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Back To the Moon — In Four Years
braindrainbahrain writes "Gene Grush, a former division chief at NASA Johnson, has written a series of articles on how the U.S. can return to the Moon in four years. He says not only can we land there, but we can actually build a base on the Moon as well. How is this feasible? A public/private partnership between NASA and a private space company. Quoting: 'The biggest obstacle is the lack of a rocket, called a super heavy launch vehicle, to lift it off the planet. NASA is working on one, called the Space Launch System, but the agency is constrained by its budget and the likelihood of it flying in that time frame is slim. But there’s an interim solution: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which will have its maiden flight this year and can supposedly launch up to 53 metric tons into orbit.'
'[I]f NASA makes lowering launch costs its highest priority, escaping the bonds that hold us to Earth will be financially feasible. We don’t do this by controlling the design so much as the frequency -- we are the customer, after all.' 'The development of a lunar base could be a catalyst for lowering our launch cost to space and accelerating the development of automation and robotics. ... If America doesn’t step up to the plate, China’s ambitions for the moon may establish it as the “go-to” nation for space exploration. Many nations of the world privately say they want the moon to be the next step in space exploration -- but they can’t get there on their own. They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead.'"
'[I]f NASA makes lowering launch costs its highest priority, escaping the bonds that hold us to Earth will be financially feasible. We don’t do this by controlling the design so much as the frequency -- we are the customer, after all.' 'The development of a lunar base could be a catalyst for lowering our launch cost to space and accelerating the development of automation and robotics. ... If America doesn’t step up to the plate, China’s ambitions for the moon may establish it as the “go-to” nation for space exploration. Many nations of the world privately say they want the moon to be the next step in space exploration -- but they can’t get there on their own. They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead.'"
I won't claim that NASA isn't serving as a conduit between the dollar printing engine and SpaceX and providing some land facilities, but aside from that, NASA hasn't been able to get back to the moon in 40 years. Assuming there's a good reason to do so (H3 is good enough for me, even if it's a bit soon) SpaceX can conceivably raise the funds on their own and find a jurisdiction friendly to their launch requirements. Even if NASA weren't interested, SpaceX would still get to the moon in relatively short order - even if only as a testbed for Mars landings.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You know just 1% of our military budget diverted to NASA could do amazing things.. imagine if we diverted half of that budget!
Wouldn't a collaboration between ESA NASA JPL CSPA Roscosmos be more fruitful? Space race is so last century. - Folken
Look, this is great and all, but if I see some ugly polyester costumes, 1970s hair, and giant pneumatic tubes that carry people to and fro on that base, i'm going to seriously consider researching sustainable and well-lit subterranean shelter to ride out the impending lunar nuclear disaster.
This sig no verb.
It's not the fuel that's expensive, it's the thing you put it in. And that rocket has to function perfectly, 100% of the time, across a giant temperature, pressure and acceleration gradient. And it has to be "man-rated," in other words, made survivable in case of a failed launch and prepared for atmospheric re-entry, which are some of the most extreme conditions known to mankind. Most of the costs that are being complained about are due to the absolutely necessary safety culture built into the manufacturing of these vehicles, stacked on top of amortized R&D (hint: SpaceX didn't need to do nearly as much R&D as they did to get the Saturn V off the ground).
"They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead."
That leaves us (USA) out, sadly. Unless it can pull in advertising revenue, it ain't happening. I hope China does well with their moon exploration.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Not at all. They're the champions of Democrats-are-wrong, and since a Democrat administration isn't spending money on NASA, that must be wrong.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
And yet you're fine spending a hundred times more on defense budget?
The moon is rich in valuable resources (water: hydrogen, oxygen) that are hard to find elsewhere in Earth orbit. These resources are much cheaper (in an asymptotic sense) to get from the moon than from Earth due to the weaker gravity. The moon will be a practical location for a base for as long as demand for fuel, air, and water in Earth orbit remains high.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Links please. The tone of the articles are paramount. If the first was an expose, it's not quite what you paint. Even if it's as you portray, that's preferable to say, CNN, which has points of view it *never* airs because it's against their political agenda.
"three- or four-day notice of a missile strike off the moon"
Sorry but I really doubt that the moon is a useful military platform. As he mentions, you would get a three or four day notice of an attack; on the other hand an ICBM launched from a nuclear sub on a depressed trajectory has a flight time measured in MINUTES. The cost (and difficulty, and danger) of lugging a nuclear tipped missile (capable of crossing cislunar space) all the way to the moon (and maintaining it and protecting it against solar flares, cosmic rays, temperature extremes, and meteorites) would be enormous. His own estimates contend it would cost $300M just to put 8 tons on the lunar surface. Presumably the missiles wouldn't just lie around on the surface but would have to be dug in (excavation equipment, power requirements). And don't even solid fueled ICBMs need regular topping up of some critical elements? (batteries need to be replaced, tritium in nuclear triggers decays). So a supply chain stretching to EARTH must be maintained or the value of this deterrent (there's no way it could be used for a first strike, even today we've imaged the entire lunar surface to a meter resolution) goes away.
Unless he's proposing that the Chinese build an entire lunar colony with the industrial capacity to build robust launch systems, this is wildly impractical. On the other hand if the Chinese can manage to put a serious industrial infrastructure (creating solid fuels from lunar dust? mining uranium ore?) on the moon in a few decades then the U.S. will have a lot more to worry about than getting nuked by china. (Nuclear Bombs are the only practical weapon for something costing this much, "rods from god" are great when compared to chemical explosives but with E=MC2 a nuclear warhead has millions of times more energy per kg).
It would be great to see NASA use Space X's Falcon heavy instead of their own heavy lift launcher which seems like a huge waste of taxpayer money (and that's if it even gets built). Unfortunately, after reading his outlandish (jingoistic?) fears about China, I have to question the rest of his reasoning. No wonder why Fox News is publishing this.
H
And lastly, give this generation something to shoot for. Something other than the newest Angry Birds or social media app. Something to shoot for, to make history, to inspire a new generation like JFK's speech on going to the moon. It will happen. The question is, will they speak Chinese or American?
It takes roughly an order of magnitude more energy to get water into space from the Earth than it does from the moon.
I said "in an asymptotic sense". If you're not familiar with asymptotic analysis, then the response you were looking for was "*whoosh*". Nobody's talking about a single rocket trip to the moon.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I'm assuming you meant He3, but it is worthless without a working fusion reactor, of which we have none. The only value of a lunar base would be as an intermediate port for assembling large ships for longer journeys. Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
It'll work just fine in baloons though.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Assuming there's a good reason to do
A moon base means learning how to survive without a magnetosphere.
You are now aware that we are over 500000 years OVERDUE for our magnetosphere to falter, disappear, and be rebuilt in the opposing polarity. Saving the fucking world should be enough reason for any sentient race to seek self sustaining off-world colonization. In fact, if ending the assured threat of extinction by making sure all your eggs aren't in one basket isn't your #1 priority as a species, then are you really sentient, or just a bunch of damn dirty apes?
Hey, the late 1950's called. They want their silly argument back!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
And for doing the funny voice.
Nice try. In the event that Obama were to adopt far right-wing policies, they would just go even *farther* to the right. We've already seen it on national security. Obama adopts the far-right position on national security, and Fox responds that he hasn't gone far enough.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Why should we care about your kids going to college when people in Africa are starving? If you stop everything to wait until something is finished, they'll never get anything done. 80/20 rule for life!
The only thing high orbit gets you for a kinetic energy weapon is acceleration in a vacuum ... you still need a huge rocket behind that metal bar with more energy in it's fuel than most nuclear warheads.
NASA announced today a competition to find the best epitaphs to go on the tombstones of future astronauts. Current frontrunners are YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR and THIS MEMORIAL ALSO PURCHASED FROM THE LOWEST BIDDER.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
He3 is fuel for reactors we don't even know how to build yet. The moon is a very useful place to have a base scientifically (Great for astronomy in all bands) but commercially, not much use. There's no money in it. The ore isn't good enough to pay for the cost of getting it, communications and earth science are better done in more-affordable earth orbit, it's too far to transmit power. It could serve as a good waypoint for longer journeys, manufacturing fuel in the shallow gravity well, but there's no commercial possibility further out either. Lofty dreams of colonising space don't pay the bills.
We'll probably still be saying that when the meteor hits.
Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
You mean on the far site.
A moon base means learning how to survive without a magnetosphere.
Except that we already know how to do that: use shielding.
What we don't know how to do is deal with the social and economic consequences. But a moon base would provide no useful information for that.
Would it not work better in permanently dark craters at the poles?
Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
You mean on the far site.
Or perhaps he means in a crater near one of the poles, like Shackleton crater. These are known as "craters of eternal darkness," by the way, which obviously sounds way cooler than "the dark side of the Moon."
Don't forget fuel depot - I believe there are at least a handful of scientifically vetted plans for mining and refining chemical fuel on the Moon, which could then be delivered to Earth or Lunar orbit for a fraction of the cost of fuel lifted from the Earth' surface, enabling far more sophisticated orbital space programs, even if we were never to go beyond Earth's local space.
And for longer-range flights there's the fact that the vast mass of the material leaving Earth's orbit would be fuel, so reducing the mass lifted from Earth would drastically reduce costs. Not to mention that, thanks to the low rotation rate and near-total lack of atmosphere, a low-G tumbling-cable skyhook only a few hundred km long could be operated around the moon capable of grabbing payloads directly from the surface and hurling them onto Hohmann transfer orbits to Mars or Venus. That's one hell of an stepping-stone into the solar system, and something that could be built relatively easily from current materials. Far easier than the multi-G, skyhook thousands of km long necessary to rendezvous with payloads in Earth's upper atmosphere, and much of the engineering experience gained would be transferable once we're ready to tackle that more challenging project.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Back to the Moon in 4 years.
Back to the Moon and back, 17 years.
Ask my how much I want to be taxed to send someone to the moon right now.
Its really more about priorities. The USA has effectively prioritized all forms of police state activities above basic infrastructure, science and other investments in the country. Rather our local governments are going broke maintaining police force/population ratios which have no bearing on crime rates, and our federal government hasn't seen a "homeland security" project they didn't have to buy into. Be that massive aircraft carriers used to "project force", into areas we shouldn't be, naked body scanners, or spying programs to track everyone's movements.
Plus, in the case of the police, since there are so many of them, and stopping crime is _HARD_ they tend to spend all their time giving citations, and enforcing non violent "offense" laws that should really be matters of personal freedom (see drug laws).
Heck, the city i live in just passed an ordinance banning more than 4 adults from living in the same house. Who "enforces" this? The police of course. So if your a poor student, its now illegal to rent a house with more than 3 other of your friends.
magnetosphere to falter, disappear, and be rebuilt in the opposing polarity
It will not disappear - it will become more complex and less effective at blocking solar radiation. But that shouldn't matter to those of us on the ground, since we have the atmosphere to protect us. The folks in the space station might have a problem, however.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They'd have a bit of a challenge though in maintaining control of the moon base though - either it's automated, in which case there's maintenance issues, or it's a self-sustaining Chinese colony physically cut off from the mainland, whose loyalty might be difficult to maintain over generations.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This time we will send an African. And we shall call it "Black to the Moon".
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
NASA hasn't been able to get back to the moon in 40 years
It's not like NASA has been trying to get back to the moon and has been failing. NASA hasn't been back to the moon in 40 years due to political reasons, not technical ones.
The fallacy is in assuming [conservative group] doesn't like liberal ideas because of Obama. Or that [conservative group] doesn't like Obama because of liberal ideas.
In reality, the #1 reason [conservative group] doesn't like liberal ideas or Obama is because they're on the other team. Likewise, [liberal group] doesn't like conservative ideas or G. W. Bush for the same reason.
And probably the real truth is that conservative and liberal politicians like each other just fine, they just want to be on opposite teams so that they control the entire game.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Grush's plan is sound as far as back-of-the-envelope estimates go. But there is more to this than money. Roughly half of NASA's HSF budget goes to projects that exist only to spend money. As in, you could cancel the projects, reduce NASA's budget by that amount, and you would still get the same amount of space exploration done. Unfortunately, when the budget crunch comes, those projects are never the first ones cancelled. So I think the key to effective long-term space exploration is to establish incremental and self-sustaining capabilities while resisting cost growth in the pork projects.
So, yeah, someday we can send astronauts to the moon. But first we need to figure out how to send people to orbit for "free". And we need to expose the pork projects for what they are while preventing infrastructure from being built around them. You can help! Don't buy the BS that NASA is going to send humans to Mars for 0.5% of the federal budget. When your Science Committee congress-person comes up for re-election, reward responsible oversight and not "vision".
China being the lead in space isn't just an economic advantage, it is a military one. Just a satellite with metal rods in a high orbit can do more damage by tossing them to earth than most nuclear warheads can.
Actually those systems were meant to be in LEO and are de-orbited prior to launching. And, no, they don't come close to causing the kind of damage of a nuclear warhead. Slightly larger than telephone pole sized rods are estimated to be the equivalent of 120 tons of TNT. That's about 10X the M-388 tactical nuke that was fired from the Davy Crockett field gun. But those have not been active in years. I have a friend who was trained on those. Due to treaty agreements, we can no longer train anyone to use them, so the army still has the ability to recall anyone with training back to active service indefinitely. Even at the lowest estimate of "Little Boy" (13 Kilotons) that was dropped on Hiroshima is over 100X of one of these "Rods from God". The current highest yield nuke in the US arsenal is the B83, with a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons. The W6 is the smallest yield device in active service with a 100 Kiloton yield. Even that is over 800 times the yield of a tungsten spear from orbit.
the US is like one of those muslebound body builders, with plenty of muscle but almost no fat
hahAHahAHAHAHaHAHa
and also
BAhaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Etc.
I can see why you didn't log in.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, I'm sure that you'll have no problem coming up with a single concrete example where it's cheaper and easier to do this on, or from the moon, rather than Earth....
One. Just one real example.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Anyone who doesn't realize we don't have the tech to build a self sustaining off-world colony... is an idiot. We can't even build a closed loop ECLSS that will keep a handful of people in O2 indefinitely without outside support - let alone all the other infrastructure of an industrial society. We barely have a handle on the known unknowns. And given the example of terrestrial colonies, it's not at all clear it's even possible to build a fully self supporting colony. (And for a lunar colony, unlike terrestrial ones, dropping tech to survive isn't an option.)
Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...
You seriously think those things even begin to dent the budget of NASA? Your rant is more about criticizing the damn liberals and their GUBMINT than it is about any serious problem with NASA. If you really want to see NASA accomplish things, get congress the hell out of their business and stop letting every new administration pull new mandates out of their asses. Or, push more support for the COTS programs, that produce far better results at far less cost, thanks to free market economics which work so well everywhere else. The only problem is they don't funnel money into the pockets of established defense contractors...