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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.
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.
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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
Makes for a sort of depressing answer to the Fermi Paradox. Why haven't the thousands of advanced species conquered the universe yet? Oh, they will. It's just not practical right now. Maybe during the next budget period they can establish a group to consider returning to space. It'll happen eventually. They've been meaning to do another manned orbital mission for the last few thousand years. They'll get to it as soon as some immediate priorities are sorted out.
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.
It comes down to money. Adjusted for inflation the 60's NASA budget was double or triple today's. And Gemini/Apollo was basically all they were working on. Of course, it was all just a fraction of the cost of an Iraq war or a bailout.
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/
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