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NASA's Next Mission: Deep Space
gManZboy writes "NASA's Mars Science Lab and Curiosity rover are the next steps in a long-term plan to travel farther and faster into space. Check out the future spacecrafts and tools that will get them there — including NASA's big bet, a spacecraft that combines the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle with the Space Launch System, designed to take astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo 17 Moon mission in 1972. NASA will need 10 years to prepare astronauts to take Orion and SLS for a test flight."
Or are we going to offshore it?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Sadly, there is on the one hand the desire to come up with ever more grandiose projects now that the space shuttle program is defunct and on the other hand looming budget cuts... so what we will get is a huge launch and a couple of years of data and then a giant chunk of metal hurling through space that no one can afford to keep track of any more. Civilization is collapsing.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
Never going to happen.
Face it, you're broke.
Our space program flat out sucks. I wonder if the people in the 70s ever dreamed we would have such an embarrassing lack of progress during the next 4 decades.
i never understood why NASA insists on making the Mars trip a return mission. Why waste 3 years there and back stuck in the middle of space doing no science?
Just send a couple of guys there and make it a one way mission. They can start colonising immediately and start building stuff. Pioneers used to do that sort of thing all the time in the new world.
People place too much value on human life. If the Chinese send anyone theyd do it that way.
I bet NASA could find a million volunteers to do it and id be one of them. Id do it for a single week on Mars.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Geez, imagine if they rolled both of them into one and the same step! Way to stay on top of it poster and the editors!
SLS exists by Congressional mandate, to send cash to ATK and the other Shuttle contractors. It'll probably never fly.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
SLS is a steaming pile of shit shoveled onto NASA by Congress. I hope it never flies. Frankly, the Ares V launcher was a pretty good idea, but was bogged down by having to involve all of the old shuttle contractors.
The plural of spacecraft is spacecraft.
Let's think about all that we have learned from our manned space program in the last 30 years. And now let compare that to everything we've learned through our unmanned space program. What amazed us more, pictures from Hubble, or pictures from the ISS? Or was it shockingly detailed infrared pictures of the universe's first light? Or was it the ISS? Was it the amazing Mars landers? Was it the fact that a human-made probe made a soft landing on freaking TITAN??? Well it turns out that the ISS was more expensive that all those missions put together. That's largely because human exploration is just expensive and it's getting more expensive all the time. Alongside, robots are quickly closing the capability gap on us, and in 20 years I'm confident that they can do more on Mars than humans could.
In the 60's our robots sucked, lives were cheap, the Soviets were scary, the economy was pumping, the politicians were united behind NASA, and the Moon was close. Yes, that was the single coolest and most amazing thing that any space program has ever done. But we're fooling ourselves absurdly if we think that in the present day we can get our glory back by doing Mars. The conditions are different in every way.
And I think it would be terrible for the space program as well. Just like the ISS ate up an ungodly chunk of each year's Space budget (for what?) as serious and far cheaper science experiments got vetoed, a Mars mission would just *be* the NASA budget for three decades. It can't be denied that it would primarily be a prestige mission. There are much better ways to learn each and every one of the things we would learn on such a mission. But I think Americans want to do it because we feel like we're on the decline, and like all aging men, we want to get back on that horse and show that we've still got it. It's like the old dude who reminisces about that time he was 24 and hooked up with a model, and ends up buying a Porsche and a mountain of Cialis because he thinks he can relive those glory years. Yes, we're looking for an excuse to whip out our cocks again and scream madly about how we can piss all the way to Mars. But it's more than a little pathetic, not least because there is no political way that our political system could produce the huge volume of steady funding that such a project would require. If we try it, it will be mentioned in every two minute version of the history of the American empire, right at the end.
Whenever I hear "Orion" and "manned spaceflight", this is what first comes to mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
The current Scientific American has an interesting article on the path that manned exploration out of the Earth-Moon system might take. It employs aspects of the unmanned program to cut cots and to have a more flexible program. One interesting aspect is that the main spacecraft is parked in high earth orbit and human crews fly to it in a small craft. Once on the main craft, it does a swing by the Earth to get a speed boost. Its main engine is electric-power (off of solar arrays). While only part of the Scientific American article ("This Way to Mars," 12/2011 issue) is free, they do kindly provide links to its references at the bottom of the page. See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=this-way-to-mars .
Apparently, you need about 100 tons in low Earth orbit for such a craft. That would be two launches of SpaceX's proposed Falcon Heavy. It seems way more likely to fly than NASA's proposed Space Launch System (SLS).
Moon, Helium 3, rocket fuel.
Go there, pick it up, use it.
Unless if it were successful. Unless instead of just getting there, we stayed and started building something. Biotechnology is advancing by leaps and bounds, as is nanotechnology, material science, etc. And a lot of it is thanks to that ISS that you so willfully deride. The Hubble or the landers may take the headlines of today, but is the ISS that is preparing some very real gifts for tomorrow.
God only knows what we could accomplish, if we tried.
...Nine?
Please?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I cannot imagine spending six months in that tiny capsule and I doubt anyone outside of Lockheed Martin Corp's PR department and their employees in Congress can either. Orion seems fine for getting people to and from orbit and even to the moon, but for deep space I think we should do a lot better. Why not build a real space ship to carry people and Orion between Earth and Mars? I'm picturing something like the ISS only without as many modules and with real propulsion, perhaps from Vasmir ion engines. Design it to stay in space for multiple missions. When it isn't in use, perhaps it could be docked to the ISS as backup in case of emergency.
Then i suggest NASA supports the worst candidate, so in case he/she wins, they will cancel him/her (him).
What NASA needs to build is an interplanetary arc; a big spaceship complete with rotating sections for gravity, nuclear propulsion, huge areas of hydroponics and onboard shuttles for visiting planets.
With such a spaceship, visiting other planets of the solar system would be much easier.
How NASA projects should work:
President gives a mission to NASA
NASA estimates method and budget
Congress approves budget
NASA completes mission
Here is how it actually works:
President gives a mission to NASA
Congress chooses the method (maximum jobs) and budget (way too small)
NASA tries and fails to make congresses' stupid ideas work
New President cancels old mission in favour of a new mission that is "better" because he can take credit for it
Just send machine to colonize the moon, mars or where ever. In a few hundred years or so when they are done building whatever infrastructure is needed for a comfortable enough life, send the humans to "colonize". When done, repeat. Simple!
Quit using old, outdated systems of units. That's Euros per pound.
Wake me after Deep Space missions 1-8 are over.
If SOME politician in charge would just give NASA a well-defined mission such as "10 years for a working moon base" or "15 years to land humans on Mars" they would find a way to pull it off, even without budget increases
Ah, the Vision Myth. The noose around NASA's neck for the last 40 years. If only the next President would say the magic words that somehow make all the badness and waste go away.
Five Presidents have offered grand visions for space. Kennedy wanted a man on the moon in ten years. Nixon wanted a reusable space truck that would cost less than $100m per launch. Reagan wanted the 12 man Freedom space station with a space-ship construction module, launched in 8 years. Bush Sr. wanted a lunar base on the moon within a decade, and then launch Mars missions within 20yrs. Bush Jr, virtually the same, but signed off on Constellation. That's an 80% failure rate since NASA was founded. And 100% failure for the last 40 years.
Why would the next Grand Presidential Vision for NASA be any different?
Hell, it's getting worse. Obama's IMO quite reasonable "Vision" for NASA, hand off manned LEO to commercial operators and focus NASA on technologies necessary for manned BEO missions, didn't even get on the floor. Congress had ordered NASA to ignore the President's directive before the budget was even written. Then in the budget, they created a mock-Constellation, SLS, to absorb every funding dollar from the older program. And now they're actively treating commercial-crew as a rival to their plans, and slashing its budget. At least previous Congresses have had the decency to pretend to support the Presidents' Visions. Now they aren't even pretending it's anything less than war.
Why not dust of the drawings for the Saturn 5, OK it will need a modern control system but then you are ready to go. To compare with a car: Put a modern fuel injection system on a late 1960's V8 car... that would move..
Frustrated space guy...