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Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak
coondoggie writes "Things don't look good for NASA when the report outlining its future begins: 'The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. [NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most complex and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations.' Today the Augustine Commission handed to the White House the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee summary report, after months of expert review and testimony. Many observers expected a bleak report, but ultimately the future of US manned space flight will hinge on how the report's conclusions are interpreted. Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."
Where's the proof of any previous moon landing?
... fund a manned space program when you blow all your resources on worthless, unnecessary wars?
Why is it we can afford a f***ing trillion dollars on the f***ing wars, and not put together a credible space program?
I guess there's no profit in it, and our state religion won't allow that. That's why we're not only not going to have a manned space program. It's why we're fucked as a nation in general.
It's just mind-boggling, but there it is.
Why send people to The Moon or Mars anyway, except for bragging rights? Robots only need sunlight to flourish!
Plus, if we send 'em all to space, no risk of running into any robotic overlord problems....right?
I think the most important thing can be crystallized:
Without more money, there will be no meaningful human space flight.
As for the details, I agree with the report where it says that Mars is not a good first destination. I concur that the Flexible Path scenario would be pretty smart. There's a wealth of information and experience to be made in exploring the Lagrange Points and Near-Earth Asteroids.
Basically, is the United States willing to cede space to China and Russia?
All the options presented to the White House will include shuttle extension in one form or another, however only Option 4B extends the shuttle beyond 2011 (you may remember the shuttle program was supposed to end in 2010). The arguments for extending the ISS beyond the currently deorbit date of 2016 are very attractive. It seems likely that US support for the station will continue until 2020, at least. With ISS extension comes commercial crew to orbit, but the committee seems convinced that this capability will not be available before 2015.
The administration needs to make 3 decisions:
* Get out of LEO or not. This is a non-decision, they have to or there's no program.
* Extend the shuttle to 2015 or not. This is an unlikely decision, the production lines are closed, restarting them is incredibly expensive.
* Return to the Moon or not. The whole "flexible path" thing is gaining traction, but its basically just a nice way of saying don't go anywhere, or stay there.. and the political capital of going back ot the Moon remains strong. In my mind this is a non-decision, we're going back to the Moon and on to Mars.
And so, with that I feel confident in saying that the White House will choose option 4A, in form if not in name, probably with some bonus thing tacked on the side.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Is as NASA to what?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Yeah. And, when NASA spent all the money on the X-33 they ended up with nothing to show for it.
Post-Apollo, NASA has a poor track record of developing new launch systems. I'm certain there are many bright and dedicated engineers at NASA, but as a collective organization, NASA just sucks at developing new launch systems.
I propose we take the remaining $32 billion that NASA hasn't spent yet, and deposit it in a bank somewhere. The first American company that lands human beings on the moon, keeps them there for one day, and returns them to Earth can collect $20 billion. The second company that does this can collect $10 billion. The third can have the last $2 billion.
No money will be paid for designs or plans, no matter how sincere. Only results will be paid.
It would be even better still if there were bounties for a useful space station (with fuel tanks and other infrastructure) to encourage solving the problem in a long-term way, rather than an Apollo-style pure race to the moon. These bounties should all be tax-free, of course.
I am 100% confident that bounties like this would result in America developing manned spaceflight capability. If we keep giving money to NASA bureaucrats to spread around to the military-industrial complex, I am less than 100% confident.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
When the shuttle program ends, it will be the end of the US manned space flight program. People have been asking why are when spending $X (what seems like a really big number) on manned space flight when we've been there, done that, and have Y number of problems still back on earth. This has been going on since Apollo 11. We stop sending people to space, people won't miss it. NASA may continue to fund some great robotic programs, but it doesn't capture the public's mind. And if they can't do that, they'll find their budget dwindle a little more each year. How many people, outside of slashdot, really care that the Mars Rovers are still going how many years later? And I think it barely survived the last budget cut. Even then you get into the politics of , "Yeah, it maybe doing something, but your eating up $Z dollars that could be funding my new flashy thingy!".
Back in the 1960's, NASA had a mission. Since they completed that mission, they've been floundering in the wind. They still done a lot of good work, but they've not really had a well defined goal to reach since 1969.
And as far as costs go, what is NASA's budget, $18B or there abouts. Didn't the Federal Government just give the state of New York $18B to improve the IT department of the states health services.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
NASA's mistake in sending the last rovers to Mars was not to bring some gold, raw diamonds and black gold to seed the surface and report these as discoveries on the planetâ(TM)s surface. You would have De Beers, Mobile and a dozen other companies spending their profits from extorting us, their loyal customers, for a good cause this time. The American tax payer would not have to spend a dime to support the new space frontier
So what you're saying is that NASA is run by the same people who manage software projects.
Maybe we would be better off if we put them on a rocket and aimed it towards the sun.
Want to go back to the moon? Replace the Aries with an updated Saturn 5. Cheaper, proven tech.
NASA is outdated and no longer serves a very viable purpose. Yes, 50 years ago it was necessary (well maybe not necessary, but at least helpful) to have the government organize space flight and research. However, the knowledge and technology is there (as has been shown by the X-Prize) for space exploration to go private. Private companies will achieve the results that we need while costing significantly less. Universities can also collaborate with companies to further research. Slashdot is always so full of people complaining about massive corporations getting government money, so why not have corporations that need satellites start paying the cost for getting those satellites up there instead of taxpayers?
It's time for NASA and it's massive cost to society to be put to an end.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Just mass-produce sophisticated robotic probes!
It'll still be cheaper, and if we send 'em to space, we'll rid ourselves of any earthbound Robotic Overlords...right?
This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense. Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts, but for millions, perhaps billions, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
If there's anything robots don't do, it is "look to the stars." It is men who comprehend the insignificance of this world in relation to the vast emptiness of space, and the costs it will take to traverse that scape. It is men who want to watch the enormous Earth grow smaller and wax philosophical. It is men who walked upon the lonely face of the moon and felt enormous elation and accomplishment coupled with their nigh-incomprehensible solitude.
If NASA is having its intercelestial driver's license revoked, it should at least be given the directive to help direct traffic of the private industry. Apparently we need half-insane men and women blasting themselves and their employees and friends off to distant space rocks if humankind wants to travel across this galaxy. We do not need them crashing into satellites and ploughing into nearby cities due to lack of launch pads or proper orbital-traffic readouts.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Programs like the Hubble Telescope, Voyager, radio telescopes, mars rovers, etc, are all projects that teach us immensely more for the invested dollars than manned space flight. Maybe we should encourage more of this type of research? I think Americans have a special fetishism of the frontier that gives fleshy-contact primacy, but intellectual contact with astral elements is exciting too.
...The U.S. Department of Defense.
It is not a civilian agency. It simply employs civilians along with its military talent.
So expect any money that is "better" spent (from the POV of $1000-plate politicians and ex-military people) on defense to go to those matters than to NASA.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
According to WallStats, NASA's funding for 2010 is $18.7 billion. According to The New York Times, the amount of bailout funds committed by the U.S. Government to Bear Stearns and AIG (both of which are fraudulent companies) is $82 billion. That is 4.4 times the amount of funding that NASA is receiving next year. If the manned space program is canceled, let it be known that it was due to debacles such as this.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
rename the rocket to "planetary missile testing platform" and call the space program the strategic defense initiative. Or you can go one step further and rename NASA to Department of Homeworld Security.
Ok, not to be whiny, but I didn't like this particular summary, as it mentions the panel's conclusion that NASA's current path is unworkable, but doesn't make any mention of the alternative paths forwarded presented by the Committee (and discussed in the article). Here's an alternative summary, with some links to the actual report summary (which I suspect none of the commenters so far have actually read):
A summary of the Augustine Committee's upcoming report on the future of US spaceflight has been submitted to the White House and NASA, and made available to the public. The committee's analysis found that NASA's current plans for a human lunar return by 2020 are unworkable, with NASA's status quo not likely to place them on the moon 'until well into the 2030s, if ever'. Raising NASA's budget by $3B/year opens two primary options: 'Moon First' with a lunar return and possible base-building starting in the mid-2020s, or 'Flexible Path,' which would initially focus on building an in-space architecture for supporting progressive exploration, starting with Lagrange points and Near-Earth Objects (asteroids and comets) in the early 2020s, and exploring the moons of Mars or Earth in the mid-2020s. Options for a heavy-lift launcher were also outlined: NASA's current plans for an Ares V, a less costly 'directly Shuttle-derived' vehicle, or the least costly (but politically most difficult) 'new way of doing business' of purchasing launches on an upgraded EELV. Other key findings are that the ISS should be extended to 2020, that developing in-space refueling would benefit all of NASA's options, that NASA should make use of commercial crew transportation, that NASA should revive its space technology development program (which had largely stagnated in past decades), and that while Mars should be the ultimate destination for human exploration, it is not the best first destination. The White House and NASA will review the report and announce NASA's forward path in early October.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just outsource manned spaceflight to China and India?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Look at the mess people create on earth. It's probably best that we keep our distance from other worlds. It makes me kind of happy to know there are vast expanses of uninhabited space. Our resources should be focused on fixing problems here first, then we can look to the stars. At this point, going to Mars seems like a pointless endeavor when crack-heads line the streets of the Capitol of the United States after dark. I'd like to see a thriving space program as much as the next nerd, but exploring the universe can wait until we've mastered being human without killing each other, the air, the seas, and the land upon which we walk.
NASA took a bold step down the road to oblivion when it bet the house on the shuttle as its primary launch vehicle. They've never recovered from that gigantic, world-class screw-up. They had reliable, proven heavy lifters, and the approach used by SpaceShipOne would surely be viable for orbiting smaller payloads if NASA had spent even half the development money that went into the shuttle on that kind of project. I don't know what the final answer is, but I see no evidence right now that NASA is anything more than a bunch of pencil-pushing bureaucrats with no vision and no real belief in their mission.
The international language of aviation is English. If the US government doesn't give NASA a good kick in the ass, the international language of space will be Mandarin.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
...unemployed Canadian aerospace engineers to head things up at Nasa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Chamberlin)
Right here's the proof.
NASA is an independent agency of the US government; the NASA administrator reports directly to the President (but doesn't serve on the cabinet). NASA and DoD do have overlapping interests, co-operate on a lot of stuff, and have a lot of inter-agency agreements, which you can find at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/codeid/ but if NASA were under DoD, there wouldn't be any need for inter-agency agreements.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I hope that they chose the "flexible path," maybe with a little more than $ 3 billion per year in extra spending they view as the minimum price. The asteroids are where it's at in a bunch of ways - easy to get to the first ones, easy to deal with, and the likely source of economic activities in space (raw materials, etc.) for the rest of this century. Plus, if a NEO was discovered that looked like a threat to the Earth, the flexible path would provide the infrastructure to deal with it.
One interesting thing you could do with the flexible path is build a lunar space elevator with existing technology. If that was done, you could then land on the Moon without building a new generation of lunar landers. That to me sounds like a cost effective and forward-thinking way to go to the Moon and develop a space flight infrastructure, not the lunar option outlined in the Augustine report summary.
If only NASA was too big to fail......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Given the nature of our universe I foresee no leap of science allowing practical interstellar travel. So any human spaceflight out side of LEO seems pointless to me.
Moving the ISS to a Lagrange Point would require an enormous amount of fuel, and getting that fuel to orbit. You would need to attach engines, and the station structure cannot handle the force.
If you read the commenters original comment, he mentioned "an" ISS, not "the" ISS. There's absolutely no reason that you couldn't just launch some Bigelow space station modules to a Lagrange point and set up a new space station there.
There is also currently no way of getting supplies and people there.
I suspect that's largely what the point of "Flexible Path" largely is -- to create an infrastructure for ferrying supplies and people between points in space. You can get things/people to a Lagrange point (or a NEO, or Phobos) if you have a dedicated "true" spacecraft which doesn't also have to lug around the mass necessary for launching people into orbit and performing reentry.
For a good idea of what the "Flexible Path" might involve, I suggest reading through this 2004 study led by Wes Huntress for the International Academy of Astronautics, "The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space." It describes how an incremental architecture can be used to progressive expand exploration outwards from LEO, to Lagrange points, to NEOs, to the Lunar surface, to the Martian moons, and finally to Mars itself.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/AdvisoryGroupReports/iaa_report.pdf
... had manned space fight and was working sending people to the Moon and Mars? Admittedly far-fetched, but if that happened then some people would just say "NASA? Who cares?"
Three Squirrels
All of the Lagrange points are outside the protection of the Van Allen belts, so anything stationed there will be pummeled with deadly radiation.
Manned spaceflight is a waste of time and money which would be better spent on people living on Earth. Moonrocks, velcro and tang are cool and all, but having people not starve to death on a daily basis is just way cooler.
...ever since Richard Nixon had the temerity to be president when man first landed on the moon. That infuriated the Democrats, and they've been out to kill manned space flight ever since.
Forget about the US space program. The future of manned space travel is with the Russians and the Chinese.
Build a goddamn space cannon? If we did that, it would be really easy to get supplies to whatever destination we send humans. Need food? Use the cannon! Need building supplies? Use the cannon! Of course, you'd need a damn big cannon with a lot of force... Or just a magnetic accelerator mounted to a really tall mountain.. But I really want to know why we're not doing this. It would be a big investment, but it would only be a 1 time investment
Just wondering why the Obama administration has gone out of its way to tell NASA that it can't possibly do what it is planning to do. Why is the "yes we can" guy telling NASA "no, you can't"? They spent $3 billion on Cash for Clunkers in less than a month. 10% of the first traunch of bail out money would fund the extra money that NASA needs for over 10 years.
If anything, NASA should have been charged with innovating its way to save the money and fulfill all of its goals. The private sector is ready to take over the routine matters of LEO missions. How demoralizing and counterproductive to just tell NASA and the world "no, you can't do what you're planning to do because we say so".
Here's an idea, have NASA sell the ISS to the private sector. Sell shares to any and all takers in a free marketplace. The thing has no residual value if you drop it into the Pacific Ocean, and the current lame experiments don't justify the use of that expensive real estate.
The deep space option where you learn to visit and land on Near Earth Objects (and perhaps later the moons of Mars and asteroids in the asteroid belt) is more interesting, because it allows you to reuse your exploration infrastructure. With the Moon and Mars, you leave much of your equipment at the bottom of a deep gravity well instead of bringing it back to Earth orbit to reuse it. Also, this is absolutely NECESSARY for the survival of human beings on Earth, since you learn how to work on and around potentially-killer-space-rocks. This is what makes us better than the dinosaurs, otherwise we'll die.
Also, the Deep Space option allows progressive increases in capabilities, without a decade of nothing interesting going on. Deep Space infrastructure could evolve all the way to a manned mission on Titan:
1)Characterize radiation environment and shield (passive or active) or otherwise protect (anti-radiation pills? Pick people from Iran or India with innate genetic resistance to radiation?) your astronauts, if necessary. Do this while you are doing other interesting missions (checking out NEOs, etc) in Deep Space that are shorter than a trip to Mars.
2)Characterize whether artificial gravity is needed or not (as opposed to just exercise).
3)Experiment with fuel depots in orbit. This is helpful, but necessary for Deep Space. This is where commercial launch providers can compete and shine.
4)Add electric-propulsion (like VASIMR) at your leisure, without needing them to work before you start doing interesting missions. Fuel Depots are a backup plan in case this doesn't work.
5)For electric-propulsion, you can start out immediately with solar power (which has a LOT of growth potential in Power per kg) in the inner solar system and upgrade to Nuclear reactors for missions further out in the solar system.
6)Develop increasingly closed-loop life support systems to reduce consumeables on long trips.
7)Flyby and orbital missions to Mars would allow teleoperated rovers, which would be much more productive than autonomous rovers.
8)Develop and test a small lander for short stays on the Lunar surface.
9)Make the lander's tanks bigger and send it to Mars with your now-mature Deep-Space orbital mission package. You spend most of the time in orbit around Mars but make a short trip to the surface before returning to orbit.
Now, you've made boot prints on Mars. This time, don't let your human spaceflight infrastructure rot and make you spend 40 years more stuck in LEO. Take the momentum and go with it:
Really awesome options:
10)Develop ISRU on Phobos, if you find water-ice or other volatiles. This would enable refueling of Mars craft, which greatly reduces mission costs and risks and also will allow reuseable Single-stage-to-martian-orbit Mars Descent/Ascent craft (notice, this isn't really possible on Earth, but it is on Mars because of the lower delta-v).
11)Take your ISRU technology already used on Phobos (Martian moon) and perhaps the Earth's moon (if there's ice in the craters) and use it on Mars to support longer stays and a base.
12)The Final Exam on this whole thing would be a mission to Titan. You'd need nuclear power, Electric (or nuclear thermal rocket) propulsion, ISRU, closed-loop life support, mature lander technology, and long-term radiation-mitigation technology. And gonads.
13)After you've gone to Titan, sit back and reap the benefits of your human spaceflight infrastructure: launch costs cheap enough to make space-based solar power viable, mining of the asteroids has already begun (Phobos was once an asteroid), and you probably already have a permanent base on Mars that could someday grow into a colony.
Notice, this doesn't require space elevators (although I'm a fan of them).
Time to import a few good Germans.
How much of that $82 billion has been paid back to be fair?
NASA's return isn't the greatest since most of the basic stuff and materials have been developed already.
The report contains exactly what obama wanted it to contain. Legitimate sounding reasons to cancel the space program and spend the money on welfare programs.
It was dead on election day. Amazing actually.... NASA is a fairly good example of an expensive, bloated, useless bureaucracy.
...if NASA supposedly faked the moon landings, they can't simply lie to the American public for increased funding for a second coming to the moon.
"Our research indicates, yadda yaddah... speculation has arisen, etc., " *shifts paper* "We can confirm there's oil on the moon."
"How much money will it take to get there in a week?"
"You want that in plain zeros or scientific notation?" *wiggles eyebrows*
You think a senator would seriously expect to win an argument against someone with four PhDs?
Sure it would have been much more convenient not to have a fiscal crisis, but it did happen. We were hours away from collapse of the US banking system. You think that would have freed up lots of funds for space exploration do you?
Nothing whips the US into shape better than robust competition.
It's funny that you felt the need to compose that rant when I didn't actually say anything to indicate that I opposed the bailouts. I was just bemoaning the fact that we can't find $3,000,000,000 more per year for NASA (the amount that the report said would be required to reach the moon) but we can spend many times that on bailouts, pork, weapon systems that DoD doesn't even want, etc, etc.
Of course now that you mention it, what do you suppose will happen to those life savings that were "saved" by the bailouts when our currency tanks? The Fed has created billions of dollars out of thin air. Congress and the President continue to run the Federal Government deeper into the hole every year. Eventually those two factors are going to catch up to us and god help us all when those chickens come home to roost.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The US Congress will by order, de-orbit NASA in FY12.
NASA Industrial Espionage ops (mostly targeting US industries), a singular and stellar achievement of the agency, will be transfered to another federal agency, and budget will be tripled. With the tripling of budget will be the initiation of new dis-information ops, designed to implant erroneous programs and documents within US industries, for "management" purposes by the US Government.
I've never understood why the slashdot crowd has such a collective hardon for manned space flight. Are there not enough other "big problems" to solve down here on the planet?
It's harder to make the same arguments for NASA spending, and even moreso for manned space exploration. I just don't see the payoff from the ISS, nor the Shuttle whose main purpose is to staff it.
This might be a cynical view but here's how I see it panning out:
1 - US sits backs and waits for either private investors or NASA to make a break through the bureaucracy. Unfortunately nothing happens for at least 10 years.
2 - China / India / Delete As Appropriate make a mad dash on their manned space program, i.e. nationalism and all that.
3 - US gets annoyed by 2 and public opinion now gets interested.
4 - US responds and spend serious GDP. Most likely wins.
5 - GOTO 1
The system seems setup to respond to outside competition, and needs something to fight against and beat. We're just in a period where the other competitors are slowly gearing up that's all.
As I think most people have noticed the key problem with NASA and its manned space flight program is an adequate justification for manned space flight that will give NASA the funding it wants. As it is, I don't see that NASA can justify greater funding of these ambitious but unproductive programs. To paraphrase a common saying, you go to space with the money you have. NASA instead designed the Space Shuttle, which was supposed to fly at a wholly unrealistic rate of 40 launches per year. To be blunt, its failure to achieve that launch rate (combined with the unneeded and expensive features it had) broke it as an economically viable means to get to space. Rather than work on a way to get it or some other more viable vehicle, NASA stayed with a failure for thirty years. Now they want more funding for vehicles that we already know aren't what we need (in particular Ares I duplicates the functionality of the Delta IV Heavy and the Atlas V Heavy, most of what the Ares V does can be duplicated with smaller, cheaper, more frequently launched rockets), hinders commercial efforts in space (eg, Ares I competing with the above commercial rockets), and has an unsound schedule (In addition to the considerable delays in the Ares I just due to its reliance on ATK's solid rocket motor as a first stage, we also have at least a 13 year delay since the Constellation program started before the first truly new aspect of the program, the Ares V are flown. That is a recipe for program cancellation.).
This problem in turn decomposes naturally into two pieces: a justification for public funding of manned space flight and a justification for why NASA should be the particular recipient of that funding. While I can't locate it now, I wrote a modest-sized list of reasons for manned space flight. The fundamental problem is that even if people grant those points (eg, diversification of social and cultural risk, opportunity for innovation from new environments, preparation is helpful for a future with significant space colonization), there really isn't a pressing need to shovel a lot of money towards manned space flight in today's budget.
Second, as I indicate above, NASA hasn't demonstrated that it can competently spend money on manned space flight. Sure it can be difficult when Congress funds your program, but in the end, NASA is the party that understands how to do things in space. Congress can insert pork, but they can't force NASA to thoroughly undermine their principles and long term goals. NASA's inability to use effectively its current funding hampers its ability to increase the funding for such endeavors. I think it's highly unrealistic to write of all the money that NASA would "need", say for their hypothetical "return to the Moon" without considering these two parts of the problem.
What is really missing is that the blue prints were designs. During production, the builders found that the BPs would not work on many items. So, they would talk to the other part builders and make changes. And those changes were NOT incorporated back into the blue prints. That is similar to the Boeing 747. The old blue prints could never be used to build the crafts. The guys on the line would make parts slightly different from the specs. Thankfully, Boeing has since worked to get that info back into Catia (it was a multi-year project) and all of their future work requires that all info remain inside of Catia. What is interesting is that the 787's current timeline is a DIRECT effect of trying to force a waterfall effect on 787, when all previous jets were essentially iterative.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"It really is rocket science."
That's, uh, rocket engineering.
There has been many comments on us requiring a new form of propulsion, obviously not chemical rockets. Nuclear pulse propulsion. Could take a manned mission to Pluto and back in a year. The trick? Dropping .15kt nukes out the back of the ship and riding out the shockwave. Extremely effective. The original design is from the early 60's. They even wanted to launch the ship from the ground using this trick, and pogo-sticking to orbit. Hiroshima was 50kt, so there's little threat about a nuke going "astray."
I'm NOT a Christian but I have to throw some logic here.
Islamic jihad is holding us back a hell of a lot more than any other religion on the planet.
You wanna find a bunch of people committing genocide on other Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheist? You want to find a truck load of suicide bombers who would kill innocent people for a chance at virgin orgies in the afterlife (where they call for our death by 10's of thousands)? You want to find the most backward people on the planet whom the vast majority have no running water, electricity, no more than a 5th grade education, who are run by psycho imam extremists and dictators, and control the vast majority of oil on this planet? Look no further than the Middle East and Africa. It's the armpit of the world with a culture that contributes NOTHING to this planet other than the raw crude oil they pull out of the ground.
Wanna find a bunch of elitists who waste our money on these clowns, create wars with these idiots where we send our own people to their death to play police, who could give tax breaks to car manufacturers and those who use alternative energies (and would create jobs) but choose to do nothing, and completely sell out to these losers? Look at Washington and corporate multinational big oil where the dollar means more to these sacks of excrement than human life.
That just needed to be said.
A Delta IV Heavy can get about 4 tons to geosynchronous orbit. With 2 of them, you should be able to get 4 tons to the moon. (Send one up with just fuel, the other with your astronauts, move the fuel over to the astronaut's vehicle, off you go.)
Use another pair to get the return vehicle onto the moon. Or to have a spare, there.
A Delta IV costs about $300 million. I'll bet you could get a discount if you bought a few at a time, but even so, that's 1.2 billion for 4.
(Not that I have a horse in the race for Ares v. Delta IV v. Proton or whatever - my point is just that we have the lift capability to do SOMETHING.)
Spend half a billion to man-rate the Delta IV, another 800 million for a launch pad, and you still have 2.5 billion left over for your vehicle - if you want to make a 50% profit on your expenditure, and if we cut the prize down to $10 billion instead of 20.
Heck with getting people up and back - $20 billion should be enough to get a full colony started on the moon.
TSG
compared to the “defense” budget.
I think it’s pointless to ship humans to other planets, except if we need to live there because we’re out of space here.
But hey, we could go to half the planets is the solar system with that budget, that is spent to kill humans instead for no reasons other than greed and lies.
It really is a bigger insult to America, than 9/11 ever could be.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Manned space missions stand in the way of real science. Real science in space can be done much cheaper and cleaner without the problems caused by bio-spewing humans and all their environmental needs.
Things don't look bleak to me
- We're experimenting with magnetoplasma engines on the ISS in the near future
- Exploring Near-Earth Objects is life-sustaining
- The moon is about security and, if that were in jeopardy, it would not be delayed
- The ISS may receive many more years of funding
- Non-governmental US companies are being contracted for more and more
Sorry folks, this all makes me happy. Our robotic missions to extended destinations are fulfilling our science inquiries in the mean time...
Perhaps the current Administration will have the wisdom to realize that this is also something of an opportunity.
If manned spaceflight is important to humanity then it should be humanity's mission, not just America's. Enlist the aid of other nations. Their money and talent have to be good for more than just financing your excesses. If you don't want to deal with the Russians and the Chinese perhaps the Japanese and the Indians would be interested. But ideally this is something
the rest of the world should be involved in, if as many here say it's important to humanity and not just to America.
Too bad that forecast for just afghanistan war is over 70 billion. Not to talk Iraq one. Make damn starships not war. Same for the LHC and alike, it's only 5-10 billion compared to hundreds for official military stuffs... set aside black projects (2.3 trillions). We stay on our little mudball destroying resources for making mass destruction systems. Very smart. Maybe we all deserve annihilation.
We, in the US, can't do it. Money alone isn't enough. We don't have the technical expertise anymore
We're not any dumber now than we were 40 years ago. The fact is, that the Space Age is over. It ended sometime in the early 70s. There isn't a country in the world with a surplus of young aerospace engineers, since aerospace just isn't cool anymore.
, and brainpower is getting more difficult to import/adapt, as we are no longer the leader of the free world,
While I might agree that brainpower is becoming more difficult to import, it's certainly not because "we are no longer the leader of the free world." Who is the current leader of the free world? Austria? The loss of appeal of staying in the US has much more to do with the rising economic standards of the developing world, and the current state of the US economy.
but possibly have one of the more oppressive regimes amongst the technically advanced nations.
Obviously, the US is as oppressive as China.
Creative minds are attracted to freedom.
People are attracted to money. Creative or otherwise.
Every penny is ultra important anymore. We no longer have things like Bell Labs, we can't justify Bell Labs anymore on mere financial terms. What's money got to do with it? Unfortunately, everything. We can no longer afford space programs, because we can't afford taxes, car, life, health insurance and credit card fees. And regulation requiring even more mandatory insurance fees is imminent.
US taxes are among the lowest in the industrialized world. Leaving health insurance to the "free market" has resulted in such cost savings, that we spend 15.3% of GDP on healthcare (second in the world), and is estimated to reach 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017.
It's gonna be Japanese(expertise, freedom of creativity)
JAXA? That agency that doesn't even have any capability, nor plans, for manned space flight; let alone "massive space stations". Given the culture is biased towards conformity in Japan, your "freedom of creativity" seems to be based solely on flickr photos of Harajuku.
and Chinese(resources, chinese-wall-building-like stamina, centrally focused government of the ancient Egyptian type) only in space
Wow. Right out of the Onion's Our Dumb Century's headline, "Will the Steam Engine Replace the China-Man?"
Nice to see that you left out the Indians.
But do we really care these days for space stations?
No. We stopped caring after the international pissing contest that was the Cold War ended.
The energy problem is more crucial.
Bingo. So why waste time with "massive space stations?" That was soooo last century.
But we no longer have backyards of Oberlin to figure it out,
Your fetish of the lone amateur scientist, toiling away in his garage, until he alone solves the world's Great Problem is -- to put it delicately -- absurd. You are describing the world of the 19th century. A world where advances in basic science were done with an optical microscope. A world where we knew almost nothing of how the basic laws of the universe worked. Those days are thankfully long gone. You might as well be lamenting the fact that an uneducated goat herder can't make advances in modern math with only two rocks and a compass.
and even if we do, people are too busy working too jobs to make ends meet and don't have the time anymore for it. Look at houses built in the US in the 1890-1920 period, and the decorations on them. Compare ones built in 1960-2000. Who had free time on their hands, and extra
From reading the comments, everyone uses this chance to push some agenda, to assign the blame. Some use this as an excuse to criticise the policies of the current and past government, some criticise NASA, some even rejoice at the thought and decry that this development should have happened sooner. I can hardly put it into words how much this hurts.
You have to be made of wood not to feel wonder when looking up at the stars. I am sure every person at some stage of their lives wondered what it would be like to fly in space and to walk upon other worlds forever hidden by the vast distance. To look back and see with your own eyes the smallness of our world.
And 41 years ago we did just that. The Apollo program was our crowning achievement. All of the sudden all those dreams were not as impossible as they once seemed. At that time everyone was enthralled at the possibilities! Every kid wanted to be an astronaut, scientist or engineer. The Moon was just the start, a first step on our expansion into space. That was the pinnacle of human advancement and by far the United State's greatest achievement.
Some say we did it for all the wrong reasons. Some will argue that we did it wrong to start with. Others even believe that the event never took place. As if the reasons for it diminish the achievement...
And now, less than half-century later we are discussing the prospect of abandoning the capability to send a man into space. Of turning our back on all the pain-staking work we done to get where we did and let the space facilities rust. All of the sudden it is enough to send a robot; All of the sudden science is the only reason for looking upwards.
What is wrong with my generation? What has happened to our sense of wonder? When we look at the stars do we not feel the same way as our predecessors? Where did we go wrong that we let ourself die on the inside? Somewhere along the line we squandered all the inspiration, dreams and ambitions of our parents and grandparents.
May the Space Age generation forgive us...
ESA's is already launching to the ISS.
Ariane 5 has a payload of approx. 6 to 10 tons to GTO and up to 21 tons to LEO.
Not tomorrow, not if, but now. If you're scared of the Russian communists, you could always use the European socialists ;-)
Flame my ass, mod me down, I don't support this level of idiocy that exists here.
NASA does not get a real budget because NASA does not generate votes.
What gets votes are two categories...
The masses through one handout after another, to keep them placated between elections and loyal to their local politicians who "did this for them out of the goodness of their heart"
The money on Wall Street. Those who deliver the real campaign donations through various routes, direct and indirect.
We have seen trickle down economics distilled into its purest form now, we just hand money to Wall Street and its interest.
So, yeah, while the parrot heads all love to sip their half cafe decaf lattes nodding their heads over the wit of "its the war, man" it isn't true. Its a terrible excuse. Are the wars bad? Yes, but parroting that line is exactly what politicians want you to do. Why? Because they are pissing away the money that could have gone to NASA and many other valued science related projects instead on building monuments to themselves in towns across America (the number of buildings/roads/bridges named for LIVING and in power politicians is amazing now).
Sorry ... I hate replies like your every time I see them and every time they get modded insightful. Wars are wrong, but they are an excuse that Congress and the like use to not fund NASA, funny thing is even without expensive wars when was the last time NASA got any real money?
Well? Show me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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as already predicted a week ago in my latest article -- http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts2/052strangestory.html -- the Augustine Commission Report has given ONLY "options" (EIGHT) but NO CLEAR ANSWERS
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so, there are ZERO CHANCES for the (much less expert about Space) politics to decide the right things for NASA and the future of human space exploration
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the "core" of the Report substantially is that "with more money NASA can do more" while "with less money NASA can do less"
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it seems not to read a Report written by TEN "space experts" but only something that is so OBVIOUS to be Lapalissade -- http://ow.ly/oA6K
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paraphrasing the (287-212 B.C.) Archimedes of Syracuse's statement "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth." -- http://ow.ly/oA6W -- the Augustine Commission (after THREE MONTHS of "hard work"...) is only able to say "Give enough money to NASA, and NASA will move beyond Earth."
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however, the "Ares-5 Lite" isn't new as "better strategy" since I've suggested to adopt it (in place of the Ares-1 and Ares-5) 3.5 YEARS ago (in May, 12 2006) and FOUR months BEFORE the RESIZED-Ares-5-called-Direct, in this article: http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/005_SLVnow.html (that, in the same days, I've posted on several space forum and blogs)
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"[NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."
What happened to "avoid alliteration always" ?
Stem Cell Scientists still don't have safe waters with the President's executive order, because it lacks the same permanence of a law passed by congress if the next administration changed its mind too we'd be back to where we were without a law backing it up. As a result of this instability fewer and fewer stem cell biologists are sticking around a few in Wisconsin, a few out in California, and a few other places but most are going overseas to safer waters with greater stability.
Its great that this summer with the LHC being damaged particle and high energy physicists came back to the states to work on the Tevatron, but its still going to be shut down soon and LHC will be online eventually. So there go the physicists back to Geneva (again).
Now were talking about dismantling a core part of NASA. Sure some of the scientists will just get shifted to other projects some may try moving to the private sector, but others are going to go to the ESA, Russia, Japan, and other countries with developing space programs. Since it will be their only option aside from retraining.
The major private R&D companies are persistently decreasing their budgets and sizes. There isn't anything to the scale and scope of Lucent and Bell Labs. The MS Research, Google, and IBM all do good work, but its very focused and well they can't hire everyone (or at least they won't hire everyone) which also pushes some with great talent into the financial sector or just anywhere willing to pay them. I mean how many companies are funding basic research in industrial companies? Big Oil used to fund a lot of academic geology, but a lot of that has gone dry in recent years. Does DOW fund anything that isn't just product enhancement research? I haven't heard much if anything about something truly amazing in aerospace either, I mean we're upgrading the Apaches AGAIN these 30+ year old flying machines weren't intended to be the last helicopters we ever developed, but as it stands there still the best we've come up with, but no one is pushing for better, no one has even tried to define what might make the next thing better.
I completely understand that historically R&D and funding of basic science came from all areas of the private sector (from areospace to mining to well I can't think of any clever industry that begins with the last few letters of the alphabet, but you get my point). All of that well seems almost completely dried out and I'm not just talking about due to the current crisis this seemed to have been the case while things were still booming not so long ago.
Not to mention there is still overwhelming draw (fiscal incentive) by financial companies (some domestic, but many foreign at least in ownership if not location) to eat up people with strong computer, mathematical, or statistical skills for some fat paychecks!
I understand that NASA has recently had problems with pet projects that weren't producing or lacked direction, but the answer isn't cutting off manned spaced flight. Manned flight is what made NASA the success it has been and can be a primer to restoring such glory. Manned flight personifies the modern explorer it provides a face to the organization and heroes for a country as a whole people who are alive and well that people can aspire to. All science has its slow and fast phases and NASA (space/rocketry/etc) isn't immune from that, but that doesn't mean the answer is cutting it off, in fact the answer is the opposite it needs more and it needs nurturing. It needs the support of its public.
I don't see how this proposed shift in NASA is in line with the speech the President just made to the school kids, I mean what if those kids want to be astronauts and rocket scientists? I guess maybe they work for Virgin Galactic (not an American company) or they are likely going to have to work for a foreign space agency. I read the statements they made on the campaign in the Science Debate I do believe this President understands what's at stake if we don't push hard to ignite
Wow NASA has already spent 8 billion of their 40 billion dollar funds. Which is almost a fourth of their income. I don't think that NASA has enough money to do a return to the moon mission and a US manned space flight. I think that the only way NASA could do this is if they ask for more money. I don't think that NASA will get anymore money. So I agree, things aren't looking good for NASA right now.
We have been living beyond our means and will have to cut back,
I wish this were true. There are still many people living by the holy credit card and trying to keep up payments. There is still a mentality that many people have where they buy stuff with their credit card, for which they do not have an equal or greater amount in their bank account.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
9)Make the lander's tanks bigger and send it to Mars
I like your post, but I just noticed this and wanted to nitpick. Mars has an atmosphere, so the lander technology will have to be totally different, with some sort of heat-shield like the shuttle or the Apollo re-entry capsules. Good news is you can use airbraking for a lot of delta-v on descent instead of fuel... but all that energy from friction has to go somewhere.
It can't just be about science. We can't afford *just* that. It can't be focused on manned missions - too expensive and dangerous.
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It's GOT to return something immediately practical, like power or critical information. The time for using it for grand national gestures is long past. Forget Mars, or the moon for that matter. The money is in Earth orbit.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The $8 billion of the project money that has already been spent has gone towards research and development... which is the most expensive part of a project like this. The other reason why this is a slash article, is because of the technology that comes from the research and development... velcro, your 7 hour laptop battery, GPS, satellite television, efficiency improvements in solar panels just to name a few. Plenty of good will come of this trip if we see it through, not only the US, but the rest of the world... were all human here aren't we?
Or have humans learned how to breathe vacuum but only so long as it is in a lagrange point...?
Honestly this report is the best news for space exploration in years.
We can do 10x as much exploring and discovery using un-manned exploration as we ever could with a manned program.
You and I aren't going to get to go anyway, so our experience is probably going to be better with a robotic rover that can send back full stereoscopic views in multiple wavelengths rather than some guy who will radio back "Wow, this is really cool, you should see this."
Most of the actual scientific community absolutely hates the manned space program and how it has siphoned off all the money to defense contractors a billion dollars at a time. The shuttle and the ISS are pretty much completely worthless to science. They barely even get into space to begin with.
Here's an exercise. Draw a circle on a piece of paper to represent the Earth. Measure its diameter then work out the relative diameter of the orbit of the shuttle and ISS and try to draw it around the first circle.
The death of the manned space program is honestly the best news that space exploration, science, and discovery could get, and people here need to think about it for a little while and they may discover that they're actually on the other side of the argument from where they thought they were.
G.
It's interesting to read the (at times very passionate) reactions of the slashdot community to this news bit. It's true that a viable space program requires a lot of resources, but resources doesn't equal money. If you feel this strongly about space exploration, why not roll up your sleeves and contribute? Here are three options (and I'm sure there are many more):
1) http://www.thevenusproject.com
2) http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
3) http://www.open-aerospace.org
"Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."
Oh, heck. I could spend _that_.
Yeah, but supposedly those banks are going to pay us back with interest.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
$3 billion annual shortfall? I have an idea. Let's negeg on Obama's $81 billion UAW bailouts, and bump up NASA's funding for the next 27 years.
an ill wind that blows no good
Shouldn't it be setting up a moonbase for the "mass driver" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver cheaper launches of satellites, space-solar power, and eventually the construction of a L5 colony or even a hybrid moveable colony that could then colonise Mars?
We need to stop wasting valuable resources sending humans into space. Too expensive to house a human in space. We are killing terrorist with drones why not travel space with them. We would accomplish twice as much twice as fast and just think of the spin-offs for earth? New, more powerful androids. We need to move quickly before Japan kicks our assess again. We could have complex androids on Mars in 5 years at a fraction of the cost. Drop them onto any number of planets that have no hope of supporting human life, but could yield great scientific data. Put on your thinking cap NASA and give up trying to send a fragile vessel into a hostile environment. It makes no sense scientifically and economically.
And to do this we need to make some changes:
1. We need to bias the nature of corporate america to put a much larger emphasis on long term plans, and less on the next quarterly return.
1a. Pay executives on the basis of a livable wage NOW, and 20 years dividends off a block of stock. E.g. For this year you get $100,000 + dividends on a block of 10,000 shares for the next 20 years. Next year you get 100,000 + your first dividend cheque + dividends on another block of stock. When you retire in 20 years, you get dividends off a 200,000 shares. The next year, dividends off of 190,000 shares.
1b. Anyone who owns more than N% of a company's stock can only get rid of X% of it per year. This means that the major players in the stock market (insurance companies, pension funds) will have to consider their position carefully as they can't change it quickly.
2. Changes to the tax law.
2a. It must become a lot simpler. Right now too many of the sharpest brains work to game the tax system.
2b. Lots of changes to encourage long term research and risk taking. E.g. being able to carry over losses in a division indefinately to write off against eventual earnings.
3. Changes to liability law.
3a. Known and obvious hazards should be exempt. E.g. If you slip and fall on my icy step, when the ice is there for you to see, you acted imprudently.
3b. There should be a mechanism for declaring hazards, and the probabilities. E.g. A ski hill should be able to post a sign detailing the types of hazards on the hill, stating the number of fatalities, major and minor injuries per 100,000 skier days, and be done with it.
3c. Injuries while attempting a crime should have no liability. E.g. The burglar who breaks his leg jumping your fence and landing on a pile of loose bricks should not be able to sue you.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.