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NASA Hedges Their Bets On Return To Moon
With budget cuts in the works for everyone these days, NASA has decided to float an alternate plan for returning to the moon that is just a little bit cheaper than the current proposal. Of course, the new option would be very reminiscent of the old Apollo space capsule instead of the tricked out shuttle currently planned. "Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top NASA manager is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion. This cheaper option is not as powerful as NASA's current design with its fancy new rockets, the people-carrying Ares I and cargo-lifting Ares V. But the cut-rate plan would still get to the moon."
Sigh, they're not hedging their bets. Shannon thought it was interesting, so his team studied it. That's all. This is what people at NASA do. It's their job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDGBxP3rYWw
"It is a small effort, it hasn't been looked at across NASA, because we already have a plan: Constellation. I think we should fund the plan."
The point of Shannon's presentation was to say exactly what he says at the beginning of that video. NASA is *always* looking at *all* the options and the DIRECT people are just, simply, wrong; that's why no-one is interested in their shit. Not because there is some great big conspiracy to quash their option.. but because the mission requires a Saturn class or bigger vehicle. NASA has been given the mission to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon, use in-situ resources and stay there permanently.. then move on to Mars. You're not going to land an outpost on the Moon with a 70mt launcher, and you're definitely not going to go to Mars with that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I love the idea that this is some how shocking.
"NASA investigates other options and doesn't look at problem in blinkered and myopic way" - News at 11.
NASA always looks at these ideas and then normally decides that either the risk profile is too high (the most impressive thing about the first moon landings were the LACK of deaths) or that it just doesn't stack up as something that will deliver the overall objectives.
Hell in theory a great big Trebuchet could get someone to the moon, pretty one way mission though. The challenge here is to get someone to the moon, return them safely to earth and to establish a base on the moon. This is a HUGE challenge and one where a government agency has to do so at levels of safety that a commercial organisation wouldn't bother to meet.
When people bitch and moan about the price then that is fair enough, but please lets be honest here. Getting to the moon remains a HARD problem, the Chinese are going to take a long bunch of years to get there, and you can't solve hard problems with CostCo models. Either the aim is to go to the moon or not. The price comes from the aim and ambition not because NASA act like congress after pork.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
James Michener, the writer, was also on the NASA advisory board, and in his fiction Space, there are a few pages on the conflict in the planning stage between the Earth orbit faction, in which the base module would orbit Earth and the lander would go to the Moon surface and back, and the Lunar orbit faction, whose design was more efficient and eventually won.
One of the characters says that by doing that the US had foregone the availability of a space station. It is interesting that the fallback plan goes in that direction, because it could be relatively easy to have the cargo craft double as a lorry to the ISS.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
We don't need another Apollo-like mission to the moon. We've already done those enough. It's just going to cost money without any substantial new information. The next mission to the moon should be bigger and a lot different from what we have done before. Either have the balls to commit yourselves and the money to something meaningful or don't do it at all. I'd also like to point out that the moon isn't going anywhere in the near future. If a meaningful mission would cost too much now, there's no shame in waiting for the technology to became more mature.
Of course the new option would be very reminiscent of the old Apollo space capsule instead of the tricked out shuttle currently planned.
Methinks that even the author didn't RTFA... The shuttle-based plan is the new contingiency plan. And both plans would involve the same "Apollo-like" Orion capsules. I guess that if no one else does, then its misguided to even expect authors to RTFA?
The worrying part of this design is that the same orion capsule would be only able to carry 2 astronauts at a time during launch, presumably due to fuel constraints. While the rest of it sounds like a pretty reasonable bet, this bit just makes me think "well what's the point?"
Why people... Let's see. The ultimate goal of the program, as stated by Pres. Bush, is to put a man on Mars.
Using the most energetic path we have available, Mars is over 3 months away. Assuming the nuclear power plant is out, then the time to Mars is closer to 9 months with an ion/vasimr engine; or, 18 months coasting.
IF you're going to send people to Mars, it seems like a good idea to test your equipment and get some practical experience living in a little (Mars) or no (Moon) atmosphere, low gravity, high incident solar radiation environment with dust that can best be described using the word "evil". If you can help it, you want to do this as close to help as possible in case something goes wrong. The Moon is 3 days from Earth.
Now someone is about to post the comment whose premise is "The Moon is NOT Mars!" I'm aware of that. So is NASA. Mars has a toxic atmosphere (0.01% Earth pressure, primarily CO2). Mars has water vapor, condensation, and ice, all of which affect equipment and all of which the Moon lacks. Martian dust is not Lunar dust (you could argue Lunar dust is more evil). Martian gravity (1/3G) is higher than Lunar gravity (1/6G). There's still a lot of commonality, enough to gain valuable experience testing equipment and methodologies. It would not be much help to our astronauts if we send them to Mars with equipment that fails within hours, or send them with a survival plan that's unworkable. Especially if those problems could have been found with a little testing.
For what it's worth, I think we will get to Mars; but, it's going to be 30 to 50 years, not the 20-25 former Pres. Bush was arguing for.