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NASA Ends Plan To Put Man Back On Moon
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online: "NASA has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight programme despite a congressional ban on its doing so. Legislators have accused President Obama's administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill."
Hey, look at the upside. Now when the usual suspects use the tired argument, "If we can put a man on the moon we can do X." just look at em and say "But we CAN'T put a man on the moon anymore. Our might forebearers could do that but we can't. Morons like you traded all that for a welfare state."
Democrat delenda est
As a young Canadian whose intended career path would have hopefully ended up with spaceflight on a NASA craft, I want to thank NASA for crushing the dreams of children everywhere.
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
At this point in US space travel's history it seems like we're in a transition period. The old technology has finally caught up with itself and now without the Shuttle we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards. Rushing into a new manned programmed for what seems like no good reason other then to just do it will be a waste of money and take awy from developing tech. Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems. Any plan for a moon base would involve robot systems paving the away ahead before humans regardless so let's focus those funds long term rather then making a couple of special interests happy.
Unless we can set up a colony there, it just isn't worth it.
The moon, you see, is a harsh mistress.
YEAHHHHHHHH!
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Jobs for locals and the 'thanks' that flows back into the political system. Loss of face? Dual use tech might also keep the cash flowing and skill set in place..
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ya, I mean, it's kind of sad, but lets not forget we now have people living in outer space on the ISS. I don't think we're losing any scientific benefit we might get from a trip to the moon.
that's teh shizzle bizzle
Constellation, particularly Ares, was a boondoggle that was years behind schedule and was never going to get us there. Now we can work on Mars and do it in a feasible manner. Commercial companies like SpaceX can handle the LEO stuff, and maybe even heavy lift. Also, it gets rid of ATK, who should have never gotten another contract after blowing up Challenger.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
If Congress is really mad that the Obama administration is shutting down the moon program, then there is a simple way they can handle the situation. They can vote to fully fund NASA's programs. So far, all I hear from Congresscritters is lip service. If they really want to send humans back to the moon, then show us the money. Talk is cheap. Space hardware is not.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
People act like any measures taken now determine the future of the American space program forever. The budget is what it is. If NASA needs to focus on less expensive methods of exploration, that doesn't mean it will be that way forever. If it's a major setback, that's unfortunate. It doesn't change the financial health of the country, however.
I really don't have a problem with this. We've already been to the moon several times and have found that it is, in fact, a giant rock. I really see no reason to go there again without some kind of purpose in mind. For example, constructing some kind of permanent base there.
This is a symptom of the "winner gets the spoils" approach to administration in the US. Every administration is supposed to set new policy in every direction, which comes from the system where every new President appoints his people to jobs all over the executive. This frequent revision of policy makes sense for short-term issues, especially ones central to the election (say DOJ anti-drug projects or FTC business regulations) but is an absurd way to manage scientific and engineering projects which naturally have timescales much greater than 4 years. Having every president retask NASA (or the agency of your choice) leads to enormous waste as projects are cancelled and new projects are started so they can be cancelled by the next administration.
The article and the information within don't add up. If you want a screaming article about the end of the Constellation program, direct your anger at NASA's budget, fewer then 1% ( about half of that, actually ) of the federal budget. Don't go insulting NASA. All the voices against it in this article are biased. Why do they want to keep it? Not because they support the system. They want the jobs in their district. Really, they dont care about the program at all. At a time like this, you have to ask yourself- what is NASA? A job programme, or an exploration agency? Constellation is a waste. It had to be cancelled. It was unsustainable. Even if NASA got one rocket right now ( from santa ) with all the research done - THEY COULD NOT SUSTAIN IT. It is too expensive, way more expensive then even the shuttle. Compare this: After 9 nine billion spend on the Constellation program. How much is there in orbit? After half a billion spend on a new family, SpaceX falcon have had succesfull launches, into orbit - And faster! There is something wrong with constellation and / or Nasa management. You HAVE to scrap or fix it. This cancellation could be seen by industry insiders from years away. It ended right after the beginning, when the funding was slashed by congress
[blockquote]An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online:[/blockquote]
Isn't it odd that these days, more and more, Americans have to find out what their government is doing from foreign newspapers?
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
the idea of humanity continuing on the moon or Mars is gaining popularity
Really? Maybe if enough people BELIEVE...
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars. There is no place on Earth that costs as much as a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of the cost of just getting to the Moon, much less Mars, much less staying for any period of time.
These people you speak of... you really think they have any idea of what they're proposing? I'm all for fantasy and imagination, but at the end of the day, no matter how bad the Earth gets, it's exponentially more comfortable and practical than any other place in the Solar System.
The Admin and the Engineer
Going to the moon now would have been Apollo all over again, with little to gain. The moon has been done and we should leave it to commercial and new scientific activity now.
If we, as a species, want a project of comparable difficulty (compared to Apollo from the 1960 perspective) then we should send a human crew to Titan.
But the problem is how to fund it. The cold war and the US taxpayer funded Apollo. The Soviet people helped in their own unique way, by showing how not to do it. A new space program would have to be a global exercise, with contributions from many countries. If we decide to have just one war less then finding the money should not be a problem.
For a couple of decades we have been avoiding an important question: why do we want human beings to go into space? We should think hard and come up with some answers pronto.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I don't think the case for visiting the moon (and Mars) is compelling enough for the current economic climate.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They should just shoot another Moon landing footage on a studio lot in Burbank. That should be enough for another 40 years of national bravado.
Except this time we'll do it in 3-D and put it on Pay-Per-View with heavy product placement. Doritos Moonwalk? Why Not?
Well, we decided that there might be another bank or car corporation that the US government wants to buy or just give money too. The citizens will bitch and moan about raising taxes so abandoning projects that millions have already been spent on just to reserve the other couple million for political capitol seems to be the going plan.
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars. There is no place on Earth that costs as much as a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of the cost of just getting to the Moon, much less Mars, much less staying for any period of time.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> but at the end of the day, no matter how bad the Earth gets, it's exponentially more comfortable and practical than any other place in the Solar System.
While you are correct as far as your limited imagination goes, ponder these notions:
1. One medium size nickel-iron asteroid has more metal content than pretty much everything we will need for decades. Space has a LOT of resources and there isn't any sort of ecology to worry about despoiling. So do YOU care about the environment? Or are you a poser interested in the egoboo of recycling your plastic Walmart bags? Or perhaps a pave the Earth nutjob? (See how easy it is?)
2. The one thing space has is space. Something we have run out of here, there aren't any places to go here and start over. Yes there are barren hellholes almost as hard to colonize as space but you won't escape the long arm of civilizatrion ANYWHERE earthside. A frontier is a great social relief valve, allowing a certain personality type to be a useful asset instead of a bomb waiting to go off.
3. Sooner or later Earth is doomed. If we are still all here when that happens we go extinct.
4. Resources expended on space exploration has a hell of a lot more useful economic benefits than warehousing losers in housing projects.
Democrat delenda est
There's debate over whether we got a man on the moon
Why wouldn't the USSR say anything about it being fake? Unlike today, back then both the USSR and the USA put a lot of effort on their space programs.
Sending humans to space is generally a bad idea and, AFAIK, is only done for propaganda purposes. Humans aren't fit for space. Maybe in the ISS it's worth it, but not for Moon/Mars missions since robots should be able to do a better (can stay there for years making a huge collection of rocks) and cheaper job.
There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
Why be interested in that, when you can keep fighting in silly wars that no-one can win, when you can keep bailing out finance sectors and car manufacturers even though their business models clearly got them into trouble in the first place.
Sorry, my rant toggle must have been on, and I didn't notice.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
No one is interested in the Moon unless we'll build a base there. No one wants to pay for another trip back to the Moon if we're just going to plant the flag and come home again. Been there, done that.
Do something new and different, or don't go at all.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Back?
There's debate over whether we got a man on the moon
Buzz Aldrin ended that debate. Does he have to end it again? Can I have your WGS84 coordinates please?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Don't forget the funding of that idiot "Blair" on "NASA Edge."
Maybe in the ISS it's worth it, but not for Moon/Mars missions since robots should be able to do a better (can stay there for years making a huge collection of rocks) and cheaper job.
"Can," assuming, you know, dust devils consistantly clean off the solar panels, don't crash on landing, don't get stuck in dust a mear half inch thick, don't get buried under a sheet of ice, and are free of mechanical defects.
Humans were able to bring back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks. How much have Mars landers been able to bring back? Heck, how much have moon landers been able to bring back (hint: this one's a non-zero answer)?
Seriously, there is no place on Earth as deadly as the surface of the Moon or Mars.
Wait till WW3 happens or an asteroid hits. Then other planets aren't going to look like such a bad place to live. If we stay here, we go extinct.
The US is no longer a super power. We're no longer a nation of thinkers and doers, instead we've made ourselves into an entitlement society. We tax those that work and innovate and we subsidize those that do not work and only consume. We're doomed if entitlements aren't eliminated, they are the tools of enslaving individuals disguised as progressive freedom.
Respect the Constitution
Spend the next 10 years using robots for science (the area NASA/JPL does very well with) and develop new propulsion, energy, life support etc for a new manned directive in the future. In the meantime let commercial ventures work out some new low cost delivery systems.
As an astronaut has said recently (I think it was Armstrong himself), you cannot say "develop technology for next 10 years". Technology doesn't appear out of nowhere. Any technology developed is to get to some goal, be it digging a well or landing on the Moon or Mars. If there is no goal to land a man on Mars or to have long term presence on the Moon, then such technology will not be developed. It's as simple as that.
We currently have our multi-core, 64-bit processors and 8+GB of RAM in our computers at affordable prices only because of AMD and Intel rivalry for the almighty dollar. If AMD never existed, Intel would never needed to develop the technology they currently use. We would have our Pentium Pros and we would have to be happy with them, as a step up in performance would be the Itanics. Goals and an attempt to reach such goals is what drives technology and development, not mere attempt to "we want technology".
But then who needed that useless Apollo program anyway, eh? NASA was one of the only major purchasers of early silicon chip technology. Without that money for that "special interest" of silicon chips lasting 10-15 years, well, modern CPUs would have been a pipe dream. Definitely no PCs today and everything that they encompass.. Apollo program payed for itself 1000x over just through their funding of the early silicon technology.
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space.
I don't quite understand how "Not going to the moon" translates to "Not going to space."
Space is a lot bigger than just the moon. Also wasting money and time trying for human transport to the moon is...a waste. It would be much better used trying to, I dunno, try different things?
I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
See, I don't get this. It's like saying "Well, we've tossed in billions upon billions of dollars down a hole with no end in sight already, why don't we just toss a few billion more in there?"
They're stopping the program since it's a *waste of money* that's taking away from other viable programs. I don't understand why people want the government to keep throwing money at the same outdated plan in the vain hope that, somehow, with enough money, you'll hit some magic point where the money spent actually becomes economically sound.
Man, shit. Give me 10 million dollars ever year and I'll show you a productive space program. Trust me. I'll always project completion 5 years in the future.
Sooner or later Earth is doomed. If we are still all here when that happens we go extinct.
Sometimes I wonder if that would be a bad thing.
How much have Mars landers been able to bring back?
As much as their mission required them to. They may not have full labs there, but they can still send useful information. In my opinion it's better to send a few bots from time to time than to send a dude there once, or twice if we're lucky.
If we're going to colonize the Moon, bots will have to build a base there first (remember that it has no atmosphere, so the base will either be heavy or underground, so it would be unlikely to come pre-built).
um... your numbers are WAY off. Sure, pre colonization period, probably god awful expensive to move to America. But, even with inflation (heh), it doesn't even begin to match the relative cost of space exploration.
The Admin and the Engineer
Humans aren't fit for space
Humans aren't fit to fly from Australia to Europe in 20 hours at mach 0.8 but somehow we manage to make it routine and safe.
(the satay sticks with peanut sauce in MAS business class are absolutely FTW).
http://michaelsmith.id.au
> Sometimes I wonder if that would be a bad thing.
Then give yourself a Darwin Award and get the hell out of the way of those of us who actually give a damn. But of course you won't do it anymore than than asshat Peter Singer (look up his latest NYT column) will off himself. No, your type would want to be the last one out after you make sure all the useful people are killed off.
Democrat delenda est
I take issue with 2, 3, and 4.
2. There's lots of space at the bottom of the ocean. It's a lot less dangerous, and a lot cheaper, too. See my point? Space is a barren hell hole that makes the barren hell holes on Earth a paradise. I don't know what you've heard, but... Space... it's not a nice place.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Even after the Sun novas, there will still be Earth... just quite a but different than it is now... maybe not all in one place either. People are what matters about Earth, and little else (my cats, too!).
4. The point of housing those that can't afford it is not about economic advancement. It's about being human. You should try it.
The Admin and the Engineer
Pretty sure there were air, water, animals and plants in the Americas and Australia before Europeans got there. I heard a legend once that there were even indigenous people!
I did not know the man in the moon was missing.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Lunar Vehicle at the end of Obama's inauguration was a joke ?
No one is interested in the Moon unless we'll build a base there. No one wants to pay for another trip back to the Moon if we're just going to plant the flag and come home again. Been there, done that.
You have to do that kind of thing every now and then to prove the status of a dominant empire, though. It's pointless in and of itself, but it's a status thing, which is why China is pursuing it so aggressively. If they do it, it will be an implied challenge for the US to repeat the feat to prove that they are still strong.
I would guess the deep abyss of certain places in the ocean are more deadly. You have vast amounts of pressure, I'm no rocket surgeon or brain scientist, but I think that's a lot harder to deal with then the vacuum of space. Actually if you were exposed to those pressures you would be crushed and dead instantly, where you could survive at least 20-30 seconds in space and live. Plus there are giant squid.
*DrugCheese rants*
Seems to me there is really no good reason for a manned spaceflight programme just now.
Research and exploration can pretty clearly be done more cost-effectively by robots. Even if a certain proportion of them get stuck in stupid ways that a human could fix in a minute, they're just so much cheaper per mission than people that you get much more science per $billion from the ones that survive.
Colonization and so on is a great goal, but I suspect the best way to pursue it just now is to simply to grow the economy on Earth and research basic materials science etc., until it becomes more affordable.
So, that leaves bad reasons -- national flag-waving (being first for the sake of being first); and media/political appeal (easier to get $10b to fly an astronaut than $1bn for 5 robot missions).
Makes me a little sad -- I share the "living in space" dream, but I truly can't see anyway it makes sense at the moment.
I guess so. They've lost the dream, they've lost the initiative, they've lost everything needed to get off the earth. The future is either overseas, or with the private sector. The only question is, "When did the US cede dominance in space?" I say, it was when they decided to build a stupid fucking space plane, and fly it repeatedly, when a space plane is OBVIOUSLY NOT a viable method of moving deeper into space.
I hated the idea of a space plane when it was first publicized. Morons. Space planes don't explore space - they only explore planets and atmospheres. Every real exploratory space ship should carry something LIKE a space plane, for deployment when a really intersting planet is discovered, but no one with a dream of space exploration even things of winged craft.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Arguably, yes, bottom of the ocean may be as dangerous and as inhospitable as space. But it's a lot easier to get to, and a lot less expensive. And that's an enormous understatement. And remind me why we want to go to dangerous places for the bargain price of a decade of national revenue?
The Admin and the Engineer
My first thought was that if the Russians announced a plan to put someone on the moon again the Yanks would be back there tomorrow.
I think your rant may have been well placed. With the international treaties against nations laying claim to space objects, and agreements not to send any armed space vehicles, it doesn't allow for war there. On the other hand, if a nation were to do exactly that, they would have the upper hand.
Imagine some rogue nation develops a significant space program, *AND* arms it. There would be no way to defend against it, or for other nations to fight against it. Of course, with the way things usually go, the rogue nation would be the US, swearing to defend the neutrality of space through superior force, and in such stop evil nations from having a space program.
Since we can't militarize space, there's no incentive for military involvement in space, except for spy and communication satellites, which are run happily from the ground.
I've argued quite a bit, if nations of Earth were to stop wasting their resources on crap they are now, we could have a significant space presence, with a strong step towards deep space exploration. We will never learn how to do it unless we work at it. ... and for a car analogy. If we had looked at the M. Brezin car 1769, which could do a whopping 2mph, and said "this is too slow, it will never be worth pursuing", we would still be traveling on foot, horseback, and by horse drawn carriage. Today, we look at space travel and say "it will take too long to get anywhere", so we don't try. 6 months to Mars? Of course it is, we're still in the Bronze Age of space travel. We've discovered a little, but we have an awful long way to go.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The only way to get the rich to disgorge money is to persuade them that an external enemy wants to take it from them - hence the constant use of communism as a bogeyman by the Right. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its presence in space, the external enemy was lost. If you want a new space program, better get the Taliban to start launching satellites.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Repeat the feat? That would just be another waste. If we go back to the mooon at all (and I hope we do) I want to see a BASE STATION built, with personnel stationed there permanently. Hydroponics, mining, extraction of atmospheric gases, as well as water - you know, built a habitat for a few thousand people, then grow it to a few million people.
But, what I REALLY want to see, are manned missions to the Mars and the various moons that might be made habitable with a minimal effort. (Minimal effort, meaning the erection of domes, and/or digging into the surface, as opposed to some moronic effort to put a base on a gas giant, or a hot planet, like mercury.)
Nope, I don't want to see a stupid scrap of cloth hung out on some barren rock. I want PEOPLE there, to transform the barren rock into something useful.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It seems to me that the human race needs to work on improving its skills in robotics in space exploration and many other areas. We are seeing them used in deep sea disaster recovery and warfare and it is time to see them used in positive projects. With an aging population exoskeletons need to be commercialized. Space exploration by robots is the next step and the technology developed there is going to help us get through the next few years of difficulty we are going to be experiencing.
it's a status thing, which is why China is pursuing it so aggressively. If they do it, it will be an implied challenge for the US to repeat the feat to prove that they are still strong.
so wait and see if they do it first... if they fail, we'll be able to point out not only that "this is why we no longer attempt to do this just to see if we can... it's very dangerous", but also, "oh yeah, but when we did attempt it, we succeeded."
if they succeed, and msnbc/cnn/foxnews ratings don't drop as the head pieces babble about american pride, then do it again live and shut everyone up. ultimately, it's a barren rock. have fun.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock.
Er, yes. I guess that's true, though trying to build anything on 'Earth' once it is subsumed by the expanding Sun will also be an expensive project.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Might as well take the S out of NASA since they are no longer interested in Space. Then it becomes NAA, or maybe NAH (No Astronauts here)
Hopefully congress can just close down NASA, and give the meager budjet to private space exploration. The bureaucrats at NASA can be sent to the gulf to clean up the oil spill.
Of actually developing new technologies that will truly expand humankind's frontiers beyond what they've ever been before.
Rather than rehashing a 40-year-old accomplishment, just to prove we still can.
Of course we still can. If we wanted to devote resources to it like we did the first time, we could make it happen. But with no Cold War competition to make putting some boot prints on the moon seem like an urgent need, nobody wants to spend that kind of money, even those who hate social programs as much as you.
That's why Constellation was crippling NASA while still failing to meet its already mediocre goals.
Instead, focusing on basic R&D while leaving the heavy lifting (literally) to private industry, NASA will actually be able to accomplish things. Actual new things, things that will make future trips to the moon cheaper and more than just a boots-and-flag mission. Frankly even if NASA's budget was Apollo-sized I would rather they pour it into these projects.
The future of NASA hasn't looked brighter in decades. It's always darkest before the dawn, and recently it was very dark, but that was caused by the very project the loss of which people are lamenting!
The enemies of Democracy are
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock.
Er, yes. I guess that's true, though trying to build anything on 'Earth' once it is subsumed by the expanding Sun will also be an expensive project.
I suppose. Maybe we can mitigate that cost by starting a project now to put Man on the Sun. It's just as practical as Mars, and only mildly less comfortable.
The Admin and the Engineer
To attempt to head off common misconceptions about NASA's new plans (like those in the article summary), I'll go ahead and post the contents of an FAQ straight from the source. Also, it's important to note that the new budget -increases- the amount of money for NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/faq.html
This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about NASA's exploration mission and its associated programs and projects following the 2011 Budget Rollout.
Why is the Administration proposing a new direction for Human Space Exploration?
In May of last year, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) tasked an independent committee with reviewing U.S. human space flight plans and activities, with the goal of ensuring that our nation is pursuing the best trajectory in this arena - one that is safe, innovative, affordable, and sustainable. While the committee did determine that the Constellation Program was technically sound, they found it to be "be on an unsustainable trajectory" because it NASA was "perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." In other words, the budget did not support the Constellation architecture.
What is better about the new approach?
The new approach proposed by the Administration focuses long term investments on the fundamental capabilities required for human space flight beyond Low Earth Orbit, but that we currently lack. The plan calls for technology development in areas like propulsion, in-orbit propellant storage, automated and autonomous rendezvous and docking, advanced closed-loop life support, and tele-robotic operations. It also increases funding in NASA's human research program, allowing us to better understand the potentially harmful effects the space environment might have on people and how we can best mitigate them. Most importantly, this approach is financially sustainable.
Does this mean that NASA has given up on returning to the moon?
Absolutely not. In fact, recent discoveries of water on the moon have made it more scientifically interesting that ever before. Our focus in the near term will be discovery through robotic missions, such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, followed by robotic precursor missions, to scout the terrain for the eventual return of humans.
Why is turning over a portion of human spaceflight to commercial industry a good idea?
NASA has already committed a significant investment to commercially provided space flight services. Almost all of our satellites and many science missions are launched commercially. In addition, we recently contracted with commercial companies to carry cargo to the International Space Station commercially. The next natural step is for NASA to buy commercial flights for our astronauts to the ISS. This will free up NASA to pursue the greater challenges in the way of a trip to Mars.
Exploration Systems was the directorate that managed the Constellation program. What will its role be under the new plan?
Under the new plan the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) will be responsible for many research and development programs including exploration technology and demonstrations, heavy lift and propulsion technology, exploration precursor robotic missions, and human research. In addition, ESMD will manage the commercial crew and cargo spaceflight programs.
Terraforming Venus is another interesting project, one that'll have huge economic benefits if done correctly.
A very good article on this subject is here:
Terraforming Venus Quickly
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
1991
Link: http://www.paulbirch.net/TerraformingVenusQuickly.pdf
Arguably, yes, bottom of the ocean may be as dangerous and as inhospitable as space. But it's a lot easier to get to, and a lot less expensive.
If you saw ROV feeds from BP, it's eternal night at mere 5000', temperature near freezing, hardly any life, and soft silt hundreds of feet deep. Humans can't just don a spacesuit and walk there, they need a robot or a very expensive submarine. Space is easier to work with, even though it's harder to get there. Also space is more natural for humans, and there is more to do there. There isn't much to do at the bottom of an ocean. You can't have any industry there; vacuum is far better than water. If your pressurized vehicle develops a leak in vacuum you can stop it with a chewing gum. If the same happens deep under water, that thin stream of water will slice you in two.
The moon is relatively "easy" as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. It's close enough to make mistakes and learn. We haven't left low earth orbit in a long time.
this is my sig
The US budget is $18.3b for NASA in 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget. and The United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization"[10][11][12] via U.S. farm bills - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. and who knows how many billion on protecting its gas corporations - http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm. Space research is cheap, repays in technology dividends and uplifts people. Subsidies encourage the status quo and defer the inevitable.
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there. Then they will have the high ground; literally. The gravity well on the moon is so much less than earth, that kinetic weapons will work so much better from it. Hence, it is a strategic imperitive that someone will utilise the moon for a weapons platform at some stage.
What about the USA buying rocket technology from ESA ? Ariane is an excellent vehicle with a great record.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And then the question becomes, "Do we seriously need to keep trying for Constellation?" It doesn't seem to be working whereas new techniques may or may not be applicable here.
Imagine if all the money wasted on Constellation had been spent on, I dunno, researching better rocket tech? Making better robots? Doing actual science?
I understand the stepping stone thing, but look at it this way. Imagine there's a stepping stone in the river. The first time we made it by jumping there and BAM we made it. So now we keep thinking up bigger and better ways to jump there and started building the same shoes we had last time. Only, we've been building those shoes for so long and spent an insane amount of money on it.
What if we tried building a bridge with planks to the stone instead of spending half a century trying to build the shoes we used 50 years ago? Or, I dunno, get some modern shoes?
Making mistakes and learning is one thing. Wasting insane amounts of money on a rocket to nowhere is something else.
It's not about "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET!" It's "OH NOES NO MOON ROCKET THAT USED UP SO MUCH MONEY THAT IT IS RIDICULOUS HOW IT STILL CAN'T FLY AND HOW OUTDATED THE TECH IS."
Since these flights costs tons of distiled oil per seat from dead biomass rotting and cooking in high pressure during millions of years, this is a dead avenue. Sooner than expected, we will face the reality, that transporting our flesh and bones bodies from places to places is a waste of our precious limited resources. We better hope we develop alternatives with efficient telecommunications and advanced robotics if, we really need to interact with remote environments.
Léa Gris
If we don't go to the moon, someone else will.
Sorry, the money didn't go to welfare, it went to the banks and car companies.
The can-do attitude was replaced with the "can we make a profit on it by swapping stocks around".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You want someone to beat to the punch ?
Go for the indians. EXACTLY to show that they're capable of every bit as much technology and engineering as a US based company, they have ISRO (feel free to google it). They've got lunar probes launched already. Are currently fielding a solid fuel rocket (so they may well be the first to reach Mars), as well as some nifty ideas on how to continue the human space flight programme. ISRO spends billions of dollars on their space programme, and gets 5-10 times as much for the money, because they generally contract locally.
When Kennedy stood up to the Russians when he said "we do this not because it's easy", he also created jobs and techonological advances for AMERICANS (and the rest of the world also, but primarily for his own people). This is the knowledge and legacy that Chineese and Indians are now usurping.
I do agree that ADDITIONAL spending beyond that which was originally budgetted might be frivolous currently, due to the current financial environment. However, dismantling the programme entirely will be like pissing your pants when you're cold. It may feel nice NOW, but you're going to regret it later.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
The first is from those who say "ending Constellation will cost jobs in my state" (i.e. those who just want more pork thrown their way and more lobbying money from the contractors) and who wont accept any option other than the status quo.
The second argument is from those (including various astronauts etc) who say that the alternatives proposed by Obama will leave America without manned space flight capability for too long (forcing the US to buy expensive seats on a Soyuz to get to the ISS). They claim that the "commercial providers" Obama wants will not be able to deliver a manned booster/capsule fast enough (and have zero experience with manned booster/capsule production). This group is open to alternatives to the current program, just not the (currently non existent) alternatives Obama wants.
You certainly arnt one of those "useful people" are you.. you sound like the person who would push women and children aside to make sure you got on the lifeboat.
What are you talking about? Obama didn't veto the NASA budget, he redirected the focus of NASA. The parent's post is saying, correctly, that if Congress wants NASA to go back to the Moon they have an easy solution: write a line item in the budget dedicating X-billions of dollars to returning to the Moon. The US does not have line item veto and Obama isn't going to veto the general budget.
Sending people into space quickly isn't necessary, merely entertaining. It is emphatically NOT exploration.
We REQUIRE robots and remote-operated systems to interact with everything out there anyway, and those are useful on Earth too. We can EXPLORE space and learn at a much better ROI by developing remote-manned systems that don't need life support and won't need to return. Space exploration not being a mission of US conquest, let some other countries spend the money to put humans up. We can do to them what they did to us and exploit their tech later. The race isn't always to the swift.
I understand the anguished horny craving of Slashdotters to go into space. Get rich, pay a contractor for the ride, and be entertained.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
... until we come up with a space propulsion system better than the rockets and ion drives that we currently have. Despite the talk, putting humans in a tin can for 3 years 30 million miles from earth is not realistic for medical or psychological reasons. Unless a system can be developed that can get people and materials around the solar system in months rather than years or decades then we can forget about colonising or exploiting it in any realistic manner.
a true ideologue.
--
damaged by dogma
It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.
Contrary to the prevailing public relations blitz that is being put on by ATK and certain entrenched interests within the D.C. beltway, The United States of America is not ceeding leadership in space to other countries. Instead, the paradigm is changing from that of a central government bureaucracy that is responsible for the financing, acquisition, and planning of such an endeavor to something that is more de-centralized, mostly privately led, and allowing freedom to ordinary individuals to try and get into space.
For commercial spaceflight companies, America simply dominates the rest of the world combined. When I hear of things happening in spaceflight and can compare stuff that is happening elsewhere, there are about two to three times as many companies formed and activities like the creation of a new spaceport than anything happening in the rest of the world. No, I'm not saying that private companies aren't being set up elsewhere and there certainly is something afoot in the European Union too in terms of private efforts for getting into space, but if you want to get into the action and see where the hot activity is taking place, it is currently in America. South-western USA to be exact if you want to know where the bulk of these companies are working at.
Never get into space? I suppose that this flight was a figment of my imagination. This is hardly the only company going into space, and I don't see vehicle production lines necessarily getting shut down.... except in Utah. I call that simply ATK having a singular problem trying to figure out how to make a profit in the current market rather than a national crisis. Sometimes dinosaurs go extinct too.
The same could have been said of America or Australia from the perspective of Europe, before colonisation.
It could be said, but only incorrectly, since the Europeans were well aware that those places were inhabitable before colonising them. Also, in both cases, there was specific reasons why humans were sent (or went of their own accord). In those days, infections often meant amputation. These days, we are able to cure most infections using penicillin. Similarly, in those days, exploring or exploiting remote, inhospitable locations meant sending humans. These days, we no longer need to send humans to exploit or explore remote locations, instead we do so using robots.
But of course you won't do it anymore than than asshat Peter Singer (look up his latest NYT column) will off himself.
Oh, come on, have you even READ his column? Singer isn't saying that everybody should just commit suicide because humans suck.
Singer is a philosopher, and he specializes in ethics. As a philosopher, it's his job to ask questions - difficult questions, questions that haven't been asked before, questions that noone yet has an answer for. As an ethicist, he's doing that in the field of ethics.
Most people presuppose that when somebody asks "should we do X?", what that person really means is either "yes, we should do X", or "no, we should not do X". This usually isn't a bad approximation, either, but it doesn't work for philosophers. Philosophers don't ask questions to communicate opinions that they have already formed based on gut feelings; rather, they ask questions to think about things and arrive at conclusions and form opinions in the first place.
As for singer, he's asking questions like "If a child is likely to have a life full of pain and suffering is that a reason against bringing the child into existence?", "If a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life, is that a reason for bringing the child into existence?", "Is life worth living, for most people in developed nations today?", "Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all?" and "Would it be wrong for us all to agree not to have children, so that we would be the last generation on Earth?".
These are all good questions that are worth considering. The answers aren't obvious, and thinking about these things, no matter what your opinion ends up being, will only strengthen your understanding of the matters at hand. They aren't comfortable questions, but that doesn't mean they aren't good or necessary ones, and attacking Singer for no other reason than that he's asking them reeks of anti-intellectualism.
Finally, here is a link to the blog post in question itself - you conveniently failed to provide one. I'd invite everyone to read it for themselves, make up their own mind, and enter the discussion (not necessarily in that order), rather than revelling in their refusal to have a discussion in the first place.
Never get into space? I suppose that this flight [spacex.com] was a figment of my imagination.
It's not a figment of your imagination, but let's also bear in mind that American commercial space ventures are just now accomplishing what NASA was doing about 50 years ago, and that's with the aid of all the wonderful new tech that has evolved since that time. It's not reasonable to expect they're going to make up that kind of shortfall in a short period of time.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yep. All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
One thing that can be said about things like telecommunications satellites (including TV broadcasting sats but much more), remote sensing ("weather sats"... but also monitoring remote weather stations on the Earth too), and reconnaissance sats (including the classic "spy sats" by various military agencies.... but also things like Google Earth) is that they are proven applications of space technology where clearly a commercial entity can make some money and convince investors to dump in billions of dollars for infrastructure necessary to get it going. A good example of this is with the Iridium Satellite Constellation. BTW, Iridium is going to be expanding in the next couple of years with a new generation of their technology... with increased bandwidth and capabilities.
I'll also note that with these applications, while the "wealthy" do get served with this technology, it also helps those who are at the bottom of the heap in the social order of things too. This very technology has saved more lives due to advanced warnings for things like tsunamis, hurricanes and cyclones, and other severe weather problems than almost any other human activity other than urban sewage distribution and treatment systems. Very ordinary and indeed poor individuals also have access to the telecommunications systems, and navigation systems like GPS and Magellan have helped to make the transportation of goods around the world much, much cheaper due to increasing efficiency of navigation and shipping transportation.
The real trick is trying to figure out how to make money doing something else in space. Where there is going to be something new happening is with space tourism (yes.... those who have money "throwing it away" for a few moments of micro-gravity) and with space-based manufacturing. There certainly are processes and products that can only be made in space, and until very recently there was no basic infrastructure in place to even permit this kind of activity to take place. It really hasn't happened yet except on some very experimental processes that generated more hype than actual products. You will very soon be using products that have been manufactured in space and not simply just made for space manufacturing companies.
As for going to the Moon or Mars, the problem is that there is no infrastructure in place to be able to get to those places in the first place. Apollo was not about establishing infrastructure... other than building up Kennedy Space Center. Anything related to the Apollo program has long ago been gutted and sent to museums, and really didn't involve setting up a general system of allowing anybody other than government bureaucrats and employees to get there.
Getting to a Western USA model, when trying to exploit frontier areas there is a need to establish various bases of operation that can be used for both military and civilian uses. There is this thing call "logistics" that is necessary to really get somewhere and spend some significant periods of time away from your home. It doesn't matter if the location is in Antarctica, the bottom of an ocean, or on Mars. If you don't have that infrastructure in place to support that exploration, you can't have a sustained presence there. We don't have that infrastructure in place, and it is a fallacy that Constellation was ever going to get that infrastructure put into place there either.
We don't have an equivalent of McMurdo on the Moon, and until that happens you can kiss any chance for people doing projects on the Moon goodbye. Once something like that is built on the Moon, opportunities will expand and there will be
Can I float a theory?
Ex-Soviets who are itching to get back into The Game of Everything, make a deal with the Afghanis, to trade oh, ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in return for fun toys??
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Compromise for you -
Go to the moon with Prelim equipment that wheels out a return a little faster than a full base. Come on, Can't we just build some kind of goddurn Steel Box and plunk it down? Yea, it would have no air, but you could stick some Spy Eye stuff in it to look for "Tuurrists". Can't we drill that out for under say $100 Million?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...f*ck.
Weaponizing space really does little good even if there is somebody who tries. BTW, it was the Soviet Union who first put weapons into space... as a machine gun found on one of the Salyut space stations. Yes, that was technically in violation of treaty, but who cares? There really is no enforcement provision on any such provision.
BTW, a little lesson on orbital mechanics: If you fire a bullet in space, there is a tendency that the bullet ends up back at roughly where you are at when you fired the thing.... after making an orbit around the Earth. In other words, most weapons that are used on the Earth right now tend to create "space debris" if they are actually used.... which tends to make life miserable for the person firing the weapon in the first place. Essentially, if you use weapons, it is a space-equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. Generally it is a bad idea.
As for the "waste of resources" and diverting it to space, that isn't going to happen unless there is something which is a draw to encourage us to get "out there" in the first place. Other than the petroleum reserves of Titan (hint, this is a joke), there is little reason at the moment to exploit resources off the Earth. I think that will change over time, but that time hasn't happened yet.
I am so sick of the crap I see in Washington....
The space program has more than paid for itself many times over in technological spinoffs. You can look at computers, materials science, plastics, medicine, geology, resource management, weather forecasting, and many other areas. All of these have been majorly impacted in a positive way by the space program. Congress and the Half-wit in Chief, in their infinit wisdom could not plan their way out of a wet paper bag when it comes to the space program. We should be spending billions more (at least 10X more than what we are spending today) on the space program. Forget Mars for now! We need to get back to the Moon; learn how to live there, start to mine it, start to utilize the resources, and send those resources home. In other words, colonize the damn place. Yes, it will be hard and expensive, but let us keep an eye on the longer term goal of getting off this planet. What our half witted President and Congress have done with the space programs is criminal. We need a newer and better shuttle. A system that is FULLY reusable this time.
Then, once we get our footing on the moon, then let us think about going for Mars. Not only for a visit, but to stay, to colonize, and to keep pushing our way outward.
call me romantic or whatever, but i would love to go to moon for some R&R (jumping six meters is cool) and i am sure some folks would love to make R&D there because of lack of laws and authorities there not to mention scientific advantages :)
and besides humans have too many eggs in one basket
The old ________ has finally caught up with itself and now without the ________ we must pay the penance for its mistakes and not having proper plans afterwards.
There, generalized that for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There is no shortage of energy if we are clever about it. We can make hydrocarbons directly from solar energy and recycled carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. We can do that for the next five billion years if we want.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You're forgetting the (enormous) difference in budget between these new space companies and NASA 50 years ago.
Mada mada dane.
Or with the case of Constellation, which was designed for 6 month global access missions (Apollo was only equatorial) with the purpose of exploration and the construction of long term habitats and research facilities on the moon, absolutely been there, absolutely not done that.
I agree with you 100%, I just find it strange that no one, including Obama, read the mission plan for Constellation, instead of just seeing that Ares wasn't doing well and saying the whole thing is trash. It was designed to do things that we've never done before.
The Constellation moon missions were to the Apollo moon missions as Portland is to the Lewis and Clark expeditions.
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
The point of a republic is to keep stupid reactionary things like this from happening; to filter out the short-term whims of the majority while still representing them overall. Unchecked democracy is terrible.
Although, since this is Obama's doing (or so it seems, indirectly), Congress didn't get a chance to not do its job before we gave up on manned space flight for a half decade in the name of politics.
as if millions of space nerds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They didn't like the moon so they never got back to another mission until now... Comonn that was a fake ! Nobody has been to the moon before
It's much cheaper to simply launch your weapon on an ICBM or launch a stealthy weapons platform in space than it would be to go to the moon and set up a giant frickin' laser. If there's ever weapons on the moon, they'll probably be used for fighting other people on the moon.
Besides, there's that whole outer space treaty that makes the moon a neutral zone like Antarctica. Hasn't been too many wars on that continent, and it's a lot nicer than the moon.
The moon will someday be an extremely important military base for whichever establish a presence there first. Anyone remember NASA's plans for a "mass driver" for lunar mining? The idea was (supposedly) to use a magnetically accelerated rail gun to launch buckets of lunar ore into space. Guess what, it wasn't for mining. Imagine the ability to launch LARGE moon rocks on arbitrary trajectories at earth. Further, imagine you can do this from the dark side of the moon? Who needs nukes, ICBMs, bombers and the like when you can take out a city from space with nothing more than a big rock. Go ahead and laugh. Those who weren't asleep in physics class will know what I'm talking about though. The kinetic energy would be, dare I say, astronomical and the launches very difficult to detect.
The reason the moon program was revived was not to give Bush political points as some have suggested here. It was to counter the very active Chinese program to reach the moon. You can bet the Chinese realize the military significance of the moon.
And another thing, it is tremendously ironic that so many of you are posting doubts about why we need a manned space program while using technology developed as spin-offs of said program. Imagine a world without integrated circuits...
No, I'm not forgetting it - that budget difference is a critical factor when it comes to whether commercial space travel will work. NASA had the benefit of somewhat expendable military test pilots, which saved a fortune on liability and other concerns, and also had the benefit of being able to use existing military technology for boosters and other hardware for the Mercury and Gemini programs, plus military support for other aspects of the mission.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
We can only hope. The sooner the US loses access to space, the safer the civilized nations of the world will be.
No, it's okay - you're ranting for millions now, so you might actually feel a little bloated and even nauseated at times :)
I love my country, but I hate the current state of my government.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
'cause the space program is the only thing republicans will agree to aborting, so it can get by-partisan support.
"I'll bet anything the poor outnumber you sophisticated science-types about a million to one."
Probably. And almost none of them pay any federal income taxes. That's right. Over half the U.S. Population does not pay any taxes. The top 5% of earners pay almost all the income taxes.
Yea we can put men on the moon but... No wait we can't anymore.
And for many posters on slashdot we never could in their lifetime.
Of course we could fall back to the other old saying. We should stop spending money on space and use it to feed the hungry... "put your cause in here" We did and did that make anything better?
I fear that we have lost our way. We no longer care about the stars in the sky. We only care about the stars on TV. Oh brave new world has such people in it. As long as get your bread and circuses we will be happy. Or our daily Soma if you like.
Good night all the future has left the building.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There is a third, that Constellation was a failure due to engineering issues from the get-go without a huge budget-up. But that the mission can be done on the budget that we do have.
That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands. It has already passed through qualifications, all of the components exist now (unlike Constellation which was all-new) and we can have it flying within 36 months according to the engineers as well as the contractors involved. And that is the conservative estimate.
http://www.directlauncher.com/
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I have to agree with the parent. It's pointless to 'go back to the moon' unless there is actually something to be done. Just doing something 'because we can' is pointless and doesn't advance science in any way. Private industry can advance rocket technology faster than NASA if they find incentive to do so. Since they have verified water on the moon, there appears to be some incentive, but just showing up for some pissing match that we already won is stupid. I agree a permanent base on the moon would be ideal, but I just don't see that happening in the next decade or two. I do see it becoming more realistic in the next 50 years or so as we become more efficient in both robotics, solar power solutions, and potentially in propulsion techs as well.
Ideas that we will unleash our robotic army to build a base station there are also just fantasy. We lack the technology to deploy such a mechanical fleet. Our robotics are limited to a solar powered buggy with some minimalistic sensors, a saw, and an easy-bake oven. Hardly the stuff that SciFi is made of.
Lets all try to be a bit more realistic here. Leave it to private industry to catch up and surpass what NASA did. They've had 50 years to come up with a better rocket. All they've done is refine what we have.
Which is more efficient, a private taxi, or public mass transit? Which is cheaper to use? Which moves more people on less fuel?
Why would a private space taxi be any different?
--Joe
Columbus's voyage was done with standard ships that had been seized for failure to pay port duties. The trip was shorter than many voyages that were being routinely undertaken around Africa (many of which got fairly close to South America in order to use good winds).
There was nothing exceptional about Columbus's voyage except his incorrect calculations of the Earth's circumference convinced him he could sail from Europe to Asia. He got incredibly lucky that the Americas were in his way.
Imagine some rogue nation develops a significant space program, *AND* arms it. There would be no way to defend against it, or for other nations to fight against it.
That's when you chop the heads off the Hydra - space weapons can't hurt you if the government and command-and-control infrastructure that control them has been slagged by a conventional or nuclear retaliation.
I think the real threat from space is not space-> ground attack but attacks on other space-based assets - imagine taking out all of country X's surveillance and military comm sats in preparation for a ground or ICBM attack.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Nevermind that the price for both is totally different.
Hey what do you mean "back" to the moon...?
Didn't you see Capricorn 1...?
Thank you.
Robots are the only way we will ever explore space in regards to our present technology. We should focus on robotics.
It never makes sense until you get there. All of the world's great explorers didn't know exactly what they would find - that was the point. The transition from living in space not making sense to it being a necessity includes all the baby steps of doing it "just because."
or else!
We've spent one or two billion $ over 30 years on Mars probes, give or take. Some did crash, some did get stuck in stupid ways, none has yet tried to do a sample return, although it has been proposed. On the other hand others have outperformed expectations and given us more photographs and so on than any manned mission likely could.
No one seriously believes we could put a man on Mars for less than $30bn (Zubrin, for a quick cheap flags and footprints mission) and most serious estimates are $100 to $200 bn. For that money we could send a LOT of robots.
I'd like humans in space to make sense for research/exploration, but I can't see the numbers ever adding up.
If Eisenhower hadn't created NASA, we'd now have solar power satellites instead of nuclear waste and oil spills, space settlements and access to space as routine as is air passenger flight.
Seastead this.
I think BP has spent the last 60 days showing the extreme limitations of robots or tele-operated machines in harsh environments. If you want to get anything serious done, send a person.
The people that want to go to space are not you, and they DO have reasons for wanting to go. A lot of them are even spending their own, hard earned money to do so. Whether you think they should or not is rather beside the point.
Necron69
It is interesting, to say the least, to see non-NASA people's opinions on this issue, and moreover, to see people's opinions who are technically minded but outside of NASA. As someone working on Constellation at NASA, I am living this issue every day, and have been living it for months now. There is lots of misinformation on this thread, and lots of opinions I disagree with. I won't take the time to really respond to any of them, but in the case of the former, it's entirely understandable considering the poor communication coming out of NASA (both in general and on this specific issue) as well as the poor quality of news reporting as it relates to spaceflight (and by extension, nearly everything technical in nature). In the case of the latter, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Mine is that we need to get society off this rock as soon as possible and establish a permanent self-sustaining settlement on another one as a means of risk mitigation against the various calamities that could destroy human civilization. Second, I feel it should be us (the United States) because someone is going to do it - it will happen eventually. That point should not be up for debate. For us to sit around spending money on things like wars and bailouts instead of continuing the role as the leader in space is, in my humble opinion, short sighted. But I digress.
The one thing I will say is that Constellation is not dead - yet. It's had its head cut off by reassignment of the program manager. It's been dealt a tough blow most recently with HQ telling the prime contractors (Lockheed, ATK, Oceaneering) that they need to put money into reserve for contract termination liability - the costs associated with winding down a contract. Typically this contract clause is never enforced, and especially not at this time of the year. Our fiscal year ends on Sept 30. These contract termination liability costs now represent about 50% of the money left in the budget for this fiscal year, which essentially means that things need to be cut to the bone to get there. Many people feel that enforcing this clause is a pretty shady way of circumventing Congress and the law, because until Congress signs a new budget or specifically tells NASA to stop working on Constellation, NASA is legally obligated to continue working on it as the program of record. By enforcing this clause, it could be construed as circumventing this legal process. If a budget agreement is not found by the end of the fiscal year (and that is looking more and more likely), then NASA gets a continuing resolution - the same money allocated the same way for next year as it was this year. So hypothetically, NASA could pick back up with this "new money" and continue working on Constellation.
That being said, for months now, before this contract termination issue came up, most of the different Constellation projects (Orion, suit, etc) have been working to try to scale back design, remove Lunar content, accelerate the schedule, reduce scope, etc to try to "bridge the gap" between what Congress says they should be doing and what HQ and the executive branch says they should be doing.
Lastly, I think that most people at NASA don't necessarily have a problem with Obama's general plan for NASA - they have a problem with its lack of specificity, lack of a concrete goal, lack of a timeline. I get the feeling that if Obama came back and said he wants to cancel Constellation, come up with a new heavy lifter (both things he has said before) but also that the goal is to establish a human presence on "X" surface "Y" years from now, more people might get on board.
I think the real threat from space is not space-> ground attack but attacks on other space-based assets - imagine taking out all of country X's surveillance and military comm sats in preparation for a ground or ICBM attack.
Only issue is that blowing up their satellites is a rather scorched earth tactic. It's not real viable unless you don't have any satellites of your own and don't want any either.
Aside, it might be feasible to take out low-orbit surveillance satellites, but not comm sats, as it's not exactly trivial it hit a bus-sized object 22,000 miles away (geostationary orbit) and moving at about 7,000 miles per hour, so it's unlikely that any country with the capability to do that would meet the criteria above. Both anti-satellite tests (China's weather satellite and USA-193) were on satellites at ~500 and ~120 miles up.
But on the other hand, crazy people seem to occasionally get into positions of power.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It is very difficult for me to argue against 'cheaper' and 'safer' when it comes to robots, but you've still got a long way to convince me that they do a 'better' job.
Robots do their job well but they can do only a miniscule fraction of what a trained geologist could do in the same time. At best, robots are adequate, and that's limited to their mission objectives.
I think BP has spent the last 60 days showing the extreme limitations of robots or tele-operated machines in harsh environments. If you want to get anything serious done, send a person.
Ah -- the one thing NOBODY has (credibly) suggested dong about the oil leak. There may be a reason for that. Sure robots are limited, but when you get far enough from home (in any of a variety of senses) humans are (a) also very limited and (b) very, very high maintenance.
The people that want to go to space are not you, and they DO have reasons for wanting to go. A lot of them are even spending their own, hard earned money to do so. Whether you think they should or not is rather beside the point.
Necron69
That's fine. Branson, Cormack and co. are welcome to play about in suborbital rockets. Musk is now running quite heavily on US govt money. At this stage Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could probably get themselves to the Moon by blowing their entire fortunes. When economic growth and/or technical development makes it cheap enough, people will go, and good luck to them but it's not a sensible investment for a government or a corporation just yet.
The thing is that it's not one robot vs one geologist. $ for $ it's more like 1000 robots vs one geologist. Also, the geologist can tele-operate the robots (at least on the moon).
A permanent base is one thing. A permanent base for humans is quite another. Much of the benefit of having humans on the spot can be gained as easily by having humans drive by remote. Either way will encourage technological development.
Don't worry, the human diaspora into the rest of the solar system will come. We're just not ready for it technologically yet.
If we really want to get man back on the moon, why is it so difficult now? Just re-use the 60s tech, since it was amazing successful (for example: lunar lander worked every-time despite not having a true low-gravity test before Apollo 11 etc...). The tech would be dirt cheap now as well.
4. The point of housing those that can't afford it is not about economic advancement. It's about being human. You should try it.
Thank you for pointing this out. Taking care of our fellow human beings is one of the things that makes our humanity what it is. (Of course, all the bad stuff also is part of that.) One thing not to overlook with respect to housing, however, is that it's not ENTIRELY driven out of the goodness of people's hearts. If you allow too many people to live on the streets, and don't take care of those who can't (or won't) take care of themselves, society will quickly find itself succumbing to high levels of crime as those individuals attempt to survive any way they can.
So, while there is obviously an aspect of taking care of each other as human beings (which is great), there are also selfish/societal pressures for doing so as well.
I think SpaceX is doing a fair bit better than what NASA was doing 50 years ago. The Dragon capsule is certainly going to be at least as good if not better than the Apollo capsule, and competitive with the Orion capsule on a whole bunch of levels.
More importantly, it isn't going to cost a billion dollars to launch the Dragon + Falcon 9 in order to get into orbit with cargo and/or people. And in comparison.... what has NASA been doing over the past 40 years since the famous Moon landing to get anywhere beyond low Earth orbit? If you are trying to suggest that the Ares V was going to get us back to the Moon, I'd like to see the actual congressional authorization to get that vehicle built in the first place. There is no "bent metal" on that one either, and I certainly am not holding my breath to see it built... even assuming that the current "Constellation" program is ever restored or preserved in current and future budget cycles.
NASA is still going to be going in circles around the Earth stuck in low-Earth orbit for the next several decades.... unless private Americans somehow get out of that rut. It will be a sad day when the return of NASA astronauts to the Moon will be covered live on CNN.... by reporters who got there first to film the NASA spacecraft landing there.
It hasnt changed much since the 1960s. NASA's manned goals were (1) moon, (2) space station, (3) Mars. Vague discussions of (4) moonbase have popped up now and then. (1) and (2) have been done and are un-inspiring. (3) and (4) are too expensive for a declining world power like the US.
So let me see if I understand this accurately: CONGRESS (whose responsibility is actually allocating funds) is complaining that the PRESIDENT (whose role in budget matters is primarly negative) isn't talking about enough spending on a program that they have actually underfunded for 30+ years?
-Styopa
I never thought of the "where would a bullet go in space" question. I guess that would make for a rather funny looking platform. It would need a big armored wall for when it came the whole way around. :) That, or they'd have to be careful to shoot off of their plane. If they shot down a little, it would tend to (hopefully) continue in a decaying orbit.
Militarization of space doesn't necessarily mean guns against other spaceships. A rain of titanium rods down from an orbiting platform towards the ground would be nasty.
I suspect the want for resources is why we've checked out moon rocks, asteroid composition, etc. Of course, we've only looked at a very small part of anything we've investigated.
The cold war cost a fortune, and only served to show who had the bigger dick (and budget). You have a nuke? We'll build 10. We have 10, you'll build 100. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, until ... well ... the cold war fell apart.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
We all know it is already made of cheese.
But would those 1000 robots still perform better? I doubt it. Robots, while excellent at performing P equations, they can't do NP as well.
They can't go "oh, that rock looks interesting over there, let's check it out." As far as remote control, it's a 20-40 minute round trip. Can't make snap decisions.
While the FY2010 budget for NASA is 18 billion, I find it interesting to note that the amount spent on cell phone handsets in 2008 was around 37 billion.
Or if you look at the past six months of cell phone handset sales from the top manufacturers - closer to 65 billion.
The public's disposable income could practically fund it's own space program.
Beyond that... there are minerals an energy resources out there. Whoever gets there first with permanent settlements will have a real advantage as we are tapping out most of our resources earthside. The space program has probably never been more important than now. Its importance is not properly valued by most, however. It's obviously not just about putting some "Antarctica" style science base there. It's about putting self-sustaining, potentially growing on their own bases, with the concurrent use of local resources.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there.
It should be us who put a permanent base there.
Constellation is not the first step in the process of doing so. It does nothing to help us towards that goal.
The R&D into automated factories and robotic assembly, in-space refuel, cheaper propulsion systems once outside earth's atmosphere, and so on are the first necessary steps.
We should not go back to the moon for a stupid boots-and-flag mission. We already did that; the flag and bootprints are still there. People should not be going to the moon until robots have already built a habitat for them there.
The enemies of Democracy are
The reason:
Have you learned nothing from the story of Odysseus? "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." We do that which is difficult because it is difficult, and in the practice of doing it, improve ourselves.
A lot of the problems that cost so much time and effort to solve 50 years ago are now well-known and documented. Modern space companies are staffed with people who literally grew up in a world where the problems and solutions are well-known. Just knowing how the problems were solved back then makes it a lot cheaper to build new rockets, even aside from GP's point on the other new tech that has appeared on the shelf in the last 50 years.
Emotionally, I agree with you completely. Logically, I think we get to go to the stars better, and probably sooner, by not spending buckets of money addressing a an artificial challenge like flags and footprints on Mars in the next couple of decades. We did something a lot like that already with Apollo and it pushed a lot of interesting technologies, but I think we need to find a different kind of challenge next to push a different set of technologies -- curing cancer, maybe or resolving religious and ethnic differences without killing each other -- much more difficult and in different ways than another big engineering project. I'm not convinced that any manned space programme that we can do just now is actually the right challenge for any real purpose. I'd love to be -- I'd love to look forward to phone calls from my grandchildren at University on Mars in 2050, but I don't think I can.
If you look into Social Security, it does more to misappropriate funds to insufficient living accomodations and degrade the health of subscribers to get them into all kinds of pharmacy bullshit. Looking at it as a matter of age, the success of Social Security is a very racist charge in that the age for full benefits is higher than the average life expectancy of African Americans and Mexican Americans. The life expectancy for whites is right behind it with Asians.
Social Security is just like medical insurance in that regard: some ignorant politic directing lifestyle as nothing more than a disguised tax. Some people should let die on their own. The only good medical insurance is a well-regulated surgeon on standby for the broken bones, and organic-grown vegetables and fruits. Fast and fried Foods, petroleum products, aerosols, and artificial foods are the cause for all the fibromyalgia and metabolic disorders.
Also, learn2TimeCube.jpg
Am I the only one who read the title as:
NASA Ends Plan To Put Black Man On Moon
Russia now only has the only launch vehicle capable of reaching the ISS.
Japan has returned from an asteroid with a sample and launched the first solar sail.
For some reason, America let the momentum stop after landing on the moon, and we can't seem to get it back.
I think a big part of this is that NASA hasn't properly conveyed the importance of space travel to the public. When people say insane things like "We should spend those billions on Earth", they miss the big picture: that the Earth is limited. Our resources are finite, and eventually, we will use everything that can't be recycled, re-mined, and re-used.
What happens when we pump the last barrel of crude oil? What happens when we run out of some rare metal? Our very lives are now dependent on technology that cannot continue to exist if we do not find new sources of materials, energy, and simple room to grow.
Sure, the problem is 50 or 100 years down the road, but that future is rushing down on us fast. It's already been 50 years since we first achieved orbital flight; if we allow another 50 years to pass before we start working on the problem, it'll be too late.
All the money is now focused on things to serve the Earth (like a TV relays, spy pictures, or weather data) or serving wealthy earthlings who want to go into something almost zero gravity for a short stay. There's nobody interested in paying for Moon or Mars projects anymore it seems.
I have no idea where you pulled this from, but it's completely and utterly false. Please read through the budget and exploration plans before making idiotic comments like that:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/workshop_home.html
The first problem with the libertarian argument is that free markets exploit only that which is profitable. Discovering that which is profitable is often a thing done by or for governments. If you look at the history of innovation over the past hundred years, almost all of it would have been impossible without the direct involvement of government. The computer was developed for the defense industry, as were rockets, jet propulsion, modern nuclear physics, refrigeration, microwaves, radio, the list goes on and on.
Lately the profit motive behind going to space has been more or less limited to tourism. A visit to the moon by NASA, especially an extended manned one with the intention of exploiting the moon's natural resources and discovering the problems of long-term hostile-environment extraplanetary colonization could provide the very sort of research that would create a profit motive for private industry to exploit the moon.
The second problem with the libertarian argument is that the companies developing these technologies already are private industry, they are merely funded by the government.
The third problem is the cost. If you compare government spending in any given year, 3bn is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop in the bucket that could result in MEN WALKING ON THE FREAKIN' MOON. What part about MEN WALKING ON THE MOON did you miss?
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You're adding technical complexity that's not needed for something like a Mars trip. We can boost people to sufficient delta-v for Mars transit, that's not (comparitively) difficult. Even if it were difficult to do in one go, we have the technology for orbital rendevous to make that work (given all our ISS experience). The energy costs are "just" a matter of throwing enough money at it (and it's not a prohibitive amount). Putting people in a confined space for a year for the Hohmann transfer to Mars orbit and having them come out the other side not suicidal is IMO the more challenging aspect.
As Far as I've heard, the orbit of the ISS is not a good one for lunar transfer. ISS is at 51 degrees inclination and the moon varies between ~18-28 degrees. Inclination changes use lots of fuel.
I'm thinking at best you could send the parts up to the ISS, have them assemble it, and then send it off to slowly change it's orbit unmanned using an electric thruster like an ion engine. It would take a long time, but once it got there you'd fly a crew up to dock with it and go off to the moon
However, there is no hardware designed for in orbit assembly of ships on the ISS. ideally, you'd want lots of robotic arms that could do the assembly automatically, so that you wouldn't need to risk any astronauts lives with spacewalks. ISS isn't equipt for that, and your be risking the investment in the ISS and the crew's lives unnecessarily by trying to keyhole it into that role.
An orbital construction facility at an inclination of ~23 degrees WOULD be great for getting to the moon, but not the ISS.
Moon dust problem is too big an obstacle in low G environment
We'll go back when we have some answer to controlling super fine moon dust particles.
Obama wants to end the socialist policies set by previous administrations and allow free market corporations to go into space. Why do republicans hate the free market?
Yup. :)
Ok, that was too short of an answer. You are absolutely right. We should be exploring, and not in the way that we have been. We've looked at a few drops in the ocean, and concluded there are no fish. There could be vast mineral deposits on the Moon and Mars that would be amazingly useful. Beyond that, who knows what we'd find. I wouldn't be surprised if we found non-terrestrial minerals that we could spend decades figuring out the best uses for. Who knows, the better fuel for space travel may just be a planet away, waiting to be mined, but we've pretty much given up on the whole idea.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Recapping our top story... moon project scrapped.
you remind me of a scene from a movie... can't remember which... they're in a space craft, but descending in water... and the thing is creaking. One asks the other "How many atmospheres of pressure do you think this thing can withstand before we're crushed?" and the other guy says "well, it's a space ship, designed for the vacuum of space, so I'd say anywhere between 0 atmospheres... and 1"
That argument is called DIRECT, as in Directly derived from the shuttle stack. It is an evolution design, which was originally proposed in 1978 and always kept on the back burner should the need arize for heavy lift, which a lunar mission all but demands.
If we must do an Apollo 11 remake, then I'd much rather we go with Direct than Constellation. Ares re-uses a lot of the shuttle too, but it was more ambitious about trying to actually improve more than the silly orbiter-stuck-on-the-side problem. Hypothetically good for technical advancement, practically bad for its schedule and cost.
Personally, though, I'd hold off for a while until it doesn't necessitate a single huge rocket to lift everything needed to get to the moon and back in one launch. I think it makes a lot more sense to have a fuel depot waiting in earth orbit for separate stages of a vehicle to the moon to be lifted, assembled, fueled, and sent off to the moon without having to carry all that extra propellant. If we do it right, we'd have already used the same mechanism to put supplies and a return vessel at the landing site, waiting for them. That way, the astronauts can actually stay on the moon for a while, rather than staying for only as long as the tiny leftover fraction of the mass budget of the moon mission that was allocated for actually being on the moon. Ya know? Make it worth our while? Doesn't that sound more interesting?
Without the urgency of going back to the moon quickly and thus the need for a shuttle-class lifter, the big advantage of Direct isn't there anymore. And without that, a change of technology looks more appealing. Falcon IX, for example, just demonstrated an ability that Direct could never do: aborting a launch once all engines were fired. You hit 'go' on an SRB and detect some abnormal behavior, tough shit. For that and other reasons, I would prefer to go with a liquid-fueled system if possible. And it seems pretty possible since it's already launched with an amazingly low price tag compared to any government-developed system.
Don't get me wrong, I've been impressed with Direct since I first heard about it. I just want to know what programs we'll have to give up to do it, and a good reason that we really need something bigger than a Delta IV so badly to justify giving them up.
If Congress wants to mandate Direct but also give NASA extra budget just for that, then I say go for it!
The enemies of Democracy are
I believe Outsourcing to India will be cheap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_human_spaceflight_program
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
The ISS inclination was selected primarily for Russian purposes, as it is the easiest orbit to achieve from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. That is one of many compromises made for its development that might have been different in terms of an overall infrastructure had it remained as simply Space Station Freedom. An inclination of about 28 degrees is more appropriate from KSC (maximum payload to orbit), and as you point out would also make a fairly decent depot for trans-lunar injection flights too.
It will be interesting to see what Bigelow Aerospace is going to be up to.... presuming that anybody can actually get to the Bigelow space stations in the first place. If there will be in-orbit construction going on including spaceships to the Moon, I would expect it to happen with some Bigelow equipment at least in the short term. At a price of about $400 million, it seems like a bargain to purchase one of the BA-330 modules for some long-term duration flights that might include beyond low-earth orbit flight experience.
It seems to me the debate is over [i]why[/i] to bother with putting a man on the moon. I get why people question the reasoning since the Cold War ended. Unfortunately I don't think people see it as the investment in the future that it truly is.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
The constellation & Aries may be gone but there are replacements for them, & yes they most definitely are out sourced designs, see http://www.spacex.com/F9-001.php Oh yeah & its in orbit right now! thats 15 years ahead of constellation / Aries.
Perhaps you're forgetting the bloody wars that humans have historically fought to control new territory. It's nice that there aren't any natives to butcher at our next apparent expansion node, but expecting all the conquerors to join hands around a lunar camp beacon singing Kum-Ba-Yah, sharing the wealth and letting live is a bit idealistic, no? The biggest land rush in history's getting ready to happen, and once all the best spots are taken (on the moon, that's the poles, a few other specific spatio-geographic regions, and anywhere that sports a detectable amount of special resources, most notably water), the players are very likely to do more than thumb wrestle for the lion's share.
When people give you massive amounts of money for failing, I would say you have a fairly good business model.
cat
I've argued quite a bit, if nations of Earth were to stop wasting their resources on crap they are now, we could have a significant space presence, with a strong step towards deep space exploration.
But what exactly is in deep space for us to explore which robots can't?
There are no Vulcans or Klingons. There's vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and tiny specks of rock and...?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Beyond that... there are minerals an energy resources out there.
There's minerals, yes. But unless you can eat aluminium, magnesium, titanium or nickel-iron - or have a really big zero-g rocket to build (in which case what is it going into space to get?) - how much is their absolute worth on the scale of human life-support? A really big rock or lots of electrical cable is still not much compared with some soybeans, water and oxygen. Unless you're building a space society for robots, in which case see our current space exploration plan.
What is the purpose of mining the solar system? Is it to attempt to sustain exponential population growth and resource usage for Earth citizens? Then I can see a few problems with that. One, even the solar system's resources are finite and an exponential growth curve will max them out in a few hundred years. No problem you say, we have a galaxy? Nope, two, speed of light limitations mean we're going to hit the solar system's limit long before we can hope to get even to Alpha Centauri, and getting there will mean learning to live inside very small cans with very small finite resource limits. Heck, even getting to Mars will mean that. So even empowering exponential growth will eventually mean learning to live with zero-growth. Why not short-circuit that learning curve and start to learn to rock zero-growth right now, while the cost of failing is much cheaper?
Three: are you really sure you want to mine space? What happens when you run out? What about aesthetic considerations? How much of the Moon are you willing to convert to space widgets? 50% seems too high, nobody wants to live under a romantic skeletal Death Star II . 10%? 1%?
Whatever fraction you pick, eventually some mining company is going to complain it's an arbitrary political limit and start pressing for more. Then what?
tl;dr: Stuff runs out, getting space stuff is hard, getting it back is harder, so we really are at a steep wall and it's probably smarter to stop running rather than hope we can learn to fly before we hit.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
This is fine, until someone else puts a permanent base there. Then they will have the high ground; literally. The gravity well on the moon is so much less than earth, that kinetic weapons will work so much better from it. Hence, it is a strategic imperitive that someone will utilise the moon for a weapons platform at some stage.
Not entirely sure that that's right - Rocketpunk Manifesto goes into some detail on possible space warfare tactics and I think came to the conclusion that the 'high ground' in orbital space is probably actually LEO. But I admit to being very hazy on these things.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Well, if any of us pretend that we even have a clue of the contents of the rest of the infinite amount of space that there is, we're lying to ourselves.
What's out there? Who knows. Wouldn't you want to find out?
Asteroids made of solid platinum? Gold? Minerals we haven't even theorized exist yet? We already believe there's a planet size diamond out there (BPM 37093).
A space presence doesn't necessarily mean people there. Something is a lot more than nothing. But, the day a starship comes into range of BPM 37093, and it's illuminated by another star, I want to be on the bridge watching.
But as you say, all that's out there is nothingness and tiny specks of rock. It's good that you already know the contents of the rest of the universe. Now we don't have to explore it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.