U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars'

MarkWhittington writes "Politico reports in a June 18, 2013 story that House Republicans have added a Mars base to its demands for a lunar base in the draft 2013 NASA Authorization bill. Both the Bush-era Constellation program and President Obama space plan envisioned eventual human expeditions to Mars. But if Politico is correct, the new bill will be the first time an official piece of legislation will call for permanent habitation of the Red Planet. The actual legislative language states, 'The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars.'"

Comments

Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Uniquitous]

The moon, Mars, deep space... just get them off this planet and out of our hair ASAP.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawd, NO! Leave them here & let's the rest of us go!

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawd, NO! Leave them here & let's the rest of us go!

Don't worry, you can have Venus for the geeks, Jupiter for the nerds and Pluto all for yourself.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[i kan reed]

Just don't send any of that expensive oxygen with them. We can save that for a second trip.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, the first few vehicles might have some glitches. We should probably use Congressmen and Senators until they stop exploding.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, until we run out of Congressmen and Senators and finally decide to fix the faulty design...

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Kjella]

Too late, they're already full of hot air.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[PRMan]

Shh, don't reveal the secrets upfront!

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Steve_Ussler]

no idea what this 'presence' is supposed to achieve.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[chill]

Then the whole CO2/global warming issue should be solved.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Zumbs]

Gawd, NO! Leave them here & let's the rest of us go!

Don't worry, you can have Venus for the geeks, Jupiter for the nerds and Pluto all for yourself.

I'm more of a cat person myself ...

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[paiute]

Gawd, NO! Leave them here & let's the rest of us go!

Don't worry, you can have Venus for the geeks, Jupiter for the nerds and Pluto all for yourself.

Kudos to you, brave AC, for passing on all of the obvious Uranus jokes.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was methane!

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[TheCarp]

I like it....ok here is the plan.

We need to build 3 ships, we can call them ARKs. We convince some astronomers to tell them that there is an asteroid on its way, life is going to be wiped out, and we have to evacuate.

Of course, as our leaders, they will have to be sent out ahead, and the rest of us, will be right behind them. Of course, to make the deal nice, we need to make the ark big enough for them to bring their friends, personal assistants, telephone sanitizers, the whole shebang.

Launch them on a path out of the solar system, and track their progress for a few years as a long term test. Use the data to fine tune the other two craft for the moon expansion and mars missions.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with Uranus?

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the AC was too smart to suggest that any /. types might get any anus, yours or otherwise.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[davester666]

Yeah.

On the second group of ships, we send everybody who voted a straight party ticket for either R or D. Exceptions could be made for those who can prove they are dead and buried.

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't send any of that expensive oxygen with them. We can save that for a second trip.

O2 is a dangerous and reactive gas. In high concentrations it can kill. We wouldn't want to send congress into space with something so hazardous...

Re:Cool, let's send Congress first.

[RockDoctor]

I fail to see the fault in the design. Please elucidate.

Unfunded mandate?

[jandrese]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet? They just want NASA to stop everything else that they're doing and start making manned Mars rockets? Is it any wonder NASA struggles with long term projects, with Congress meddling every year with crazy ideas and budget uncertainty?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[the eric conspiracy]

I'm surprised the House admits to the existence of Mars and the Moon as separate bodies in space rather than being lights in a crystal sphere around the Earth.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a sustainable human presence on the earth before there's a sustained human presence on some other planet.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[polar red]

"enormous"
http://www.openculture.com/2012/03/neil_degrasse_tyson_how_much_would_you_pay_for_the_universe.html

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean congress or Obama? Not much difference unless your a true believer? The US government thinks money grows on tax payers and Chinese lenders. Why not, we have an endless money pit the way business is conducted today. The universe is the limit for the US government.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[tpjunkie]

Not only that, but the funding level for NASA is actually lowered by 5% to boot. I suppose no one should be surprised that the people who seem to have difficulty with science also have difficulties with math. Unless they think going to Mars is going to be a cheap proposition.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet?

"The House" and "The Senate" don't pay for anything.

You and I do. ..

And I, Anonymous Coward, still don't see a valid reason to put humans in orbit, never mind the moon or Mars (other than it'd be cool). Let robots do the work.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[SecurityGuy]

It doesn't say they're putting a permanent human colony on a different planet.

It says establish a program to develop. All they actually have to do is establish a program that's intended to develop such a program that will theoretically result in such a colony way off in the nebulous future. I can see that being done on not much money. Actually succeeding, of course, will require that enormous expense.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

rather than being lights in a crystal sphere around the Earth.

Around!? You do realize that in order to even conceive this notion, they'd first have to make a bold leap of thought regarding the sphericity of our humble middle realm of existence? There aren't many things I would put past them but I think you're too much of an optimist.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[halltk1983]

Of course not. They get the headlines by telling someone to do it, but don't want to have it said that they increased funding. Unless it can be linked to beating the terrorists. Then we'd be there next year.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ultranova]

Does it? How do you know the lights "Moon" and "Mars" are not simply used as easily identifiable beacons in an attempt to colonize the inner surface of the sphere Dyson-style?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[kermidge]

This isn't so much about the Moon and Mars as it is keeping some monies flowing into the hands of the several major aerospace consortiums. On the plus side, a number of talented, skilled people will be kept on the payroll, else all their expertise essentially vanish without handover. NASA itself will not see worthwhile funding to do little more than continual studies and reviews. Meanwhile it plays well to the constituencies and lets a few of more deluded stroke their egos.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Graydyn Young]

Apparently the House plans on using a rocket powered by wishes and rainbows.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

I don't know what NASA actually does besides print shiny brochures and give tours to kids. We landed on the moon in 1969, before I was born. If we look at the progress made since that time, NASA has been a failure by any objective standard. In the 90's there was at least some marginal progress - Chandra, Mars rover, and so on. Now all they do is marketing. Oh wait, plus important "science" - like how fruit flies fuck in low earth orbit.

Money should go to Inspiration Mars or SpaceX. NASA is where dreams go to die.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Jawnn]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet?

Of course not. Don't be silly. What they do want to do is divert attention away from the real issues by making much noise about "cool stuff" like space programs.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ColdWetDog]

It all makes sense really. Since the Apollo landing, computer generated graphics have come a long way. It should not be hard nor expensive to "travel" to the Moon and Mars, Hollywood style. Would make an excellent reality show, one that was more true to life than most of them on the small screen these days. Hell, NASA could even make money from this. Works for Industrial Light and Magic, doesn't it?

You people are too literal sometimes.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ArcadeMan]

That's a sure way of making the human race extinct.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, NASA has done a shitload of stuff since Apollo. They have been doing long term, small scale research on a whole raft of subjects including plain ol planes. They've organized some pretty impressive technology for the Mars / Jupiter / Saturn unmanned probes. They've kept the ISS up and running.

All of this isn't as sexy as the Shuttle or Apollo programs and NASA would be glad to ramp up it's efforts had it been given some decent long term funding and had Congress resisted the urge to micromanage everything. There have been setbacks of course. The James Webb Telescope/a) (successor to the Hubble) is over budget and over time. Sometimes rocket science is hard.

Given the constraints they have had to work under, I'm surprised they get anything done.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[idji]

it's not a "crystal sphere" - that would be round, it is a FIRMAMENT - a flat roof.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

They're doing busy work. If you want to be in space exploration, you need to be bold. Their probe technology is from the 1970s, and the ISS is a solution in search of a problem. Look at a list of the last 500 experiments conducted there, and try to find one that someone will care about in 100 years. Now compare that with the massive balls it took to land people on the moon, when computers were still a novelty.

James Webb. Great. Another fucking telescope, like we don't have enough of those already. I guess it's a good way to spend a few billion if you're close to retirement and you don't want to risk anyone dying on your shift. But like I said, we need to keep those glossy color brochures coming, and that doesn't happen without good optics.

You want to know how you figure out how well people can survive in space? You don't build a $20 gazillion boondoggle and do experiments for 10 years. You send people into space and see what happens to them. Without typing up 2,000 pages of composite risk management paperwork.

Re: Unfunded mandate?

[Electric Monk]

Maybe they should call Jony Ive

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Squidlips]

Yes, they want to rob from the highly successful unmanned missions to pay for the Houston manned missions which have been highly unsuccessful if you count astronaut deaths as non successful.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[gtall]

You give the House not enough credit, or I should say the Republicans on the Science and Tech committee. The chairman is a bible thumping Sauropod from the Jurassic Period. He want no effort in research for how humans are affecting the earth, nor does he want any naughty asteroid capture technology to be developed 'cause if the Big One has our name on its ass, then it is G-d's will and all "deserving" souls will be raptured. Yet, the Republicans thought he'd be perfect for a committee that effects how we spend our science and tech budget.

I'm ashamed.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZonkerWilliam]

And yet you think Mr. Obama and his troop plans on paying for anything yet???

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[tsotha]

Realistically there's no money for a major space project. We're running a trillion dollar deficit - the government has no way to pay the obligations it already has let alone new ones.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Cro Magnon]

Since when has lack of money stopped the government from major new projects?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Nyder]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet? They just want NASA to stop everything else that they're doing and start making manned Mars rockets? Is it any wonder NASA struggles with long term projects, with Congress meddling every year with crazy ideas and budget uncertainty?

If we pulled out of the middle east, stop spending so much money on military, (I know, long shot here), we'd have a nice chunk of money for NASA.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to know how you figure out how well people can survive in space? You don't build a $20 gazillion boondoggle and do experiments for 10 years. You send people into space and see what happens to them. Without typing up 2,000 pages of composite risk management paperwork.

This is an excellent idea. And I know just the people to send first: anyone on welfare. The taxpayers are keeping your ass alive? Then your ass is going to space to see what happens. Most of them will die, and thus we will learn many things not to do in space. Don't want to have your ass shot into space as a lab monkey? Stop taking the welfare. Simple.

This proposal will also provide the funding, as our welfare costs decline. Oh, we'll have to send enough people in charge to corral them, so bring back all the military we've got invading everyone else's countries and shoot them into space too. Massive funding shift to the "shoot 'em into space" program as well as large increases in quality of life for all the damn rest of us.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ColdWetDog]

If you only get chump change, you do busy work. I agree in general that NASA should be doing bigger, more important things, but they're sort of resource constrained at the moment.

And, actually, you do figure out how to deal with long term issues in space by sticking up a metal can and orbiting earth for ten years. Yes, we could have done better, we could be doing better, but with the money and political power that exists, all you get is the ISS. Remember, space is hard. Really hard. The ISS has returned a lot of boring but important data on how people and materials survive in LEO. You don't get that data by watching Star Trek reruns.

And that 'fucking telescope' that has your panties in a bunch has a much better chance of significantly changing our world view than any reasonably feasible manned program.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The House and Senate pay for things just as much as you pay for your groceries. While their income source may be my taxes and your taxes, that money is in their account to spend. Your income comes from your employer or customers, so using your logic you spend your employer's money. Once you are paid something it starts being yours, just like once you pay out something it stops being yours.

And I, Anonymous Coward's alter ego, says Anonymous Coward is just like the people who would say there is no point in sailing across the ocean. When we push our limits is when the biggest gains come. You don't learn much in the way of new science by repeating the baking soda volcano experiment, but when the boundaries are pushed new technologies and techniques are developed to cope.

Sending robots helps to advance robotics, sending people helps to advance humanity.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

No. A thousand times, no.

"If I had money, I would do great things", is how a bureaucrat thinks. Someone without vision does not suddenly develop it when they win the lottery.

An explorer on the other hand, has a vision first, and then moves heaven and earth to make it a reality. If we gave NASA serious money, they'd spend about half of it on toner for their printers, and for new conference rooms and educational programs. Giving NASA more money will mean more incremental science, more staid experiments in low earth orbit, more refinements of the measurement of background radiation. You can rest assured they will not risk one penny on something that could blow up on them.

We don't need that. We're tired of that. The space program should be run out of trailers in the desert in Texas, not air conditioned offices in Washington. We need the PhD who has a model of a space elevator in his basement and is raising $50 at a time on Kickstarter to take it to the next level. Would you donate your own money on Kickstarter to a single project that NASA is running? Hell no. Neither would I. Neither would my neighbor Bob.

How exactly is James Webb going to "change our world view"? Nicer pictures of galaxies? Big fucking deal. The moon landing united an entire nation because it was so audacious in its thinking. Now all we do is sit back and take pictures of space. It might change the world view of some physicists, for whom it is a jobs program. Bob next door probably isn't too excited about his money going towards it after putting up drywall all day. A space elevator? That's something Bob can get interested in. Vision is something almost all Americans appreciate, even in this day and age.

Fuck NASA. Come up with something that shows you have balls, then you can have my money.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[idontgno]

Unless it can be linked to beating the terrorists.

Well, we need to replace Gitmo. And the status of many of the inmates there could certainly be considered "permanent", so it would qualify.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[losfromla]

and me without mod points yet again.
I agree and have read somewhere that NASA is extremely risk-averse. Especially since they lost a couple of shuttles, what a bunch of posies they are. It takes less balls to be an astronaut nowadays than to be a schoolteacher.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem comes in by the fact people won't accept or fund a mission that has a greater than x% chance of failure. Anything that is groundbreaking is likely going to have a greater than x% chance of failure so it won't be funded.

That coupled with the misperception of how much of the budget NASA takes it makes it difficult to get public funding, private funding is difficult for much of the same reason most people who have money did so by not gambling their money on long term high risk investments.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

James Webb. Great. Another fucking telescope, like we don't have enough of those already

The JWT is a metric shitload more able than Hubble. Enough space telescopes already? Really? IMO, space telescopes are something that you can never have enough of, regardless of the spectrum they are tuned for. More eyes in the sky means more knowledge. EOS.

You send people into space and see what happens to them. Without typing up 2,000 pages of composite risk management paperwork.

People like you are the problem. Is the ISS not in space? If not then where the fuck is it? I'll concede that it really hasn't acheived much compared to what it could have done, apart from being a waystation for that useless piece of shit that was the shuttle, but you can bet your last wasted tax dollar that NASA is collecting reams of data from the ISS about the long term effects of humans in space. Bear in mind that many of the early plans for going to the moon involved using a space station as a staging point and that this is probably a good idea as evidenced by the designs for the now dead constellation program, which were ideas from Werner et al in the 1950's.

  Also no one has spent the same amount of time on the ISS that would be needed to send humans to mars with conventional technology (chem rockets) so there is definitely more to be learned which is to say nothing about the masses of data that has been lost from Apollo. IMO the US govt is fucking everyone they can to get what *they* want, power and control, not space programs with any meaning.

God Bless America, but fuck everyone else.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[bware]

Look at a list of the last 500 experiments conducted there, and try to find one that someone will care about in 100 years.

Hubble
Kepler
Cassini-Huygens
COBE
WMAP
Spitzer
MSL
GRACE
GRAIL
Chandra
Galileo
SWIFT

We've been mapping the cosmos. We've studied the cosmic microwave background in great detail and discovered that that crazy inflation idea is basically correct (COBE, WMAP). We've determined the Hubble Constant within 9% - we didn't know it within a factor of 2 when I was in grad school (WMAP). We've mapped the large scale structure of the universe, voids and bubbles. Not to mention the numerous theories that have died in the face of experimental evidence from NASA probes, or crazy ideas that have been confirmed.

We've discovered that almost every star we've looked at has multiple planets (Kepler). When I started in this biz, we literally had no idea what \eta_{planet} might be, and now we're closing in on \eta_{earth}.

We've landed probes on Titan (Huygens) and Mars (Rovers, MSL). We're driving robots around on Mars. We've mapped the gravity fields of two planets (GRACE, GRAIL). We've studied the outer planets in great detail (Cassini, Galileo). We've discovered that we don't know what 96% of the universe is made of (HST/Chandra).

Not to mention mapping out gamma ray bursters (SWIFT), x-ray and infrared cosmology (Chandra, Spitzer), and detailed study of the planet we live on (GRACE, numerous others).

We're living in a golden age of cosmology and earth science. You think no one is going to care about these discoveries in a hundred years? Two of those, dark matter/energy and the discovery of extra-stellar planets are paradigm-shifting.

We have the capability to do much more. Give NASA the price of a couple of B2 bombers or an aircraft carrier (or an ISS) spread out over the next decade, and we'll determine the spectra of the atmosphere of other planets light years away (and perhaps find evidence of life), and study the universe in the gravitational wave spectrum. And a dozen other great ideas that simply aren't going to be funded in my lifetime.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ebno-10db]

The House and Senate pay for things just as much as you pay for your groceries. While their income source may be my taxes and your taxes, that money is in their account to spend.

Congress can change taxes more arbitrarily than I can change my income. They can also borrow money. Me too, but when the bill comes due I'm personally responsible for it. Not so congress. I'm neither an anti-tax fanatic nor a deficit hawk, but to act as though congress were terribly constrained, or suffer the consequences for excessive government debt in the same sense I suffer for excess personal debt, is ridiculous. We taxpayers really do foot the bill.

Sending robots helps to advance robotics, sending people helps to advance humanity.

Agreed. I vote for the robots.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

I meant 500 experiments on the ISS - but even looking at your list, isn't that a perfect example of incremental science? Mapping, more mapping, more detail. Better resolution of the Hubble constant. Some more probes (technology that dates back to Voyager). The Mars rovers don't have any technology that wasn't around in the 80's. Nothing wrong with any of this, but it's the clean up work that happens in dull periods. Contrast that with the 50 year period going from the development of the modern rocket to landing on the moon. With the first artificial satellites going up along there.

If someone in the early 70's had seen your list, they would have laughed and said "that's it"? By now we were supposed to have permanent settlements on the Mars and moon, space elevators, Bussard ramjets, exotic matter factories, mineral harvesting in space. We were supposed to be comfortable operating in the asteroid belt. On the other hand, everyone knew we were going to find extra-stellar planets. The math dictated it. Actually finding them was tidying up loose ends. And dark matter is the new ether - it's so obvious until one day it's not. This isn't any sort of "golden" age. We still don't even have a viable candidate for a unified theory, and everything since Einstein and Dirac have been increasingly wild attempts to get equations to balance.

So what's NASA going to do with more money? Throw bigger and bigger mirrors into orbit? Create another boondoggle like the shuttle, which was supposed to be a "cheap" launch vehicle? That's all old science. Show me something new.

Look at your list of projects. If those were Kickstarter projects, how many lay people would throw their own money in?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Tablizer]

I'm surprised the House admits to the existence of Mars and the Moon as separate bodies in space

They do until you tax it.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[miniMUNCH]

Sir/madam... you are entirely misjudging the landscape of Aerospace technology and Space Exploration.

The fact is that SpaceX is indeed quite awesome (as are numerous other aerospace companies). SpaceX in particular as of late. they are learning and succeeding at an incredible rate and are taking some new ideas and putting them into action. But they have not yet done anything from a mission prospective that wasn't already done over 40 years ago (launch into LEO, dock with something, return stuff to planet surface.... Russian Aerospace and NASA wrote the book on how to do that 40 years ago). SpaceX doesn't have a legacy of any successful missions that have pushed the boundaries of space exploration.

NASA, RFSA, ESA, and other government funded space exploration centers have an incredible track record of pushing the limits in space exploration: these organizations have executed amazing, high-risk, missions with a remarkable track record of success.
Shuttle program, ISS, Hubble, Messenger, Cassini, MRO, Curiosity, Planck, etc.... the list goes on and on.

People talk about JWST in negative terms now... but I believe the folks on the JWST project are going to get it 'perfect' and JWST is going to be a crowning achievement for mankind.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[miniMUNCH]

Yeah cause landing a 1 ton robot on Mars with a sky-crane shows NASA has absolutely zero balls

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Rob_Bryerton]

A little perspective is needed here I think, and this fact is pretty scary. Ready for this?

The entire budget of NASA, from it's inception up to the current day, has been equivalent to (ready for this?) 2 years of the US military's budget. Think about that, and try not to weep.

Not that I disagree that we're in some serious financial straits...

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Bing Tsher E]

Now compare that with the massive balls it took to land people on the moon, when computers were still a novelty.

Computers were not a novelty in 1969. They may have been a novelty in 1953, but they weren't in 1969. Were you even alive in 1969 to know what you're talking about?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[miniMUNCH]

We keep on talking this way about accepting risk, not accepting risk... when it is really more about spending money intelligently. NASA/RFSA/ESA/ et al. accept 'intelligent' risk on big missions all the time (mars landings are crazy hard).

NASA's job is to DO it, not 'try' it. (Yoda: "there is no try...") Sure, government can give some company money to try to do something, and when that company screws up they can pay their lobbying department overtime to smooth things over with Congress.

(Think about it... you don't pay 50 million to build damns which *might* hold water. -OR- Car manufacturers have been designing and making cars, continuously innovating and integrating new technology, for over 70 years... they still don't always integrate new tech seamlessly and frequently have to issue recalls.)

NASA generally can't issue recalls once the mission is off the launch pad... if you launch a flawed entry-decent-landing vehicle towards Mars it just crashes when it gets there (and that has happened). The best route for fundamentally new missions is to go for maximum mission assurance... it costs more but you almost always get the accomplishment you are after. It would be one thing if, for instance, NASA's track record was not so good... but it is pretty damn good.

This policy is also followed by Russia, ESA, JAXA. And this policy and systematic, organizational means by which this is achieve has had extremely positive cascading effects in numerous aspects which we often take for granted (commerical aerospace, medical device, etc.).

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[RatPh!nk]

That was my angle when I first read this piece. They know it is going to take buckets of time and more importantly, just a sick amount of money.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[quenda]

The house thought they had the funds already, but it turns out they were looking at the NSA budget, not NASA.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

Nitpick much?

When we're discussing a time span of a hundred years, maybe 16 years is not enough for the "novelty" factor to wear off. Computers certainly weren't widespread, and only experts had access to them.

By your idiotic logic, you can't be an expert on the French revolution unless you were alive in 1789...

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

I'm sorry, but you're making about zero sense. If the sky-crane explodes and drops the 1 ton robot, who exactly is going to get hurt? The Martians? What exactly is the risk in this operation?

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

These are just stale NASA talking points.

The shuttle program was NOT a success. It was a colossal failure. It was intended to be a cheap, reusable vehicle to get cargo to low earth orbit. Per Wikipedia, the original target was $630/lb to get payload up to orbit, in 2011 dollars. The actual cost wound up being $27,000/lb. That's 4,100% over budget. If you consider that a success, I'd hate to see what you consider a failure.

Hubble? You mean the telescope that they launched with a mirror that was ground in the wrong shape? The one that cost millions to fix while it was in orbit? That one? We got a lot of pretty pictures, sure, but there was nothing revolutionary about the technology itself.

JWST is a fine idea. But it's just a better version of Hubble for $8.7 billion. All I'm saying is that when you're talking about budgets of billions, we should expect more than we're getting from NASA.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Zontar The Mindless]

An explorer on the other hand, has a vision first, and then moves heaven and earth to make it a reality.

Right, just like that Cristóbal Colón character.

(Those ships he got from the King and Queen of Spain didn't count for anything that really mattered.)

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's all well and good, but it does nothing to address the point that, by 1969, computers were anything but a novelty in the aerospace industry.

Whether or not they met some mystery "big balls" criterion peculiar to you has nothing to do with it.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Johann Public]

Certainly you wouldn't want to educate them even stupider, as we all know that our dear planet is in fact a CUBE

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Wildclaw]

Realistically there's no money for a major space project.

Realistically, there are a lot of labor resources available for a major space project. Of course, expecting any modern western neo-liberal government to be able to leverage said resources is laughable at best.

Money is just a tool. It has zero value in itself, and is only useful for distributing actual productive resources. As long as there exists underlying resources, the distribution of money can always be fixed with a combination of taxing and printing.

Claiming that an economically sovereign government like the US can't pay their obligations is laughable. It isn't like the US debt is denominated in gold or foreign currency. The people running the US government may not be willing to pay the obligations since it would expose the lies they use to scare voters with, but if they really wanted to they could.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[fritsd]

Would make an excellent reality show, one that was more true to life than most of them on the small screen these days.

I think you missed the Youtube videos of the Mars 500 simulation somehow.. I especially liked the one about space pizza.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I see what you did there. But hey, if we can make it to the congress and put 1/3 of the DOD budget into NASA, mankind could be out of the milky way by the end of the week. Anyone interested in politics? Anyone?

At least, you know, Aliens.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[ZeroPly]

I can't tell if you're being intentionally dense or just querulous...

In 1969, the aerospace industry itself was a novelty. The computers they were using were custom designed for the project. Computers were by no means in widespread usage - to the lay person, not the expert, they WERE new. Hence the word "novelty".

Use this thing called "Google" if you don't believe me. Curiosity, in comparison, was running a PowerPC 750 design. Released in 1997. On top of VxWorks. Which was first released in 1987. The design was criticized for being archaic, to which NASA responded that they wanted to go with safe.

The dots. Connect them.

Re: Unfunded mandate?

[smaddox]

All science is incremental. There are periodically rapid advances, but these are almost always due to beginning investigations in a new field. The paradigm shift philosophy is overblown.

None-the-less we are experiencing rapid developments in cosmology. In my lifetime, the first exoplanets have been discovered, and we are rapidly refining estimates for the various factors of the drake equation. Before I die, we should know if we are alone in this vicinity of the galaxy. In addition, we have a mostly complete model for the past and future of macro-universe. Finally, we have uncovered great mysteries, namely dark matter and dark energy.

You may not find current NASA research interesting or worthwhile, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are somewhat like people in ages preceding Enlightenment. They made great strides in pure science, but they still lived almost like in Middle Ages. Great discoveries about the world they lived in, mapping and surveys, advances in marine technology, were yet to come. It seems to me that this imperatives coming from government have to do with that. Knowledge seldom satisfy men of power. It just makes them restless, anxious and even angry when it humbles (or at least tries to do it) them. Knowledge is not always power, but the powerful doesn't want to hear such crazy talk. Gimme my scientific powers, damn it!
So, I expect that pressure will be rising in time ahead to put to practical selfish use all that (sic!) money that was spent on scientific research, preferably on something that subdues other humans, either through brutality, or through some kind of global monopoly (e.g. extraterrestrial mineral resources).

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[LanMan04]

Spheres are LIES.

All hail the TIMECUBE.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[halltk1983]

When has shipping inmates off to a distant location ever been an issue? To be fair, there's probably less dangers to your health on Mars than Australia.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[arobustus]

I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet? They just want NASA to stop everything else that they're doing and start making manned Mars rockets? Is it any wonder NASA struggles with long term projects, with Congress meddling every year with crazy ideas and budget uncertainty?

No they want everything else too. As usual they think they can get the money by stiffing poor people.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[tsotha]

The entire budget of NASA, from it's inception up to the current day, has been equivalent to (ready for this?) 2 years of the US military's budget. Think about that, and try not to weep.

I don't see the relevance. We need a military. We don't need NASA.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[tsotha]

Claiming that an economically sovereign government like the US can't pay their obligations is laughable. It isn't like the US debt is denominated in gold or foreign currency.

There's a limit to the amount you can do to inflate away your debt. If you go overboard you get hyperinflation, which causes all sorts of extra problems. Of courser they will print as much as they can, but it won't be enough, even for current obligations.

Re:Unfunded mandate?

[bware]

On the other hand, everyone knew we were going to find extra-stellar planets. The math dictated it. Actually finding them was tidying up loose ends.

Cite please. Cause I remember sitting in conferences discussing this with other people in the field, and we were apparently woefully underinformed.

I could, were I so inclined, find you numerous references to discussions of the Drake equation in the 80s and 90s when one of the unknown variables was \eta_{planet} and the explanation was, maybe planets are just rare. Maybe we're special. It's not the way anyone would have bet, but it was definitely a possibililty.

And dark matter is the new ether - it's so obvious until one day it's not.

One, I think you mean dark energy, and two, both dark matter/energy were stunningly unobvious when I was a grad student, even though we were dealing with the same problems that led to the experimental evidence supporting these theories. I don't think the solution was obvious and handed out when I wasn't paying attention in Weinberg's and de Witt's classes.

This isn't any sort of "golden" age.

Holy cow. We've built, launched, and observed so much more in the last 20 years, experimentally, than in the whole previous century. I could hand you my grad school copy of Peebles, and we knew nothing, nothing for certain. All speculation. Now we know, and know that we don't know, and that's old science. What an ingrate.

This is how science is done. I don't care that you didn't get space elevators or jetpacks or a GUT. You might have expected what all those bozos in Popular Science were predicting for five cents a word, but no one else did. Those guys didn't understand orbital mechanics, chemistry, or physics. Huh. Who knew? We don't have flying cars and robot detectives and blasters either. Turns out maybe they weren't such great idea. Or fusion, or cheap reliable nuclear energy. The Jetsons weren't a reliable predictor of the future. We don't get cheap travel to the asteroids. We get GPS and smartphones and digital photography. We don't get fusion. We get Google and cheap travel to other continents and super-reliable cars and global warming.

I don't know what we'll get in the future, but it won't be what you, or I, expect. My grandfather got cars, airplanes, world wars, nuclear energy, and moon travel. I get computers, internet everywhere, and to go almost anywhere in the world I want to go. And realizing that the universe that I was taught we almost understood is 96% unknown. That's pretty awesome. "Everything we knew yesterday is wrong!" That's exciting, if you're a scientist.

Nothing's been done since Einstein and Dirac? All that work towards making and validating a Standard Model and making it calculatable out to 11 decimal places is a big disappointment? Just for instance.

You want new science, and you want it to be done out of trailers in BFE, Texas, and you want it for no money by people who get paid nothing. Land is cheap out there. Go nuts. Elon Musk isn't doing it that way. He's got a pretty nice setup in Hawthorne.

If it were possible to do science that way, most of us would be doing it. I don't know anyone who's in it for the money.

Kickstarter is your metric for what should be done? Look at what's on Kickstarter now if you want a list that's 99% junk. It's worse than Sturgeon's Law! That's why scientists have peer review and decadal reviews when we want to spend a lot of money. I'm not letting Kickstarter decide what science gets done, else we'll all be working on robotic sex slaves and Death Stars.

As far as NASA goes, yeah. More (and maybe bigger) telescopes in different wavelengths, more outer planet probes, more solar system and earth study. Dozens of great ideas are unfunded for the price of peanuts, and would be cheap at the price. One of them might well give us the key that unlocks the beginning of the universe or a GUT, but that's the thing about science. We find things we didn't even know to look for.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop changing the subject and fix the problems at home.

Re:no

[jellomizer]

Like...
Encouraging children to get into STEM Degrees. The moon landing back in the 1960's but a large boom into these careers. Although a small portion of them will be working on the space missions. The interest in these things as a kid will make them far more interested in the topics. Getting kids interested in Science Technology Engineering and Math, will help them get off their butts go to college and get in less serious trouble.

Our Environment. Sure launching a rocket into space take huge amounts of carbon. But to figure out how to get people to survive and thrive on the Moon and Mars (extremely harsh conditions, and little energy sources) will create technology that we can use here on earth. Hey that solar panel on the moon can keep a small city running with a half a month of darkness, means on earth we could at least get it to run half a small city. Plus it will need to be small and light to get there. Extracting Drinking water out of the brimy pools on mars, would help us get drinking water out of our oceans and deserts.

Agriculture, these people will need to be self sufficient, in a bubble, imagine what we could do with these ideas on earth.

Health Care. The people in colonies on the Moon and Mars can get sick, we will need to find new procedures to fix these problems. They can be transferred back to earth as a cheaper solution to many problems.

Those are just a few.

Re:no

[lopgok]

"Our Environment. Sure launching a rocket into space take huge amounts of carbon."

So what takes a large amount of carbon?
Burning liquid oxygen and hydrogen?
Manufacturing the liquid oxygen and hydrogen?
Manufacturing the aluminum?
Perhaps it takes a lot of *energy*, but I don't know where a huge amount of carbon is involved. Help me out.

Re:no

[Areyoukiddingme]

Cheap rocketry uses liquid kerosene. Lots of carbon.

Liquid hydrogen is reserved for the crazily expensive NASA boondoggle known as the Space Shuttle. 'cause what you want in a "space truck" is the world's most exotic and difficult to handle fuel....

Re:no

[lopgok]

My bad. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#S-IC_first_stage the first stage uses RP-1 (aka kerosene) and LOX. I thought it used liquid hydrogen.

As for most exotic and difficult to handle fuel, I think that would include liquid fluorine (FLOX) or nitrogen tetroxide.

Re:no

[Hatta]

Encouraging children to get into STEM Degrees.

The best way to encourage children to get STEM degrees is to create high paying STEM jobs. Pay scientists and engineers what we pay CEOs and sports stars, and you'll start to see the culture change.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually aluminum smelting accounts for approximately 1% of all global carbon emissions...

Re:no

[KeensMustard]

Encouraging children to get into STEM Degrees.

Is there a reason we need more people to have these degrees? Then encourage them to take the degree for those reasons. It's not as if the science we already need to do and the engineering we already need to do is not a challenge.

The moon landing back in the 1960's but a large boom into these careers. Although a small portion of them will be working on the space missions. The interest in these things as a kid will make them far more interested in the topics.

And after the boom came a bust. One of the big negatives of the apollo mythos is the intertwining of space exploration with sending bags of meat into space. The role of the bags of meat, is, as you say, to give the venture a human face - it's soap opera and (accesible) human drama.

But maybe the science is worth doing for it's own sake. Maybe the BIG achievements of NASA - Cassini, Voyager, the hugely successful Mars rovers - maybe these are the things we should celebrate, because these are science for the sake of science. If we are not getting kids excited about actual science then we are doing it wrong. Science is exciting.

But to figure out how to get people to survive and thrive on the Moon and Mars (extremely harsh conditions, and little energy sources) will create technology that we can use here on earth. Hey that solar panel on the moon can keep a small city running with a half a month of darkness, means on earth we could at least get it to run half a small city. Plus it will need to be small and light to get there. Extracting Drinking water out of the brimy pools on mars, would help us get drinking water out of our oceans and deserts.

We already know why we need those technologies. And we already know how to live sustainably on earth. If we are not motivated by the needs of 7 billion people and all their descendants, if we are not motivated by the need to preserve the biodiversity of the earth, then the needs of 7 people in a tin can will not motivate us. Solar panels can already power a small city on earth - we just don't want to reach into our pockets and build. We already know how to extract drinkable water from non-potable sources - we just don't care enough about the people without water to do anything about their needs.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even need to do that. Pay engineers and scientists as much as we pay cops, public school teachers or garbage men and you'll start to see the culture change.

Re:no

[ebno-10db]

The best way to encourage children to get STEM degrees is to create high paying STEM jobs. Pay scientists and engineers what we pay CEOs and sports stars, and you'll start to see the culture change.

How crass. If STEM people want money it means Americans are lazy and won't accept delayed gratification. That's what CEO's and their sycophantic politicians say anyway.

Re:no

[geekoid]

There are a lot of high paying STEM jobs.

And kids don't thing of money, they think of cool things. The find out about 'cool thing' from the media. So having a Space Program that is big, and exciting and in the news has kids want to go into engineering and science.
Most kids don't even realize there is a pay differences in jobs until the are between 10-12.

Do you really think some 9 year old sits down and does a cost analysis between careers to determine what they want to do?
ALL you would see is an influx of crappy engineers and Scientists, along with pressure to create an easier path for a PE via trade schools.

If you want to use money as a motivate, guarantee them time off and a good retirement.
And engineer and scientist should get a sabbatical every 5 years, and 50% of there averaged pay in retirement.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it calls for bases on the moon and Mars, the bill doesn’t set a specific timetable for any of this and opts for a “go-as-we-can-afford-to-pay” strategy.

In other words, "Yeah, this sounds good and makes us look like we want to excel, but we're not comitting to it financially or temporally so that we can move the goalposts whenever and however we like."

Re:Meh

[ConceptJunkie]

Like everything else Congress does, this seems like nothing more than another reason for them to pat themselves on the back. What it actually accomplishments is irrelevant.

Fine, let's work the current goals into it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a crime to try to take away an achievable and useful goal, like bringing an asteroid back (or just landing on it), for a long term project that will disappear with the next Congressional whim.

Suggested adaptation: we're landing on an asteroid to use it to build a moon/Mars ship/base.

Not that this will pass anyway, I'm sure.

Re:Fine, let's work the current goals into it

[fritsd]

I suspect that's the long-term plan of JAXA when they did their Hayabusa mission:

• Send spacecraft to 25143 Itokawa when it's close to Earth
• Dig a hole big enough to put spacecraft in (shielding problem solved!)
• Mine Oxygen, Silicon (for more solar cells) and Iron (radiation shield for the open side of the hole) and pulverise some of the rock for soil
• Get off again when it's close to Earth.
• All future Mars missions:
• • Launch to Itokawa when it's close to Earth
  • Dock and live there until it arrives nearest to Mars orbit
  • Launch from Itokawa to Mars
  • (and vice versa for the return trip)
• ???
• Profit!

If ever there was a role for drones...

[erroneus]

...this is it. We've got drones on Mars already. They just don't fly yet.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[TheRealMindChild]

I honestly don't know if they can fly. Atmospheric density and all of that

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[i.r.id10t]

Anything of any shape can generate lift in a non-vacuum, assuming it has enough velocity.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/platform.html

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[lookingglass]

Getting a bunch of comets (and heavy iron cores asteroids) to terraform Mars should be the goal. Then we can think, in a few thousand years or so, to populate it.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[H0p313ss]

I honestly don't know if they can fly. Atmospheric density and all of that

<sarcasm> Especially with only 38% of our gravitational field to work with... </sarcasm>

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Anonymous Coward]

>enough velocity
WE NEED MORE ZEROES
lift != flight

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Anonymous Coward]

X-Plane actually has a mars mode.

Long story short, you require a ton of thrust, and there's poor handling. The aircraft is lighter than on earth, but flying on the surface of mars is comparable to flying at 70km here.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://what-if.xkcd.com/30/

You have your answer, and it is no.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the atmospheric density is one of the deciding factors in how much lift you get. At the surface, Mars has ~169x less pressure than Earth- let's assume that the density scales more or less the same.

That means your drone will have to fly 169x as fast as on Earth to achieve the required lift. The power which drag is dissipating from your craft (F * v) will be 169x as much, and the kinetic energy it takes to assume that speed- even with 0 drag- is 28561x as much. So, not really desirable.

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Hentes]

How do you think they got there?

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the atmospheric density is one of the deciding factors in how much lift you get. At the surface, Mars has ~169x less pressure than Earth- let's assume that the density scales more or less the same.

That means your drone will have to fly 169x as fast as on Earth to achieve the required lift. The power which drag is dissipating from your craft (F * v) will be 169x as much, and the kinetic energy it takes to assume that speed- even with 0 drag- is 28561x as much. So, not really desirable.

Doesn't anyone read Kim Stanley Robinson anymore? This was all done in his mind more than twenty years ago. And Robert Zubrin says we can do this. So what the hell are we waiting for?

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[geekoid]

Especially with only 38% of our gravitational field to work with...
FifY

Re:If ever there was a role for drones...

[geekoid]

Ha! didn't take the tags change.
I changed sarcasm it ignorant.

Yes, yes, I see the irony.

A man on Mars is one thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Colonizing with a base on Mars is another. I can imagine trillions of dollars going into creating a permanent base on Mars. It's not like the New World with plenty of raw materials and resources to utilize- there is nothing to mine or harvest that can evenly slightly ease the dreadful costs.

It leads me to conclude that there is a hidden agenda for mandating NASA to create a base on Mars. Something Doom-like.

Re:A man on Mars is one thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

there is nothing to mine or harvest that can evenly slightly ease the dreadful costs.

[citation needed]

This is just a stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

After they saw Gingrich's hail mary, I'm sure they'd simply love to have more pork-barrel spending in their districts. Meanwhile, they continue to mess with NASA's future, making planning projects impossible.

There has been a notable lack of enthusiasm for the asteroid mission among some of the Republicans who hold key NASA oversight roles in the House — including House Science Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — since the mission was proposed. The mission would require development of a robotic spacecraft with solar-electric propulsion, and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket NASA is developing.

There is no funding authorized for a crewed planetary lander or deep-space astronaut habitat in the bill.

Another provision of the draft authorization bill that originated with House Republicans is an overhaul of NASA’s leadership structure. The proposed changes would give Congress greater influence over the selection of the NASA administrator, and give the administrator a six-year term. The NASA administrator is currently a political appointee who serves at the president’s pleasure.

House Republicans led by Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) included these changes in their Space Leadership Preservation Act (H.R. 823), which was introduced in February and has lingered in committee ever since. That bill was itself a rehash of a similar proposal introduced back in September 2012.

Oh, of course. The Texans are at it again.

Re:This is just a stunt

[robot256]

The only political goal NASA ever achieved was the Apollo project. Every other piece of political grandstanding is just noise in the background to the scientists and engineers on the ground who are trying to advance the state of the art. The only projects that NASA ever finishes these days are either small enough to fly under the radar (pun intended) or involve international agreements which if we break them would make us look bad to our allies. The unmanned Mars program and many climatological satellites are examples of the first, and the International Space Station and James Webb Space Telescope are prime examples of the second. But arms trafficking regulations and "national pride" prevent us from collaborating internationally on any new manned launch vehicles or habitats, so those projects inevitably get cancelled when every new batch of congresscritters try to put their names on something.

The only way for NASA to finish a big manned project is to contract it out to companies with capital to keep development going between political catfights, or somehow block the legislature from changing its priorities or funding levels more frequently than every 5 or 10 years. Or cut the politically-motivated crap entirely and just give more money to research and development projects so that maybe by the time humanity comes up with some real priorities, we'll know how to build a friggin' warp drive.

priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more concerned about a sustained human presence on Earth.

Re:priorities

[robot256]

The technologies we develop to live in space have consistently made life better here on "Spaceship Earth". But using the space program as a legislative distraction and throwing a few billion dollars at it here and there with no real results certainly doesn't do anyone any good.

Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Spy Handler]

"Get your ass to Mars!"

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize he got hounded out of politics quite some time ago? Probably as his repeated infidelity was doing the rounds with illegitimate kids.

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably as his repeated infidelity was doing the rounds with illegitimate kids.

Nope. It was a carefully crafted plan to avoid amendment of the Constitution for his inevitable run for President.

We have now safely avoided a Demolition Man future.

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Anonymous Coward]

DON'T SEND COHAGEN THERE!!!!!

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Anonymous Coward]

He can't run for US President snce he wasn't born in US soil.

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the first things we need for colonies on Mars is reading comprehension.

Re:Rep. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California) says

[antdude]

Former Governator should had said that. Too bad he is not the President.

now is the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy theorists unite!

Floating Cities on Venus!

[Anonymous Coward]

We need floating cities on Venus like in this book.

Re:All for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The want to make them the co-head office of Acorn.

It's the perfect governmental waste for an organization that doesn't even exist now.

I have an idea

[slashmydots]

Let's send the house (and senate) to live on the surface of the moon then and they'll finally have nothing left to distract them from doing their darn jobs! Then maybe something will get done in congress. Plus, Moon Congress sounds awesome.

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Congressman: You didn't give us ENOUGH FUEL TO GET BACK!!!!

oops

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll tie the oxygen refill shipments to them getting both houses to agree on a budget.

"Sorry, looks like the funding for another year's worth of oxygen got sequestered! Time for a round of special elections, I guess."

Re:I have an idea

[PRMan]

Teach you to cut the NASA budget by 5%! Now can we have that increase?

Insane

[DoofusOfDeath]

Any astronaut would be crazy to do this. Congress would be just one internal squabble away from defunding the stream of resupply ships.

Re:Insane

[iggymanz]

you forget politicians have to do something when people get into an emotional snit over something; the miniscule amount of money spent on space will never impact the defense contract or entitlement spending so no worries for them.

and,there will be no lack of qualified and able volunteers

Re:Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

you seem to be under the misimpression that this ISN'T a defense contract.

Space has ALWAYS been about the military. Comm sats, Spy sats, Nav Sats, even boring Weather sats. All of it's used by the military. This is will be a wonderful platform for testing new rockets, improving gear for hazardous atmospheres, possibly even enhancing comms gear.

Re:Insane

[iggymanz]

sure, sure, but it doesn't have to be presented to those in emotional snit that way, and even the anti-mil folk can vote for it

Re:Insane

[The Grim Reefer]

Any astronaut would be crazy to do this. Congress would be just one internal squabble away from defunding the stream of resupply ships.

I read several years ago there there were a surprising number of qualified people who were willing to go to Mars, even under the assumption that it would be a one way trip; and possibly a suicide trip at that. So I doubt finding people willing to go would be an obstacle. Hell, most of the original astro/cosmonauts had to be half crazy.

Regardless, you are correct. Congress may want this for pulling money and jobs into their districts and to garner votes, but will not have the backbone to fund it. Just look at the ISS. Originally the US was going to go it alone. How many times was the space station Freedom redesigned? I think the original design presented to congress was $14 billion. When congress choked on that NASA redesigned it to meet budget expectations. Then congress wanted it to have more power generation capacity. So it had to be redesigned again. After pissing away time and money it finally became an international effort.

Re:Insane

[geekoid]

Yeah, that would go well for the politician. An astronaut starving to death all over youtube.
Once people got there it would be political suicide to stop supporting those people.

we've seen this before on bullshit mountain

[nimbius]

1. insist the US Postal Service implement pension funding 75 years into the future with no known revenue source to do so, as we cannot directly defund it. pretend companies like UPS and FedEx actually want to deliver bulk mail in place of the postal service but are in fact incumbered by its existence.
2. insist NASA pursue permanent manned installations on the moon and mars despite the fact its orders of magnitude more expensive than current unmanned operations. pretend companies like SpaceX are somehow encumbered by the existence of NASA.

Re:we've seen this before on bullshit mountain

[Anonymous Coward]

1. solution: fedex and ups buy usps. Fed-Ups.
2. solution: waste 20 years' funding building "prototype next generation engines" using already-existing pork frameworks (humid states that build shuttle rocket boosters) but you can't tell the difference because it's covered with a clean tablecloth. in 2032 pass a bill that turns nasa into the lease holder for a module's worth of space aboard bigelow's moon base or china's yinghuo--4 mars base

Do it... but do it right

[steveha]

I want to see mankind spread out into the solar system, and ideally I'd like to see the USA at the head of it all. So I'm not unsympathetic toward the idea.

But I really want to see the space program get done correctly. So far, every trip to the moon has been via a single-use rocket, completely used up for the one trip. It made sense when we were trying to win a race, but it also meant we hadn't built out the infrastructure.

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck". Proposed heavy lift vehicles are more like a "space moving van", and they will have their uses, but what we need more than anything else is a spacecraft that can fly and fly and fly some more with minimal maintenance.

We want a craft that can fly to orbit, return, and then go again tomorrow. It might need some maintenance overnight but it should be as little as possible. The space shuttle needed man-centuries of work between flights... we can do far better than that.

Single-stage would be ideal, but two-stage might be easier to get going... just make sure both stages are reusable and don't need too much maintenance. Cargo capacity need not be huge... it would be cheaper to fly things up in multiple small loads on a truly reusable craft, than to build, launch, and use up a single heavy-lift vehicle.

Once we have the "space pickup truck" we need to build a transportation hub in Earth orbit. It would have emergency Earth return vehicles docked, would have lots of supplies (fuel, water, oxygen, food, etc.) and would have staff on board all the time.

Once you have all the above? The moon becomes trivial. Build a "moon shuttle" that could be basically a couple of fuel tanks and engines bolted to a frame, with some sort of shielded crew compartment and a lunar lander docked to it. It need not be pretty and it need not be tough because it will never land anywhere.

Ideally, also we should build a "space cannon" system that can shoot things into space. This would be the cheapest way to send up inert things like oxygen and fuel, or even dried food and tough electronics. And humans living in space will need serious radiation shielding... the cannon could possibly send up lots of shielding mass.

Imagine how expensive it would be to deliver cargo from America to Australia if we had to do it by building a single-use cargo missile. With modern aircraft the dominating factor is fuel costs. If we could get space travel costs down to chiefly the cost of fuel that would be a massive reduction in costs.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Let me guess, you are under the age of, say 40? This is the entire arguement for the Space Shuttle that derailed proper space development for over 20 years. FORGET about the whole re-usability thing - it just costs too much.

Cheap(er), reliable, modular, expendable life vehicles... Like what SpaceX is doing now.

The rest of the ideas, like a proper transportation hub in orbit, and even to some extent a space cannon, make some sense. But realistically getting into earth orbit is easiest, fastest, and cheapest the same way they did it in the 1960's. One rocket at a time, work out the bugs, and get this shiz movin...

Re:Do it... but do it right

[0123456]

Wow. Let me guess, you are under the age of, say 40? This is the entire arguement for the Space Shuttle that derailed proper space development for over 20 years. FORGET about the whole re-usability thing - it just costs too much.

Cheap(er), reliable, modular, expendable life vehicles... Like what SpaceX is doing now.

Uh, you do realise that SpaceX's plan to dramatically slash launch prices is... drum roll... reusing their rocket stages, right? I believe they're going to test a relight of the first stage engines for landing on one of the next Falcon 9 launches, though it will just hover before being dumped in the sea.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Areyoukiddingme]

Fortunately, that's precisely what Elon Musk is building. The Falcon 9 will be partially reusable sometime next year, and fully reusable probably by 2016. (It's two stage.) A Falcon 9 launch is already an order of magnitude cheaper than a launch from the (illegal monopoly) United Launch Alliance. Once the Falcon 9 is even partially reusable, that price will fall another order of magnitude, making possible all sorts of on-orbit assembly of larger structures.

Nobody is likely to build a linear accelerator launch system this century. Building one at all is hard enough. Building one that doesn't result in smashing your payload into atmosphere at the end is even tougher.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[symbolset]

Reusable Mars and moon trips require two craft - a lifter and an interplanetary. Also, a huge supply of fuel and/or ion propellant and air/water on orbit. Planetary Resources and NASA Dawn are working on this last bit.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see mankind spread out into the solar system, and ideally I'd like to see the USA at the head of it all. So I'm not unsympathetic toward the idea.

But I really want to see the space program get done correctly. So far, every trip to the moon has been via a single-use rocket, completely used up for the one trip. It made sense when we were trying to win a race, but it also meant we hadn't built out the infrastructure.

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck".

Why? Making a reusable space vehicle requires huge investment. Space travel is not at all like Earth travel; a one-time vehicle doesn't make sense on Earth, but it makes a ton of sense for the foreseeable future for space. The distributions of wear on a launch/reentry vehicle are vastly different than those on a car or a plane. We don't have a solution for things like non-ablative heat shielding that can stand up to that kind of stress. A reusable vehicle makes sense once our baseline is Earth orbit, but until then, we'll probably get farther for cheaper just using one-shot rockets.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[turgid]

FORGET about the whole re-usability thing - it just costs too much.

Shall not!

But then, it is British, so the chances of one being built are pretty negligible...

Re:Do it... but do it right

[HiThere]

I don't think your proposal is practical. The "space pickup truck" idea is nice, but the idea that it should descend to and lift off from a planetary mass is unfeasible, without controlled fusion, and perhaps even then. (You could do something similar with some sort of skyhook [the PinWheel is my favorite, as being the most practical in the near term].)

But FIRST you need to work on a nearly-closed eco-system. This "space pickup truck" will take a long time to make a long trip. It will probably be powered by solar cells and a ion-jet of sorme variety. This will let it move from orbit to orbit, carry things along, etc., even do interplanetary voyages. But it's SLOW. This means that it needs to be either robotic or a closed eco-systme. (Well, nearly closed. Really closed is impossible.) And if the people who are inhabiting it are going to remain sane, it needs to be large enough to live in. Larger, probably, than a hutment in Antarctica. (It's easier to go outside in Antarctica, and less expensive of habitability. In Antarctica that just means heat, in space it primarily means air and water...no matter how careful you are.) Also, if you design it for habitability you need to carry along significan radiation shielding. Water is probably a good choice for that. But that means weight.

If, OTOH, you only mean short interorbit transitions you still end up with a slow vehicle. And one that can't land on a planetary surface.

Please note that the same driver frame should be able to have several different cabins mounted on it, and should be able to haul cargo. But that's really tricky when you're using rocket/jet propulsion. You can't haul the stuff behind on a cable, unless it's WAY behind, and then the cable had better be able to stand being exposed to the wash of the exhaust. Probably better would be to have three or four main engines angled slightly outwards, and slightly manuverable, to allow hauling things on a cable, even though that would reduce the efficiency. But adjustable, so if you weren't hauling cargo you could eject straight backwards.

Please note that this approach won't work much beyond the orbit of Jupiter, as solar cells will become too weak to generate enough power. So you need some alternate power source. Fission reactors are the only thing that currently seems feasible. Fission reactors are probably enough to allow manuvering throughout the solar system, but for interstellar, even at slow speed, fusion may well be needed. (I suppose that one could build an anti-matter factory near the sun and power it off sunlight, and then store it as fuel...that seems only an engineering problem, with no theoretica breakthroughs required. But it's a HUGE engineering problem.)

Near term, though, to get from a planetary surface with an atmosphere, use a skyhook. (Some could be built now. They aren't all as difficult as an elevator.) If there's no atmosphere, use a catapult. Ion rockets to get from orbit to orbit. And human presence requires a nearly closed ecology. Which can be developed right down here. Siberia or Canada seem like good locales to do the development, with other locations if it needs to deal with excess heat rather than excess cold. (And note that right now the real requirement is cheap land that can be somewhat isolated, and funding. BioSphere & BioSphere II were examples of attempts that have failed, and in failing taught us something. But nobody's put serious effort into the development. And it needs to be done before anyone does any serious planning about a permanent human presence off the planet.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[steveha]

Wow. Let me guess, you are under the age of, say 40?

I watched some of the Saturn V moon launches on live TV when I was a kid. I had a Space Shuttle poster when I was a teen. So, no, your guess is wrong.

This is the entire arguement for the Space Shuttle that derailed proper space development for over 20 years.

The Space Shuttle program promised many things but did not deliver. A vehicle that requires man-centuries of labor between flights does not meet my definition of "reusable". So, the Shuttle could haul a giant heavy load up to low Earth orbit... does that sound anything like what I said I want to see?

FORGET about the whole re-usability thing - it just costs too much.

Because the NASA of the 1970's was not able to do a proper job, it can't be done? I disagree.

Cheap(er), reliable, modular, expendable life vehicles... Like what SpaceX is doing now.

And I am cheering for SpaceX. They are carefully building their technology base... start with something simple, then keep figuring out how to improve it. They may develop a working a "space pickup truck" before NASA can finish the paperwork to start studying the problem.

But realistically getting into earth orbit is easiest, fastest, and cheapest the same way they did it in the 1960's. One rocket at a time, work out the bugs, and get this shiz movin...

Assume, for a moment, that we have the "space pickup truck". Surely that is "easiest, fastest and cheapest"... once you have the craft built, you get to use it over and over. With a single-use rocket, you have to be extra-careful when building it because the only way to really test it is to fly it and use it up. With the "space pickup truck" the work of building and debugging it can be amortized across multiple flights.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[gtall]

Yep, but what we really need is an big, honking space gun to shoot asteroids out of our path. If we don't, nothing else will matter.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta...

The problem with the shuttle was it was not *really* reusable. They basically pulled the whole thing apart and put it back together every time. It was not designed for that. They were going into spaces that were supposed to be sealed up and never opened again, every time. They were replacing a decent percentage of the expensive ceramic tiles, every time. The tires they landed with could only be used once. And so on...

Portions of the thing were reusable. But not the ones that cost much...

They also never *finished* the program. It was supposed to be 1-3 prototypes. Build a couple better ones retire 1-2 of the earlier ones, and so on. Instead they stuck 'with the fleet'. Which dramatically increased the budget because instead of EOL of a vehicle there was no EOL and only rebuild. It was designed for limited re-use not indefinite re-use.

The best way to get into orbit is a space elevator with a ship waiting at the top. But that is going no where.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably you were joking.

But you don't really want a gun to move asteroids... what you want to do is rendezvous with the asteroid as soon as possible (i.e. when it is as far from Earth as possible) and add a rocket motor on it that will push continuously for as long as possible. The earlier you start the push, the less of a push is needed to make it miss the Earth.

I'm not sure if a nuke is better or worse than a rocket motor... the nuke shoves very hard for one moment, and the rocket motor shoves less hard but keeps doing it until the fuel runs out.

Early rendezvous works better if you have a staffed transportation hub in orbit. "Once you are in Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system."

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle

Next semester you'll learn about Constructors and the Factory pattern. You don't have to use a Singleton for everything.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[drinkypoo]

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck". Proposed heavy lift vehicles are more like a "space moving van",

...and they have to pay a toll on the intergalactic superhighway, hurr durr?

The "right" way to do things is highly debatable. My money is on the space elevator. Then you only need a "space train" or perhaps a "space RV" or even "space velocipede" which makes trips between orbit and your destination. Getting out of the well is the big problem here.

If we could get space travel costs down to chiefly the cost of fuel that would be a massive reduction in costs.

And if we could get it down to where we didn't need fuel to get into orbit, that would be an even more massive reduction.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see them explore more non-rocket and hybrid non-rocket/rocket techniques. Acceleration tracks with high g-forces and abrupt orbital insertions for dumb modules. Use low-g rockets for sensitive equipment and human beings. The cost to LEO is a huge hurdle, and we need smart ways to overcome it. Using current technology, there's too a good chance we'd plunk down $trillions just in time to see some other country come up with new tech that does the same thing for $millions.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[MozeeToby]

I don't think people realize how many times we've come so close to having a real space program. And that's not to knock the good engineers, managers, and astronauts at NASA, it's just a description of reality. We were laying down plans for a thermal nuclear rocket when the space race was abruptly canceled. We were getting ready to attach a small rocket to lift the external fuel tanks into orbit for use as space station components (one of which would double the usable volume of the ISS) when disaster struck and the plans were canceled (imagine 100 space shuttle external tanks linked together in orbit). We were getting ready to do an asteroid capture mission which had real potential, through in situ mining and refining, of opening up the solar system; a project that is apparently now getting the ax.

It happens again and again and again. An accident, a funding cut, a change in leadership. And every time we lose decades of potential progress. I'm tired of it. I want my space ship dammit!

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

The "space pickup truck" idea is nice, but the idea that it should descend to and lift off from a planetary mass is unfeasible, without controlled fusion, and perhaps even then.

The "space pickup truck" (SPT) carries payloads from Earth to orbit, then returns from orbit back to Earth. Full stop.

Controlled fusion is not necessary. SpaceX is already working on designs that could mature into a practical SPT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_rocket_launching_system

This "space pickup truck" will take a long time to make a long trip. It will probably be powered by solar cells and a ion-jet of sorme variety.

The SPT only carries payloads to orbit; it doesn't make any long trips. Other craft can be assembled in orbit to make long trips.

Long trips imply radiation shielding, and almost certainly imply some sort of "gravity" from a spinning habitat. It would make no sense to try to send a long trip spacecraft up in a single launch of some ultra-heavy-lift vehicle.

Along with the long-trip spacecraft you need some sort of lander. Assuming you have a single-stage SPT, it might be cheaper to take one along and use it as a Mars lander rather than custom-build a lander just for Mars... but that is just idle speculation; maybe we need a custom Mars lander. If we do need a custom lander, send it up in pieces on SPT flights, or if really necessary send it up on one launch of a heavy lifter. But the fuel goes up in multiple SPT launches or space cannon shots... The NASA publicity images ("artist concepts") I saw of an Apollo-style Mars mission, everything shot up on one single rocket launch from Earth, are insane.

Anyway we need at least three different designs: the SPT, the interplanetary craft, and some sort of landers (because the interplanetary craft will not ever enter atmosphere or land anywhere).

As for your discussion of fusion reactors and interstellar flight... I like that you are thinking big, but I'll be happy for now to focus on near-term tech. I'll be very surprised if a skyhook can be built in the near term... references on that? And I don't care that much about a super closed system, as having the SPT means you can just keep sending supplies.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Let me guess, you are under the age of, say 40? This is the entire arguement for the Space Shuttle that derailed proper space development for over 20 years. FORGET about the whole re-usability thing - it just costs too much.

Cheap(er), reliable, modular, expendable life vehicles... Like what SpaceX is doing now.

The rest of the ideas, like a proper transportation hub in orbit, and even to some extent a space cannon, make some sense. But realistically getting into earth orbit is easiest, fastest, and cheapest the same way they did it in the 1960's. One rocket at a time, work out the bugs, and get this shiz movin...

Are you joking? Congress stripped NASA of funding, first by making them drop Saturn Vs, then cutting development funding for the shuttle. The Air Force stepped in and paid for a space shuttle out of pocket change. That's what happened. That's why the requirements changed to include massive cross range capacity and cargo from ~5,000 lbs cargo to 50,000 lbs. The NRO wanted to be able to pluck satellites out of orbit at will.

What we need to do is get back to encouraging innovation.
 
 

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideally, also we should build a "space cannon" system that can shoot things into space. This would be the cheapest way to send up inert things like oxygen and fuel, or even dried food and tough electronics.

You need to read some Issac Newton to complement your Jules Verne.

A cannon alone cannot put things into orbit. A terrestrial cannon can only put objects on an elliptical trajectory that intersects the Earth. The "inert" payload will just crash back down, unless you fire it past escape velocity.

To reach orbit, you must have a secondary delta-V. This means either including engines, thrusters, sails, etc with your payload or getting it to the moon for a slingshot. That's a big fucking cannon...and you still have to degrade your superlunar orbit into something useful, which means either including engines, thrusters, sails, or a few centuries of aerobraking (which will ablate your payload anyways)

Using cannons for space travel is just as impractical as using cannons for your daily commute. You don't just need to arrive at your destination; you also have to have the correct velocity when you get there.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[WindBourne]

Actually, a 'cannon' (railgun) would work for sending up water, fuel, etc. Simply 'drop' onto a 'catching mitt'. Of course, if you miss, then it either slams into something that was not expected, OR it comes back to earth.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

...and they have to pay a toll on the intergalactic superhighway, hurr durr?

Whatever. But when the contractor did work on my house, he hauled all the stuff in a pickup truck, and no moving van was involved.

Sometimes you need to move a big load in one vehicle. Most of the time you are better off with something that is cheaper to operate.

My money is on the space elevator.

If you can build one, please do.

I am dubious about the near-term feasibility of a space elevator. I don't think our materials engineering is there to build it, and there are other problems.

http://io9.com/5984371/why-well-probably-never-build-a-space-elevator

Sure and I'd love to be wrong, but in the near term, it's going to be rockets of some sort. Let's at least make them reusable.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[geekoid]

"But I really want to see the space program get done correctly. "
so what crystal ball do you use to tell what is the correct way to do something that hasn't
't been done before using technology that will have come into existence for this specific project?

Oh right, you're opinion based on NOTHING is the correct way.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[geekoid]

If ti is built, the owners will spend there Saturdays fixing the wiring.
ZING!

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideally, also we should build a "space cannon" system that can shoot things into space. This would be the cheapest way to send up inert things like oxygen and fuel, or even dried food and tough electronics.

You need to read some Issac Newton to complement your Jules Verne.

A cannon alone cannot put things into orbit. A terrestrial cannon can only put objects on an elliptical trajectory that intersects the Earth. The "inert" payload will just crash back down, unless you fire it past escape velocity.

To reach orbit, you must have a secondary delta-V. This means either including engines, thrusters, sails, etc with your payload or getting it to the moon for a slingshot. That's a big fucking cannon...and you still have to degrade your superlunar orbit into something useful, which means either including engines, thrusters, sails, or a few centuries of aerobraking (which will ablate your payload anyways)

Using cannons for space travel is just as impractical as using cannons for your daily commute. You don't just need to arrive at your destination; you also have to have the correct velocity when you get there.

Something like this?

Re:Do it... but do it right

[steveha]

Despite your snide comments, I will give you a serious and polite answer.

I am a bit of a "space geek". I grew up reading science fiction (lots) and science fact (some). Back when Usenet was still the main place for discussions, I used to read the sci.space group and the discussions there.

What I posted as my opinion is based on reading a lot of stuff, written by people who know more about space technology than I do. I attempted to summarize the key points, and I apologize if I was unclear or made any mistakes.

I don't know you and I don't know why you seem so angry about this. I apologize if I offended you in some way, but I don't think what I wrote was unreasonable or offensive.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[fritsd]

Threaten to move to France or Russia or China then, see if that does the trick!
<voice-over person="general Turgidson">Mr President! We cannot afford a rocket scientist gap!</voice-over>

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Assume, for a moment, that we have the "space pickup truck".

Why not just assume that we can build a vehicle that travels faster than light? Surely that is the best way to explore the galaxy!

You can't just assume away the laws of physics, anymore than you can assume away mass fraction, chemical rocket fuel limitations, current material knowledge, and airframe weight penalties. Your mythical "space pickup" does not exist, and can't be built with current technology. We tried. It failed. And it killed 14 people.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck". Proposed heavy lift vehicles are more like a "space moving van", and they will have their uses, but what we need more than anything else is a spacecraft that can fly and fly and fly some more with minimal maintenance.

*Cough*spaceshuttle*Cough*

Single-stage would be ideal, but two-stage might be easier to get going... just make sure both stages are reusable and don't need too much maintenance. Cargo capacity need not be huge... it would be cheaper to fly things up in multiple small loads on a truly reusable craft, than to build, launch, and use up a single heavy-lift vehicle.

*Cough*spaceshuttle*Cough*

The space shuttle needed man-centuries of work between flights... we can do far better than that.

Everyone designing/building/testing space launch systems currently disagress. Not possible yet.

Once you have all the above? The moon becomes trivial.

Of course. But, as stated many times, the NON trivial part is creating your mythical "space pickup truck". It isn't possible with current knowledge and technology.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Major problem with concept of Space Shuttle was in trying to lump all things expensive and hopefully reusable into a single de-orbiter. It led to effectively disassembling first stage and bolting the heavy main engine from it onto last stage, even though it has no use after the main fuel tank is completely spent and just wastes away the useful load carrying capacity! Humongous rocket engine flied to orbit and back as dead weight every single time!

If first stage was engineered to safely glide back to earth on its own after reaching its ceiling altitude and delivering stage two, turnaround time would have been shorter too - then you wouldn't had to wait for orbiter to return from orbit to do maintenance of main engine. You could had started it from day D or D+1 from launch.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[HiThere]

Ok. To me pickup truck implies a different set of uses (primarily short trips, but capable of more), it doesn't imply a heavy lifter (in which I include anything that can lift off a planetary mass).

But lifting off a 1g mass directly is going to be VERY expensive, unless you have some sort of skyhook. (I include catapults in the skyhook category, even though that's clearly a misnomer for them, but they don't work well through an atmosphere anyway.) So you STILL need a nearly closed eco-system. Or you end up in the ISS situation, where every weeks living is dependent on your ground support not having had its budget cut, or being destroyed by a tornado, or what-all. That's nothing that a durable habitation can be built around, and it also ties you closely to NEO. Going even as far as lunar orbit does horrendous things to the expenses.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[turgid]

Indeed, and rust-proofing, dare I say it...

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just assume that we can build a vehicle that travels faster than light?

Sadly, current physics theory says FTL is impossible. However, there is no reason to think that a well-engineered and reusable launch system is impossible.

Some people think that SSTO (single-stage to orbit) is impossible or impractical. But two stages is certainly possible and there is no reason the stages can't be reusable.

"space pickup" does not exist, and can't be built with current technology.

SpaceX is making good progress. Within a decade, we may have the first "space pickup". And it won't have been built by NASA!

We tried. It failed. And it killed 14 people.

Oh... so one design, made by NASA in the 1970's, proves that the concept can never work and is dangerous. I suppose you will tell me next that IBM mainframes are the future of computing?

A "space pickup" won't have solid rocket boosters with faulty O-rings.

Re:Do it... but do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

what we need more than anything else is a spacecraft that can fly and fly and fly some more with minimal maintenance.

*Cough*spaceshuttle*Cough*

LOL. The Space Shuttle required a standing army of ten thousand people to keep it going. It took man-centuries of labor to strip down and rebuild an orbiter before it could fly again. It did not qualify as a "space pickup truck".

Cargo capacity need not be huge... it would be cheaper to fly things up in multiple small loads on a truly reusable craft, than to build, launch, and use up a single heavy-lift vehicle.

*Cough*spaceshuttle*Cough*

LOL. The Shuttle orbiter had a pretty massive cargo capacity (albeit only to low Earth orbit), yet due to all the labor to rebuild it, it took many months between flights. It did not qualify as a "space pickup truck".

Everyone designing/building/testing space launch systems currently disagress. Not possible yet.

And everyone in the private sector is trying to incrementally advance their technology to make it more and more reusable. The technology will get there. There is nothing in physics that says that launch vehicles cannot be engineered for reuse.

For example, instead of having a launcher come screaming down from orbit and burning up a heat shield, a launcher can come down under controlled rocket power and land sedately. Landing is much easier than taking off, since the launch vehicle will be much lighter (having burned up most of its fuel on the way up to orbit).

Re:All for it...

[ArhcAngel]

You're currently modded flaimbait but my first thought was let's do it now. Load up all politicians, attorneys, and used car salesmen and launch em!

While I agree with most of the /. posts for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see Congress and the President really push for this. It would actually help the economy and the country regain movement forward instead of stagnating in this quagmire of squabbling and bitterness.

budget

[Taibhsear]

You know guys, if you want these things you're probably going to have to stop slashing NASA's fucking budget every year.

Pork, Pork, Pork

[Squidlips]

By US House, they mean TEXAS. This is just PORK for Houston and its rocket-to-nowhere--The Space Launch System (SLS). SLS has no mission, but it means money to Houston and therefor they dreamed up this ridiculous objective, And Houston will do anything to get the money, including poaching from the highly-successful unmanned mission from JPL such as Opportunity and Curiosity.

Re:Pork, Pork, Pork

[Anonymous Coward]

By US House, they mean TEXAS. This is just PORK for Houston and its rocket-to-nowhere--The Space Launch System (SLS). SLS has no mission, but it means money to Houston and therefor they dreamed up this ridiculous objective, And Houston will do anything to get the money, including poaching from the highly-successful unmanned mission from JPL such as Opportunity and Curiosity.

The article doesn't simply say US House, it says, "Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee". That committee is chaired by Lamar Smith (R), Texas. There are 50 members, 8 of which are from Texas. That's about 1 in 6.

Re:Pork, Pork, Pork

[Squidlips]

Houston is the lexis of all the Manned-mission PORK. The other congressmen are from states that get Houston contracts or Houston has worked out a deal. This is pure Houston and pure waste all the way. Manned mission cost many orders of magnitude more than unmanned while delivering a tiny fraction of the science of unmanned missions. What have manned missions accomplished in the last couple of decades? Just about nothing and killed lots of astronauts. Unmanned missions have been highly successful during that time period. Voyager I & II, Cassini, Mars rovers such as Opportunity and Curiosity, etc.

Re: Pork, Pork, Pork

[Anonymous Coward]

While this move is likely just pork for Texas, I do want to mention that the Space Launch System is being built at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Johnson Center is responsible for training, research, and other activities involving manned space missions.

Re:Pork, Pork, Pork

[WindBourne]

Not just houston. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, California, Utah, and Florida are all hotbeds for pork money. And look at this:
Republican Members

Steven Palazzo, MS, Chairman
Ralph M. Hall (R-Texas)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)
Frank D. Lucas (R-Oklahoma)
Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Mo Brooks (R-Alabama)
Larry Bucshon (R-Indiana)
Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
Bill Posey (R-Florida)
David Schweikert (R-Arizona)
Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma)
Chris Stewart (R-Utah)

Democrat Members

Donna F. Edwards, MD, Ranking Member
Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon)
Dan Maffei (D-New York)
Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts)
Derek Kilmer (D-Washington)
Ami Bera (D-California)
Marc Veasey (D-Texas)
Julia Brownley (D-California)
Frederica Wilson (D-Florida)


The ONLY one on this group who is NOT trash is Rohrabacher. The rest are seekers of pork.
If a one of them REALLY wanted to go to the mars and/or the moon, they would be allocating money for setting up a base in Antarctica using BA's BA-330 and/or ILC Dover's equipment. But, do they? Nope.

Re:Pork, Pork, Pork

[geekoid]

" Manned mission cost many orders of magnitude more than unmanned while delivering a tiny fraction of the science of unmanned missions"
Misconception.

Manned mission can do huge amount of science that robotic missions can not, and they have a wider scope of capabilities.

Yes, send rovers, send robots, but send people was well. The benefits in RnD, hope, excitement, and the ability to just grab a shovel and find something interesting should not be underestimated.
If people aren't excited about spaceflight, then eventually even the robotic mission will be cancelled.

A human could literally car a robot somewhere they they observed to be interesting, let it go do it's thing in that area.

And on the same day:

[Graydyn Young]

http://science.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-space-hearing-nasa-authorization-act-2013
When Thomas Young was asked when NASA could get to Mars on their current budget, his response was "Never."

Space President Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

My eyes played an interesting trick on me and I read that as "Space President Obama."

Just don't...

[johnkzin]

Just don't drink the glacier water...

Mars but no asteroids?

[wift]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/18/nasa_funding_asteroid_mission_education_and_climate_change.html

Seems like Mars is ok but not asteroids or climate science.

Re:Mars but no asteroids?

[robot256]

Right, because they know getting to Mars is impossible on the current budget. That way they don't have to worry about us actually doing anything at all.

All about voters

[T.E.D.]

It makes great electoral sense for them. A place where communications are so stretched that everybody is literally years behind the times would make for perfect Republican voters.

Army

[ArcadeMan]

Tell them there's oil on Mars and they'll be taking the funds from the army instead of NASA.

After all, there's always funds for the army, even when there's no funds to take care of things back home.

Re:Army

[TWiTfan]

There is no way that Army rockets could hit a target as small as a planet.

Re:Army

[cashman73]

Better yet, tell them that we need to go to Mars to find Marvin's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. After all, it is a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) capable of destroying the Earth merely because it's obstructing Marvin's view of Venus.

Oooh look at this! *jingle jingle*

[GameboyRMH]

Odd timing of this, it follows a stream of wacky distractions coming out of Washington since a whole bunch of skeletons spilled out of the closet in the last few months...

Who's paying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice! Apparently the US is just swimming in money now. Glad to hear the budget got balanced.
O_o

Re:Who's paying?

[EzInKy]

It will be paid for by anyone who contributes a portion of their labor to the government, which is represented virtually by this thing often called dollars.

How fck'ed up is this

[cjjjer]

sustained human presence

When they cannot even sustain people in their own country properly...

Sustained human presence on the moon

[ArcadeMan]

Yeah, we all know how it's going to turn out.

Re:Sustained human presence on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we all know how it's going to turn out.

Or it could turn out like this.

The GOP

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that they lived on another planet. Now they want to colonize the moon and mars. I'd say round them all up and send them there on a one way ticket.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we even bother with sending humans to other planets anymore? What is it that a human is going to do in a clunky space suit that we couldn't do with a good robot?

And screw Mars. We shouldn't even think about sending anything but exploratory bots to Mars until we have a robotic workforce stationed on the moon that can mine H3 and either ship it back to earth or convert it to some other form of microwave or laser energy we can beam back in order to solve our dependence on fossil fuels that are killing the very viable planet on which we currently inhabit vs. burning fuel and dropping space junk all round earth in order to send a few people to barley survive on another planet.

Gonna feed the anonymous troll

[Xaedalus]

Anonymous, you will NEVER solve the problems you are indirectly referring to. Poverty, war, crime, environmental pollution: those are inevitable byproducts of existence itself. Not to mention that you fail to take into account the greatest random factor of them all: human stupidity. Stopping our march to space and spending money to solve problems here at home is the most futile fallacial notion ever; because you will waste more money trying to correct for human stupidity and the inevitable results of existential chaos than you ever would in building capability to get into deep space. Those problems will never be solved--but putting permanent encampments of humans on the Moon and beyond CAN.

Re:All for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's plenty of fertilizer for the farms...

Just like Steven Hawking

[mknewman]

I think these House Republicans are a bunch of doomsday preppers who think that by getting to another planet/moon everything will be rosy for the human race. What they don't understand (because of their lack of science background) is that it's a lot easier to live in SPACE than on a body with a gravity well. We should be building ships to go to the asteroid belt and/or Jupiter and Saturn not wasting our time on cold dead planets/moons. Let's go somewhere interesting and easy not hard.

Nope.

[Arashi256]

And I want an ice cream. Doesn't mean it's going to happen any time soon. I suppose it's possible I'll see men on the moon in my lifetime, but I sort of doubt they'll be flying a US flag. Probably Chinese if I had to guess. And I don't think anyone will ever be going to Mars. Or if we do, it'll cost an obscene amount of money, probably fail on the first attempt, people will die and the public will lose their desire to see it happen. Depressing really.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

100% agree on all counts. Given current technology, it just ain't practical to go to Mars with people. The one way idea is marginally practical (if you trust the support structure back on Earth), but I doubt it will happen and probably not in the US if it does. Practical space travel requires a few technological breakthroughs that aren't predictable: a power source, for one, something we can't seem to manage on Earth with no size or weight limit. Meanwhile, it makes sense to keep refining technology we have with unmanned baby steps and the ISS, in hopes that we'll eventually be able to use it with people beyond LEO.

I still believe that western civ peaked in the 1960's: that was the last time in history that a project like Apollo could be sustained for 8 straight years without silliness like this happening every session of Congress. China differs only in that fewer people have to have "national resolve." For the US I'm glad we got the Interstates finished when we did; I doubt that would happen now, when we can't even maintain them.

Re:Nope.

[ebno-10db]

I still believe that western civ peaked in the 1960's: that was the last time in history that a project like Apollo could be sustained for 8 straight years without silliness like this happening every session of Congress.

It was funded for 8 straight years because the space race was a sideshow to the cold war and, after the USSR put both the first satellite and the first human into space, a matter of national pride. There were more Apollo missions planned originally, but they got defunded. That was idiotic considering all the sunk costs. The best chance for the US to get to Mars is if China gets to the moon.

And...

[bmk67]

I want a pony.

The difference is, one of us has the power to make it happen.

Hint: It isn't the House.

With an attitude like that...

[Piata]

Thomas Young is going to be looking for a new job REAL soon. He needs to get with the program. Honesty has no place in political hearings.

Republicans are all about ownership

[Kirgin]

China does not recognize the treaties against the ownership of celestial objects and Republicans being Republicans want to squat on the two best pieces. This is as dumb of an idea as you can come up with for human exploration, but at least it's getting space programs some money. Problem is Politicians aren't rocket scientists and have no concept of the work and technology precursors needed for them to claim their pretty marbles. Asteroids and Comets... building material, water and all the precious metals you could ever want. So of course US wants to avoid asteroids. First asteroid you lasso with gold on it and watch all the rich folks wail and howl and scream when their gold value drops to 19th century levels. China has been mandating their rocket scientists read western Science Fiction for ideas and concepts we take for granted. But they don't even have to bother because Science Fiction is huge China now and is fueling a whole new generation of Science Fiction authors. US better watch out.

Waste of money, period.

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Sending someone to Mars is a complete waste of money in the short term. As is finding water or even signs of life on that planet.

And before you jump down my throat about bullshit such as Space R&D leads to beneficial offshoot technology, realize that we do not need to spend $100 Billion dollars to send someone to Mars with the offshoot of having a better memory foam for our mattresses, new flavor of Tang, or a more grippy version of Velcro.

We have real problems on Earth. We have an energy crisis. We are running out of fossil fuel and demand more electrical energy year over year. One could argue that sending someone to Mars could lead to a solution to Earth's energy crisis. However NASA could easily spend billions on R&D for energy for a space mission and find out the best solution is to tack a nuclear reactor to the end of the spaceship because you can just eject the spent core's into the void of space. A solution like this will not benefit Earth at all.

Instead, having a mandate to solve our energy crisis on Earth first, by finding real alternatives to using fossil fuel for energy and making technology use energy more efficiently, would lead to trivial solutions to generate and conserve energy on a mission to Mars. That is, NASA could operate on a cheaper budget and spend less time finding solutions for a Mars mission when we have real solutions to Earth problems.

Space R&D is limited in scope and we can only hope for there to be offshoot technology that could benefit Earth. NASA is not going to design solutions with a dual purpose, to work on Mars and provide solutions to Earth. Why create a limitation on R&D when it won't move the Mars mandate further, faster.

The problem, or course, is that a US presidency only lasts at most 8 years and its hard to hand over an easier Mars solution to the next president.

It's simply irresponsible to waste billions on Space R&D when we have significant economic, energy and climate issues on Earth. Three days after people see someone landing on Mars on YouTube nobody will give a shit and we will be stuck with the same problems on Earth, now just with even more repressive tax debt.

Fix Earth first, then lets see the planets and the stars. Why not have mandate to sustain life on this Planet?!

Re:Waste of money, period.

[drinkypoo]

Instead, having a mandate to solve our energy crisis on Earth first, by finding real alternatives to using fossil fuel for energy

We have them already. Butanol for gasoline and algae into biodiesel for diesel fuel. These technologies are already-proven and would be profitable without government interference.

Re:Waste of money, period.

[isorox]

Sending someone to Mars is a complete waste of money in the short term. As is finding water or even signs of life on that planet.

And before you jump down my throat about bullshit such as Space R&D leads to beneficial offshoot technology, realize that we do not need to spend $100 Billion dollars to send someone to Mars with the offshoot of having a better memory foam for our mattresses, new flavor of Tang, or a more grippy version of Velcro.

$100 billion is about 12 hours of earth's output, It's peanuts.

If money could solve the energy crisis, it would be solved.

Humans cannot survive on Mars

[emil]

Since the planet does not have a strong magnetic field, the surface is lethal.

The Earth is largely protected from the solar wind, a stream of energetic charged particles emanating from the Sun, by its magnetic field, which deflects most of the charged particles. These particles would strip away the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, resulting from scavenging of ions by the solar wind, are consistent with a near-total loss of its atmosphere since the magnetic field of Mars dissipated.

As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.

Re:Humans cannot survive on Mars

[drinkypoo]

Since the planet does not have a strong magnetic field, the surface is lethal.

Sure, if you're naked. But that's true anyway since it doesn't have an atmosphere worth mentioning, unless you're mentioning dust storms.

As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.

As has been discussed elsewhere, that assumes using an existing space vehicle design, with jack for shielding. But since you'll need to take water with you in order to bootstrap the mission, you can use it for shielding.

Re:Humans cannot survive on Mars

[Hognoxious]

As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.

Rather a flexible unit of measurement, that. See also: Senkichi "WTF" Awaya, August 6th 1945

Re:All for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Load up all politicians, attorneys, and used car salesmen and launch em!

I know politicians and attorneys are not popular groups of people, but not even they deserve that kind of hell. You can launch the politicians and attorneys to mars if you want, but lets send the used car salesmen to the sun.

Re:All for it...

[Steve_Ussler]

I 2nd that motion!

Re:All for it...

[Steve_Ussler]

and what is this supposed to accomplush?

Re:All for it...

[bkmoore]

But where would you find a big enough rocket???

Expand U.S. Citizen Surveillance...

[UltraZelda64]

...to the moon and Mars.
The government is looking into out-of-this-world control!

U.S. Public wants 'Congress On the Moon'

[bussdriver]

U.S. Public wants 'Unsustained Congressional Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars' where they belong... unless you believe in hell, in which case they'll be going there eventually for a lot less money.

Re:All for it...

[fustakrakich]

Now just hold on there... I might need a used car some day.

Re:All for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Load up all politicians, attorneys, and used car salesmen and launch em!

Poor salesmen.

Ummm.

[Anonymous Coward]

More feel good propaganda. Just like the Bush's Constellation program, and Obam's goal to reach Mars. it's all a bunch of crap to win favor in the public. The fact is, there is now way with the current budget and the current policy of scrapping our space program, that ANY of that will happen.

The fastest way to Mars...

[Nivag064]

The fastest way to get a human on Mars is to launch from Earth.

The fastest way to get a sustainable human presence on Mars is to build a base on the Moon, and use its raw materials for shielding, fuel, etc., and only getting the hi-tech & wet-ware from Earth. Why lift a lot of mass off the Earth when it is is a lot cheaper to do so from the Moon, in the medium to longer term?

It is only cheaper from Earth for a one-off mission, or at most a small number of Mars missions.

For sustainable transport between the Earth and the Moon, you want at least 5 structures, 4 of which would be easy to reuse - in order to minimise cost:
(1) Earth-LEO shuttle - the most difficult to reuse
(2) LEO station - for transfer of men & material
(3) LEO-LMO shuttle
(4) LMO station - for transfer of men & material
(5) Moon-LMO shuttle

LEO: Low Earth Orbit
LMO: Low Moon Orbit

Similar reasoning applies to Moon-Mars transport, as there is no point in landing a craft capable of going between the Moon & Mars on the surface of Mars, or the Moon for that matter - though the Mars landing is the most technically challenging.

Re:The fastest way to Mars...

[gtirloni]

To develop the technologies that would allow us to mine and transform raw material at the Moon in a safe way would be quite an improvement (or should I say miracle?).

Re:The fastest way to Mars...

[Nivag064]

If we really want a sustainable presence on Mars, we have no choice but to obtain at least bulk materials from the Moon - such as fuel & shielding - later more refined structural components.

In the longer term we will need to be able to manufacture Hi-Tech stuff off Earth, but that will take a while - but we need to start NOW!

Re:The fastest way to Mars...

[fritsd]

But you know it's "on the critical path" otherwise it would be much too expensive to launch everything from Earth.

Re:The fastest way to Mars...

[dotancohen]

Moon-LMO shuttle

LEO: Low Earth Orbit

That is a nice dream, but Low Moon Orbit does not exist. The moon's gravity is too lumpy for that. You either land on the moon or crash on the moon, you don't orbit it. At least, not for more than a few weeks and even that demands considerable fuel expenditure in the form of station-keeping.

"come on Charlie Brown, kick the football..."

[Thud457]

and I want a pony.
a unicorn pony.
a well-hung unicorn pony.

Until these nimrods in congress actually come up with the funding for this, and given their history of cancellations, up front, this is just useless wheel-spinning that might fund a few shoestring studies that go nowhere. We'd get to Mars sooner if we put the project on Kickstarter than waiting for congress to fund it.

they found water

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is the natural consequence of the recent finding that there was running water on Mars, which gives a strong clue that there's still lots of it around. Anybody who reads sci-fi knows that water is like the oil of the solar system, so it's only natural that the USG will want to occupy the land.

Re:All for it...

[spazdor]

Don't forget the telephone sanitizers.

hot air

[sanman2]

Enough hot air to heat up and terraform the planet

Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[Sla$hPot]

But the first step is to build a permanent base on the Moon.
The Moon's close proximity to Earth and it's low gravity will provide the necessary practice for moving on to Mars.
All focus should be on the Moon until a manned base on Mars becomes realistic. That is when the essential hull structure and fuel for the Mars space ship can be extracted and build from materials of the Moon). Then we can go to Mars and further.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[WindBourne]

Actually, we would gain more out of doing a base on Antarctica, then you would on the moon. That does not mean that we can NOT do a base on the moon, but we gain nothing extra.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[Sla$hPot]

Whats on Antarctica?
Are you planing to use the Earth magnetic field to jump into space like the Germans dreamed of?

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[WindBourne]

What is is like at Antartica? COLD. Runs from -89C to -5C. Lots of high speed winds with cold temps with snow/ice that eats at material. Days that are 24 hours long. Seasons. Sun is missing in the winter. Shortage of water (though it can be picked up locally). Shortage of resources. If they really want to do well, they should bury down into the snow.

And what is it like on Mars? COLD. The mean on Mars runs from -87C to -5C. Lots of high speed winds, with cold temps with dust in it, that eats at material. Days that are ~24 hours long. seasons are similar, though 2x as long. Sun is missing in the winter. Shortage of water (though it can be picked up in various amounts). Plenty of local resources. If they want to do well, they should bury down into the frozen ground.


If this can survive at the Antarctica, then it can not survive mars. Something that works on the moon, MAY or MAY NOT work on mars. The ONLY thing that the moon has for testing purpose is life support, and that is available on the ISS.

OTOH, The moon is the worst place for testing. Little to no wind. No atmosphere. Lots of micrometeorites (mars has some, not many). Temperature extremes (mars does not get hot). Radiation galore (far far more than mars gets). In fact, mars surface gets less radiation than does the ISS (which is partially protected by our magnetosphere). The Radiation hitting the moon surface is 4-8x what the Martian surface will get. So, if BA units check out in Antartica for 2 years or longer, AND can check out for several years as a space station, then it is fully tested for Mars.

About the only advantage for the moon is testing a lander. Nothing else. All else should be tested here on earth or at the ISS.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[Sla$hPot]

Most of what you suggest is about environmental challenges, that can be tested in a big hangar anywhere on Earth.
Sure it's relevant to test weather you can survive on the poles or not. But that has been achieved already by several countries.
It is more important to prove that we can move things around in space than live out there, because we know we can. We already live in space, in a space craft called Earth. At the moment it's just too big for us to change it's direction :)
The real challenge is to provide a supply chain to the Moon and prove that you can harvest material and energy making a base worth while. I believe it is.
If we can't survive on the Moon for extended periods of time, because of environmental issues, perhaps, in the long run, robots can fill the gap, building the structures needed to accommodate humans later on, if needed.
But the reason why the Moon is so important is it's low gravitational field, that makes it more economical as a jump pad than Earth or Mars. It has all the materials needed to build structures in space.
All the talk about harvesting material from meteors is also irrelevant. Everything is there on the surface of the Moon. And the amount of solar energy is abundant.
The Moon is also very close if you need to run or guide vehicles via. remote control.
It is almost as if someone put it there, to help us come out.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[WindBourne]

That is not quite accurate.
First, the inflatables have NOT be subjected to several years of cold/weather extremes. And there is nothing in the our environmental set-ups that test it. In addition, you do NOT want the inflatable in a hanger. Set it up at the Amundsen–Scott base during the summer and let it stay there year around. Ideally, we would also have a small nuclear generator that would provide power to it, but, via nebulus treaties, they may not be allowed. However, a small nuke is exactly what is needed at the base. It can provide not just power, but heat, all of which will be needed on mars as well.

In addition, no other nation has set up an inflatable at the south pole. NONE.

Now as to supply chain, it is far more important, to test the supply chain to Mars, then to the moon. However, the fact is, that both the moon and mars will occur at the same time. Why? Because private space is pushing this, and multiple nations are backing it due to low costs.

But your argument that the moon is needed is absolutely false. Even on the supply chain, better to have several years of supplies there, as well as multiple robotics in place working on things, PRIOR to sending a single. And NONE of the conditions on the moon equates to what is on mars. I mean NONE.
,br> But, as I said, the moon will happen around 2020 (barring neo-cons interfering or pushing their god forsaken SLS), and Mars will be around 2025.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[Sla$hPot]

>But, as I said, the moon will happen around 2020 (barring neo-cons interfering or pushing their god forsaken SLS), and Mars will be around 2025.

That sounds like a bet to me.
I would be a bit conservative and add 20 years to those estimates.

I'm against sending people off to Mars in ten years time. I just don't think we will have the capacity to do it, without making it a short and ugly one way trip.

The Moon will allow us to practice in small increments. And it will make it possible to build much larger structures than we can lift into space from Earth.
It's like the scrum versus water fall approach.

But lets see whats happens. The bet is on.

Re:Permanent Mars habitation sounds great

[WindBourne]

Mars should ONLY be done as a one-way trip, or a minimum of 10 years.
The fact is, that life likely is there. The last thing that we want to happen is for it to be transported back to earth.
And believe me, there are PLENTY of ppl that are willing to move to Mars and pioneer there.
But, the bet is on.

It'd about time Republicans

[Ukab the Great]

Adopted a slightly more realistic climate change position.

NAIA....Neo-cons At It Again.

[WindBourne]

What a waste of paper. This is designed to provide purpose for the SLS. Yet, they have ZERO intention of going to the moon, OR mars. The ONLY way that we can do that is if we lower the costs of launch. Yet, the SLS will have a cost similar to the shuttle. In fact, probably higher, since it will have FEWER launches/year than what the shuttle had on average.

THis is just the GD neo-cons wasting more money and pushing NASA to be their GD jobs bill. If they had ANY interest in going to the moon/mars for real, they would kill the SLS and allow NASA to go forward with Bigelow Aerospace/IDC, SpaceX, SNC's Dream Chasers, Multiple tugs, all of which the neo-cons are trying to gut.

I dislike the dems, but they are nowhere near as corrupt or destructive to America as the neo-cons. Today's neo-cons have more in common with a drug lord or al capone. And then as a group, the dems just do not have a brain: wonderful scarecrow on the way to visit Oz.

Surface of Mars

[chinton]

I find it odd the legislation would specify the "surface of Mars"... I guess they want to keep us away from that alien reactor.

Here is the real problem

[WindBourne]

All of these ppl are going for pork. Look at this:
Republican Members

Steven Palazzo, MS, Chairman
Ralph M. Hall (R-Texas)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)
Frank D. Lucas (R-Oklahoma)
Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Mo Brooks (R-Alabama)
Larry Bucshon (R-Indiana)
Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
Bill Posey (R-Florida)
David Schweikert (R-Arizona)
Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma)
Chris Stewart (R-Utah)

Democrat Members

Donna F. Edwards, MD, Ranking Member
Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon)
Dan Maffei (D-New York)
Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts)
Derek Kilmer (D-Washington)
Ami Bera (D-California)
Marc Veasey (D-Texas)
Julia Brownley (D-California)
Frederica Wilson (D-Florida)

The ONLY one on this group who is NOT trash is Rohrabacher. The rest are seekers of pork.

If a one of them REALLY wanted to go to the mars and/or the moon, they would be allocating money for setting up a base in Antarctica using BA's BA-330 and/or ILC Dover's equipment as well as pushing private space. But, do they? Nope.

In addition, they would kill the SLS and instead push a COTS-SHLV for 2 SHLVs. Do they? Nope.

Seems to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

That the US House wants a sustained lack of focus regarding humans in space. I mean, ffs we went to the moon 9 times in the 60's/70's and have done jack shit in terms of human exploration since. Now they wanna ramp things up again with a divisive goal?

Neil Armstrong had the right idea that we needed to keep going to the moon in order to practise space flight and iron out *all* the bugs, but no, the US had to cancel Apollo and lose a lot of the info gained during that epic program. Now they want to start it up again, pretty much from scratch? I expect we'll lose a few more astronauts because of this.

Sustainable eh?

[32771]

http://xkcd.com/1007/

The biggest joke ever, they hardly know what is actually sustainable on earth.

Send Republicans to Mars, Make Earth Better

[reallocate]

Let's get them to volunteer to be the first to go: "Republicans on Mars!"

The fewer of the miscreants on this planet, the better.

Re:Send Republicans to Mars, Make Earth Better

[Hartree]

Capital idea.

As long as we also send you to Venus.

Hoomanns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Living or dead?

I'm OT so please mod me down

[mcgrew]

Your sig: You should list the URL in your /. account/options, and maybe even mirror it in a /. journal.

I always hesitate to click on shortened URLs but took a chance after looking at your comment history.

Prism

[warGod3]

So, is this going to be some kind of launchpad for a new NSA/Prism program to avoid jurisdiction/constitutionality? Kind of like Gitmo?

Now Would Be A Good Time to Begin

[LifesABeach]

NASA does not lack for volunteers, and the technology exists, and is tested. NASA just lacks the self generation of male reproductive organs.

That's not it

[rsilvergun]

it's not about the boondoggles. The reason we got away with it was the super rich were just as scared of the Soviets as the rest of us, and they let the rest of us have some money long enough to do something great. Now that the threat is proved to be silly they've gone back to grabbing up all the wealth and power and running us head long to a new dark age. For those of you keeping score at home that's what: Austerity means.

I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing

[rsilvergun]

did anyone every think about the _good_ bureaucrats do? Stop laughing, I'm serious. Every time there's a major disaster the lawmakers sneak several nasty little bills through. All perfectly legal. Who do you think used to call them on that? The press? They've been owned by the powers that be since the 70s, so now you're making me laugh. The police? They do murders and petty crime. Those committees of bureaucrats aren't just faceless minions. They're the ones in charge of enforcing the less immediate but no less important laws.

Next time you meet a bureaucrat thank them. They're people too, and they do good work.

Re:I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing

[Zontar The Mindless]

Next time you meet a bureaucrat thank them. They're people too, and they do good work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZYHP6IBoac

Re:I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing

[rsilvergun]

Well, if a washed up 80's band says it, it must be true! :).

Also, woosh. My point was that popular culture (like music) is heavily biased against bureaucrats without ever considering that there might be reasons for them to exist.

And for the record, I don't worry about the government. Corporate power dwarfs it.

Re:I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing

[Zontar The Mindless]

Also, woosh. My point was that popular culture (like music) is heavily biased against bureaucrats without ever considering that there might be reasons for them to exist.

And for the record, I don't worry about the government. Corporate power dwarfs it.

Ok, next time I'll make sure to say that I'm arguing with you, instead of trying to agree with you.

Quade...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the natural consequence of the recent finding that there was running water on Mars, which gives a strong clue that there's still lots of it around. Anybody who reads sci-fi knows that water is like the oil of the solar system, so it's only natural that the USG will want to occupy the land.

You're goddamn right. And everyone who watches sci-fi knows that eventually the colonies will revolt. And start the reactor.

Now Is Not The Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Government Officials of the Three Branches of US Government,

I have few hairs remaining that are not grey, and the recent unveiling of the violation of the civil rights of 300 million Americans by the NSA is the biggest news story of my lifetime. Now is not the time to be talking about the moon.

Booz Allen Hamilton is to the NSA what Halliburton and Blackwater (or whatever their name is this week) are to the US military. The key players are revolving-door people, including one who appears to have perjured himself in front of a Congressional oversight committee with no repercussion. Like war, global surveillance and the indefinite storage of everything gathered has been turned into a for-profit venture. Turning things like war, prison systems, vote tabulation, health care, and now global surveillance into highly corruptible for-profit ventures is going to have serious long-term consequences to freedom, democracy, and our society. This needs your full, undivided attention. Calling up Ted to get him to pull negative NSA stories from CNN's front page and talking about the moon hoping this will blow over isn't going to cut it.

We are counting on you to be the government that you are supposed to be.

NASA needs more money and support

[Anonymous Coward]

It is languishing as it is. We should shoot for Mars instead of the Moon, but the budget should be quadrupled at least. Military budget pared back by the same amount. If we can get to Mars, then the Moon is a fucking cakewalk (logistics wise). Those old Congress critters want to go back to the 50's and 60's the glory days of their youth.

NASA - Grand plans, no funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a pony, and here's $10 to pay for it.

Moon and Mars bases

[Anonymous Coward]

Moon Base Alpha and Bowie Base One!

Wizen-up, Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Unionized government employees at all levels have long been willing participants in a massive ponzi scheme:

They love to complain that they are severely underpaid (teachers, in particular do this by whining about their annual salaries and hoping the taxpayers forget that teachers get months off every year... their salaries are fine when you compute the salary per worked hour). They also hope the taxpayers do not notice their incredible pensions; most taxpayers have NO pensions, but unionized government workers often retire and continue to be paid...NOT some fixed amount, NOT their starting salary, NOT the career-average salary... but often their HIGHEST salary or some high percent of their highest salary. In California we have retired firefighters and prison guards drawing over $300,000 per year! I have a retired teacher in my family who brings-in more money per year than she did while teaching and she has better health coverage than any other person I know.

Union-friendly politicians (like most Democrats in CA) get elected and stay in power by promising these insane benefits to the unions; It lets them get all that union support NOW, while supposedly providing lots of affordable services to the taxpayers NOW but the reality is that they are in-effect borrowing BILLIONS from future taxpayers who will be required to pay for all those pension benefits while getting no benefit from that money (the people they will pay high taxes to fund will not be providing services but will actually be taking it easy in retirement) The politicians who make these deals know this is unsustainable...but it works for them in the here-and-now which is all they care about. The Union bosses who make these deals know this is unsustainable, but they plan to be long gone before the system collapses... and it works for them NOW (they get POWER, in both directions, by being the ones who control the union activism and political contributions the politicians need, and by being the ones who provide their members with all the contractual promises of future benefits) The union members know this is all technically BAD, but they assume their union bosses will lock-in contracts that will leave future taxpayers no option but higher taxes... and they know it's dishonest.... many of them do lots of overtime and/or "accidentally" get an "injury" in their last year before retirement which drives-up their benefits for the rest of their lives.

A few years ago, the US Congress finally put its foot down on a tiny sliver of this reckless and not sustainable activity by passing a law that affected the single worst offender of all in the US: the US Postal Service. You see, since WWII the USPS had been hiring lots of veterans as mail carriers (it was a good idea in those post-war years that provided a good bunch of disciplined workers AND put lots of former soldiers to work) but the USPS and their unions and DoD played a little-known game... they mixed and merged (and muddied the relationships between) benefits (and things like "years of service", which were used to calculate amounts of benefits) which allowed the USPS to hide the future costs of pensions, shift some of those costs over onto the military, and generally vastly under-fund the pension system. In a very rare show of responsibility, congress ordered the USPS (which has supposedly ceased to be part of the government and therefore should NOT be intertwining its pensions with government pensions) to fully-fund its pension program (so it will actually have the money to pay future retirees). Postal workers have been bitterly complaining ever since that they are no longer getting the same super generous pension (which used to be based on plans to squeeze future taxpayers) and they are now required to contribute to their own retirements like some lowly taxpayer/postal customer.
(always hoping the public would not notice their extreme job security and amazingly generous pensions) and the politicians, meanwhile, have earned re-election by promising all those future pension benefi

Wow, let me guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

you either love big throw-away rockets, or you have not fully thought this through

The Space Shuttle was they very first re-usable space vehicle (and the very first space plane... that's TWO firsts). It was, to re-usable spacecraft, what the Wright Flyer was to the Boeing747. If we had only built 5 Wright Flyers and then operated them for 30 years and then retired them and said "golly, that was interesting, but NOT efficient or cost-effective (and two crashed killing their crews)" and decided as a result that there was no future in that whole "airplane thing" ... we'd have been complete idiots.

Manned space flight will be a big-government novelty as long as it is based upon throw-away rockets. Nobody but a government would be able to afford to fly from New York to London if each flight involved a 747 that would shed parts all the way to London ending with three highly-trained people strapped into a detachable flight-deck that parachuted onto the tarmack at Heathrow (and the need to spend the time and money to build, test, prep and launch another shiny new disposable 747 for the flight back to NYC).

Even new-space Hero Elon Musk knows this. He's working on making his Falcon rockets re-usable. In fact, EVERY one of the current crop of new-space companies which plans of future commercial space activity is based on spacecraft re-usability (and some like Blue Origin and Space-X are going to re-use the launch vehicle too). The older American rocket companies who are not aiming for re-usability are they guys at ULA (who make their money selling big expensive throw-aways to government) and the guys at Orbital (who are not really "building" a rocket... they are essentially integrating bargain-basement Ukranian and Russian launch vehicle parts with an Italian throw-away cargo craft (to go after big government cargo contracts)

With a fully-reusable launch vehicle and spacecraft (once perfected to the degree modern aviation has been) the primary costs for a flight to space will be Fuel, ground crew, maintenance, and flight crew

Yeah, any conspiracy theory to maintain...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. the Slashdot meme that Republicans are "anti-science"

When Republicans, year-after-year, push hard to keep the Obama administration from stalling NASA's manned spaceflight activity for YEARS (as Obama promised the teachers unions he would do in the spring of 2008 when he promised to shift those funds to education) there MUST be SOME other explanation... because Democrats insist that Republicans are "anti-science"...

PORK! yeah... yeah... that's the TICKET! those Republicans are just in it for the PORK.... and if you keep saying it over and over you may not have to face any cognitive dissonance...

Get out much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seek the help of a mental health professional... immediately

There are aerospace activities in all the places those representatives (of both parties) are from (big aerospace firms are very good at spreading activities across congressional districts to enable support for the big government projects they live off of). Additionally, any chop in NASA funding would likely result in a shift of funds to other so-called pork in some of those same districts or other districts (which would lead to some other guy listing another (probably overlapping) set of congress persons... If anybody bought a bunch of ILC Dover and/or Bigelow stuff for a dumb "make-believe we're on Mars" play in Antarctica somebody else would scream about "pork" ... Bigelow is in Nevada and the Democrat leader of the senate is Harry Reid of Nevada, you know...

Oh, and all those people pushing to kill the SLS and move the money to "commercial" or "new" space are just pushing to take money from one set of firms (with ties to defense forms) and move it to another set of firms (some of which have ties to the Obama campaign)... just pork in the other direction...

Try again

[Anonymous Coward]

Liquid Hydrogen provides far better performance once you get above most of the atmosphere which is why it tends to be used on upper stages while Kerosene is used on many lower stages (solids give even a better kick than kerosene when you are close to the ground) which is why you see them so often strapped onto liquid-fueled rockets.

Liquid Hydrogen was the fuel for the 2nd and 3rd stages of the Saturn moon rocket and it's also the fuel for the Centaur upper stage used on so many Atlas rocket launches (it was not just used for the Space Shuttle)

The Space Shuttle was also not a "boondoggle" it transported 852 people into space (the mighty Saturn V: only 30) flew 135 flights (Saturn V: 13 times) And helped NASA learn MANY lessons about regular space operations, spacewalks, space assembly and maintenance, very high altitude flight, very high-speed flight, etc that the short and highly-focused moon missions and the 3 very limited Skylab missions could not. Indeed, every mission we now fly (including missions by people like Space-X) are informed by those lessons. Furthermore, many robotic missions like Hubble were launched on Shuttle (and Hubble was repaired and refurbished by Shuttles). Yes, NASA management figured-out how to destroy two of them (one by launching outside the certified limits and one by ignoring a growing pile of evidence that there was a problem with foam falling from external tanks) but bad management can make any complex machine fail. Russians have killed people on Soyuz and had some close calls. The Apollo program nearly killed the crew several times (not just the famous Apollo 13... Apollo 12 was nearly lost, Apollo 15 lost a parachute and damaged the others, etc. The NASA experience with capsule parachutes and their risks were one of many reasons for the Shuttle)

Before Shuttle, NASA flew all-male young, physically-fit test-pilot crews in cramped capsules with no privacy; one, two or three people packed into an air-tight continually-falling elevator car, eating, sleeping (not) bathing, pooping in plastic bags....

With Shuttle, NASA flew crews of Americans and non-Americans, Men, Women, non-test pilots (doctors, scientists, engineers, etc) Black, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, etc. of many cultures and many ages. The shuttle's low-G ascent and descent profiles allowed even senior citizens to fly and accommodated many sensitive experimental payloads. That huge payload bay allowed not only large payloads TO orbit, but also provided another first: Large payloads FROM orbit... which enabled things like LDEF (which enabled all the materials studies that then enabled construction of the ISS, and contributed to the engineering of the thermal coatings now used on things like the Space-X dragon) Shuttle was far less than perfect... it's general design was selected from a set of options by a politician named Nixon (who selected cheaper-to-develop rather than cheaper-to-operate and/or safer-to-operate), after all, but given the era when it was designed and the financial and technical constraints applied to it, it was a complete marvel and it's quite likely none of us will live to see another project of such boldness

VASIMR?

[fritsd]

Maybe if NASA make Franklin Chang Díaz their director we'd finally see his VASIMR engine deployed for tests on the ISS. What happened to that? Did it just not work very well yet, so the mission is postponed? It was announced to be launched with one of the last space shuttle flights to the ISS (probably quite a large and heavy component). That would give your "space pickup truck" engine, and it uses Argon which is much cheaper (more abundant) than the expensive Xenon for other ion engines.

Why can't those Republican senators demand that he be the initiator for this project?

Chang Díaz also is active in environmental protection and raising awareness about climate change, ...

Oh that's why...

Mars Needs Ecosystems!

[billstewart]

The hard part of going to Mars isn't the rockets - it's building a long-term sustainable ecosystem that can keep some humans alive without a convenient resupply system. There have been a few little terrarium experiments like Biosphere 2, and even they had to cheat when they borked their atmosphere. We've really only experimented with one large-scale ecosystem that can support humans (it's called "Earth").

Perhaps the best part of this project will be that it tells Republicans they've got to take ecology seriously and tell the people who keep messing with the thermostat to stop it.

China will be first

[sturle]

I'm willing to bet a large lump of bitcoins that the next human on the Moon will come from China. This may make Congress act if they are able to do anything but fight. Do you have a budget yet?

For all the shit Republicans get up to

[Arancaytar]

Their space policies are inspiringly ambitious.

(Not that this excuses them being assholes to anyone whose skin color, sexual orientation or income bracket they don't like.)

Re:For all the shit Republicans get up to

[Arancaytar]

Addendum: I actually think the plan is ludicrous, but that was true of the moon landing too. Worth it.

Re:All for it...

[jdmuskrat]

if you include all the idiots and morons from fox news, right wing hate talk nazi propanda talk radio, and the tea party, then i am all for it. or we can just wait for the rapture and god will smite them and that will save us a lot of tax dollars.

And I would like a pretty pony!

[flacco]

And I would like a pretty pony!

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Seriously, why not Titan? The moon full of water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't Titan be a better choice?

Sure, it's cold - but we have the science and capability to warm local environs.

Seems such a waste to send our first serious colony to such a desolate rock.

Why go?

[Dr. Crash]

Kennedy had it right: "We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, BUT BECAUSE IT IS HARD."

Sometimes you have to push the envelope. And sometimes, that means good people have put their life on the line. Humans in general don't get really serious about things unless they have skin in the game. You have to get them interested. Call it STEM motivation. But one Apollo launch is worth a million laptops in some third-grade classroom.

Forget STEM. Let's think about JUST ONE question on Mars... one we cannot possibly answer inside Earth's atmosphere; only long-term exploration of the Martian surface will suffice: Is there life on Mars? The possible answers are "No", "Yes, a long time ago.", and "OH MY GOD IT'S EIGHT FEET TALL WITH SIX EYES AND IT WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU SIR!"

Say it's "no" - there's no life on Mars, and never was. That tells us something important - Life is precious, life is delicate. Very important
message.

Or there _was_ life on Mars: what kind of DNA did it have, if any?
Again, very important message: either DNA can fly thru space ("panspermia"- and we are _NOT_ alone) or it evolved separately-
and we are still NOT alone - but there's another way for life to happen!). ... or... if the physics are such that it couldn't have happened naturally, then (1) we are not alone, and (2) Mom is out there somewhere...

Or there _is_ life on Mars: Same messages above, plus a whole new and mostly untarnished ecosystem to understand. We have only 1.1 ecosystems here (I count the undersea "black smokers" as 0.1 ecosystem). Add another, and maybe we can make some understanding headway.

What will we need to invent? I don't know! Neither do you. Neither did Kennedy. And it wasn't velcro, Tang, and funny ballpoint pens that were important. It was things like radar, and heat-resistant materials (look up Carnot efficiency to understand why that's important), and lightweight sensors, and lightweight, fast electronics, and computational fluid dynamics, and finite element methods, and precision navigation, and ...

We went into 1960 as a species that, if you couldn't solve it with fifty guys with pencils, papers, and slide rules, we couldn't solve it. (that shot of a roomful of guys in white shirts with slide rules calculating like crazy in "Apollo 13" was real, dudes.)

We came out of Apollo as a species that, if the problem was important enough, we had the means, the methods, and (most importantly, the confidence) to throw as much computation as had ever been done in the whole history of the world, every second, at the problem.

Oh- and that computer you're reading this on? Doesn't matter what brand, what OS... Wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for deciding that we needed to solve those FEMs and CFDs needed for space flight.

Those solar panels? Every gram you put into space costs you about $500. You're damn right we're gonna go full-bore on making good solar panels, simply because it's cheaper to spend a hundred million bucks on the research than to loft one more overweight comsat.

That pretty weather report with satellite images? Never would have happened if the First Seven hadn't all been shutterbugs, taking photos of weather systems like they were all out for the Pulitzer Prize. Same with the GPS in your phone, or your satellite TV.

It's not what we know we will find. It's what we don't know that is the value.

Pie-In-the-Sky

[CHIT2ME]

This is all Pie-In-The-Sky stuff until the teaparty decides it's time to raise taxes on their masters (Uber rich bastards) and fund not only NASA but also national infrastructure, etc., etc. As far as I'm concerned, until they do this they are simply blowing smoke out there arses!!!

Is this an Onion joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?!?! I mean, seriously *The Republicans* want this? And how are they going to pay for it, with their good looks? (How far will that get them...out of the driveway? Out of the garage? Over the first oil spot?)

How about Mars One?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars... really? So the House is not convinced the Mars One project will send actual humans, or something?

A.C.

Hmmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we get a sustained human presence in the Capitol first?