in a fire, then I suggest you go do so.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The moon program was sold in a time when people in the US were afraid of a world ruled by Soviets. Manned space travel needs to be sold better, or rather, it needs a reason to be. Science is a hard sell since robots can do maybe 95% of the same work with maybe 5% of the budget.
Actually, we have no freaking clue what killed the dinosaurs. But even if it was a meteorite/asteroid (as you smugly imply), it would still be a LOT smarter to pump our money into digging tunnels here on earth (where we at least have large existing supplies of oxygen, water, geothermal heat, and survivable atmospheric pressure) than pumping it into a pipe-dream of surviving the MUCH more hostile environs of any other reachable planetary body. Even after a large asteroid hit, I'd still rather be on Earth than anywhere else in the solar system.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here is a video on how they work http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7425960.stm
for text try http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=getting-a-handle-on-space
Even after a large asteroid hit
Why do we have to take the hit if we have a workable space program? I'd rather deflect the damn thing than start digging tunnels while meekly accepting the fact that the vast majority of the human race and biosphere would die off.
The space program is pretty cheap if you look at it that way.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I disagree. A large portion of US Government owned patents come from NASA. These patents are then licensed out, or auctioned off in exchange for money. Give them funding to create money for themselves and US. It's only a liability if you refuse to utilize it as an asset. Where the other things you mentioned are pork, funding NASA can easily reap economic benefits if the administration in charge would choose to use it like they did back in the 1960's.
The whole Orion program was basically just a re-do of Saturn/Apollo anyway.
Columbus' journey was basically just a re-do of Leif Ericson's anyway. The ISS was basically just a re-do of MIR.
Free Martian Whores!
The second point is operative today. The domestic economy is in meltdown. Going ahead with this program is akin to giving the aerospace industry a bailout. If it needs one, then let's just give them the money outright.
No statement is true, not even this one.
Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.
I do not have to get more specific than that. They may have focused on the most prevalent viewpoints, but to say they considered every last aspect of humanity's individuality and its' effects on the average social viewpoints is patently absurd. The problem is, since everybody is different, the interplay between the individual and the social norm is subtle. The best way to describe the reality of society is to liken it to determining the weather. Chaos theory, perhaps, describes it best.
In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people. These models then need "fixes" applied, like patches, over time. It's not to say that Locke or Marx were idiots; they were quite intelligent men, regardless of your opinion on their socio-economic models. But to say the abstract models they specified will work flawlessly in society is foolishness. Every model currently in play in the world is an example of that. They were adopted with the purest of intentions, but patch after patch was overlaid upon them to rectify some perceived flaw in some specific case. Then you get American Capitalism, British Capitalism, German Socialism, Vietnamese Communism, Chinese Communism, etc, etc. They're all examples of how these models broke down upon entering society. In an ideal world, no one would want to modify the models at all, and then Locke or Marx's utopia would flourish and everyone would be dancing in the street as they basked in the fruits of their perceived "right way to live" socio-economic model.
But it has never happened and it never will happen, and therein is the entire point I was trying to make.
That's a nice little bald assertion you've got there. Were you planning to affix any content to that... or were you hoping it would stand on its own?
That's a nice little attack on his post you've got there. Were you planning to affix any content to that... or were you hoping it would stand on its own?
You can be lazy on calling people out on their ineffective arguments, but not many people will care if you don't provide any evidence to oppose such a post. And no, I don't care either way to comment on the topic, I'm just suggesting that your posts are as constructive to the conversation as this one is.
It depends a lot on where the money needs to be spent. There have been a lot of advancements in technology (especially computers) since the 60s, so I imagine that pretty much the entire control system would have to be replaced. Plus it's a larger rocket and a larger capsule which will require new design rules and testing. And it's hard to imagine that the price to actually build and operate the thing, once designed, has dropped a lot. The raw materials are still the same and the fuel is governed by physics more than by brilliance of design. (Given that it's bigger and has more people, costs have probably risen.)
Simply knowing the aerodynamics of rockets might not be that much of a savings. Or it might be; I can't say without better information than I think any of us here has.
Actually, we have no freaking clue what killed the dinosaurs. But even if it was a meteorite/asteroid (as you smugly imply),
Given the evidence, the odds point to it almost certainly being an asteroid that did the deed. The crater at the same time, the iridium deposits, etc, all support the theory. Can we say that it was an asteroid without a shadow of a doubt? No, there is a slight possibility it was something different, but we're a hell of a long way from having "no clue" as to what did it. That's the same backwards ass thinking that throws up evolution as "just a theory" every time it's brought up.
As to the rest of your post, as another poster pointed out, a space program is far more useful in deflecting asteroids than in evacuating the whole planet. Something as simple as parking a satellite next to the incoming body for long enough (talking a span of years/decades here) can gravitationally perturb it enough to move it off of a collision course.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Okay, sure. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, all with their own particular values and opinions. You could surely collapse some values of certain swathes of people into a group of norms, but we're still talking at least hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, if not millions (depends on how specifically you try to categorize said opinions). Just looking at their books and various other writings, I can easily assume that they did not take into consideration hundreds of thousands of viewpoints. Therefor, they did not take into consideration all of the variables involved in reality.
Please note that the viewpoints of the irrational need not reflect reality. That Euclid did not discuss the feelings of triangles should not count against him. I will acknowledge that most people have not considered all viewpoints, but am not sure what your point is. We were originally talking about economics, and you've somehow drifted off to social studies.
In essence, Marx and Locke focused on abstracts. The problem is reality has so many specific instantiations of unforseeable behavior that their economic models tend to break down the moment you put them into play with large groups of people.
I will not defend Marx, with whom I completely disagree, nor even Locke, who founded natural rights in the Divine. With respect to your argument, though, I can respond.
The reason your argument bears no relation to mine - essentially, you are talking past me - is that you measure a model's success by its results. This is quite common today. Most people take the pragmatic approach of supporting any and all actions that get the most convenient, immediate, positive results to them, without regard for the means involved, or for the long-term consequences of such actions. You are right to say that in such a viewpoint as has been widely accepted (by yourself included), it is impossible to construct a model that will succeed. There are indeed too many variables.
For me, however, the ends do not justify the means. The means are everything. Thus the appeal of my argument is in its support for individual rights, not necessarily in the outcome. However I do think the outcome would be beneficial to the producer and consumer in the long run, although certainly not universally true. But the goal is not to help everyone all the time - such is merely the goal of central planning, to which I am opposed. The goal is freedom to pursue your values without force from or directed toward others.
You need to look at Direct Space Transportation System...
We managed to find $25 billion to fund bailing out a moribund auto industry. It seems to me putting that money into a forward-looking industry rather than a backwards-looking one would have been a much more worthwhile use of the money.
The dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program.
Why do you say that? Because some asteroid hit the planet and wiped them out? Maybe they just didn't have ships large enough to get the entire dino population off of the planet. Maybe they didn't have anything large enough to deflect the killer asteroid. Maybe there's a fleet of dinosaur ark ships fleeing to another star right this very moment.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I can't believe this recycled 1950's tripe gets modded up. It's not even worthy of a further response until you can think of a reason WHY somebody would want to place their nuclear arsenal two days away on the moon.
How does space exploration have "no obvious returns"? The return is the ability to travel into space. Just because something is not profitable doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
This is why corporate space exploration will never be any good.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Actually, I was always discussing sociology. I was discussing economic models and their implementation in reality. You cannot have a reality involving humans without social studies being integral. I guess you missed that part of my previous statement (way up there, when I mentioned "reality"). That was (in my opinion) the important part of my statement. I fear you may have focused on the rest and not on that one part. A communication error, perhaps.
I definitely see what you're saying and I can respect it. However, idealism rarely gets us anywhere. Invariably, ones ideals clash with another's. Then it's a question of struggle.
I, personally, try to avoid ideals, especially fanatic devotion to any ideal. I've seen where zealotry leads, and I have no desire to be there.
I guess my main problem with your position is that you seem to ignore that a large portion of the people feel that social programs (those things you don't feel governments should be in charge of) are important aspects of government. Is not government supposed to reflect the will of the majority of the people? Have they not used their most valued right (the right to vote) to make their voice and opinions heard? Have they not collectively decided that government's role should be expanded beyond protecting interstate commerce and defense?
I'm only surmising here, but I imagine your response would be "their right to define the government they desire is fine, as long as it falls within the boundaries of the constitution, which protects the rights of the minority from the majority". If so, my response to that would be "fair enough, but do you really want to force the issue? If it came down to allowing a federal government with social services, possibly in contradiction of the constitution, or amending the constitution, which do you think will really end up happening?"
I'm only speculating here, but people in our society have gotten used to social programs on some level or another. I cannot imagine an amendment to the constitution allowing the federal government to participate in social programs.
(I apologize if that wasn't going to be your response; feel free to correct me :D)
Let me tell you how grandma died...
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
What makes you think they didn't have a space program? More importantly, what makes you think they are all dead?
I find it highly suspicious that we haven't been hit with an ELE from space in the past 60 million years. The most probable explanation for that would seem to be that, roughly 60 million years ago, someone or something blasted off into space with a mission to protect the earth from future bombardment.
It was probably the raptors (it always is). I'm guessing they saved as many as they could in the seed ships while sending hunter-killer probes after near-earth asteroids. Even now, a society of hyper evolved Raptors are probably awakening from their cryogenic fugue out in the Ort cloud. Any day, they'll be sending a probe our way to evaluate the habitability of Earth as they've no doubt done every 20 million years or so.
What's gonna happen when they find out an infestation of not so furry primates have taken over and are now molding the remains of their ancestors into cheap plastic hello kitty christmas ornaments? I'm guessing they'll either capture a comet from the Ort cloud and send it hurtling our way, wipe us out with death beams from space, or send crack teams of Raptor ninjas down to exterminate us in hand to hand combat.
Further, people talk about spending money on "space" like we take the dollars, stuff 'em in a rocket, and shoot it off. Those dollars are spent here, on earth, and create jobs and opportunities for lots of people. Not to mention the spinoffs we get as a byproduct.
We can either just give money away (welfare), or spend it to create jobs and knowledge. I prefer the later.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I never said they weren't, in fact I never mentioned those uses. But Important != necessary. Columbus managed to cross the Atlantic without it. The Egyptians built fairly accurate pyramids without it. Kids today are just soft.
That's an interesting line of logic you are using. I suppose we don't need electricity either?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And if it didn't exist, they'd use another.
And that source would be...what, exactly? Other sources are either less accurate, more expensive, or both. GPS availability directly impacts not just what is possible but what is practical. You seem to believe practicality has nothing to do with an end product, that the mere possibility of it rules all. Let's hope you're not a product engineer.
I never said they weren't, in fact I never mentioned those uses. But Important != necessary. Columbus managed to cross the Atlantic without it. The Egyptians built fairly accurate pyramids without it. Kids today are just soft.
Columbus crossed the ocean without it -- and took months to do so, didn't know where he was when he got here, and risked death merely by voyaging in the first place. The Egyptians built their pyramids with great mathematics and an inexhaustible supply of brutal slave labor. Are you suggesting that we should regress to a less "soft" period where death is more commonplace and grinding slavery is a means to achieve great monuments to dead pharaohs?
Of course not, and I never said otherwise. But cable TV has been around a long time, and it's not that long ago that the satellite links had to be booked in advance and were very expensive, hence they were only used for really special events. That's if they worked at all. In other words, satellites are not a necessary prerequiste for cable TV as Mr Soon-to-be-homeless stated. For some of the content, obviously yes, but that's a different issue. You might as well say that the internet won't function without a camera, because you need one to make pr0n.
Again you confuse possible with practical. There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of ideas out there that are possible but not practical. They will never reach fruition unless some breakthrough in practicality comes to fruition first. The space program has led the way on many such innovations that have made our everyday lives -- computers, cell phones, batteries, lightweight materials, etc. -- richer, and it's done it by dint of making things practical moreso that making them possible in the first place.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yeah, it's not like there have been any major advances in computer-aided design or modeling since then. And materials research has been at a STANDSTILL.
And don't even get me started on the sorry state of the slide-rule industry...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
We managed to find $25 billion to fund bailing out a moribund auto industry. It seems to me putting that money into a forward-looking industry rather than a backwards-looking one would have been a much more worthwhile use of the money.
A common logical fallacy -- "We wasted $x on A, so it's okay to waste $y < $x on B.". I am not in favor of the government bail outs. So far as I'm concerned GM should just spin off Corvette to Honda (the only GM car people actually dream about owning) and let the rest of the company die. But at least people actually get some utility out of cars -- they drive them every day. Nobody drives to the moon and we already know what's there -- a big dead rock. The actual scientific work is done far more cheaply with unmanned probes.
By the way, "we" didn't find $25 billion for the car company bailout. Every cent of every bail out is being borrowed.
How is sending people to the moon or Mars a worthwhile activity? Sci fi fantasies about settling Mars and what not are just ridiculous. Antarctica is infinitely more hospitable to human settlement than any other planet or moon in the solar system, yet nobody considers it sensible to build cities in Antarctica. As for technological spin offs, it would be far more efficient to invest the money directly in developing the spin offs rather than waste 90% of it going to Mars.
Actually no they didn't
Older ICBMs like the Atlas, R-7 "I think", and Titan had to throw really big and heavy warheads. They all could put a lighter satellite into orbit.
Modern US missiles have less throw weight but even then a Peacekeeper or Trident could reach orbit with a light enough load.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Bailouts should NEVER be just gifts of cash (as recently done). A quid-pro-quo should always be demanded. A space program as a bailout is not good (it should be done for itself), but it's far superior to a cash handout.
Similarly, the bailout of the finance sector should have resulted in massive government ownership and control of the sector. It should have then sold those things off as quickly as the market would bear, but a cash handout was extremely bad. It follows an extremely bad precedent and maintains it. The lesson is "It's ok to gamble recklessly with other peoples money. If you lose, someone else will pay."
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And exactly what you are saying is why Democracy is doomed to fail. When everyone has a right to vote for what they may or may not get they'll eventually vote themselves benefits for which the economy cannot sustain. Why not just have a vote to make everyone a millionaire? Too much money?...how about $500k?....$1k?...$500? If handing out money some how makes everything better why is the economic stimulus so low? why not make everyone a millionaire?
The fight from the personal rights advocates are afraid of this eventual collapse, while the government support people look at the poor and seemingly neglected people and wish for them to have more. Both think they are right and both have a basis in a moral "good." Neither will function wholly in any kind of pure form. Between pure Free Market and pure Communism we have socialism. Socialism can be scaled in either direction closer to Free Market or pure Communism. finding the sweet spot is the difficult part and will be very dependent on culture.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I was referring to recorded human history as being insignificantly short compared to geological timescales. Asteroid impacts are fairly common on the geological scale, the Arizona impact being only about 50,000 years ago. Asteroid Apophis, which is due to make a very close approach in 2029 and again in 2036, below the level of geosynchronous satellites, would not require much of a nudge to send it crashing to Earth, and it is definitely of the dinosaur killer size, being over 300m in diameter.
I'm not saying there aren't other things to worry about for the future, but we shouldn't neglect an important area of exploration and discovery because you are more likely to need another stop-gap solution for alternative fuels than a viable defense against world-changing, life-ending impacts. You are more likely to be killed in a car accident than be struck by lightning, but that doesn't make it safe to sit under a tall tree during a thunderstorm.
Ignorance is Bliss -- And the Opposite is True -- Genius is Madness
What would worry me here is NASA's history. The Apollo 1 fire. Challenger. Columbia. The common thread in all of them is NASA engineers saying "We have a problem, we need to stop and fix it.", and NASA management going "It's OK, we haven't had a problem yet.". So when I hear NASA engineers saying "This isn't going to work.", and NASA management going "Everything's going to work, we just need to fix a few little things.", I start wondering what reason I have to believe things aren't going to work out just like the last few times.
NASA engineers are really good at solving problems. NASA management is very bad at acknowledging they have a problem that the engineers need to solve.
Well, since you asked...
The Jupiter is a straightforward evolution of the Shuttle system into a traditional rocket. 1) The Shuttle itself is removed from the stack. 2) The external tank is modified and strengthened to carry a payload on top and engines on the bottom. 3) The three expensive shuttle main engines are replaced by two expendable engines and moved to the bottom of the external tank. 4) A 10 meter payload fairing is mounted on top of the fuel tank, with a capacity of up to 20 tons of hardware. 5) The Orion spacecraft is placed on top of the payload fairing. 6) A crew escape system is placed on top of the Orion.
Now, that sounds complicated, but it is much simpler once you see the results: DIRECT Launcher.
What that gives you is a versatile rocket for placing a six man crew PLUS 20 tons of cargo at the space station in a single launch. This configuration by itself is almost a complete replacement for the Shuttle, except for the Shuttle's ability to return payloads to Earth. Or, the Jupiter could lift 50 tons of payload to LEO in an unmanned configuration. Ares-I can't do either of those jobs, now or ever. No existing or planned EELV can do that. Ares-V would be such a behemoth (if it ever flies) that it would be much too expensive to fly on a regular basis. That is why Jupiter-120 is more versatile than Ares-I.
The second phase of the Jupiter proposal is to add a second liquid rocket stage on top of the core stage, while at the same time adding a third engine at the bottom. That will enable the Jupiter to place up to 110 tons of payload in LEO in a single launch. For the lunar mission there would be two launches, just as for Ares. One launch would carry the Orion CEV and the Altair lunar lander. The second launch would just lift extra fuel and the upper stage. The Orion and Altair would dock with the upper stage, then use the upper stage to send them to lunar orbit.
Jupiter can also be used to launch exploration missions to Near Earth Orbit (NEO) objects, launch large scientific payloads such as really big telescopes, Earth recon sats, etc. Jupiter is small enough and affordable enough to be used on a regular basis, but still twice as powerful as any existing or planned commercial launcher (including SpaceX).
Because Jupiter is so cleanly derived from the Space Shuttle, it needs much less development money than Ares. In fact, the entire Jupiter project, including lunar capability, would cost less than half of what is planned for Ares. The Ares-I project is going to cost around $15 billion by itself, with another $16-17 billion for Ares-V. Jupiter is projected to cost less than $12 billion for both the initial LEO version and upper stage. This economy is possible because both versions use the exact same "common core", with only the addition of the third main engine and the upper stage to allow lunar missions.
So the whole DIRECT premise is to build a single new "medium" sized rocket from the Shuttle heritage, which can be used for Earth orbit and lunar exploration. Ares requires the development of two entirely new rockets, neither of which have much at all in common with Shuttle or each other. Jupiter can use most of the existing launch infrastructure, including crawlers, crawlerways, and the fixed portion of the existing launch towers. Ares-I and -V both require extensive modifications of the launch pads, and both launch pads will be dedicated to one or the other vehicle, since they are so different. And at this point, the Ares-V is getting so large that it may require completely new pads and crawlerways to be built.
Jupiter can be used with or without an upper stage. It can launch manned missions with or without payloads. It can launch payloads with or without crew. It can be ready up to three years sooner than Ares-I, which is actually planning their first manned flight for 2016. 2016! Jupiter will still take until late 2013, but that is because it has to wait for the Orion CEV to be finished.
And that's why Jupiter is more versatile, affordable, and sensible than Ares.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
But there is just one problem is equating this with NASA. NASA has, AFAIK, never done any research into deflecting asteroids and has never implemented or even proposed such a program.
Thought I'd do some checking on this and share with the class:
B612 Foundation
We've been anticipating the conclusion of a contract we issued to Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early 2008, and it's now available. We asked JPL to analyze, in detail, the performance of a transponder equipped gravity tractor (t-GT) in determining the precise orbit of a NEO with which it has rendezvoused, and to evaluate the towing performance of the GT per se.
And elsewhere on their site:
NASA's NEO Report to Congress (see #15 below) has stirred considerable controversy due to both its rejection of Congress' request for a recommended program to support the new Spaceguard Survey goal and it's technically flawed deflection analysis. The analytic work supporting the summary report to Congress is being withheld from public review by NASA despite it having been published as a 3-color glossy "Final Report" and distributed internally.
The sky is falling, really:
The bad news? While this all looks fine on paper, scientists haven't had a chance to try it in practice. And this is where NASA's report was supposed to come in. Congress directed the agency in 2005 to come up with a program, a budget to support it and an array of alternatives for preventing an asteroid impact.
But instead of coming up with a plan and budget to get the job done, the report bluntly stated that "due to current budget constraints, NASA cannot initiate a new program at this time."
Why did the space agency drop the ball? Like all government departments, it fears the dreaded "unfunded mandate." Congress has the habit of directing agencies to do something and then declining to give them the money to do so. In this case, Congress not only directed NASA to provide it with a recommended program but also asked for the estimated budget to support it. It was a left-handed way for the Congress to say to NASA that this is our priority like it or not. But for some reason NASA seems to have opted for a federal form of civil disobedience.
I think this ties in with NASA's, and specifically Administrator Griffin's, emphasis on manned missions over unmanned missions. I hope Obama replaces the man. Because, not having a space mission is a good excuse for the dinosaurs, we can't use that one.
I find it highly suspicious that we haven't been hit with an ELE from space in the past 60 million years.
You may have been going for a funny mod, but...
Actually there was a "minor" extinction level event approx 35 million years ago at the end of the Eocene. There are several craters associated with this event, including the one under Chesapeake bay, and one in what is now Siberia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene-Oligocene_extinction_event is a good place to start if you want to know more. (Anyone with time please contribute to that, I wish I had time)
There are other minor extinction events that we still don't know the cause, or causes, of. It is very possible that a lot of minor extinction events can be associated with asteroid impacts - not all large (>1-2 km size object) will necessarily produce an extinction event. If one occurred in a very deep ocean location it would likely have very different effects than one that occurred on land or in shallow sea waters, and that's just a very basic view of the various impact scenarios.
As we continue to gather data about impacts and the fossil record, it's very likely we'll find more impacts associated with more extinction events, especially regional or local ones. The hard part is differentiating the impact scenarios from other local or regional events; but at least we have the tools to start doing so now that we didn't have just a few decades ago. I suspect that the next few decades will show us that impacts have played a much greater part in the evolution of life than we suspect.
We can only hope that the data will convince our public and politicians that we need to develop a capability to prevent such impacts. Even the impact of a smaller object - say, 1 km wide or so - would have global consequences to our civilization, no matter where it occurred.
Life on this planet isn't really that fragile - it's survived for many hundreds of millions of years. Our human civilization, however, is extremely fragile. Being aware of how nature can disrupt that should be of primary importance for us, now that we have the tools to figure it out. To not do so, to ignore what we could learn about how to protect ourselves from impacts, or global climate change, or the resources we consume, is extraordinarily short-sighted and points to a failure of our governments, our people, and our society to work for the survival of our species. (Most people want their family lines to survive...)
If we don't survive, then all we've done before, and all we do now, is pointless.
More than going to the moon or mars - "known quantities", we need to put much more money into finding, investigating and exploring near earth asteroids, in order to develop the capabilities we'll need in the future to deal with those NEAs (and comets, eventually) which may pose a threat to us; and also to begin the investigation into harvesting resources from them. This is where much of the political and scientific vision has failed in the last few decades.
There are those who will argue that it's not important. To them, I just say, isn't it best to spend our limited space access resources more wisely, to kill at least two birds with one launch? I don't think that a return to the moon, or a manned mission to Mars* (as great as that would be) would gain us as much as several unmanned and perhaps one or two manned missions to local orbital asteroids would gain us.
*Yeah, finding out whether or not there has been life on Mars - something that will likely only be done by putting scientists on it's surface - is a great thing. I just think it is outweighed by other considerations.
We would gain both the ability to track more of the threats against us, plus the ability to start mining objects that don't have any gravity well worth speaking of and aren't geologically differentiated objects
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.