Slashdot Mirror
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."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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 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.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
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)
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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."