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NASA Moon Launch May Be Delayed After 2020
krou writes "The Guardian is reporting that NASA is quietly revising its internal estimates of a 2018 launch for its Ares V rocket. Although publicly the date given for the launch was 2020, the internal launch date was set for 2018. The shift in dates seems to be linked to 'growing budget woes,' and 'engineers say that means the public 2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.' NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m. 'This was to be allocated to early work on the Ares V heavy-lifter, and the Altair lunar lander. With only a half-billion dollars now available, this work cannot be done.'"
Maybe, this time, we will make it to the moon!
I fear the Y2038 bug
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nasa_embarks_on_epic_delay
That's what NASA does.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'd rather dates get pushed back a bit, and we do this right, than go off half assed and mess up. The moon isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and as much as I love the idea of space exploration, and think it is the single greatest thing we can do as a race, I think we also need to look to our own backyard and clean that up as well.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
If you ask me, We should have focused on Ares V and Orien first. We could have use EELV for human launch and later develop the Ares I.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As more people want things at home, mission to moon and the entire manned space programme shall be delayed indefinitely.
Once the shuttles are retired, I have my doubts whether the entire manned program doesn't get canned.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
For the last time it isn't theft. It's copyright infringement.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
just thinking about this. Musk wanted to figure out a way to fund a monster rocket. My guess is that if Falcon 9 and heavy are successful, he will get his chance. The reason is that congress will probably want to kill all funding for Ares V. It is possible that Direct will get a chance, but I do not think so. The reason is that it will be the same set of ppl and companies that did Constellation. As such, I could easily see Congress saying enough is enough.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Planning a project and then cutting the budget is a common tactic used to divert more of the work and cash to contractors. In this case the intention was to cut the booster program and use already available hardware such as the Delta Heavy instead. This sort of behavior was an epidemic during the previous administration, but the present one showed signs of staying the course. Not long ago Obama was (mis)quoted as saying that possibly we should use available "military" hardware. The misquote, or possibly misstatement on his part, was in the fact the the hardware is used by the military, but comes from civilian sources that already supply the same to NASA.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So America has given up on the space race, huh?
I guess it's up to China and India now.
NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m.
Okay, the cost of the entire Apollo program was $25.4 billion dollars. That's 25,400,000,000 1969 dollars - about $135 billion in today's dollars. So why is it so much cheaper this time around?
I put it down to the fact that technology has advanced quite a lot since 1969* - The film industry in particular, if you're making a movie there's a heck of a lot more you can do with that kind of money than you could have in 1969.
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*Disclaimer: All sly remarks on the redundancy of this sentence being used on slashdot are hereby inherently redundant.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
From a secret launch site in the Florida Everglades, with a really big trebuchet. They are rounding up alligators as we speak, to fill the counterweight basket. It's gonna take a lot of gators!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
We went from having no rocket program of any kind in 1945, to deciding to put a man on the moon in 1960, to actually doing it in 1969. Now, we decide we want to go to go back, and can't make any progress at all.
Our national labs are filled with nothing but bureaucracy and useless political management. There's no sense of urgency, there's no focused direction.
Seriously, we can't do in 20 years today what we did in 10 half a century ago? Come on. This shit's just sad.
From the time JFK announced his challenge to go to the moon it took us eight years to actually do it. Now we have all the technology from all of our space research for the past 40 years, we have five years sunk into the current plan to return, and they are saying they can't finish it in another nine years? This is the fruit of our lousy political and education systems!
For all its grand announcements and associated fanfare the United States government has no intention of going back to the moon. The reason. There are no people, that is no eligible voters on the moon, so there is not point in going there.
However, China does not care whether there are possible eligible voters there or not they just want the high ground. So they will go.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
First off, Griffin isn't NASA Administrator anymore, since Obama accepted his resignation as Obama was being inaugurated.
Next up, I don't notice Griffin taking any responsibility himself for leaving NASA in disarray after years running it. Even though he messed up its budget. Yes, Bush deserves blame for messing up NASA, including by putting a CIA Star Wars hack in charge of it, who wasted our time suppressing climate change research results. But Griffin doesn't have any standing to criticize anyone else until he owns up to his own bad work setting back our space program, now apparently by decades.
--
make install -not war
This sounds like flamebait but I swear it's not. I would love to hear someone knowledgeable explain to me why (at least as it seems to a layman like myself) NASA did amazing things for so long then hasn't done anything to capture the public's imagination for decades. I understand how massive the funding was in their heyday, but every other technology sector seems to do more with less over time - is NASA's mission just impossible to accomplish for less than 3% of GDP? Or did they hire worse and worse recruits over time? Or did the wrong people get put in charge? Or does this stuff just get harder to do?
This has baffled and saddened me for years. I really do want to hear an answer from someone who has some insight...
"95% of all Slashdot
Look, guys. Got to face this sometime.
America just isn't as young as it used to be.
Forty years ago? Sure. We could get a rocket up, in little time at all. And though we'll certainly never forget that first time - we were ready to go again just a few short years later.
But face the facts, people. The country isn't a spry 193 anymore. Let's just have hope that NASA is trying its best, Although its worrisome that the launch date doesn't seem very firm, just keep in mind - nothing would be worse than a premature launch.
We don't intend to disappoint.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
If we had a vote between spending whatever was needed to get to the moon again and bailing out another banker, I'll bet we'd vote to go to the moon. At least then we'd see some results from the spending.
There was a MASSIVE infusion of technology and expertise from German Scientists that had been working on the "Rocket Problem" since the '30's. Also, there was significant military research in the U.S. before, during, and after WWII as well.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
If we were willing to spend the money, to dare the risk, America might one day find she has what it takes to get an American to the moon and return safely. What lessons we must learn from that mission: the physics, the materials science, the computer and communications technology might drive a surge in American eminence in science and engineering. Yes, it is not easy. We should go to the moon and do these other things not because it is easy but because it is hard. It is an opportunity to prove that we have the grit, the intelligence and the skill that others do not, and we'll reap the benefit of taking that journey for a generation.
Or maybe we could just get ILM to do it in CGI and save budget. Is Bruce Willis available? Think of the product placement opportunities!
/Co-channeling JFK and Spielberg.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
When these things are delayed, the true cost escalate massively.
It's mind boggling to me that Obama is shit-eating happy to hemorrhage 2 Billion a week at Iraqistan, for nothing and no one, but the space program gets fucked up the ass.
This isn't about going to the moon at all: it's about retaining the expertise that America paid dearly for in the 60s! The huge sums invested (yes, "invested") in the space program kept US aeronautics and engineering at the top of the world for 50 years.
But now the Euros make better planes, and US engineering is being rapidly eclipsed.
As expertise is lost, so the budgets escalate, and the delays get bigger, further escalating costs.
Pretty soon the USA is an "also ran" in space, and shortly thereafter it becomes an "also ran" on Earth. The writing is on the wall: only massive investment in science, technology and expertise can save the USA from utter collapse under the weight if 53 trillion dollars in entitlements.
While space investment (under NASAs most specific commission - to provide all their data to any US firm) return well in excess of a dollar for every dollar invested, there are a couple of things that the USA simply MUST do in order to avoid total melt down.
1) Don't start any more wars, and finish the ones you got going on now.
2) Invest heavily in space technology
3) Secure the supply of energy to the world for the entire future.
Number 3 can be achieved by singlehandedly getting Fusion power tamed. I'm not talking about that ridiculous ITER thing - because the only thing which will come from that fiasco is a pile of Ph.D.s about 10 metres tall - and most of them won't be 'merkin Ph.D.s!
No, the small-scale, tiny fusion efforts like Focus Fusion and Bussard's Polywell reactor - if practical will yield results for sums under a billion - while the potential payoff is measured in the hundreds of trillions of dollars in this century.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
It'll be done when they can play Duke Nukem Forever on it.
This sig is false.
If it really costs 4 billion dollars to put a man on the moon, is it worth it? What resources can be economically gained from going to the moon? Is the moon made of pure Gold? If so, the shuttle's 22,700Kg cargo capacity full of pure, refined, 24 karat gold 22 would need to have a value of $1,762.12 per gram in order to make the trip economically break even. With today's gold value somewhere under $100 per gram, and the fact that the moon is not made of refined 14 karat gold, I think it will be a long time before a trip to the moon is economically viable at a cost of 4 billion dollars. ;)
- James
In 1961 the Apollo program was founded when US President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969 it was accomplished when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. It took eight years. I was four years old at the time they landed. I watched breathlessly each launch, each landing, and all the reports in between. I actually recall trying to convince some of the adults in my life the significance of these events. The Moon! That ball in the sky! Men are walking on it! I failed miserably. I lived in Watts at the time. They didn't care then and they don't care now.
It had never been done before. Practically none of the necessary materials science, engineering and physics were even understood at the time. They performed orbital vector calulations sometimes using computers, and sometimes using banks of people operating calculators.
40 years later we carry computers in our pocket that have more power than all the computers in the world at that time. Our cars have better navigational equipment. It has been done before. The problem has been solved - we've done it many times. The physics, mechanics and materials are well understood. But now we can't figure out a way to do this again in under a decade. It's over. We're officially sliding into decay.
Now I point to that ball in the sky for my son who's five, and I say "That ball in the sky! We knew how to get there once. My parents did it, but we forgot how when I grew up. If you study hard - if you really want it - you might go there too." And then we point the telescope at Mars.
/And it's Orion. Try and spell it write, ok?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Congress messed up the Hubble Space Telescope project a few decades ago by similarly setting unrealistically low budgets. The scientists agreed to the budget because that was the only way to go forward. Perkin Elmers, the prime subcontractor for the lens, had to take all sorts of shortcuts to meet that budget. They had to skimp on quality control. Instead of multiple tests, they used the same system that guided the polishing of the lens to verify the polishing was correct. It turns out that a bolt was inserted backwards in the measuring laser. Of course, this meant that the mirror was wrongly-ground and that the error was not caught.
The Ares Project is more important not only because it represents the next generation of American rocketry, but also because lives will be depending on the rocket. The early Apollo and Shuttle projects claimed lives because of shoddy work. History is in danger of repeating itself.
Congress and NASA should either do it right, or not do it at all. Astronauts assume the risks at every launch, but we should not let them take that risk if it is too significant. NASA should just put the ball down and walk away if it believes that the project cannot be done correctly on the current budget. Not for political gamesmanship, but to protect astronauts.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
But in 1969, we were in an arms race with the Soviet Union at the time, so we not only spent a gazillion dollars on nuclear missiles, we also managed to get to the Moon?
Either we need to pay more taxes, or we need a more efficient use of our money.
By the time they get there, they'll find a Chinese flag, an Indian flag, a Canadian flag, some monument to commercially-sponsored space travel, and a McDonald's.
Do you want fries with that?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m.
It doesn't mention it in the summary, but people need to keep in mind that figure's only for the Ares V, which is supposed to be building on the Ares I. The GAO (which is certainly historically better in its cost estimates than NASA) has estimated that the Ares I and Orion capsule will cost more along the lines of $40-50 billion.
For comparison, funding SpaceX to finish developing commercial crew transport to the space station would cost $500 million. SpaceX would need to have a 100x cost overrun to cost as much as the Ares program.
In the late 40's Arthur C Clark was writing stories about the British going to the moon. He thought that Britain was still enough of a superpower to be able to do it. Nowadays, we look back at his writings and say 'You've got to be dreaming. Britain is too poor to afford anything like that.'
I venture to say that in about 40 years time we will look back to NASA's pronouncements about going back to the moon (much less going to Mars) and we'll say 'You've got to be dreaming. The US is too poor to be able to afford anything like that."
What will I get if I pick fast and cheap? If lack of "good" means that a few extra rockets blow up then all we need is a decent escape module on top of the cheap rocket. Sounds good to me.
Cow Cube
NASA is stuck on ARES to the point where any alternative is dismissed out of hand. Engineers are being forced to pare down the Orion capsule, removing safety features so that ARES can lift it. Progress tests have been redefined to allow ARES to pass inspection. There have been reports of persecution for disagreeing with Griffin's cronies. The Stick Must Fly.
Some NASA engineers thought differently. They got together and dusted off some alternatives from the shuttle design days, modernized them, and came up with the Jupiter/Direct plan. They have had their designs and budgets independently (but unofficially) reviewed and verified. They can get to the moon faster, cheaper, and safer. But sorry, not NASA approved.
It is the Cathedral and the Bazaar all over again.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
So, we just cut the budget on this project from $4billion to $0.5billion.
And in the meantime, we also just gave $700billion to a bunch of banks. To save them from bankruptcy that was of their own making.
WTF !?!?!
Give NASA some funding - like maybe a tenth of what is being spent in fixing the financial crisis? At least then we know it will be spent on achieving something great.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
It's like reading "they wandered for 40 years" in the Torah. It's just meant to signify a very long time that you're not really going to care about. In a few years it will be pushed out again, and again and again. You see we're NEVER going back to the moon and manned spaceflight will be a memory by 2020. The ISS will be gone. The Shuttle will be gone, The Russians and Chinese will have focused on satellites and space based weapons. The Indians will also be in the commercial satellite business. The Europeans will will simply declare space science an unaffordable luxury of the Evil White Man. With no heavy lifters, no missions and no stomach for the challenge and the risk, mankind will have seen the end of manned spaceflight. Perhaps in a hundred years we'll take another look at it, but who knows? It will probably be against Sharia by then.
The whole Bush administration Moon and Mars programs were just smoke and mirrors to shift funding away from the Space Station and other NASA programs, then cacel or push back the Moon and Mars missions. NASA put too many eggs in once basket with the poorly concieved Space Shuttle program and we are now paying the price with no good booster to get humans into Low Earth Orbit. I only hope the Obama administration has the imagination to keep the Space program growing in ways that are productive and that help spur the economy. What is the U.S. going to get more out of in the long run? An active space program or planting trees along a highway?