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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?
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.
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
The reason would be thinking really long term. As in, on a scale of hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
No, of course sending people to the Moon or Mars will not produce "profit" (in the financial sense) on a scale of years or decades. But in the extreme long term, we'll have new worlds to populate, new planets to colonize.
We can't stay solely on Earth forever.
All the stuff they did?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
Those moonrocks were obviously fabrications of a global Illuminati/Jewish/Freemason/Scientologist/Cowboyneal conspiracy. Everybody knows that ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
Which rocks are you talking about? ;)
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 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.
Third-party evidence for Apollo moon landings
(Enter Buzz Aldrin)
POW!
(Exit Buzz Aldrin)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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).
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?
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.
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.