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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."
...in the long term, at least.
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.
There's debate over whether we got a man on the moon, but this is more or less proving that with today's workforce we can't seem to do it. Commercial space efforts are springing up... but they're only focused on bringing money-making payloads like satellites and tourists into zero-gravity or a spot relative to the Earth, but not anywhere close to the moon.
Meanwhile, as this planet becomes less inhabitable, the idea of humanity continuing on the moon or Mars is gaining popularity... but who's going to fund development of such places? If the USA isn't funding NASA and the USSR isn't around to fund a competitor... just who's going to pay the bills?
So, are we smarter for not falling for another moon hoax, or stupider that we lost the ability to do something that was accomplished by our previous generation?
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!
They were forced into this at gunpoint by bush. With an administration which is less insane they can start dismantling what they never wanted in the first place. Bush's madness all but destroyed NASA's science program.
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!
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?
Back?
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.
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 ?
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.
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."
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
... 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
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
...f*ck.
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.
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)
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
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...
"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.
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.
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
Hey what do you mean "back" to the moon...?
Didn't you see Capricorn 1...?
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!
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 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.
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.
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
We all know it is already made of cheese.
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.
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.
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.
Slashtards have no idea that there's a already secret space program, a human colony on the moon and mars, and other things your wildest inner geek could ever wish for.
Slashtards also have no idea that indeed, extra-terrestrial life exists in our own solar system, and the world elite wants their piss ant subjects completely in the dark about this reality.
This is the real reason we will never ever go to the moon again. Obama is not about disclosure as everyone wishes. He is just sucking the shit out of his white masters' asses.
Fuck NASA and the farce it is.
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?
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.
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.