Slashdot Mirror
NASA's Bolden: No American-Led Return To the Moon 'In My Lifetime'
MarkWhittington writes "A clash over the future course of American space exploration flared up at a recent joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In one corner was Al Carnesale of UCLA, who headed the recent study issued by the National Research Council that found fault with the Obama administration's plan to send American astronauts to an asteroid. In the other corner was NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has been charged with carrying out the policy condemned by the NRC report."
Let's remember:
"Mr Bolden said: "When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.
"One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html
Unless there are muslims to assuage on the Moon, we're not going back.
-Styopa
Well yes and no. Yes in at this moment there really isn't a point, we simply don't have the tech to make going to the moon worth doing right now. Back then it was more about beating the USSR so the fact that they couldn't do much more than pick up a couple hundred pounds or rocks and doing a couple of basic experiments was fine, no reason for the flag waving today. If China or India want to blow a pile of money to say they did it? Knock yourselves out, been there and done that. As for the no part we know that Helium 3 is found to be plentiful there and since helium 3 looks like it might be good for fusion reactors in the future WHEN we can set up a base THEN it would be worth going, with a permanent base (most likely all robotic) one could make the case for the trip.
Frankly the one thing I see NO point in though is "meatbags is spaaace!" because the amount of resources you have to use to get a fragile meatbag into space with today's tech? Really not worth it. The robot doesn't need food, air, water, toilets, can be powered for decades with an RTG, its just better to send a machine to do it. Does that mean we shouldn't work on making new engines capable of moving us meatbags out there? Of course not, but as of right now with the tech we have the machines are just a better choice.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster.
The Moon has already been captured so no reason to capture it again.
Oh, you mean the global disaster that would be caused by the somewhat bright light and perhaps even slight noise (we must steel ourselves to consider worst case here) that would come from a tiny asteroid dissipating way up in Earth's atmosphere?
The greatest burden to humanity would be the possibility of an unmanageable swarm of 911 (or equivalent) calls, thousands even. This will probably completely overwhelm our delicate emergency infrastructure. It might even be a worse disaster than the average Manchester football game.
Would obtaining an asteroid be worth that terrible, fearsome risk? I... I... just don't know.
Sadly there was no real alternative to electing Obama.
What Bolden is simply acknowledging is that NASA's manned spaceflight program is over. Sure, they're still recruiting and training astronauts, but that's so they can keep the ISS manned until it is retired. The future of manned space flight, including space stations, Moon bases and interplanetary and interstellar travel will belong to private industry. NASA will focus on scientific missions. There's nothing wrong with that - it represents the evolution of the space industry. Billionaires like Elon Musk can build, launch, and return space capsules today. Fifty years ago, Musk's approach would have been highly unlikely, if not completely impossible. The US government will help fund and provide frameworks - think DARPA's development of the Internet and now the 100-year starship project and the humanoid robotics initiative. Along with its own research and development, private industry will take the frameworks and ideas DARPA is developing now and leverage and exploit them in unimagined ways, just as with the Internet.
That all depends on what you use the meatbag for. People tend to forget that meatbags are still one of the most advanced machines on Earth (and you can always augment a meatbag, once robotics and cybernetics gets to that point). Sure, the robot doesn't need food, air, etc, but those aren't really that significant of needs. They're just mass in the end.
In exchange, you get capabilities that aren't reflected in robots, such as on site decision making and complex on site study of surface characteristics and high maneuverability even in a bulky space suit. The Moon incidentally is the only place where such capabilities don't shine due to its closeness to Earth.
Ever wonder why even forty years after the end of Apollo, that no one from the US government dares go back to the Moon? Aside from the "Been there. Done that." attitude so common in space advocacy and the public, it's because you can't top the manned activities (all from only two man-weeks on the Moon!) with a few robots, even forty years later. Instead, it'll take an extensive though not necessarily manned effort to do better.
Several people replied with a question they thought was insightful but which was rather a non-sequitur. They wanted to know what was wrong with NASA inspiring children or expanding international relations. The answer is "Nothing." The problem is that none of those three things should be NASA's primary mission. NASA's primary mission should have something to do with the Aeronautics and/or Space. We have another agency that is tasked with expanding international relations, as a matter of fact that agency was established for the express purpose of managing the U.S. government's foreign relations. It is the State Department. If NASA is going to make foreign relations one of its primary goals, it is going to make itself redundant. Reaching out to Muslim nations also falls under the rubric of the State Department and NASA doing so is redundant. We also already have an agency that has one of its primary focuses as inspiring children to get into science and math (or at least it should). That is the Department of Education. Once again if NASA starts making that its focus it becomes redundant.
I will repeat, the head of NASA should see his primary missions as being involved with Aeronautics and Space, not foreign relations or education (although both of those may be secondary or tertiary objectives).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Sorry, but there's nothing useful in either place AND they're both at the bottom of another god damned gravity well. Orbital stations for spaced based solar would at least be *useful*. Satellite based internet would be useful. Is there something wrong with useful? Why is it that when we talk about space exploration, it always descends into some dick-waving "me there first" macho-chimpanzee rant.
We know how to get into space. We know there are useful and profitable things to do there. Can we just get on with it please?
The moon is useless and if there's life on Mars, it's not going anywhere. We can wait.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must be killed.
Then we can go back to the moon.
Couldn't agree more.
... etc.
Defense is generally when you respond to protect yourself from an attacker.
Defense is not what the USA has done for many years.
More accurate words that describe what the USA taxpayer's 'defense' funding is used for are words like: Invade, attack, assail, assault, occupy, enforcement, pressure, coerce, compel, spy, dominate, afflict, oppress, encumber, harass, plague, torment, torture, trample
I'm all for the USA having the biggest, most sophisticated and competent army in the world, it comes in handy when the leaders of TPLAC's (or northern peninsula communist regimes) go off the rails - but if it were for "Defense", you would expect to see a lot more of it inside the states, and not so much of it in places that never posed a real threat to the states.
Places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia & Vietnam.