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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."
... 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.
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?
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.
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.
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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. There is also currently no way of getting supplies and people there. The Space Shuttle cannot leave earth orbit. The ISS is also not built for the radiation outside the earths magnetosphere. Seriously, you cannot just take a spacecraft and put it somewhere it isn't made for.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Actual NASA guy here. Back when I was a starving grad student, I contracted a bit with a big oil company. News had just come out about the hydrocarbons on Titan, and my boss asked me if those crazy astronomers were serious. I looked into and confirmed that indeed, those planetary geologists (ahem) had evidence of BIGNUM barrels of cryogenic liquid petroleum gas just laying around on the surface of Titan.
I actually did some back of the envelope estimates for what it would cost to bring some of it back to Earth and burn it here in our atmosphere. It was too long term, and several orders of magnitude bigger than even the most ambitious terrestrial oil production project. Not to mention what burning all of Titan's carbon would do to Earth's atmosphere, if it did ever happen.
I'm glad they didn't go for it, 'cause hydrocarbon fuels aren't exactly the awesomest reason to go to Saturn's moons. Some day though, something will come up that DOES pass the cost/benefit test, and there's going to be new wave of pioneers leaving Earth to earn their fortunes.
In the mean time, I'm working to make Ares I as safe as possible with smart sensors and abort logic. If it gets canned, we'll have to do the same thing with the next rocket... and the one after that, too, and....
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just outsource manned spaceflight to China and India?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
okay this needs to stop.
yes the moon has lots of raw resources. Do any of you understand how much work it takes to make something simple like a metal wall, how many people it takes to dig up the ore, break it into pieces, smelt it down to purification levels, forge blocks, with which to forge the other objects, and the presses to stretch it into sheets. You need 100,000's of tons of equipment to build a simple airtight box that the moon walkers can live in. It would take way to much effort for a simple colony for a few hundred people. It would take a century to pay of that kind of investment. no current government, or business is thinking that far ahead. No investor would back such an endeavor.
We need something better than current ion and chemical rockets. When we figure out that part So it is cost effective to ship a nuclear aircraft carrier there then will a real colony start to be seen that will take advantage of those resources. Since none of those resources included large sources of fuel(or even water to make fuel from) then the moon will sit there for a while.
This isn't star trek. the effort to bring you something simple like a pair of scissors is huge involving the jobs of thousands,
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Given the nature of our flat Earth, I foresee no leap of science allowing practical travel to the east by sailing west. So any human sailing expeditions out of sight of the coast seems pointless to me.