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NASA Uncertain How To Proceed In Developing Deep Space Module (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: One of the provisions of the new NASA spending bill, which provided a hefty $1.3 billion boost to the space agency's budget, is a mandate to build a prototype habitation module for deep space exploration by 2018. Space News suggested that NASA is uncertain how to proceed with this sudden largess. Quite some time has passed since the space agency has gotten more money than expected and been told to speed up the development of an item of hardware. Usually, the opposite happens, with accompanying delays and increases in overall costs.
>> NASA Uncertain How To Proceed In Developing Deep Space Module
So...all NESA's noise about preparing for a manned Mars mission was just a joke then?
IMHO, this is why the push for NASA to develop these techs. One of the SLS 's primary missions is their Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission; the conspiracy theorist in me says that NASA is doing risk-mitigation just in case Apophis hits the keyhole in 2029.
I've had the feeling more than once that NASA promotes a lot of ideas that they know are impractical in order to fire up their base of support, which is largely SF fans who can't or won't distinguish fantasy from reality. With an election coming up the strategy works brilliantly, and now they're handed a big pot of money to begin realizing their dreams. So they have to hire a battalion of scientists and engineers to work on growing crops on Mars, squeezing water out of rocks, mining asteroids for minerals, and all the rest. This should be interesting.
The model has worked poorly in what regard? SpaceX is actively delivering cargo to ISS for about 40% the per launch cost of ULA (without reuse) and has meet certification to deliver crew. A whole Dragon launch is going to cost NASA about as much as a single seat on Soyuz, and the whole COTS program, yielding two launch vehicles and two automated transfer vehicles cost about the same as a single Shuttle flight. The NASA final report on the program basically goes through every combination of phrases meaning "unqualified success" in the English language in describing the results of the program.
Shiny New Australia.
It doesn't really matter what NASA has now. Space exploration requires projects that run 20 or 50 or even 100 years. Yes we have to reach that far if we really want to hit some big goals.
But the 4-year election cycle means NASA's funding is threatened every time we elect a new round of idiots. Sometimes they are Pro-NASA but mostly they aren't, and cutting funding is what happens.
You cannot explore space with a 20-year plan supported by fickle 4-year election cycles and 2-bit politicians.
Other countries like China have no such issues. China can set a 50-year plan and proceed to start on it. NASA is stuck.
Sig for hire.
So...all NESA's noise about preparing for a manned Mars mission was just a joke then?
Probably not but I think the claims of getting there by the 2030s are absurdly unrealistic and certainly haven't been funded in a way that would make them feasible. It might be technologically possible but I don't see it being politically viable. I think NASA knows that it isn't politically viable so they aren't seriously planning for it. There certainly hasn't been serious funding on the level necessary to do a realistic manned Mars mission so why should NASA seriously plan for one? They are working on it but the Apollo program had double the funding NASA gets now (adjusted for inflation) and the Moon is a lot easier.
But... but.. but... NASA already gets like 25% of the Federal budget.
And now Congress wants to give them Billions more while there are starving brown transgender children that need to be bombed?
GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, AMERICA!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How about just extending the ISS lifetime? It's a modular station. It should be possible to make it operate for longer, even if it means building an entire new station bolted on the side and operating them in parallel until the old one can be decomissioned and deorbited. It'd still be cheaper than building a completely new station because you've already got long-term habitation and life support capability for construction, and can scavenge the old modules for usable parts to reduce the mass that must be launched. Use it as a testbed for testing longer-term life support technology that needs less frequent resupplying. By the time you've designed ISSv2 and operated it for a few years, you've already got half the design done for a Mars habitation module - the fundamental technologies are the same. Just need to stick on some more radiation shielding and a flare shelter. You can even use the ISS as a sort of 'space construction yard' to build your manned Mars ship, as it'll be far too big to go up in one launch and having a convenient manned orbital facility means you can send each new part up on an unmanned launcher rather than having to send astronauts to do the bolts and hook up the cables along with it. It would require some orbit adjustments, a bit higher up and perhaps less inclined, but that should be doable.
The politics are a bit awkward though. Russia is happy to take their ISS modules and build their own station from them, but it's not clear to what extent they'll cooperate with NASA on any Mars ambitions. Given the current tendency of politics in that country they might decide that having their own all-Russian station would bring more prestige than cooperation on an extended international cooperative. They are still proud of MIR - and having a bigger, better MIR operating after the ISS is eventually decommissioned would firmly cement their claim to be the once again the most advanced nation in terms of space capability.
A deep space module needs to be able to maintain a crew for years without resupply. That means bulky life support spaces - either a huge amount of food and oxygen storage or a farm module - along with enough spare parts to repair any and all possible faults that might occur. With the habitable parts wrapped up in heavy radiation shielding. You're not getting that up in one piece - it's going to have to be assembled in orbit using a modular design, probably involving a few habitation and life support modules connected up to non-habitable supply modules. Skylab is about the biggest you can launch in one piece, and it's far too small to go to deep space. A manned craft for deep space is going to look a lot like a smaller and more linear version of the ISS.
The article talking about a 'habitation module' isn't helpful. Surviving for years without supplies doesn't need a module, it needs a whole complex of modules that fit and work together.
Humans in deep space for any length of time will need serious shielding to avoid the health risks of ionizing radiation (gamma rays, etc). Traditional shielding is heavy and crowds out payload. Without a breakthrough in shielding manned space flight can't leave our planet's protection (the magnetosphere) for any length of time. No moon base - at least on the surface, no Mars missions, no Lagrange point space stations.
Replace "Saturn V" with "Space Launch System." It gives you a large living space that is designed to be launched, hooked to and pushed around by other spacecraft.
What about Hoberman spheres, or a similar self-unfolding structure? They could deploy clusters of them, perhaps skinned with mylar or other foldable materials.
I still think the bigger problem is the lifetime of supplies needed. Everyone talks about recycling wastewater, but energy still has to be expended to crack the waste CO2 back into breathable oxygen. And then there's food. If they're in "deep" space, they're a long way from sunlight, so their plants are going to need energy from another source. And grow lamps don't last forever, not even LED lamps - 50,000 hours if they're lucky, which is only a half dozen years. Solar panels might last 25-30 years. They're going to need replacement power supplies, replacement computers, replacement everything. It's not like they can send them a supply ship - by the time the ship gets to where they were, they'll have moved on an additional 5 years or more.
I think the only viable plan is to prove we can successfully colonize Mars first. Demonstrate the capability of landing and thriving on a non-living rock. Then we can talk about what kinds of modules we need for "deep" space.
John
As of 2012, NASA is undergoing research in superconducting magnetic architecture for potential active shielding applications. Active Shielding, that is, using magnets, high voltages, or artificial magnetospheres to slow down or defect radiation, has been considered to potentially combat radiation in a feasible way. So far, the cost of equipment, power and weight of active shielding equipment outweigh their benefits. For example, active radiation equipment would need a habitable volume size to house it, and magnetic and electrostatic configurations often are not homogenous in intensity, allowing high-energy particles to penetrate the magnetic and electric fields from low-intensity parts, like cusps in dipolar magnetic field of Earth.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
There are no technology barriers to a manned mission to Mars. All the barriers are political and financial. We can launch big stuff. We can make a life support system work for years. We can surround the crew compartment with enough water to keep radiation levels tolerable. We can make a lander, using big fuel tanks to land on rocket power instead of aerobraking. We can make a base on Mars to sustain humans for a couple of years. We can make radiation shielded EVA suits and exploration cars. We can land enough rocket parts and fuel to get back to orbit. We can return to Earth, and we can land from Earth orbit.
Bringing back some Mars rocks would be nice in my lifetime. Even in unmanned missions.
An unmanned mission to bring back Mars rocks is probably doable. I'm dubious that we will send humans there in my remaining lifespan.
Beginning of asteroid mining too.
I think asteroid mining is a ridiculous concept. To be economically viable one of two things has to happen. Either 1) you have to bring the materials back to Earth to be refined and utilized or 2) you have to develop technology to refine and utilize them in space. If you choose option 1) you have to drop VERY large rocks onto the surface of the Earth. Do I have to explain that dropping large rocks onto Earth's surface is REALLY destructive? If you choose option 2) you have to replicate entire supply chains in space and we have ZERO technology in the pipeline to do that. We have no smelting or mining equipment that works in space on anything close to an industrial scale. We don't have the robotics. We don't have the control systems. Even if we did we have no power systems adequate to drive them on an industrial scale except maybe nuclear fission and that's pretty dicey even here on Earth.
These are completely realistic goals.
Depends on your timescale.
There are no technology barriers to a manned mission to Mars.
You're kidding right? We have built barely any of the stuff you cite. We certainly don't have any of it ready to pull of the shelf and send to Mars. We don't have human rated habitats for that kind of mission or duration, we don't have life support systems, we haven't figured out the physiology problems, we haven't even tried building a spacecraft surrounded by water and certainly don't have any other type of shielding, etc. The notion that there are no technological barriers is just nonsense. We can probably figure them out with enough time and money but that isn't the same as saying we are ready to go to Mars. Absent a crash program to work on all this (which won't happen) it's going to take decades to work out the technical details. We've only been outside of low earth orbit a handful of times and nothing longer than a few days. I don't mean to be rude (seriously I don't) but if you seriously think we've figured out all the technical problems you don't adequately understand the problems.
I think you are correct that the financial and political barriers are the bigger problems but let's not understate the technical ones.
I'm sure that in 2085 a gigaton of rocket fuel is available in every corner drugstore but in 2015 it's a little hard to come by!
Anon! I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you're stuck here!