The Upside of the NASA Budget

teeks99 writes "There are a lot of articles circulating about the new changes to the NASA budget, but this one goes into some of the details. From what I'm seeing, it looks great — cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going: commercial space transportation; keeping the ISS going (now that we've finally got it up and running); working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we can go off to the far flung places); automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit). Quoting: 'NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it. The Agency now sees its role as doing interesting things with people once they get there, hence its emphasis on in-orbit construction, heavy lift capabilities, and resource harvesting hardware. Given budgetary constraints and the real issues with the Constellation program, none of that is necessarily unreasonable.'"

Comments

Re:Stupid, really

[skine]

Well, Mexico did once send a killer whale to the moon for $200.

So

[jimbobborg]

From the article:

allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit

So NASA's building a version of Voltron?

Re:So

[xleeko]

From the article:

allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit

So NASA's building a version of Voltron?

They don't say so explicitly ... you have to read between the lions.

Re:Stupid, really

[idontgno]

OMG brilliant!

Build a cylindrical wall surrounding the launch complex and the outbound trajectory. Put a hefty airlock at the bottom, at ground level. Make the wall tall enough to poke out of the atmosphere. Install really big vacuum pumps.

Move the spacecraft into the wall through the airlock. Get everyone out of the walled area. Close the airlock and evacuate all the atmosphere from the walled region. (Pump it into the surrounding open air.)

When the walled in area is a hard vacuum, from ground to space, launch! The FAA has no say, because there's no atmosphere! The EPA has no say because there's no air!

The spacecraft never undergoes aerodynamic stress during launch and can be any dang shape you want! Spherical ship? No problem!

Note to all slashbots: I am joking. Maybe.