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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."
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.
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.
Without the usage of something other than chemical rockets, there will be no meaningful human space flight.
Every space agency should temporarily abandon manned space programs and pour the money they would have spent into propulsion research.
Azural - instrumentals
Which rocks are you talking about? ;)
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.
What I don't get is why we don't just buy some Soyuz spacecraft off the Russians and be done with it.
Because buying Soyuz wouldn't create many jobs in Florida and Texas. The manned spaceflight side of NASA is a jobs program which just happens to occasionally put some people into space.
Things *used* to be done on a sane budget, until everything became a nest of private contractors trying to get their hands in the pie.
I'm from Huntsville, AL. My neighbors growing up came over from Germany with von Braun. My high school English teacher was retired from NASA, but he was the guy who designed the Lunar Rover. No fancy expensive components here -- he bolted the top end of a lawn chair to the thing for a seat.
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).
Of course there's the rational Christian view that there's no evidence the rapture is going to occur within the next millennium and a large chunk of rock may hit Earth before then. The thing about the Christian faith is that you're not supposed to take it for granted that GOD will save you from some horrible fate. You're supposed to go about your business as though no one is looking out for you. With that in mind, I sure as hell want a competent space program that can have sustainable colonies on other celestial bodies as well as one that can protect us from celestial threats regardless of the fact that I believe GOD exists and sent his only son to die for our sins.
That is not entirely true.
I am part of a research project that is reconstructing the Apollo project, and I can say authoritatively that large parts of the Saturn V knowledge are indeed missing. Only some of the booster physical structure blueprints are on file at MSFC. That does not include the wiring diagrams, the internal diagrams of the Instrument Unit, or the software that actually flew the booster. That was designed by IBM Federal Systems, and when IBM was broken up as a monopoly the documentation and software were lost. We have been chasing after this stuff for YEARS. If it existed we would have found it. We have taken to searching out and contacting former programmers and engineers to see if they took anything home with them that we might be able to scan. We have even gone so far as to take apart one of the remaining Saturn LVDCs to try to read the core memory out and see if the software is present. (This is a potentially destructive effort and is still ongoing. It will be at least a year before we know anything.)
Also missing are the procedures by which the software was used, the prelaunch checkout procedures, we have almost NO documentation of the software, tools, and procedures that the ground controllers used, and so on. There's a lot of missing pieces.
I think you don't "get" it because you don't know what you're on about. The Soyuz is a great little vehicle, but its complete lack of capability is the reason why the ISS is in the terrible orbit it is in - Space Station Freedom was supposed to be in a sensible orbit that would allow building spacecraft to go beyond LEO, that plan was down-rated when the Russians were invited to participate because they were incapable of reaching such a useful orbit. The Soyuz rocket can put about 8t into LEO.. that's less than the smallest EELV currently in service in the US. The Proton rocket is a little better but doesn't have this glorious service record you mentioned.
In comparison, the Ares I (if it ever flies) will carry over 20t to LEO and the Ares V (presuming they don't downrate it again) will carry 188t to LEO. *And* they will do them with much lower marginal costs. I think your objection here is to the political bullshit that gets in the way of making these vehicles.. well that's just as bad in Russia.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two commercial companies making rockets in the 13t to LEO range might be more your cup of tea.. less political bullshit, but less of a published schedule too, so you might get what they promised, when they're damn well ready.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes in the 60's and 70's at the height of the US manned space program there was no religion in US society and a temporary wave of Atheism swept the nation.
Or you're full of shit.
You Internet "Nu Atheists" are really starting to get annoying by the way, about as annoying as born again Christians the way you interject your (extraordinarily ignorant) personal rants against the other "team" into absolutely EVERYTHING to score some cheap points in your own mind.
Oh and by the way, if you don't want people lumping all atheists into a collective when attacking you (as you all seem to hate) it's best to not speak for all atheists as though you all *are* a collective when it suits you as you have done here.
Please someone deliver the west from the mindless, fanatical Christians and Internet Atheists...two sides of the same bent coin.
The shuttle was designed as a compromise between a load of different requirements and ultimately ended up with a number of major flaws including
* while it was reusable most of the advantages of reusability were lost because of big refurb requirements every flight. Furthermore the reusability made incremental development harder. So IMO we ended up with the worst of both worlds there.
* The shuttle is essentially a mini space-station that goes up and down every time. Great for standalone work in space but very wasteful when working with a proper space-station.
* the side-mount "stack" is fundamentally dangerous because it means if something goes wrong with the stack it is far more likely to damage the crew compartment than with a traditional stack. The foam that took down columbia would have been a non-issue with a traditional stack and even an incident like the challenger one would probablly have been more survivable with a traditional stack.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register