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NASA Opens New Office For Space Missions
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has been tasked with landing astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again. The new Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will be responsible for overseeing all this and more. 'America is opening a bold new chapter in human space exploration,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. 'By combining the resources of Space Operations and Exploration Systems, and creating the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come.'"
There's no way that Congress will manage to focus on the same task for 15-20 years.
Within five years, they'll be trying to find someplace to cut to pay for some pork somewhere, and the project that's not due to deliver anything for a decade or more then will be first on the chopping block.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
From the moon to a rock in only around 60 years. Hopefully I'll have the same excitement and thrill when I'm in my 50s and we're doing something amazing in the late 30s as my mom felt when she was like 12 and we landed on the moon. And hopefully I'll still be alive when we hit Mars. Though . .. probably not. I was always excited that I was born in the generation after the moon landing, because it meant that I'd be alive to see way much more awesome space stuff happened that stirred everything about exploration and ambition of man in us as a species. Instead, I'm just hoping that something -- fucking anything -- happens in my life time.
mars is a lot harder to get to then moon also planing for a 1 way / long term trip takes time as well or due you want to rush it and end up with people dead in space / on mars?
mars is a lot harder to get to then moon also planing for a 1 way / long term trip takes time as well or due you want to rush it and end up with people dead in space / on mars?
If it's a one way trip, you're going to wind up with people dead in space / on Mars anyway.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Of course it requires a lot of time and planning (and technical advancement), but we at least have to establish a plan and incentivize an effort. or we'll never get around to it (I'm a big fan of commercial-based exploration supplementing more "humanity based" exploration, but as much as that's the big talk right now, there really is no realistic financial incentive for businesses to do this just yet).
However, we went from riding horses to landing on the moon in less than 70 years and we've gone from landing on the moon to . . . landing on nothing (including the moon, again) in another 45 years. We have a low orbit space station, which is cool but nearing the end of its life and we've stuck an RC car on Mars (which is nearing the end of its surprisingly far out-performing life).
It seems that we peaked early and have coasted from there and the best we've received are some half-assed promises and goals that we all forget about a few months later and that are re-set a couple years later as if the first goals were never set to begin with. There's no sense of "oh boy, we're working toward this ultimate goal". There's just a general world-wide sense of "I don't know what's going on, but hopefully "someday" there will be "some awesome space stuff" that happens and hopefully we'll be around to witness it.
And of course I don't want people to die in the process, but it's fucking space exploration - of course it's going to happen and we need to stop being giant pussies about it and freaking out every time something goes wrong. We're completely fine with thousands of people going overseas and dying in military actions, but one brave soul bites it furthering the scientific exploration of all man-kind and we start pissing ourselves over it.
I have little hope for NASA. Right now, they are scrapping exploration missions left and right and the missions they do have pay no attention to being cost-effective. They are building exactly one mars rover for $2.5bn and that's it. Are you kidding?
...)
(Ok, in this case, they have a good excuse for building just one of them - NASA is running out of Plutonium-238, because Bill Clinton decided that nuclear research is a thing of the past and ordered all research reactors that could produce radioisotopes to be shut down. That includes vital isotopes for cancer diagnostics (Tc-99m) with 18hr half life that must now be imported from Canada
And despite all that, the manned missions are underfunded - NASA's budget as a whole is being cut, at a time when they are supposed to do stuff that is much more ambitious than anything they did in the last 30 years. Sure, that's how you do that sort of stuff. Not.
we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come.
That's good, because I thought for a minute there you were presiding over a crumbling infrastructure and dying agency that left its best years in the rear view mirror 20 years ago.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
With what money??? With the USA having some 14 trillion dollars in debt and massive budget cuts everywhere(read space program cuts), how is this going to be funded at all, much less over how many new administrations until the due date?
More guvmint pork. Let those engineers work in the private sector for a change, so we begin to wean ourselves from H1B visas and get those good-paying jobs to US citizens. The money not spent on this pork can go towards reducing the deficit, or even more interestingly, stimulating american manufacturing to reduce dependence on foreign imports. I'd like to see a DVD player made in the US, for instance, as well as clothing, tools, and every other item packing WalMart.
I stumbled across this link a few years ago:
http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/
The author was reporting that getting large payloads to the Martian surface was a problem who solution was unknown (at the date of publication). Does anyone know if the issues have been worked out?
That is the brilliant aspect of this plan. We fund it using deficit dollars that are owned by China. Then the Chinese space program is outsourced to the USA! It provides jobs here and scientific research all on China's dime!
If the Soviet Union was not pushing the US into space we would never of gotten there by now. All the large military contractors were also part the the moon race and they all benefited greatly by the US citizens thinking it was national pride to make it to the moon before the Soviet Union (oh and gave great amounts of money to make it happen). Now there is no great threat to get the US citizens all worked up about so it is hard for Joe or Jane politician to keep money in real science. I say we need to stage a war in outer space so that we can start spending our money on our future. Pretty soon someone will figure out how to blow the earth up so the sooner the better!
Sounds like a spin-off from the Cosby show.
"He walks in his fathers footsteps... THEO, MD. !!!"
People died getting to the moon. We can't be scared that we're rushing it when we're not doing anything.
Might I add too, there is a huge line up of people that would love to go on a mission even if it only had half-assed safety planning. Its risky we get it, when do I fly? I mean people jump into test cars at high speed, and new fighter planes etc all the time. It's risky but I bet most test pilots would rather the same risk to be the first to land on mars versus the first person to do a high negative g turn on test plane 12 of the F35 program.
But you do realize government spending hires people too right? Every dollar the government spends would go towards hiring people and buying equipment from other people who will have to hire people too, provided that they make reasonable efforts to do the project right. You give a dollar of tax breaks or incentives to companies and you'll only see a fraction of it back into employees pockets. The rest will go to shareholders pockets (while they earned it, still it isn't hiring anyone and unless it is spent it won't), raises/bonuses to people who already have jobs or worse sit in a cash account "just in case" a la Apples 76B horde.
However, we went from riding horses to landing on the moon in less than 70 years and we've gone from landing on the moon to . . . landing on nothing (including the moon, again) in another 45 years.
To be fair, we went from the *very end* of our reliance on horses for transport to the *very beginning* of our ability to land on the moon in less than 70 years. If you're going to use horses as a technological advancement metric you need to start from when we figured out how to ride horses, which was thousands of years ago. Compared to that, 45 or 100 or 200 years to go from intra-Earth-system travel to intra-Solar-system travel isn't that bad.
We've seen this before. I love space exploration since i was a kid and to me, politics should not be allowed to mix in here unless there a real problem. Its public money for sure, but NASA should be asking people what they should concentrate its focus on doing with that money. A Heavy-Lift Rocket could be useful for other things, but problem I see with it is the politics. Its a revolving door, which always bring in new people in and out of control of the government. These folks come in, try make big splash to do something "differient" and sometimes mess up things. The fiscal conservatives will gain more power and then short change NASA eventually, cutting its budgets. I don't agree with all things President Obama wants to, but his decision to bring in commerial space companies could keep the manned space program if given right goals. The Space Shuttle was aging and was costing alot money keep going. Every government effort in the last three decades of manned space program ended in sad ends. I wish Congress would let companies like SpaceX build their Heavy-Lift rocket and see if it would be good fit instead of another wasted decade of development and cost over runs to be cancelled later. Even if they hate Presidency that came up with it.
GIVE UP ON MANNED MISSIONS ALREADY!
You do great work with automated probes and observation of planets, moons, the sun, and beyond. Keep that up!
But, please, divest yourself of the 1960's "manned space-race" mentality. It wastes lives and $$$$$$. Your congressional charter gives you the mission "To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown." If a mission can be accomplished with probes, there is no reason to send humans. Only loft a human when it is necessary FOR THE MISSION.
Please, explore as you are intended to do, but quit insisting on sending a carcass along for the ride. It's holding you back.
Given limited funding they can either do manned missions or do science stuff, but not both. If you're looking for a reason to spread the pork around congressional districts then build a national (gov owned and operated, last mile monopoly) telecommunications network based on fibre to the home. That would be an investment in your future instead of just throwing money away. As for a manned mission to mars: You haven't done a full search for life yet. If it's got life you'll either kill it or contaminate it (so you'll never find it) or bring it back. (finding out that "harmless" martian microbe eats glass/oil/aluminum would suck)
Ares Five is alive! Or is it?
To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far
Or buy rides on future commercial heavy lift rockets. Part of the problem with these grandiose space plans is all the um, "little" details that have to be in place and which in hindsight suck up all the funding rather than the intended goal of the program. We have to have the big rocket, the crew vehicle, etc. But as it turns out, the more requirements you have, the less likely it is that you do real stuff, namely, actual space development, exploration, or science.
At some point, the US needs to decide whether it wants a space program that advances a US presence in space or a jobs program that occasionally does space stuff.
i know obama is gonna use old style skuds and pelt the moon and say see we hit the moon , hten use an apollo rocket and aim it at mars...BANG
I still think there's zero need for actual humans to fly to Mars until we terraform it.
Heavy lift rockets that can only be used once is a bad idea economically. What NASA needs to build in space is a non-landing spaceship that is used for travelling between planetary bodies of our solar system. It will be more expensive than a heavy lift rocket, but once it is up there, the cost of space travel for humans will be greatly minimized.
The spaceship could harness power from external resources like the Sun, and therefore help avoid carrying all that fuel to orbit, as with heavy lift rockets.
I agreed that the ISS is NOT built for space exploration. Usually I would say scrap the whole manned mission to Mars and fix the economy first but I will say this. If you're going to built a multi-purpose vehicle, make the ship BIGGER. You have about (at least) six crew members riding in a giant tin can and if you're using a (FAILED) Orion space capsule, you won't have enough leg room, let alone privacy. Also you can't be weightless for the entire journey or your bones will become brittle. You need a ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY ROTATION DRIVE, similar to the ships from the 2010 and MISSION TO MARS movies. You can't go into deep space in a small (been there, done that) space capsule or otherwise you'll go cuckoo for coco puffs. If you're going to build a ship, think big and do it right. Also it wouldn't hurt to name the ship, ENTERPRISE :) Peace.
Strap a ion rocket on the ISS? :)
We cannot afford any of this. By 2025 the middle class will have been finished off, and thus the tax base will have been erased, and we will have openly accepted our Third World status. The first words spoken on Mars will have to be translated into English for us as we shiver in our boxes amidst burning trash in America's favelas.
By 2025 we'll be lucky if we're not shooting each other in the streets to feed off each others flesh. Not only is this country doomed, we are well and truly fucked on a scale you cannot imagine.
So that a very fortunate few can become massively wealthy, enough to have them live like kings for 10 or 20 generations, the rest of us are going to be involved in a civil war that will have us shooting each other, and probably televisied for the wealthy to gamble on.
We have been robbed, and things are going to get really, really bad in short order. There isn't going to be any manned space missions coming out of the USA for maybe 100 or more years, because we're going to have rebuild after burning down the country, and things like surviving the winter will be a bit more important.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"a bold new chapter"
0) Goals are good (they do drive progress), but als need to start building craft in orbit to avoid gravitational penalties on long missions. We could now hire SpaceX or use minotaurs to put all the parts in orbit, assemble @ station, send up astronauts when done, then hit the moon and back to orbit. The use a VASMIR or similar mated with a capsule and cylenders to hit Mars, asteroids.
1) Want to get economic benefits? Land on an asteroid, process on site, park results at libration points or on moon (see #0). One metalic asteroid = $1T to $10T in rare earths and precious metals. At $2000/ounce this is very feasible. Use gravity well to bring down in ocean and retrieve.
2) long term purpose of all space programs should be to colonize. Science can be done on site, but it is far more important to get the human species multiple planetary homes. A species that does not continuously expand its range, will eventually become extinct due to statistically improbable events.