Former NASA Chief On US Space Policy: "No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: During a congressional hearing Thursday, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had harsh words for the space agency and the space policy crafted by President Obama's administration. Under the Obama administration's guidance, NASA has established Mars as a goal for human spaceflight and said that astronauts will visit the red planet by the 2030s. However, a growing number of critics say the agency's approach is neither affordable nor sustainable.

On Thursday, Griffin, administrator of NASA from 2005 to 2009, joined those critics. The United States has not had a serious discussion about space policy, he testified, and as a result, the space agency is making little discernible progress. NASA simply cannot justify its claims of being on a credible path toward Mars, he added.

Comments

Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Thanshin]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[DerekLyons]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.
 

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

After we have colonized several planets,

Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

(It) is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die.

You've been reading too much sci fi.

We need nuclear power rockets yesterday

Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!

understand you are cool with killing off the white race

The only thing worse than some Utopian sci-fi nerd is a Conservative sci-fi nerd.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel and minerals that we quite easily dig out of the ground, it should be patently obvious that we're stuck on Earth, and nothing's gonna change that until Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive (which won't happen until there's a Eugenics War).

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Without that drive to dominate other men and impress females with what great offspring we'd sire, we'd still be frightened primates on the plains of Africa.

BTW, chimps and apes have that same dominant, show-off streak.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Applehu Akbar]

What you're saying, then, is that China will get a colony going first, whereupon (Trump | Sanders) will accuse them of "cheating" somehow.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Richard_at_work]

A good indication of how public feeling was fading was that Apollo 13 wasn't going to be televised during the lunar approach, and doubts were being had about the landing itself.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

His ID is too high to be an old man. But everything else you wrote is spot-on.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

Human life? Yes, without extensive terraforming and environmental support. But life at all? Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.

               

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

Quite a weird little combo you have going on there. Usually the racists are also anti-space/progress etc. Oh well, takes all sorts. I'm genuinely glad I don't live in your head though, seems like a toxic place.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

As far as I can tell, your point is 'outer space is a harsh environment for humans". Well done you. You raised a point and it was correct. It was a completely facile point, yes, but you've got to start somewhere.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

Technically, only tropical jungles and savannas have the environment and resources to sustain homo sapiens sapiens. It is, after all, the niche we evolved it.

Other environments require technological modifications to allow successful human habitation. Perhaps you've heard of them: Clothing. Buildings. Et cetera.

We, as a species, modify the local environment to suit habitation. We can already sustain life deep underwater, and in extreme Arctic conditions. Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological and political problems, but are eminently doable if and when the decision is made to proceed. . .

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Maritz]

We are still frightened primates. On the plains of where ever.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

No, we'll colonize once China and the US join to form the Confederation. Downside: Creepy guys in suits with Blue Hands. Upside: Companions. . . Trust me, it'll be shiny. . .

Re: Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Then let's elect Trump and get it over with quickly! What'll we fund?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

But life at all?

That is what the "conversation" is about...

have enough liquid water and energy

"Where do we get the oxygen to burn the oceans of methane?"
"Crack the water, of course."
"But where do we get the energy to crack the water?"
"The methane, of course!"

smh

to possibly support native life forms.

And iron, aluminum, sodium, calcium, etc, etc ad nauseum?
The light that plants need?
Warmth?
Lead to shield us from the Europa's 5400 mSv (enough to cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day) background radiation?
And the constant earthquakes?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

We can already sustain life deep underwater

So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?

and in extreme Arctic conditions.

Again, how many people live in extreme Arctic conditions? (No, Eskimos *do not* live there. They go occasionally on hunting expeditions, but that's it.)

Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological ... problems

And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey. :eyeroll:

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

As long as I get to pilot a ship with Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite! (Throw Melinda Clarke in for good measure...)

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[sabbede]

I don't think Europe would trigger our competitive instinct. India, maybe a little. China definitely would.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[luis_a_espinal]

China, Europe or India have to put people on the moon to relight US population's push to get back to the head of the race.

No, it won't. Not only is the Space Race long over, the political conditions that lead to it no longer exist, and the general public of the US never supported the race that much in the first place.

You are mostly likely a self-loathing millienial sitting in yer' mommies basement without a clue, without even a single clue in this world. Or you are LIAR. Most likely both.

I was there and the US population did indeed fully support, and was in fact enthralled by the activities of NASA in that time. It actually brought a lot of people together that would not normally be together.

Until then, it seems simply too hard to get enough political support.

Apollo only had political support because JFK took a bullet to the head in Dallas. And even then that support barely lasted two years before the budgets started getting slashed - by the time we actually landed, the program was already running on vapors.

Take your morbid revisionist bullshit and peddle it to your acquaintance in the trailer park. You are seriously full of shit. And I now see you are just a liar / Bernie lover.

You were mostly right till you started with the infantile name-calling. Bernie lover? Really? What the fuck does the OP's political allegiances (which you know nothing off) has anything to do with anything. What type of personal demons are you projecting? Chill the hell out.

You said a lot of things that are right and accurate, but they seem to be the only thing right about you. Stop acting like a deranged lunatic.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[luis_a_espinal]

You don't think that China putting a railgun on the moon won't reinvigorate space exploration?

That, or we will buy one from them. If China can pull that off, it means we didn't do squat to either prevent it or do it first. And that will be the moment when we jump the shark as a nation... but we will be too busy fucking and drinking electrolytes as we cheer for President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey.

Just go at night...

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

"outer space is too harsh an environment for humans" FTFY.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

Several moons, such as Europa and Enceladus, have enough liquid water and energy to possibly support native life forms.

Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ironically nowadays it will be, with all the channels.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Pumpkin Tuna]

I live in the relatively gentle climate of the southern United States. Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day. Most of this planet is a hostile environment that we have to use our brains and tools to survive in. Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.

The lack of air, and levels of radiation are much different than any place on Earth. And even on Earth there are plenty of places where nobody settles.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.

On top of that, there's no infrastructure for moving stuff around. No shipping waters, no road network, and no atmosphere for flying. In order to build a factory from dirt, you need a lot of different stuff, and it is very unlikely you'll find everything within a short distance. It is more likely you'll have to go to every corner of the planet to collect the things you need.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[DarkOx]

I have to disagree. The real value in space exploration has been the technology that came out of the effort. Its debatable if that is even really the origin of much of that tech. Certainly rocket and delivery technology came out of WWII and that isn't terribly useful for doing anything but hurling weapons at each other or tossing stuff into space.

We did get a lot of valuable computer technology, and some spiffy things like Velcro out of space exploration effort. We also made a number of materials science advances that have paid real dividends. I can't help but suspect the military applications and desires for most of those technologies would have birthed them too, if NASA had not provided a slightly more open incubator. All and all it was probably worth the investment.

Here we are at the 80/20 point though. We have 80% of the tech we really need to explore the solar system. What is left is cooking up the other 20% which might easily end up requiring 80% of the total investment in space form the late 50's on when its finally tallied, at least by the time we have a mars colony. Its also quite likely the tech to come out of that will be highly specialized and not nearly so applicable to life back here on earth. So might offer us 20% of the pay back value.

Personally I think continued investment in space exploration is a loosing proposition, at least over the time horizon of a lifetime. I think it makes perfect sense to wait and let China or India prove there is some pay back out there. Its always cheaper to imitate than to innovate. Provided we take some steps to preserve our manufacturing industry ( like re-erect some trade barriers with China and India ) playing catchup should be fast and cheap if it turns out we need to do that.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Coren22]

Chelyabinsk was a wake up call to the Russians. The belt is chock full of nuke-scale explosive ordinance (rocks + velocity + impact = boom).

I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashdot_commentator]

Apollo was also backed by a legislative genius name LBJ. His "small" role ensured there would money for the 10 year investment (actually 6 years); and expenditure IIRC would amount to 4-5% of the national budget per year (US federal budgets were really small back then...).

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Kjella]

There's a huge difference between the places on earth we've turned into productive habitats and those we just sustain as research outposts through massive external support. Even in Norway that's a cold and hostile country we have cave dwellers from 9000 years ago right after the ice cap melted from the last ice age, so the description of most of earth as particularly hostile is exaggerated. It has air, it has water, it has radiation shielding, as long as you have wildlife to provide food and furs you're making a living. But we haven't and won't colonize Sahara, the Antarctic or the oceans because it's so hard to live there the net productivity is negative.

We literally only have a few hundred people on the South Pole and only a few thousand on the whole continent. Pretty much all the materials, equipment and supplies are flown in, because there's nothing but snow, ice and then some more snow. Unless you're in the realm of alchemy and can turn water into something else like wood or iron it's just not within our realm of scientific and technological progress to make it so either. A Mars base is a massive money pit. And turning it into a Mars colony well it's going to become a much, much bigger money pit before the trend turns and you need earth less.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

I do agree, but I also think that it's a mistake to reach too far. Not that NASA is actually approaching that.

If we weren't wasting money on new models of fighter that are worse than the last model, etc. and the money went instead to NASA, then a lot more could reasonably be done. But it's also true that given the US political environment no long term government funded plan has any security unless it's pushed by either a large majority of the people or by a strong special interest. An election cycle or two and the support will just vanish.

Because of this I'm all in favor of short term research, and low cost research that is unobtrusive enough to not be noticed. Improved ion-jet rockets is a thing that should be worked on. Also solar power satellites for beam-casting power to distant missions (say beyond Jupiter) as a replacement of the Plutonium that is being used up. Note that the beam-casting power could also have lots of more local uses, so once a modest version had proved itself it could be upgraded. Small incremental steps are slow, but they'll get us there eventually if someone doesn't beat us to the goalpost. And it's my opinion that space habitats are more reasonable than a Mars base. Very few people would accept that, however, so the only way to do it is slow small steps. And a good first step would be to construct actual closed ecosystems. (Get the necessary inputs and outputs to a bare minimum. You've GOT to allow energy input and heat output, e.g., but try for a real sealed environment.) Hell, start with closed environment mouse colonies. That should be fairly cheap. Then slowly work up to more complex ecosystems. BioSphere was an example of NOT being unobtrusive. The things I'm talking about would only publish in academic and engineering journals...not that they would hide from reporters, they just wouldn't court them.

N.B.: The kind of progress I'm talking about is going on right now. I don't always agree with the directions it's taking, but it's happening. I presume, without knowing, that the Vasimir ion rocket is being worked on and improved. It's main real drawback is a need for electric power. A really advanced ion rocket, though, would be able to work off of finely ground rock dust. But that would clearly take more power than pre-refined fuels.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

There's reasonable evidence that we've already "jumped the shark". This is something that can only be really determined a century or so later, but there are reasonable lines of evidence leading to that conclusion. The reason we can't tell for sure is probably that the next "leading nation" still hasn't gotten it's ducks in a row. China is a big contender, but it's not the only possibility.

OTOH, it is usually possible to recover from a stumble if you make correct moves, but Hillary? Trump? Of the major candidates only Sanders seems to even have a glimmer of understanding of the problems that are approaching, and I'm not to sure about him. And if he did get in, what could he get through a blindly obstructive congress? (Well, at least the Senate, we don't know what the House will look like after the next election cycle.) Please note, I'm not talking strictly about parties here. Only a very few of the current Senate appear to have even a desire to work for the good of the country (defining that roughly on the state of the median citizen ... and using a different median citizen for each dimension of measure of state. Nobody's average in all dimensions. If you want you could also count the mean and the mode, but I think that just makes the figuring harder without basically changing the result. OTOH, just figuring on the mode yields unpleasant results.)

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[HiThere]

If only he hadn't tied himself to the Viet Nam conflict. When Kennedy died we had, IIRC, 52 military advisors on the ground. And that whole imbroglio yielded NO promise of national advantage that I've ever been able to detect. The way it worked out there was certainly no advantage. ... Unless you count the ending of the draft, which allowed the govt a relatively free hand with how it used military force. *I* count that as a negative, but I can see why some might think it a bonus.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

We need nuclear power rockets yesterday

Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!

Umm...I don't know if you're being intentionally ignorant in an attempt at humor or just uninformed, but nuclear rocket designs generally call for them to be used only in space. Furthermore, spewing ionizing radiation into the air isn't remotely harmful unless something organic is being struck by said radiation. It's not like it hurts the air molecules.

There was a Cold War project to build a nuclear-powered bomber. They constructed the actual engine and it worked. Yes, it was hideously dangerous to be behind the engine while it was operating but it didn't spew permanent stuff like fallout or anything. Unless you were within range of the radiation while it was operating, it had no permanent effects on anything. The ultimately scrapped the project though due to weight (it had to have shielding for the crew), cost, and the fact that good old fashioned jet engines did most jobs quite well and ICBM's did whatever the bombers couldn't do.

Yes, I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout. None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?

Deep ocean habitats, along with the other examples like Arctic habitats, aren't readily done not because it's a technological challenge but for other much more practical reasons. For example, there is no pressing need for us to inhabit such extreme climates because we have much more habitable ones in plentiful supply right next door. Further, such climates are not only physically difficult but they're psychologically inhospitable in that you can't find too many people with a compelling desire to live in such conditions. The only reason we have such habitats right now is for scientific research and maybe a few economically interesting ones (undersea oil exploration, for example, which is something that's been dabbled in over the decades).

None of this does anything to dispute the OP's point, namely that these are already solved technological problems. Unlike your "stroll on the sun" comment, there's nothing required engineering-wise which is stopping us from doing it tomorrow. The fact that we don't doesn't imply we can't or won't. Should a sudden compelling reason come up -- discovery of valuable resources which are economically recoverable, for example -- you'd find people and firms lined up to make it happen.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.

Why be so short-sighted and ignore the obvious solution? You don't start with stone axes on Mars and build your industrial society from there. You take some of your technology with you when you go. Yes, it's fantastically expensive to move mass from Earth to Mars (hence my earlier comment on why the Moon is a better initial target) but it's still less expensive than starting from scratch. And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive. But, like all things with cost/benefit equations, when there's a compelling reason to do it (either political, economic, or military) it will get done. You act like it's impossible because the gear isn't there waiting on us already.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

What? No Christina Hendricks? Who cares if she's batshit crazy when she has curves like that...and a redhead to boot!

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I'll give you a hint, the rocket you would need to change the orbit of a belt asteroid would contain more energy than you would achieve from hitting a city with it.

You, sir, get a fail in orbital mechanics. With gravitational assists and a long-running ion drive, you can get some rocks up to a very impressive speed, especially since everything in the belt (presumably your source of asteroids) is "downhill" in the gravity well direction of Earth. You don't need a very big rock, you just need it to go very, very fast. A rock the size of a bus would do quite nicely if you accelerated it to a few times orbital velocity.

Granted, such a thing would be immensely expensive and take years to plan, build, not to mention the many months or years of trajectory to build up speed. And hitting a specific target would be difficult given the Earth is both spinning and orbiting the sun during your whole "speed this rock up" phase years in advance. But it's all very doable even with current tech. It's just cheaper to use good old fashioned bombs or nukes.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

It's not like it hurts the air molecules.

You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86 When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.

I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.

First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.

None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.

They were considered seriously enough to get off the drawing board and into the spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere phase.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive.

I don't think you realize how incredibly large and heavy this stuff is, compared to the spidery save-every-gram stuff that we can launch into space.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Morena Baccarin has all the necessary curves.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Too far, and simply not worth the trouble.

There are genuine and quite expensive difficulties, certainly. Please note that this is a quite different claim than "Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life."

The difference has reminded me of the very, very old joke described at http://quoteinvestigator.com/2.... The situation is somewhat reversed: instead of establishing that we'd "sleep with another world" if paid millions of dollars, and now haggling over whether we'd do it for $5, you're saying that "it would cost too much to sleep on another world". But how low would the price have to be to allocate the budget to pursue this?

For example, there are potentially very profitable reasons to establish bases near Saturn. If and as space industry grows, water is an expensive commodity to ship to orbit: Most hydrogen and oxygen in modern spacecraft are used as rocket propellant, unrecoverable for use in space industry.Hydrogen is relatively easy to gather from solar wind, but oxygen becomes a commodity for both life support and energy supplies. The icy rings of Saturn are a _tremendous_ source of solar sail portable water. It takes long-term investment to harvest them, and careful management to deliver them safely and usefully to Earth orbit space industries. But in the long terms of space exploration, it could indeed be profitable to have stable, regularly harvested water deliveries from the moons of Saturn. And a stable base on a moon like Enceladus could provide tremendous scientific research benefit on possible water based life there, and also serve as a stable navigation, communications, and repair center. And with a whole local moon for material resources, one much less susceptible to orbital perturbations than a ship or space station, it could be an invaluable location for stored or emergency resources.

I'm not suggesting this is the best option or best project to pursue. But it's precisely the kind of speculative engineering and multi-purpose mission planning that NASA should be considering for longer term projects.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

There is a tremendous difference between "habitable by human life across an entire surface", which is what you seem to be describing, and "the environment and resources that we need to sustain life". I did mention the possibility of native life, given the existence of the tube worms that live near Earth's underseas volcanos, harvesting energy and chemicals from the volcanic vents, it seems quite possible that there may be life on extreme worlds that have energy and chemistry enough to provide liquid water.

Iron? That's a key for hemoglobin for many oxygen based life forms, but you and I would have a difficult time extracting it from water, rock, or even iron ore. We consume other life forms that have already concentrated energy and minerals and vitamins for us. Oxygen? Abundant oxygen on Earth apparently started when photosynthesis in plants started generating it, life from before that change was _poisoned_ by high oxygen levels. Sodium and calcium? Those are ions concentrated in Earth's oceans by the distillation of rain on land, bringing those salts to the ocean, then evaporating. It would be fascinating to examine their concentrations of those in other world's exposed or internal oceans and learn what other processes affect water chemistry there. How much do you need for life, if any?

The point is that nature does not "prepare the ideal chemical environment" and life appears automatically to take advantage of it. It seems that life starts from quite limited forms and capabilities, capabilities quite limited by local resources, and takes advantage of what it finds, to its own benefit. Over time it can profoundly alter the environment. Then other life forms can develop over time to take advantage of _that_ environment, and eventually you can get quite an active and sophisticated ecosystem built on many layers of consumption and modification of the local environment. It would be fascinating, and I think very educational, to see what other approaches might have already worked.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[slashping]

But how low would the price have to be to allocate the budget to pursue this?

Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit, so the possible access to water near Saturn is useless.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?

Where, in this thread, did that ever come up? I became concerned about your statement quoted below.

> Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.

You're adding a new goal, namely to Independently sustain human life on another planet. That is a quite distinct topic than whether life can exist there, which you raised, and whether it's worth going there, which is what justifies NASA budgets and space exploration as a whole. I'm afraid that requirement may have that seemed quite obvious to you but wasn't in the actual questions or any published spec. Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation. There are often tools, technologies, and critical trade goods not immediately available in the colonies until they can build up the resources to produce them locally. And ecological disasters are common in distant colonies, even those with the advantage of a compatible biology such as European colonies in Australia and the Americas. One should expect disasters: I don''t believe anyone has said it would be risk free or easy. But that kind of colonization is a different question than whether it's worth establishing a base there.

I'm also afraid that this is extremely common in technological consulting or partnership. A project is proposed and bids accepted, or refused, on the basis of goals that are not made apparent in the published proposal. These goals may have seemed intrinsically obvious to the person who originally suggested the project, but need not be apparent to people paying for, or bidding on, the project. In other cases, the earlier, published goals are rejected by latecomers on the basis of _their_ assumed goals, which they've often failed to explicitly state and which no one involved in specifying or doing the work was part of the project. And the project can be poisoned by concerns or objections about these other goals, which were _never agreed on as part of the original project_. I'm concerned that this is what you're doing.

In real work, that's the point that it's vital to keep the original specifications in hand, and get changes written _explicitly_ so they can be billed for, and so that the project goalposts and expectations don't get moved beyond what anyone can or should provide. Very, very occasionally a new goal is added that actually makes the whole project much easier and saves everyone time and money. But I don't see that here.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Depends on what you get out of it. I don't think we'll ever have a profitable space industry outside Earth orbit,

Even Earth orbit stations need water and solid raw material. SpaceX is breaking the $1000/pound price barrier. But if the price for asteroid or planetary ring water farming gets low enough, particularly using cheap solar sails to navigate them, the difficulty might well be justified by the savings. I look forward to finding out over the next few decades.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

Where, in this thread, did that ever come up?

The whole point of "colonize other planets" is to escape reliance on this polluted, over-crowded, might-be-made-uninhabitable-by-an-asteroid Earth.

Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation.

I'm not sure you quite understand how remote that Europa -- and even Mars -- is, how little (both in weight and volume) rockets can carry, and how much stuff that a high tech society needs.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Coren22]

It's just cheaper to use good old fashioned bombs or nukes.

You just reiterated what I said. That is exactly what I was saying, it makes no sense as a weapon to hit a enemy country, it costs too much, and has no accuracy. The amount of energy you would need to put into the asteroid wouldn't be worth it.

Orbital bombardment is great against a whole planet, but targeting a strike against only your enemy is unlikely to be effective.

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Salgak1]

Any of the above ? I'll be in my bunk. . .

Re:Money will return once China lands on the moon

[Nutria]

One female I won't be sleeping with is Vera.

Not in the cards.

[Tablizer]

Americans are just not in the mood to pay for humans on Mars, unless somebody finds a cheapo way to pull it off.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Mike Frett]

Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody. Just imagine if we spin all that into a positive and put our efforts, instead, on the cosmos.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Maritz]

You don't need it to be cheap, you just need there to be brown people there that you don't like.

Re:Not in the cards.

[Nunya666]

Yeah but we are in the mood to drop bombs on children and pay taxes to spy on everybody.

No, we're not.

Power-hungry government morons do that. We peons have no choice in the matter.

Technically, we could replace those morons with someone else. But the current presidential race proves that our only choices are either morons or liars.

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[Weirsbaski]

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two...

Re:"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ?

[yodleboy]

"No Vision, No Plan, No Budget" ? "You know, that third one might be the cause of the first two..."

You know the first two might be the cause of the third... NASA publicity would have us all believe that a major Mars mission is just a small step up in difficulty from landing on the Moon, despite the fact that most of that Apollo expertise is aging and dying AND the fact that NASA hasn't done squat outside of LEO in 40 years (manned flight, of course). Nevermind ROI, people just want to believe that the money won't go into a black hole for 20 years and culminate with a one way publicity stunt.

I don't think there's a lot of confidence among the general public that NASA could actually pull something off at ANY budget.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[locopuyo]

Only because those damn environmentalists won't let us build a pipeline to mars.

Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[fred911]

What more could one expect taking guidance from the commander-in-chief.

Re:Minority Vision, Deceitful Plan, Wasted Budget

[currently_awake]

NASA's current plan is to spread the Pork around the USA so Merican Congress Critters get re-elected.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Nutria]

It's widely believed

Weasel words.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Nutria]

if Mars were made of solid oil

Then it would be Evil Saturated Fat, and former Mayor Bloomberg would try and get it quarantined!!

Wait, NASA has a space policy?

[zioncat]

I thought its priority was muslim outreach with bit of "earth science" on the side.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[wonkey_monkey]

It's widely believed Mars once had life.

Is it? Widely hoped, perhaps, but I wouldn't even say it's widely suspected, let alone believed.

Sad state of affairs and how we got here

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the Apollo program was already winding down. NASA had purchased the final Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft. As much as President Johnson supported NASA, he valued his Vietnam war and his "Great Society" programs, including his "War on poverty" even more.

When Nixon walked into the oval office, he inherited the space program of JFK, the man he believed had cheated him out of the White House in the 1960 election. Every success of the program that landed a man on the moon in Nixon's time was attributed to JFK and LBJ, and this probably made the deeply flawed man even more insecure. The Apollo13 incident occurred on his watch and his administration was certain that it would be blamed for any fatalities, so they wanted NASA to stop the missions that went to places where rescue was not possible. The number of moon landings was cut on top of the Johnson cuts and hardware was re-purposed for safer Earth-orbit uses like Skylab and Nixon's Apollo-Soyuz. Nixon approved the space shuttle program but selected the least-expensive-to-develop option (reusable orbiter on the side of the stack, boosted by 2 SRBs). There were designs that would have been cheaper and safer to OPERATE, but cost more to develop including one that flew inline atop a Saturn V 1st stage, one that flew mated to the side of a manned fully-reusable flyback booster, and others - but as a typical politician he picked the one that would look best on the books during his time in office.

Ford ignored NASA. He was focused on the post Watergate mess. With NASA in an R&D and building phase, there was nothing there to provide him with the photo-ops that all politicians crave, and as a congressman from michigan with barely enough IQ points to play football and who'd been appointed VP (rather than being elected) and then elevated to President (again, without an election) he lacked any sort of mandate to do anything.

Carter ignored NASA. He inherited a program with no available spacecraft, and poor non-human-rated Launch Vehicles and with no desire to do anything with NASA he just neglected it. NASA just used the Carter years to quietly push ahead with the money congress provided to do the development of the shuttles.

Reagan loved NASA, embraced the Shuttle program including showing up at Edwards to welcome one of the early missions home. He called for a winged single-stage-to-orbit "national aerospace plane" to be developed to eventually replace the shuttles, called for a permanent American space station (which he named "Freedom") and ordered NASA to plan to eventually transition shuttles to commercial service like an airline with private sector operators. When Challenger exploded, he made sure the congress provided the funds to build a replacement orbiter. Unfortunately, with political problems in his last two years, his attention was elsewhere and he lacked the political power to get his higher priority items funded and still have the clout for the NASA items. The Space station and NASP were both funded, but not to the levels needed. Both survived his administration, but not with much inertia.

Bush41 had been involved with NASA during the Reagan years (it's customary for the VP to be involved with NASA) but seemed tepid. He is famous for saying that he just did not get "the vision thing". On the 20th anniversary of the moon landing he announced a "Space Exploration Initiative" to return to the moon, then move on to Mars, but rather than doing it on a pile of new money like Apollo, he proposed a pay-as-you-go pace .... then he never funded it, and he was booted out of office after only one term. in the middle of his one term, Bush appointed Norm Augustine to run a committee, which recommended ending human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Clinton seems to have taken no real interest in NASA (presumably it did not help anyone but Astronauts "get the chicks", so it was of little use (yes, I'm joking here)) but his VP Gore did appear genuinely interest

Soo

[Kartu]

Well, with major program put on shelves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I don't really know whom to blame, Obama, for sparing money on it (NASA's budget is roughly 18 billion $, which is about 0.5% of the federal budget) and effectively stopping the program, or NASA, for Constelation program being behind schedule and much more costly than planned.

Probably more of NASA's fault.

Anyway, as far as I get the recommendation of the committee::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

goes, the plan is to skip the Moon (as 2020 is not achievable), invest into heavy rocketry (Ares V?) for which Obama promised to slap 6 billion $ and get to Mars by 2030.

Re:Soo

[NormalVisual]

I don't think there's really any single person to blame. Given that the kind of research needed to do achieve kind of substantial manned space flight objectives outside of LEO takes many years, NASA is always going to be hamstrung by the changing winds of political support. As a few have mentioned, the Apollo program owes a lot of its success to the fact that Kennedy died in an extremely public and sympathetic manner, and had already lost most of its political support even before Armstrong set foot on the Moon.

Any space initiative that can't be achieved in four, possibly eight years is going to have a hard road ahead.

Neither affordable nor sustainable..

[sTERNKERN]

It's kinda like a war, isn't it? Oh wait.. that is affordable and sustainable. /sarcarsm

Base politicking is no substitute for vision.

[Bearhouse]

No vision? Well, arguably NASA has served its purpose; founded to "beat the Commies" after Sputnik "terrorized" the USA by orbiting over it, and then the Sovs. got the first human in orbit, NASA was successful in beating them to the moon. With a bit of help from some ex-nazi scientists and engineers...
An amazing achievement, but it was always a "because it's there" kind of thing.
Kennedy's remarkable "we choose to go to the moon" speech made no mention of establishing permanent moon colonies; that was never the vision.

So after that box was ticked, and the Space Shuttle disaster, NASA pretty much drifted into a quagmire of political infighting and over-communication.
Sad really.

Maybe stop stealing from the cookie jar....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is my understanding that NASA is essentially denied the ability to make any money off of its innovations. Maybe if they where allowed to do that they would have been able to supplement a decent part of their own budget over these past decades.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Maritz]

Space is mostly empty.

Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[duckintheface]

Mike Griffin has complained about NASA priorities ever since he was fired in 2009 and stopped setting the priorities. You may remember the public campaign he and his wife waged to keep his government job. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2845... And he hopes a new incoming President will re-appoint him as NASA head.

  Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. This may be an engineering objective (it's fun to build cool stuff) but it is not a top scientific objective. NASA is planning for exploration and eventual colonization of Mars. The truth is that it is astronomically (pun intended) expensive to put humans in such a hostile environment as space. There is really only one goal that makes such expenditures worthwhile. That is the establishment of a permanent self-sustaining human colony off the Earth. The rest, including further exploration of the Moon, can be better carried out by AI or remote controlled robotic vehicles.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[NotDrWho]

Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[dyslexicbunny]

Griffin wants to go back to the expensive paradigm of sending humans to the surface of the moon. ... NASA is planning for exploration and eventual colonization of Mars. The truth is that it is astronomically (pun intended) expensive to put humans in such a hostile environment as space.

It's like you need a testbed environment for those technologies to go to Mars. Something that represents the harshness of going to Mars but we'd like to not have our astronauts die so if something happens, getting home would somewhat quicker. Something relatively close seems like a great idea. Oh? They thought of that? Interesting!

In pursuit of these goals, the Vision called for the space program to complete the International Space Station by 2010; retire the Space Shuttle by 2010; develop a new Crew Exploration Vehicle (later renamed Orion) by 2008, and conduct its first human spaceflight mission by 2014; explore the Moon with robotic spacecraft missions by 2008 and crewed missions by 2020, and use lunar exploration to develop and test new approaches and technologies useful for supporting sustained exploration of Mars and beyond; explore Mars and other destinations with robotic and crewed missions; pursue commercial transportation to support the International Space Station and missions beyond low Earth orbit.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Now I hated the 2004 NASA plan because it basically gutted Aeronautics money and I was doing technology forecasting for Aero as an undergrad but the plan wasn't inherently bad. And compared to what the current plans are, it was certainly far better. It honestly doesn't matter as there seems to be no love for NASA or manned space anymore in DC and the purse strings are largely tightened. I think if you want to do exciting space work, go to China. They give a damn.

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[prisoner-of-enigma]

There is really only one goal that makes such expenditures worthwhile. That is the establishment of a permanent self-sustaining human colony off the Earth.

Not to be pithy, but "the moon" qualifies as "off Earth" you know. Yes, it's not as sexy as Mars, but it's much closer. Much easier to get to and support a manned colony there than Mars. That equates to cheaper. And therefore all this makes the moon a better target assuming your "one goal" is really that. What makes Mars a better target for colonization? It's atmosphere is so thin there's little difference between it and vacuum as far as survival goes. There's water on both the moon and Mars. Neither body has a substantial magnetic field so no advantage there. What's the real compelling case to colonize Mars before the moon?

Scientists will argue there's little to be done on the moon of value compared to places like Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. I agree. But that's not what was stated. Pure science can be done much cheaper and safer with probes, at least to begin with. Colonization requires meat sacks and their attendant sources of food, water, and atmosphere.

Re: Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[a.swage]

Nasa had chance in 1992year with stardrive Engineering company to built a fleet of 10 warp dimmensioal drive saucers in Quantum mechanics physics ! Nasa had 6 engineers come download to penn yan new york to do all the testing on warp dimmensional drive saucer and all testing went well until we had explain in full great detail for 4 hours how computer navagation and secondary computer for warp dimmensioal drive and how it works in all in Quantum mechanics physics and advanced mathamatical principals and adanced equations in warp dimmensionald drive in electromagnetic harmonics resendence ! The 6 nasa engineers were totally lost for under Quantum mechanic physics in mathamatical terms ! Nasa tested the saucer 100 miles and back of total 200 miles with their stopwatches 90 seconds in 200 miles around trip ! The,saucer can across galaxys and multi dimmensional univeses in warp dimmensional bubbles in seconds !

Re:Mike Griffen always has harsh words.

[lsatenstein]

Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.It could just mean that he's finally free to say what he should have been saying when he was director.

Do we really need to go to Mars, now that we know how to go to the moon. What minerals have been returned, or hotels constructed for long term stay.
And then the question is: "Can we use the moon as a garbage dump?"

The only benefit of moon flights is the development of technology.

P & S earthquake waves, remember?

[kefalonia]

wow, this is super interesting.

iff it proves to be the case that the same event causes G.W. & G.R.B observations and there is a relationship that connects the speed of the two arrivals,
like in an earthquake's P&S waves, this is a whole new tool to trace events in the cosmos, as they occur. Combining with an extra handful of observations points,
it would be possible to easily find the source point via triangulation, at distances which are mind-glowing (pun intended!). Good luck with this - literally!

Re:Mike Griffen has always had a hard-on for Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a class from him in the 90s (space vehicle guidance and nav). Final exam: plan a trip to Mars. It's no secret he really, really wants a Mars mission. I haven't seen him since '95 or so, but I wouldn't doubt that, with all this talk of Mars, he would really, really like to be in the drivers seat.

IMHO he's very smart, but in an assholish way. Sort of the opposite of NDT's smart but very affable public persona.

Re:"NO BUDGET"????

[Thud457]

Steely Eyed Missile Man

Well there's your problem...
We just need another program that the military can use as a stalking horse for their priorities.

Of course, that didn't work out too well with v2.0 (the Shuttle program)...

Well for a certain value of "no vision".

[hey!]

In this case "no vision for putting a manned mission on Mars in the foreseeable future."

I know "politics" is a dirty word for most nerds, but if you want to spend the hundred billion taxpayer dollars that the optimists think it'll take to mount a manned Mars mission you should at least do them the courtesy of convincing them it's a the best use of their space science money.

"I want to go to Mars at any cost," isn't a vision. Taking a few half-assed first steps toward Mars in the hope that future admistrators will be forced to go down that path because that's all he's got after you've starved Earth and planetary sciences programs into insignificance -- well that's not much of a plan in my book.

Re:No one has harsh words for this haiku

[lhowaf]

I wonder how many people get the cultural reference (to Burma Shave, not faggotry).

Re:I disagree

[NotDrWho]

They're even better in Gravity, the movie that taught us all that NASA still has a shuttle program--and not just any shuttles, mind you, but kick-ass super-shuttles that can easily travel between Hubble and ISS.

Cable channels need content...

[oh_my_080980980]

And still nobody would watch. Just because some network carries it, doesn't mean they have an audience...

Re:Obama a dreamer, not a doer

[oh_my_080980980]

Go back to watching Fox New moron. George W's fetish war with Iraq gave rise to ISIS. Given the long occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, most American tired of sending ground troops back to Iraq to clean up W's mess.

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[oh_my_080980980]

Maybe if we didn't have two pay for two wars, two recessions, crumbing infrastructure and tax cuts by W, we'd have the money for Mars...

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[slashdot_commentator]

Two recessions? I just remember a really long one that's lasted most of his administration.

Re:No air, no reason, so sorry

[Coren22]

I'm so glad I live in the EU where we don't invade countries, don't cause global warming, don't spy on our citizens, and aren't dumb and fat.

Are you sure about that? Every single thing you mention is actually wrong.

We don't need NASA

[wad4ever]

NASA broke the ground for us, but their day is over. Nobody has gone past near-earth orbit in 40 years. Let's not relegate our space exploration to a risk-averse government bureaucracy, paid for by taxes. Elon has the right idea.

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[LynnwoodRooster]

Two wars became 3. Two recessions became one long, extended one (with record numbers out of the workforce because of a lack of jobs). And our debt still skyrockets - nearly $1 trillion in the last 12 months. Yep - no vision, no plan, no budget (remember the first 4 years of the Obama Administration, and the complete LACK of a Federal budget, just continuing resolutions by Reid and Pelosi and Obama?)

Re: Not True

[chopshopstore]

Troll

Re:No vision, No plan, No budget

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that was because of a certain right wing party refusing to do anything, and blame it on Obama.

Moron.