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Former Astronauts Call Obama NASA Plans "Catastrophic"
krou writes "Talking to the BBC at a private function held at the Royal Society in London, former astronauts Jim Lovell and Eugene Cernan both spoke out about Obama's decision to postpone further moon missions. Lovell claimed that 'it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology,' while Cernan noted he was 'disappointed' to have been the last person to land on the moon. Said Cernan: 'I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership ... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the essence of human existence.' Neil Armstrong, who was also at the event, avoided commenting on the subject."
American can, should, must and will blow up the moon.
I'd rather have health care than a trip to the moon for 4 people.
Maybe if we hadn't squandered a trillion dollars on the unnecessary war in Iraq we could afford things like going to the moon again.
You've got to cut something if the country is too politically polarized to raise enough revenue to cover expenditures. Sending tourists to a dry barren rock seems pretty low on the priority list, especially when robots can achieve the same science goals at a small fraction of the cost.
How about we explore the forests and oceans first. There's lots of scientific knowledge to be gained right here on earth.
Bringing men to the moon currently wouldn't add anything of value. It was possible in the '60s, doing it now would not bring any advancement. Space money is better spent on research for new propulsion systems and ways to get off the Earth. When that is done, THEN go to the moon.
With modern CGI techniques, surely faking moon landings should be getting cheaper?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
We face no external threats, militarily speaking. It's time for us to discard our empire.
And what "empire" is that exactly? Do you demand we let go of Puerto Rico?
Other than that we have a number of military actions in areas where we are supporting democratic governments - Iraq and Iran - that are not in any way part of a U.S. "empire" (for better or worse).
As for the lack of military threats, I suggest to tell that to the people attacking our military and citizens. Perhaps they will stop once they realize they do not exist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maned space travel - it sounds like the wild, wild west
You do realize this argument is really stupid. The basic argument goes that doing something difficult and useless is really helpful because you solve all these engineering problems along the way that are helpful for other areas. If true, then doing something useful and difficult would be much more helpful. Why not develop super efficient engines for various modes of transportation? Why not build great high speed rail that could connect cities at super sonic speeds? Doesn't sound possible? Not really, but neither did putting a man on the moon. Difference is, this one would be something when we were done.
I think you're missing all of the collateral benefits that came from the space race. You're probably typing on one right now.
if the republicans got elected the same thing would be going on - very little funding to NASA etc... Now, I can't help but wonder if both sides are really just one side... The all have two things in common. They got elected, and they want to stay elected. That's politics 101.
Why don't more private rich guys step up and fund moon missions?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
You people keep on saying this, but it is absolute bullshit. Have you ever tried comparing the cost of manned spaceflight with... well... just about anything else the government does? It is damned cheap.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
the last person to land on the moon
Gene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon. He was one of the two last people to land on the moon.
Though if you think about it. If landing on the moon inside a vehicle counts then walking on the moon inside a vehicle should also count, so he is still one of the two last people to walk on the moon.
Neil Armstrong, who was also at the event, avoided commenting on the subject.
True to form.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Granted, there are a *lot* of wastes in government I would like to see go away before government-funded manned spaceflight, but the US deficit is growing *dangerously* large. If the partisan divide is too great to eliminate anything else, something has to go, at least temporarily, before our social services go completely by the wayside, or much, much worse. I'm not saying that this is anywhere near the best choice. But these days, our country is divided that nothing else can be agreed on. Our politicians are at one another's throats instead of making compromises we need to survive as a nation. In addition, heroism aside, I think that the unmanned and orbital space programs like Hubble, rovers, and the ISS are much more critical for scientific discovery than manned missions. While less of a symbol, they produce immense amounts of useful scientific data. The Bush administration's Mars plans would likely have occurred at the expense of these programs. So there is no good answer. If civilian agencies take up the slack and begin performing the exploration, then there may be some hope.
We need to work on mineing the moon / other places and not just sending people there.
You are going to need to send people there to do that, unless you want it to take 200 years. But I think the US Government is right to cut the apron strings between manned lunar exploration and public funding. There are now threads of private funding for human activities in space. These threads should be encouraged to grow.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yes, some former Astronauts call this catastrophic. All two of them. I think the headline was worded specifically to make it sound as if this was a widespread belief among astronauts, rather than a minority one.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It's rather interesting that Buzz Aldrin has a completely opposite view of the new plan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-aldrin/president-obamas-jfk-mome_b_448667.html
... The President courageously decided to redirect our nation's space policy away from the foolish and underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming instead at boosting the agency's budget by more than $1 billion more per year over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and 2015. And he directed NASA to spend a billion per year on buying rides for American astronauts aboard new, commercially developed space vehicles-that's American space vehicles. Other NASA funds will go into developing and testing new revolutionary technologies that we can use in living and working on Mars and its moons. ... For the past six years America's civil space program has been aimed at returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020. That's the plan announced by President George W. Bush in January of 2004. That plan also called for developing the technologies that would support human expeditions to Mars, our ultimate destination in space. But two things happened along the way since that announcement, which became known as the Vision for Space Exploration.
First, the President failed to fully fund the program, as he had initially promised. As a result, each year the development of the rockets and spacecraft called for in the plan slipped further and further behind. Second and most importantly, NASA virtually eliminated the technology development effort for advanced space systems. Equally as bad, NASA also raided the Earth and space science budgets in the struggle to keep the program, named Project Constellation, on track. Even that effort fell short.
To keep the focus on the return to the Moon, NASA pretty much abandoned all hope of preparing for Mars exploration. It looked like building bases on the Moon would consume all of NASA's resources. Yet despite much complaining, neither a Republican-controlled nor a Democratic-controlled Congress was willing or able to add back those missing and needed funds. The date of the so-called return to the Moon slipped from 2020 to heaven-knows when. At the same time, there was no money to either extend the life of the Space Shuttle, due to be retired this year, or that of the International Space Station, due to be dropped into the Pacific Ocean in 2015, a scant handful of years after it was completed.
Enter the new Obama administration. Before deciding what to do about national space policy, Obama set up an outside review panel of space experts, headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official. Augustine's team took testimony and presentations from many people with ideas on what way forward NASA should take (that group included me). In October, it presented its report to the President and to Dr. John Holdren, Obama's science advisor and a friend and colleague of mine. The report strongly suggested the nation move away from the troubled rocket program, called Ares 1, and both extend the life of the space station and develop commercial ways of sending astronauts and cargoes up to the station. And it suggested a better way to spend our taxpayer dollars would be not focused on the Moon race, but on something it called a "Flexible Path." Flexible in the sense that it would redirect NASA towards developing the capability of voyaging to more distant locations in space, such as rendezvous with possibly threatening asteroids, or comets, or even flying by Mars to land on its moons. Many different destinations and missions would be enabled by that approach, not just one.
But with the limited NASA budget consumed by the Moon, no funds were available for this development effort -- until now. Now President Obama has signaled that new direction -- what
'Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world once again and is going to help grow the economy right here in Brevard County,' said the presumptive Democratic nominee, speaking to a crowd of 1,400 at Brevard Community College's Titusville campus.
Obama has changed an earlier position, in which he planned to delay the Constellation program five years and use up to $5 billion from the NASA budget for education."
Like many politicians of all political parties, Obama tells the voters whatever they want to hear. After he wins election, he quickly changes course.
The principal difference between Obama and the typical dishonest politican is that Obama personally hates Western culture and Western civilization. For 20 years, he attended a church which taught that the West is solely responsible for the failure of non-Western societies.
Of course, Japan is proof that Obama (and his church) is wrong. Not coincidentally, Japan continues to aggressively pursue space exploration. According to a recent news article, "Despite the recession, the [Japanese] government budgeted ¥344.8 billion for space exploration in fiscal 2009, an increase of 10.4 percent from the previous year."
African-Americans vote 95% Democratic even for the white guys. That's been a fact since the civil rights movement. Going by your logic, any white person who voted for McCain is a racist because they voted for the white candidate.
Take this ignorant bullshit back to stormfront or whatever internet cesspool you managed to slither out of.
For some reason this only got posted to the politics.slashdot page (where it's gotten all of 2 comments), but since I figured others would be interested in learning more I'll re-post the details here, with relevant links included:
The White House has announced that on April 15 the President will be visiting Florida to host a conference on the Administration's 'new vision for America's future in space,' which is focused on developing new technologies and capabilities needed for sustainable exploration of 'the Moon, asteroids, and eventually Mars.' The White House's plans for reinvigorating NASA are facing vocal opposition from several congressmen in Florida, Texas, and Alabama, due to its outright cancellation of the Constellation/Ares program, which was found to be 'fundamentally un-executable' but is/was an important source of jobs in many areas.
You think he's typing on Velcro? Myself, I am typing on a keyboard. They were around before the space race.
The idea that space exploration is giving us (humanity as a whole) good value for money is, frankly, ridiculous. The billions and billions of dollars spent has of course brought some benefits and some cool inventions. But spending that same money on other kinds of research would with a very high probability have yielded more benefits. But I do agree that it would have yielded less fame to the old whiners from TFA.
while Cernan noted he was 'disappointed' to have been the last person to land on the moon.
I'm sure they could fake another one. The sfx these days are much better than 1969. Avatar looked stunning!
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
to successfully mine the moon, you will need to move many 1000's of tonnes of equipment. I know some people on here think mining is just matter of digging a hole in the ground, but extracting minerals is actually a highly involved process.
once you have the cost and pay issues solved, you'll need to have people live up there safely. remote control only will never cut it, at the very least you will require maintenance crews to live up there to maintain the robots. the biggest issue with this is protection from high energy space radiation.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The astronauts, members of Congress, and defense contractors make it sound as though there was a robust manned program in place that Obama arbitrarily decided to cancel. Instead, the manned program was barely making headway and was cannibalizing the rest of the NASA budget. Here is background on the sad shape that NASA was in 2009: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf or http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1955242/Future-of-NASAs-Manned-Spaceflight-Looks-Bleak Summary: There was not enough money in manned spaceflight to hit anything close to the proposed schedule for shuttle replacement/Moon/Mars. The lack of money was driving the costs up even further (if you spread a program out over more time you wind up with a standing army drawing paychecks). The administration had the choices to give NASA a lot more money to get the manned program back on track, cut the manned program, or watch the unmanned programs be cannibalized to feed the manned program as they have been for the last couple years. I suppose upping the NASA budget would have been as good a stimulus as some, at least for aerospace engineers like me.
Is amazing how many times "not just now" turns into "never" in practice. There will be always an emergency, something with more priority at the eyes of the public opinion or at least that will be what the mass media will say... put a precedent, and the people expending the money will manage to find another priority every time.
How we could expend on space if we have to save the banks, sustain the war on iraq? stop terrorists, or maintain peace on middle east, stop communism and so on till you get even before the invention of airplanes,
Probably we will realize how essential would have been doing something on this when is already too late. For once, "think on the children" would be the appropiate reason.
Oh, man will walk on the moon again someday... just maybe not in any currently living person's lifetime.
And of course, that's assuming that we won't all be wiped out by some sort of mass extinction event before then.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The idea that space exploration is giving us (humanity as a whole) good value for money is, frankly, ridiculous
I would say that the emigration of humans out of Africa gave us (humanity as a whole) enormous value for money.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The good news for sure is an increase of $6 billion over the next five years. It stresses new technology and innovation (to the tune of over $1.5 billion), which is also good. A lot of NASA’s successes have been from pushing the limits on what can be done. It also stresses Earth science, which isn’t surprising at all; Obama appears to understand the importance of our environmental impact, including global warming. So that’s still good news.
The very very good news is that half that money — half, folks, 3.2 billion dollars — is going to science. Yeehaw! The release specifically notes telescopes and missions to the Moon and planets. That, my friends, sounds fantastic.
NASA’s Constellation program – based largely on existing technologies – was based on a vision of returning astronauts back to the Moon by 2020. However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies. Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA’s attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President’s Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration
I'll just come out and say I really believe money spent of government programs that are supposed to help people is mostly smoke and mirrors and ends up doing very little real long term good. I grew up in the NASA era, I saw the first moon landing in first grade on a black and white television and it was easily the most memorable moment for me until I saw breasts. So I say screw almost every other budget item. Pour money into space exploration. Hell, split the difference and call them 'shovel ready jobs'. I don't care. The return on investment is so much greater investing in space related technologies then studying the 'reproductive traits of prairie dogs' or other uninspiring tripe. To boldly go where no man has gone before. That's the ticket.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
I think the proposed plan does the best job of fulfilling our "responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership... to seek knowledge.". I mean, it's all about technology and seeking knowledge. It's about doing things technologically that haven't been done before, not just engineering yet another rocket. We've kinda already acquired that knowledge, and it's fully baked enough to be put in the hands of private industry now. Instead focus on the kinds of things that JPL has been working on with minimal budget on the side and that have really pushed technology and increased our knowledge of the solar system.
It's only sad if he's the last one to ever land on the moon. I hope that when we do it's for more than to put boots down.
The enemies of Democracy are
A child on the Ghanaian Space Agency base on Europa asks her father, "Almost every nation on Earth has built outposts and colonies in the Solar system except America. What happened to them, Daddy?".
"Oh, they decided to stay home and play Dark Orbit instead."
there's probably a few others i'm missing
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Leave the politics out of it. Nasa is a drop in the bucket. Lets not argue about Iraq or Afghanistan and instead pull troops out of somewhere we can all agree on, like Korea or Germany. Or ban political contributions ALL TOGETHER. Or how about passing an amendment that bars the federal government from bailing out ANY failing company or industry? There are thousands of places the government is sending our money that we can unanimously agree are things we do not want to pay for, why argue about the ones we can't agree on?
and I've heard that isn't even true.
It's totally inconceivable to imagine that when the Japanese Astronauts, the Chinese Taikonauts and the Indian Hehenauts live and work in their respectable moon-bases, we Americans are still stuck in the bottom of the gravity well.
The worst of all is this --- Not only are we stuck here, we rather waste time debating if we want to give the degenerates free healthcare than find ways to send our troopers to the moon.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They haven't delivered the flying car, so fooey on them!
Table-ized A.I.
What's been catastrophic for space exploration is that we have sunk trillions into the manned space program for little return. What's been catastrophic is that romantic visions of test pilots and the moon landing completely skewed everybody's understanding of what space exploration is or what it can achieve.
The military is already figuring it out and increasingly switching from manned planes to drones. In a generation or two, when "military pilot" becomes synonymous with someone wielding a joystick, hopefully, we can also do the sensible thing and focus all our efforts on remotely operated space exploration.
... while he was writing about the hopes he had on the space exploration and everything. It makes me sad. In some way I'm glad he's gone so he doesn't have to see this.
My first thought when I read your comment is that it's not really NASA's job to design combustion engines or supersonic locomotives (btw: moronic idea; I see you don't know physics, so look up what a sonic boom is). But there are many cool technologies that we need, with this I will agree.
I figured that it will be private ventures that come up with these. But here's something that Obama could do: He could publish a list of technological benchmarks for technology we need, and offer incentives to any company whose designs meet those benchmarks (say, for an engine or a wind turbine that could run for x hours at y efficiency and could be made for $z). One incentive could be prize money, but another, more lucrative one, would be the promise of a large government contract - say, parts for the new fleet of police cars. When scientists are aiming at a concrete goal and they know that there is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, they will suddenly find all kinds of new creativity. So yes, I guess I sort of agree with you. We do need "terrestrial" technology and this is one way in which the government could make it happen faster.
That's the conclusion of an independent fact-checking organization known as PolitiFact.
The organization's nonpartisan assessment is expected to be widely quoted by supporters of NASA who are trying to reverse Obama's decision on Capitol Hill. "
Like many politicians before him, Barack Hussein Obama broke a campaign promise. He outright lied in order to get the votes independent voters.
Many news wires are now reporting that Obama broke his presidential-campaign promise to fund Constellation. In response, his supporters (of whom many are African-American) -- e. g., Beelzebud -- are pumping messages into the blogs and online forums to defend Obama.
I actually agree! But I hope you realize that this is a project that would have to take at least 50 years. Also, it's too much to ask to build self-replicating robots. But the materials for the Martian biosphere have to be mined and processed by robots on Mars, and this will be the greatest technological hurdle. (Those robots, or at least their "sensitive parts" could be made on Earth and shipped.) But you know, designing and building such robots would be a useful thing for us on Earth as well, so I honestly think we should start working on it.
"I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the essence of human existence."
Apollo's technology was at the cutting edge. But today? It takes decades to get a new idea into space. NASA's leadership is as frightened of 21st century technology as any superstitious savage.
Curiosity? Anybody who works with NASA these days knows that it has comprehensively institutionalized the murder of curiosity.
Seek knowledge? The joke inside the walls is that "NASA" stands for "Not A Science Agency".
"Personally I think it will have catastrophic consequences in our ability to explore space and the spin-offs we get from space technology."
Spin-offs? Very rare these days. You can't have spin-offs if you're not pushing the technology envelope, and NASA simply isn't. You want advanced technology, peek inside an iPhone.
The relationship between NASA and its contractors is rigorously legal, and thoroughly dishonest.
NASA is very good at PR, and totally committed to using it to get taxpayer money to spend (and its private contractors are experts at capturing the money without having to deliver corresponding value). They are also good at international cooperation, which they use as a vehicle to inflict their stagnant practices on the potential competition.
Within NASA, the human program is the most stagnant of all. The space station has the highest ratio of cost to actual accomplishment of anything NASA has ever done (but it gets great PR). The return to the Moon was never a genuinely serious program, just more institutional welfare.
In the great age of European exploration, it took about a year of human labor on the shore to equip a sailor for a one year journey. In NASA's system, that ratio is thousands to one. With that inefficiency, there's no way that space travel can become a truly significant human activity. If you look at the advances in the supporting technologies since 1969, it might be possible to reduce costs that much, but having institutionalized layers and layers of barriers to even trying means it cannot happen.
I'm typing on a Tang flavored keyboard?
It's only a pyramid scheme if America ceases to exist.
IT's a pyramid scheme because it depends on the activity of new workers to pay for old ones. Because there are not enough new workers, social security, like many other entitlements, is imploding.
It -could- have not been a pyramid scheme had the USA not embarked on almost 50 years of free trade madness. Because of free trade, the USA had to continuously devalue the dollar to stay at least somewhat in the game, and would devalue again, if the asians weren't foolishly buying as many of them as can be printed. So... savings values face a constant erosion, people look for growth stocks to compensate, more money flows overseas, the dollar is devalued more to compensate, repeat loop, and the country gets gutted.
This is my sig.
And thanks for clearing up why you're so uninformed
I have the entire US budget down to every gory detail online at my web site.
http://www.mightyware.com/federalbudget.bhs
What has done Obama (and late Bush as well),is the simple fact that entitlements have exploded at the same time corporate profits have eroded. Yeah, the US military is up there, and Obama does bury the war now in the DoD budget proper, but have a look at outlays for everything from student loans, to medicare, to social services.... its increased enormously. I mean, Obama actually gets a nearly 150B break from TARP repayments, and Bush actually paid out 700B to TARP, and Obama is still over a trillion in the whole, and, at the rate of growth of entitlements, even if you completely surrendered the wars and cut the military in half, we would still be 700B in hock, and more, every year.
Go ahead and have a look - how much is out there for disability, old age retirement, medicare... even student loans have gone bezerk..
This is my sig.
A big portion of our bleeding economy is flowing out the giant bullet hole labeled "War against terror." and if we just stopped a _single_ _war_ that we're involved with we'd have a ton of money to put towards all sorts of stuff.
The USA spends twice as much money on entitlements as it does on the entire US military.
http://www.mightyware.com/federalbudget.bhs
This is my sig.
It's not just the "War on Terror." It's all the wars. We face no external threats, militarily speaking. It's time for us to discard our empire.
I agree with that, but in order to do that, free trade has to go. The whole reason we have the empire is to have free trade.
Now, I happen to think free trade is stupid... at least as our government thinks "free" is when it defines trade, but, without our empire, we get stuff like pirates and rogue states attacking everywhere, not just off of africa. transatlantic air traffic would stop and maritime traffic could only be done by armed merchantman.
This is my sig.
If our goal is to spend another 30 years in earth orbit.
I'd say coming down out of the trees was probably a mistake...
In fact we should return to the trees. By my math, raising the living level of 6.8 billion people by three meters yields a net increase in the human living level by 20.4 billion person-meters. We could achieve the same net increase in the level of human life by sending 53 astronauts the 385,000 km to the moon, but it's important to note that would do nothing for the median level.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ares I was a piece of pork which should have long since been canceled. I'm glad it's gone. Everyone knows there are currently two US boosters (three soon enough) in the same weight and performance category and part of Obama's plan is to use those to go into LEO. This makes sense.
What no one has discussed, either in the pro Constellation crowd or those against, is what the propulsion package will be for Flexible Path. I'd like to see some of the ideas behind DIRECT refined so we end up with a moderately economical, scalable launch architecture for really heavy payloads. COTS is not likely to develop this on their own, they're happy at 25 tons to LEO and under. It's where their profit is. Note, I'm choosing to be optimistic on Flexible path being funded and implemented.
It looks like Orion Lite from Bigelow/Boeing/Lockheed is the front runner for crew transport. I'm not sure how much commonality is possible between it and a future Orion Heavy used for lunar or martian missions. Hopefully building one makes it easier to build the other.
I'm really surprised no one has brought this up in the health care debate:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Anyway, I'm from Thailand, so I don't really care either way things roll. If the US doesn't bring its health care system up to the level of other industrialized nations and becomes paralyzed by preventable chronic conditions, it will be good for Thailand's "health tourism" industry.
There is nothing more important to our species than being capable of leaving this planet and finding alternative, habitable planets...
This is why Nasa's manned space program needs to end.
It has been the most inefficient and grandstanding spectacle by a civilization since the pyramids. Nasa has repeatedly claimed that the technology developed from the outrageously expensive trips provide innovations in the commercial sector. While there is some truth to this, it is not comparable to the money spent.
Nasa's JPL has been an example of efficiency in regards to gathering information about the universe. The mars rovers and Phoenix have been resounding successes when cost vs. information gained is considered. Keeping a human being alive and safe while traveling through space is a huge waste of resources whether it be money, energy or intellect. Our current technology simply does not allow for that to be done efficiently.
Pump money into the JPL for more remote missions, Offer awards and loans to the private sector for space travel innovations and utilize the private sector for low orbit missions and maintenance. Offer an incentive and some really smart people will dig their heels in and solve the problem...
Obama's decision regarding the Constellation program was a smart one. We will go back to the Moon eventually. Going now will not significantly improve our understanding of how to get there, how to live there, or what resources are available. It would just be another brute force spectacle.
"The budget shifts priorities from going back to the moon to developing advanced technologies, including advanced propulsion research and climate research done at Marshall. It also proposes that NASA take on the development of a new heavy-lift rocket by developing improved rocket engines, materials and ways to fuel rockets in what are basically floating gas stations in space."
Sounds to me like they want to promote the development of an infrastructure that will allow for further expansion of our space travel capabilities. That seems to make a lot more sense than the "America! F*&% YEAH!" trip we had planned...
BTW, Not only was I a physicist, I worked on a contract related to NASA's (now dead) super sonic transport. The idea of a supersonic train was is that it would be an almost impossible project, not that it would be an easy project--those are dime a dozen.
I don't get it. Is your point that NASA could be a bottomless pit for money with no useful products into the distant future? Why would we want that?
But I think the US Government is right to cut the apron strings between manned lunar exploration and public funding.
One of the biggest issues for lunar activities is going to be infrastructure. That means getting electricity, oxygen, water, food, etc. There are lots of really great theories as to how to do this. What we need is to do is actually start trying these out.
There's uranium on the moon. How do we get to it? How do we use it in a nuclear reactor on the moon? Are we better off with solar? What do we do when we're rotated away from the sun? If we build lots of solar power stations, how do we get the power from there to a moon base?
There's water-ice on the moon, in theory. How do we get to it? How do we use it to create oxygen and water? Do we build our moon bases right next to it? What's that going to do to our ability to get in and out (this water-ice is usually located in dark cold craters which are not necessarily the best landing spots for ships). How do you build a water pipeline on the moon? We can supposedly get oxygen by heating moon rocks. Is that more or less efficient?
How about food? Growing vegetables is nice, sure, and animals are inefficient but tasty. But do you want to stick with a vegetarian diet in order to live on the moon?
Developing the technologies for that is going to cost big money--and that's just so people can live on the moon. Then we have to talk about making money from the moon.
Part of the issue with mining the moon is that there really isn't anything up there that we can't get down here on Earth. About the only thing I've heard of is Helium-3 which may be useful in Nuclear Fusion. But getting the Helium-3 from the Moon to the Earth is going to be pricey. Some ideas, such as fusion plants in orbit may make that cost go down, but you still have to get the electricity to the grid on Earth and if you come up with an efficient way to do it, why not use solar instead of fusion?
So you don't want to mine stuff on the Moon and send the ore back to Earth because it will always be more expensive than just mining it on the Earth. What you really want to do is mine it, refine it, make products out of it, and use those products on the Moon. Here's where private industry comes in. Yeah, they'll do that stuff if they have a market. But for there to be a market, there needs to be entities there to create the demand. Those entities aren't going to be there unless there's some kind of infrastructure in place for them to survive.
For example, I've commented previously that I think the Moon is a great place to build space ships. You have gravity on the Moon, unlike in Earth orbit, so you don't need any fancy system to transport, say, molten iron from point A to point B--let it flow downhill like we do on Earth. A dropped screw isn't going to go whizzing around the planet for the next 100 years, it will fall to the ground where it can be picked up. But the gravity on the Moon is 1/6th that of the Earth. So you can use 1/6th the fuel to lift an object into lunar orbit than you would into Earth orbit--or you can lift something six times heavier. And going outside the Earth/Moon environment will need less fuel if you leave from the moon than if you leave from Earth.
But, again, you need that infrastructure before you can start doing such things. Private industry is not going to pay for the R&D of that infrastructure. They might be willing to pay for the R&D of how to mine and build stuff on the Moon if a customer will come along who will pay them for the finished products (whose prices will contain the R&D). That someone is going to be a Government entity (US or otherwise).
There are now threads of private funding for human activities in low earth orbit. These threads should be encouraged to grow.
FTFY.
By the way, most of that isn't entirely "private" funding. One of their biggest customers will still be the good ol' US
Okay, trip to mars estimated cost (from NASA) is $400 billion. Even for the USG, that is a huge project. The benefit on the other hand is... what exactly? Especially when you consider that there are actual problems to solve here on Earth.
I don't understand.. look at all the computational power, design automation and advancements in basic materials science since 1969. We should be able to send care packages to the moon via FedEx today.
Personally I would rather see better space based telescopes and remote probes than manned missions in the near term. For the money its just more interesting and provides the highest cost/benefit returns in terms of research/knowledge.
At some point mass production, machine intelligence and less global availability of cheap labor will rapidly start to push more and more people out of the workforce as production becomes more and more automated.
Forget the manned missions to mars... hows about an attempt at something impossible like building a large (>1million ppl) city on mars or terraforming the whole planet. No new tech needs to be invented to get people to mars and back so whats the point in shooting that low? Maybe I watch too much star trek and expect too much or maybe you can't empty a lake with a bucket.
Going into (or deeper into) debt during a recession only makes sense if the expenditures are put towards something that will produce revenue for the government in the future. The public works projects that left nothing behind but worthless infrastructure in places with little or no population were mistakes. The Hoover dam though... that made sense, even though it still hasn't sold enough electricity to pay for all the costs involved. The original costs are due to be paid in 2037. Unless something bad happens though, it was a good investment that *also* created jobs. Just creating jobs by throwing money at people won't get you out of a recession.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Certainly keyboards were around before the space race.. but if you think computing technology as we know it would exist today were it not for the space race.. you're fooling yourself. Nevermind telecommunications. You don't like GPS? Satellite communications? Weather satellites? Television broadcasts? All the new materials science?
Military research (and make no mistake.. that's what the space race was.. a military endeavour) gave us all of this tech that we are using now. And more research into space travel is better than none.
That's only because there are areas outside of Africa capable of supporting life. Believe me, if Africa was the only place on Earth with air and water, nobody would've left.
Why not just do all the Research and skip building the 3 trillion dollar rocket?
If you're going to design a moon base, why not just build it in Antarctica. You would get all the research but save the cost of building a rocket which only has minimal advantage.
If you're concerned about humans surviving some sort of nuclear war or impact then why not colonize the ocean.
We can get so much more exploration done using many small and comparatively inexpensive probes sent on special missions than we can by spending HUGE amounts to send people to the moon -- again. As they say, "been there done that". Much better to have two satellites apiece orbiting around every planet, more robots for Mars, Mercury, Titan, etc. We can do this now with our current budget and learn much from it. When we get the technology to send people to space, we'll go. Going now would be like Columbus trying to discover the Indies in a rowboat with his elementary school friends.
So what you're saying is that we need a 200B rocket engine program in order to develop a compact low energy computer?
Everything the space program has to offer can be researched without putting human beings there except for the spectacle and inspiration. Is that worth the money? Maybe. But if you just want R&D then it's cheaper to skip the rocket and just develop all the things which we would need. If we need an extremely efficient hydrogen extraction we can save the money from the rocket and just put it into an efficient hydrogen extraction program.
In many ways NOT putting people into space right now is actually pushing technology further. We're investing that energy into AI programs to drive probes without human intervention. That's also useful.
In all the talk about space exploration, I've not heard any of the so-called experts speak to the need for a concrete return on the multi-billion (trillion?) $$ investment required. As in mining the planets, moons, comets and asteroids of the solar system for the incredibly abundant mineral and chemical resources that most assuredly are out there. By now, the US as well as other nations should have a long-term intelligent plan developed that would bring this reality about.
This, and not the pissing away of vast amounts of blood and treasure to conduct catastrophically destructive limited-resource wars here on Earth, should be the goal. Ultimately, all such activity could of course become commercialized.
There would be nothing revolutionary about supersonic trains. Larger engines, better aerodynamics, etc. Sure, you'd have something when you were done, but you'd develop next to NOTHING in the process. Electric motors, and aerodynamics are a fairly simple, known quantity, and paying a lot of money for good ones doesn't move the technology forward at all.
Space travel is quite different. There are a million and one things which we don't have good answers for, yet. No airplanes go nearly fast enough for liftoff, so development of hypersonic cramjets seems the next step. Conventional shielding from radiation is impractical due to size and weight, so an electromagnetic forcefield (ala Star Trek) seems a practical necessity for even the shortest interplanetary trip.
None of the three you've listed sound impossible by any stretch. Landing a man on the moon was an incredible accomplishment, in large part due to how quickly it was done, but it was overwhelmingly recognized as POSSIBLE from 1920, on, a single commentator for the NY Times not withstanding...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What comes to mind when I say "long term survival of the human race"?
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
The planet we live on currently has about 6.8 billion residents. Most estimates of Earth's carrying capacity are around 5 billion. We simply cannot sustainably survive on one planet unless we're willing to have a nuclear war to kill a few billion people. We need a plan to start moving people off of Earth in the next 50 years. NASA and it's European, Russian and Chinese equivalents are the most important agencies for the future of humanity, and I find it appalling that they're getting less funding than the wars in the Middle East.
So, how do you justify the billions spent on the LHC? By finding a particle that we already assume exists?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
But what will China do if we are unable or unwilling to pay our debt?
That is what you get from burning your trees behind you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You forgot gamers, that was your first and last mistake.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The moon missions did do a lot of research when the camera's were off. For instance part of it is in constant use, measuring the distance of the moon thanks to some reflectors placed at the last landing site.
Just because the played golf to please the punters who paid for the mission, doesn't mean they didn't do hard science.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perhaps next time you make a joke to Americans you should try something else then sarcasm. They don't have that over there. Like beer and cheese, the knowledge seems to have been left behind when we kicked their puritan asses out of the civilized world.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mars is not and should not be at all considered "our ultimate destination in space". That is too short sighted. Interglatic, multigenterationalMars is not and should not be at all considered "our ultimate destination in space". That is too short sighted. Instead of the Moon (been there, done that) or onto Mars (just a longer trip), we should focus on building Intergalactic and multigenerational space craft. We can start doing that research and construction in low then high Earth orbit. And using robots instead of astronauts is much less expensive than just putting humans on Mars. Times are tight and the space industry should adjust along with the rest of the world.
When I was 6 years old my parents moved to Titusville, Florida right across the Indian River Lagoon from the VAB. I grew up watching Saturn V's, Atlas, Delta, Titan, and Shuttle space vehicles thunder skyward. I went to school with the sons and daughters of real "Rocket Scientists". I'd say the number one reason I got into the engineering field was the excitement and allure of these kind of epic and difficult endeavors. What inspires people to go into engineering today ? I only worked on Spacecraft and launch systems for 10 years before I got into other things, but would I have been inspired at all by a presidential challenge to build a better battery, or an energy efficient home ? I somehow doubt it. So I would argue that not only does going to the moon spin-of useful technology it inspires the youth of today and tomorrow to achieve great things in engineering !
Huh? I didn't know that the only two options were "spend billions on space research" and "spend billions on particle acceleration". Somehow, I figured there were more possible options. Silly me, I guess.
fortunately its NOT Obama's decision, its Congress's decision and the people that voted them in can voice their displeasure at the polls :-) if Congress does not do what they wish.
Instead of this "Our Moon!, Our Mars!" "First!" crap, then they might be taken more seriously than a bunch of footballers trying to win the championship.
Near earth orbit living environment for hospitals, enhanced communication satellite networks, space-based solar power, zero-g industries. The list goes on. If NASA was engaged in these useful and profitable activities, nobody would think of shutting them down. Their job is done. Let private industry take over.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
a plan. Let me point out that Bolden and Obama have said all along that the W moon plan is dead along with CONstellation. They have not said that we are not going to the moon.
CONstellation was a disaster in the making. It would count on ONE arch to get us to the moon and loads of money to keep us on the moon. We have already seen massive shutoffs and stumble over and over in NASA's goals. For starters. Nixon killed Apollo and then he started the shuttled by underfunded it. As such, it got off the ground late. What was the consequence of that? We lost SKYLAB. Skylab was to be our ISS that the shuttle docked to. Because Nixon kept cutting Shuttle funding, it was late to the game. Too late. We lost skylab, and it would be another 20 years before we had our lab in the sky.
When Challenger was lost, we were grounded for two years while we sorted it out.
When Columba was lost, we were grounded for two years while we sorted it out. again. We put the ISS on hold during that time.
Now, W and the neo-con congress killed the shuttle, and underfunded the CONstellation. Where are we today? Well, we are about to lose the shuttle and up to two years of not launching humans.
So what is wrong with this pix? We would do the SAME THING had we continued with CONstellation. Instead, with the approach of building multiple launchers AND private space, we will gain the ability to NEVER lose space access again. We also gain having private money going into this. L-Mart, Boeing, ULA, USA, etc have all been nothing but bleeders of money. Now, we are going to ask them to put it on the line and invest in space. We see that already in SpaceX. And Bigelow has absolutely been doing that. IF America invests into the private space, we can get to the moon BEFORE 2020. WIth CONstellation, we would not be there before 2025, and more likely 2030.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sadly, yes. Previous president made big statements...without funding.
Previous president ^2 made big statement...without funding.
This president...defunding.
Defunding?? Clearly you have never bothered to read ANY coverage of this since Obama has INCREASED funding for NASA! The budget is going up by 3% in real terms, which in this fiscal environment is HUGE. And the effect of cutting the extremely expensive and scientifically unproductive (in fact, nearly useless) manned mission is to MASSIVELY redirect money to actual space science!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Since many states have branches of NASA and their subcontractors, expect congressional opposition to the Obama plan.
Private launching is pretty much a non-starter in the US. Today there are three companies that are trying to do this and the Virgin Galactic method is to sidestep most of the process. They are also the only ones to have actually launched anything at all. Why is this you might ask? Well, the whole White Knight/SpaceShipOne was a trick to get around the licensing and it worked.
You see, you can't launch anything without a license from the FAA. And, because possibly polluting chemicals are used, you need another license from the EPA. These organizations are not in the habit of licensing much, so at this time NASA has a license and the US Air Force has a license. Nobody else, not even Virgin Galactic. Sure, there are a few other companies that have attempted to get licenses but none have been issued. And there are no plans to issue any anytime in the future.
So while it is really nice to talk about the wonderful achievements that have been made in static testing and hovering, nobody is going to launch anything from US soil anytime soon. And I suspect should someone come up with the bright idea of trying to launch from Mexico there would be an immediate denial of export on the grounds of an arms export license being needed.
So nobody is going anywhere anytime soon - except for NASA and the Air Force.
By the way, the next time Virgin Galactic tries a launch I would expect there to be an army of FAA and EPA guys on hand to tell them why exactly they cannot do so. That a space launch license is needed for their airplane. And they can't have one.
You make a good point: the technologies needed for the next step are even less applicable here on Earth that the Apollo technologies were.
Literally restating your points: the positives of space exploration are that it begets space exploration and excitement about space exploration. This simply begs the question. If even an advocate for space exploration can't clearly state why it is useful for any reason other than prolonging itself, it is no wonder it is being cut.
What comes to mind when I say "long term survival of the human race"?
Keeping Earth habitable, as opposed to popping a few tin cans that need constant resupply into orbit and calling it 'colonisation'.
Space has a lot of vacuum, a few rocks, almost no oxygen or water, and zero biomass. Exactly how is that supposed to contribute to human survival?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
To everyone who says we owe the computer industry to NASA,
No, we don't. If anything, we owe the computer industry to the Census Bureau, the U.S. Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Security Agency. Those were the government agencies that really pushed computer technology. UNIVAC I, SAGE, the Atlas Guidance Computer, the early airborne computers, and all the early supercomputers were funded by those agencies, not NASA. The Apollo program was mostly off the shelf computer technology on the ground. The spaceborne computers were custom, but those were descendants of guidance hardware from early ICBMs.
NASA's main innovation in computing is generally considered to be NASTRAN, the first finite-element structural analysis program.
I never said I had a problem with people going to service satellites. My problem is wasting money on space travel for space travel's sake.
Most of the technologies developed for Apollo, at first glance, don't seem like they'd be applicable here on Earth, either. I can't begin to guess whether more advanced tech will or won't find many uses, so I'd love to hear your thought processes which came up deciding they won't. Certainly, a LOT of prediction is required for any such task, and we could all easily end up wrong about what the future holds.
Just reducing the costs of lift-offs will dramatically change the face of our modern world, as the impossible becomes practical... perhaps more than the initial rush to orbit communication satellites did.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
... America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership ...
Hmm, yeah, right. Here's a few thoughts:
I think the US abandoned moral leadership a long time ago in search of profit; let's talk no more about that.
Technology: There is no doubt that it would be a good idea to strive for the best you can achieve in the areas of science. It has become modern in recent years to replace the word "science" with "technology" and "research" with "engineering"; because technology and engineering sound like something that can make you money, whereas science ans research tend to make people think too much for themselves and become unruly. It seems perfectly possibly for people to work with technology and not question the irrational dogmas of religion and establishment, but it is hard to believe in the myth of the infallible truth of the Bible, when you are a scientist schooled in critical thought.
The snag here, of course, is that techology and engineering won't go very far without heavy investments in science and research.
Responsibility: Who do you owe your responsibility to? Big money? Religious tradition? The nations of the world? Or perhaps yourself? It is not for me to tell others how to live their lives, but isn't it worth considering, that while the rest of the world can continue progressing with or without America's participation, no single nation can achieve a lot on its own. The Romans became great by assimilating the knowledge of the Greeks, Egyptians and others, European nations built on the achievements of the Arabs as well as the Romans, America harvested the best scientists and knowledge of Europe and Russia after WWII, and now the Chinese are doing the same.
Talking about responsibility, leadership and morality like he does, sounds overly pompous. It is still not unachievable for America to assume the leadership, given that the right decisions are made; and keeping in mind that leadership isn't quite the same as "being first" - it also implies that you have followers. As far as I can see, America is at the moment engaged in a game of blaming others for everything and not wanting to play; if you want to be leaders, you can't afford to sulk.
I really hate to say anything critical to a 5 digit slashdot ID, but I'll just assume you are being sarcastic.
There are a multitude of manufacturing processes that would benefit from being in a no- or low-gravity environment, just as there are quite a few that require vacuum.
While "Space has a lot of vacuum", there are a BUNCH of rocks pretty close. the moon is the closest, but there are quite a few others that are reasonably close. and there is plenty of water; we just found a bunch more in the moons polar region. Plenty of oxygen, also; it's currently bound up with other elements, but that's just a process away. biomass...well, who knows. There might be a bunch on one of the jovian moons, or one of the more easily reached asteroids might be a big frozen fishstick. no way to tell until we go look.
the FACT is, we could have easily had a lunar base since the mid 70's; getting all the parts there is the only hard part.
once it's there, it would be almost immediately extremely profitable; the aforementioned manufacturing processes alone would take care of that. and it's damned near free to get something from the moon back to earth, all it takes is a pretty puny catapult.
with all that recently found water, breathable air and drinkable water would be simpler to obtain that it is on a nuclear sub, which by the way is a pretty good model and supplier of the basic power-plant, until such time as you get enough mirrors made.
Anyone in the component industry who thought about it would tell you that a gigantic "clean room" environment, with 1/6th Gravity, and free vacuum, would eventually pay for itself. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that any pharmaceutical company would say so, also.
One other thing, I almost hate to mention: whoever has a moonbase, a solar furnace, and a catapult would automatically have the most potent & versatile weapon in the history of mankind.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Yeah, just like there were absolutely no benefits to going to the moon. Right? Right??
Give it a rest, it has been demonstrated and documented numerous times that manned space missions, particularly ambitious ones, drive scientific progress in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. Progress that actually helps to solve problems here on Earth.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
At the time of Apollo we didn't have mobile computers in any real sense and they had to develop that technology. The overflows were huge--NASA was cutting edge. Today NASA isn't so much cutting edge. Some of the overflows that were defense related are not worth as much now; the ability to launch and target an ICBM is much less valuable in today's world.
Likely research for space travel is radiation shielding an radiation hardened computer equipment. Similar to the launch technology, these are only useful for other space related exploits.
Lets contrast this with pouring money into, say, automating freeways. This could yield substantially lower energy costs for freeway travel (much less braking, less interest in high horsepower cars). But it would also give us information about making robots that interact with each other and making systems that work that way very safe. The overflows to robotics and AI would be huge and applicable to all sorts of problems, not just launching rockets.
Please enumerate the direct benefits of going to the moon? I'm not talking about the indirect benefits, which I don't deny. The point is the other option is not do nothing but take up an ambitious project that actual has value itself.
" 'I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership"
Haha, The whole world knows america is morally bankrupt, and that a large part of the stuff NASA did was done using russian rockets for many many years now.
But that doesn't mean I think america should not try though, but perhaps moonmission can be put on the backburner, I don't know, the counterargument is that the moon has certain economical and practical potential rather than only expanding knowledge like probes do, the planned moon stuff was for 'building infrastructure to power the future', something obama likes to push back on earth.
Your mistake is quite old, it is one that has been made by many people before you. You mistakenly believe that if we participate in manned spaceflight, that means we must be missing out on other things. Real life is not like Civilization, we don't work on one scientific advance at a time.
Problem is, I have yet to see another proposal that would have as effective a driving force for science as the space program. Historically, the two greatest motivators of technological advance have been space flight, and war. I think we can both agree the former is to be prefered.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I don't understand, you think we don't have limited resources to spend?
I know that the money we allocate to science is inconsequential. We could fund dozens of NASAs, as well as any other scientific project you can think of, if we really wanted too. The space program has never choked off scientific progress, just the opposite.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Yes, in hindsight it's easy to see what the technologies developed into. but at the time, it wasn't obvious anyone other than NASA would want to spend a billion dollars to get a "mobile computer". Whether the tech developed by NASA will roll into something we will see benefit in, in 20 years, is a pretty open question.
That's a pretty well-understood tech already, due to thousands of satellites in various orbits. I don't see a much need for R&D in that area, so I doubt they'll be spending a lot of money on that...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I once read, "Space travel is quite different. There are a million and one things which we don't have good answers for, yet. No airplanes go nearly fast enough for liftoff, so development of hypersonic cramjets seems the next step. Conventional shielding from radiation is impractical due to size and weight, so an electromagnetic forcefield (ala Star Trek) seems a practical necessity for even the shortest interplanetary trip."
From this I learned (1) airplanes can not lift off (we will need cramjets before they can) and , (2) you think that "Star Trek" forcefields are a necessary R&D area. Now you say this is totally understood.
Given this view there is no reason to prioritize or budget really. Every program has benefits, the points is you have to weight those against the costs. If you can't agree that this is important you will make (very) bad decisions.
Now you're just acting like an idiot.
1) I, quite obviously, meant no air-breathing jets can reach Earth escape velocity, so any space-plane would need hypersonic engines developed.
2) Electromagnetic shielding of AN ENTIRE SHIP would be highly beneficial to it's human inhabitants, if they don't wish to be entirely confined to an extremely tiny compartment for years at a time... Meanwhile, "radiation hardened computer equipment" already exists, and is well understood.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant