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President Trump Is Sending NASA Back To The Moon (npr.org)
President Trump has formally told NASA to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon. From a report: "The directive I'm signing today will refocus America's space program on human exploration and discovery," he said. Standing at the president's side as he signed "Space Policy Directive 1" on Monday was Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the last two humans to ever walk on the moon, in a mission that took place 45 years ago this week. Since that time, no human has ventured out beyond low-Earth orbit. NASA doesn't even have its own space vehicle, having retired the space shuttles in 2011. Americans currently ride up to the international space station in Russian capsules, though private space taxis are expected to start ferrying them up as soon as next year.
So with his proposed cut to NASA of 30% how exactly does he expect to fund ANY human space travel? They can barely fund robotic exploration at the current funding levels.
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He's going to get Mexico to pay for it!
and it's going to be YUGE!
Or is this a repeat of the 'public health emergency' (as compared to a 'national emergency', which would've brought actual money instead of the $57,000 in the public health emergency fund) bullshit?
from the North Korean strike is on the moon. The dark side of the moon to be specific, where all the cheese is.
Just step into this NASA Force 1 capsule here, Mr. President.
(Well it's not a crime to dream is it?)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Just send them to the moon!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Congress would have to authorize a yuge increase in the NASA budget. He and Moore are perfect for each other, Moore wants to roll back the amendments.
Americans currently ride up to the international space station in Russian capsules
I keep wondering why this is the case. Don't we have the technology to ferry folks to the ISS? I guess we do but why do we rely on the Russians?
Penny for NASA... join it and help out. maybe we can get off this shit rock.
"The Democrats had that moonshot thing last year and that played well. How about we literally shoot people at the moon? That ought to be good!"
Saying something is not the same as doing.
If the president wants NASA to send men to the moon, stop signing directives and sign a check instead.
Also, veto the tax plan (if it ever reaches your desk) which would increase the cost of graduate studies that produce that sorts of scientists and engineers who put people on the moon.
There is real value in the resources of our moon https://www.space.com/28189-mo.... Staking a claim to those resources could be a bargaining chip even if there is no real value extracted. It isn't hard to see the value. For example if there was an island in the middle of the pacific that no government had laid claim to and was later found to contain 10 billion units of natural resources but would take 1 billion units of resources to extract. Anyone with the capacity to start the process of investigation or extraction would. Others with less resources may want to partner up or even try to pay off "the first to market." There has been increased interest from Russia and China to go to the moon. Industrial races can also be good for economies as well as uniting a divided populous. Even if the Trump administration doesn't actually back NASA monetarily they may have a lot to gain by lip service alone.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
We don't need to be shooting people through space in tin cans.
At this point we have three options.
1. Continue pissing in the wind with half funded programs, then cancelling them partway through.
2. Go Full Robotic.
3. Build an for real spaceship.
I vote #3
A For Real Spaceship is...
1. Multi megawatt reactor for power.
2. Magnetic shielding.
3. Rotating living and working section for artificial gravity
4. Complete closed loop environmental system.
5. Non-chemical engines.
I would also throw in a descent and ascent module, but they can be added later since they will required chemical rockets regardless.
Every one of these required technologies (except 3...a NASA engineer told me they've done it already) would spur innovation on the same level as the Apollo program. When complete, we could then jump in and go where we want...among the moon and Mars at least.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Outer Space Treaty says no one may claim the moon, similar to how all claims in Antarctica are currently suspended.
Did you know after all these years, 'Outer Space' is still not defined? Lots of conventions and meetings expensed, however!
Space is fake. The Earth is flat.
Until there is an actual, specific, and funded plan, all Trump is doing is shooting his mouth off again.
Why doesn't he send all the SJWs to the moon instead? Then they can live there and tell each other they're not being liberal enough. That'd be a guaranteed re-election next term.
Good luck getting them to move to the moon when they live in your head rent-free.
The Alabama special US Senate election is tomorrow. Must be a coincidence.
Sigh. Just a meaningless photo op, and a standard Trump boastful proclamation.
We aren't just going to the Moon, we are going to Mars and "many worlds beyond"!
There is no actual plan, or action involved here. No funding for the big words.
BTW - how is GHW Bush's Space Exploration Initiative going? Are we on Mars yet?
This announcement at least had some actual plans associated with it:
Ah, remember when we accomplished those national milestones?
No?
Of course not a single one of these actually got any funding to even begin actual work on the component of the plan.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
"The directive I'm signing today will refocus America's space program...PAUSE....
",Rocket Man!,"...
"(cough) on human exploration and discovery".
(crowd cheers).
By the looks of your post, you were born on 2017-12-10
Nah, we should send all you rugged individualists, and you can show us just how wonderful a Randian paradise is.
Most of NASAs is eaten up by paychecks. Cut the number of admin people by 2/3rd and voila you have a enough budget surplus for all manner of space missions.
Better yet. Cut welfare/social spending at the Federal level by 1% and you can add another $23Billion dollars to NASA's anemic $17B budget.
At least he's not sending people to The Games.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
JKF, 12-Sep-1962:
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ...
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
We choose to go to the Moon!
Trump, 11-Dec-2017:
The directive I’m signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery. It marks an important step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps, someday, to many worlds beyond. This directive will ensure America’s space program once again leads and inspires all of humanity.
Beyond the basics, Kennedy had to request that Congress provide the funds and, as such, had to play preacher, cheerleader and salesman to make it happen. Trump seems less sensitive to the intricacies of politics, back-scratching and making deals; more of "I'm own this company. Do what I say".
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
We need to use the moon to build ships that can actually operate in space, that manufacturing needs to be done in a low gravity environment. China is focusing on the moon because they understand the value in mining the moon + asteroids in near earth orbit. This rush to Mars is a waste of time.
Just, Why?
There's nothing on the moon of value, and nothing to be gained from redeveloping the technologies for going there. Helium-3 is said to be in abundance - but for the hundreds of billions of dollars it'll take to get the first kilogram back to earth (not including the money necessary to build the fusion reactors to use it) we could cover Arizona in solar cells and power North America.
There are likely the same kinds of rare metals on the Moon as on Earth - without, of course, the problem of 200,000 years of humankind picking up all the obvious bits of pretty gold. Even so, the value of the rare metals is mostly artificial - having 10,000 tons of gold dropped on Earth won't enable anything that we can't do today with the gold we already have.
So, the only explanation is that this is a dick measuring contest. Our tall, thick rocket standing erect on the pad is more manly than your short skinny rocket. And, frankly, I don't want to pay for that.
And the worms ate into his brain.
You have the cognitive capacity of a potato.
When Obama was President, 'The Games' involved unmanned drones for the most part.
Sail past Gibraltar and you fall off the edge of the world or get eaten by monsters. Known fact. Nicola Tesla never existed. Fake news.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I'm a bit dry at the moment... I know I had a can of Instant Froth around here somewhere...
Much better... Now then...
It's not a question of being "anti-science" or not, but more the question of "why?"
In the 1960s, landing on the moon was a huge accomplishment. We conducted important science, established permanent lunar installations of ongoing significance, and it paved the way for our current space-based experiments on board the ISS. Even today, there is a long list (that I've seen before, but can't find at the moment) of experiments that we want to put on the moon.
However, one crucially-important thing has changed between 1969 and today: robotics. We can send a robot to the moon and call it disposable, rather than have to also send fuel for the return trip home, supplies to sustain life, and a pressurized vessel to contain it all while the astronauts are up there. There's a reason the Apollo program required the largest, heaviest, and most-powerful rocket ever flown: Putting mass into space is exponentially expensive. Each Apollo mission cost (on average) about four times as much as the whole Mars Science Laboratory program.
By sending robots to the moon (and Mars, and elsewhere), we can continue to reap the scientific benefits without literally burning American tax dollars and risking American astronaut lives. Once there, the robots can last for much longer than a human, running experiments until they fall apart... and then just a bit more. Frankly, robots are superior explorers to humans in just about every way except for three.
First, robots aren't as adaptable as humans, though they are getting better. Space-bound rovers are designed with adaptability in mind, and the engineers controlling them from Earth are brilliant at remote repair and alternative uses, but a rover won't likely be able to recover from an accidental roll down a hill, even if the damage is minimal.
Second, robots are still limited in their capability. We can't just drop down a new camera and say "here, use this." There has been some work into making reconfigurable robots that could upgrade themselves, but ultimately it's still just cheaper and easier to send a new set of wheels with the new camera.
Finally, robots just don't make good humans. Humans are fragile and sensitive, and we get so upset when one is damaged and is... decommissioned. If the goal is for humans to leave Earth and look towards colonizing other planets, we still have a lot of questions to answer about how to keep those people safe and healthy. That's why we have the ISS. There are a lot of ongoing experiments running on board the ISS, and that's satisfying our current science needs (and exhausting what little budget we have).
In summary, that's why we are where we are today. We use the relatively-nearby ISS to run human-based experiments, and send expendable robots to further places, maximizing the scientific knowledge gain while minimizing the expense of rockets, engineering, and lives. As much fun as it would be to fling more humans at that floating gray target for the sake of patriotic glory, it really doesn't contribute much to mankind's future. We've already taken the giant leap that was beneficial in 1969, by starting extraterrestrial exploration. The next one will be a permanent colony, but we're not quite ready for that yet, regardless of which president wants it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Again.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Hey, I agreed with that. And him killing bin Laden.
As Deng Xiaoping observed "Who cares if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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At the most generous, social programs and welfare are ~$1.4B This includes medicaid, medicare, and welfare. If you include social security (a fully funded and currently net profitable expense), you get to your $23B number, but that's... disingenuous at best.
Alternatively, shift 1% of our military budget into NASA and get $60B
How can he be sure the moon is actually there? I mean, all Trump has is the word of scientists! There are Americans here who believe the Earth is flat and what we experience as gravity is caused by the Earth constantly accelerating through space! Don't we need to hear all sides of this debate?
We can't even trust those scientists to figure out if the Earth is warming up or not! How can we trust them to stick God-loving Americans on the front of a rocket, shoot them into space, and land them on the @#$% moon?
bears on the planet agreed that it would be a good idea to send Mr. Trump to the moon.
Polar bears agreed 98.6 % in fact.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The treaty. You can position conventional weapons above the moon, no problem. Kinetic and chemical explosions work really well - birdshot is deadly in space! And since the treaty states that a "State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object", simply cover the area of the moon you wish to control with a microns-thin film of Mylar or other material. No one else can control/move it, and you have just claimed your chunk of the moon - without making any explicit claim.
The next president will cancel the moon initiative and tell NASA to go back to Mars.
The one after that will cancel the Mars initiative and tell NASA to build a Legrangian space station.
The one after that will cancel the station and tell NASA to go to the moon.
MOOOOO! MOOOOO! You flat earth cows! You all go MOOOOO!
Good points, unfortunately, they are irrelevant to the issue.
Other countries have announced that they are headed to the Moon. Déjà-moon. We went through this back in Kennedy's administration.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress but mining and space launches are money-makers.
Currently, there are international treaties that declare the Moon property of everyone.
Like the Paris Agreement, treaties are not binding.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Trump isn't doing this for science. He's doing it for applause. He doesn't have the ability or interest to consider any of the points that you made.
I don't respond to AC's.
Somebody on FOX reported that the moon landings were faked; so now Trump doesn't believe they happened and thinks really landing a man on the moon will cement his place in history.
#DeleteChrome
Otherwise they might observe global happening back on Earth!
So he thinks he can anulate all 'laws' of Obama.
So he thinks no one is anulating his 'laws'.
So bright!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
NASA is sending President trump back to the moon.
Killjoy.
Good points, unfortunately, they are irrelevant to the issue.
Other countries have announced that they are headed to the Moon. Déjà-moon. We went through this back in Kennedy's administration.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress but mining and space launches are money-makers.
Currently, there are international treaties that declare the Moon property of everyone.
Like the Paris Agreement, treaties are not binding.
Such agreements are nonsense anyway as the participants didn't have any claim to the moon to start with. The first people to actually settle on the moon will have a pretty good moral claim to the land that they settle, regardless of what major governments and organisations like the united nations have to say about it.
With better GCI these days, we should end up with some footage that at least looks realistic, perhaps they could add some little touches like dust blasting out when the rocket engines fire on the dusty surface, just the small things will really help to sell the story.
you have to have gone first before you can go back!
NERVA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
Diameter: 10.55 meters (34.6 ft)
Length: 43.69 meters (143.3 ft)
Mass empty: 34,019 kilograms (74,999 lb)
Mass full: 178,321 kilograms (393,131 lb)
Thrust (vacuum): 333.6 kN (75,000 lbf)
ISP (vacuum): 850 seconds (8.3 km/s)
ISP (sea level): 380 seconds (3.7 km/s)
Burn Time: 1,200 s
Propellants: LH2
Engines: 1 Nerva-2
FFS, what kind of Slashdot reader complains when the President directs NASA to go to moon?
NASA budget cut -- They're getting $19 billion dollars next year. AMD had $4 billion in revenue last year. Juniper had $5 billion. Crunchbase tells me SpaceX has received $1.5 billion in total funding so far and does $4 billion in revenue. Who delivers more value for that money? And what exactly does NASA deliver for $19 billion _each year_?
NASA mission changes -- Which one of you works for a company that hasn't had a change in strategy in the past eight years? Put your hands up. Now keep them up if your company went bankrupt. That's what I thought.
Climate change -- Not an appropriate goal for the _Aeronautics and Space_ Administration. You have NOAA, the NSF, and all the universities researching climate change on the public's dime. Let NASA worry about space instead of your pet concern.
Hillary was an awful candidate. The Dems would have won if they ran Bernie, but DNC leadership decided they wanted to cram Hillary down everyone's throat. And they lost. And you were wrong. Embrace your cognitive dissonance and get over it.
So that's your thing. Find one simple mistake 6 not 60.
And then boldly claim the rest is orders of magnitude wrong, when they are all correct? Show us the 'orders of magnitude' errors in the other 2 numbers...
You should go to space, where everyone can appreciate your absence.
If your cat frequently accidentally killed everyone in your house and your neighbors' houses as collateral damage when killing a mouse, you might start caring.
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Really it hasn't changed that much in the space science field. The Soviets sent robotic rovers to the moon in the 60s and 70s.
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Do you really think the drones stopped flying the moment Trump got elected ?
If yes, then I have a bridge to sell you.
That's an insult to potatoes.
and convert it into a giant golf resort. The residual NASA budget will be used to cover the moon with gold - he'll be the greatest man on the moon EVER!
Cats don't care about collateral damage. They'd eat the whole mouse race if they could.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If NASA put the $4B/yr they currently spend on the SLS into a fixed contract to SpaceX to develop the BFR they could have a base on the moon within 10 years. It may be wishful thinking that the US would abandon SLS after all the money that has been sunk into it but eventually someone will notice that a lot of money is being spent on a system that can only launch every two years.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I want to send Trump to the moon.
If your cat frequently accidentally killed everyone in your house and your neighbors' houses as collateral damage when killing a mouse, you might start caring.
Where can I get such a cat? Or two?
Simple.
He's going to get Mexico to pay for it!
and it's going to be YUGE!
That is a nice idea and your president is free to go down south and ask them but something tells me that the closest he'll ever get to a Mexican funded trip to the moon is a phalanx of Mexicans mooning him with the words 'Ni un peso!' written in YUGE! letters across their backsides.
So you caught a typo as well B instead of T everyone knew it was meant to be T and he obviously used T in his calculations.
It's very obvious to a half inteligent person when you add the $900M from SS to make $2.3T and 1% of that is the $23B. And using your own numbers the answer is correct, so it was clearly just a typo.
So how the fuck is $23b off by a factor of 1000?
Are you claiming 1% of the total is $23Trillion, or is it $23Million? Because both those amounts are clearly absurd.
Musk explained it by extending the light of consciousness to other planets. A person can interact with the environment, experience it, like a robot cannot. You can send a robot for you to Hawaii but its not the same as you going there yourself. That however does bring up a another point though, mars sounds like a rather odd place to be, rather cold and nasty and with suffocating air, but I digress.
Musk probably has the most viable technologies to actually do it, since its one man with some money who wants to make this happen in his lifetime, rather than a large lumbering organizations like the government which tends to lose focus on the goal, run by committees were an individuals aspirations are subservant to an organizational morass, and was hamstrung by nonsensical congressional mandates etc.
*ring ring*
NASA: Hello this is NASA
Trump: Hey NASA I'm sending you back to the moon. Cool huh?
NASA: Oh, like back to the *moon* moon? Like the real moon? Well, you see, um, back in '69, haha, ya know, a funny thing...
Trump: Excuse me?
NASA: Oh um....sure! We'll get right on it sir! Thank you sir!
*click*
NASA: Quick! soneone fond out if Stanley Kubrick still alive!!!
Of course Trump is sending NASA back to the moon...the first landing was faked.
> be 1969
> fake moon landings
> fool entire world
> usa! usa!
> be 2017
> actually try to send humans to mmon
> crew dies horribly radiation death passing through van allen radiation belts
> ohshit.jpeg
> coverup.mpeg
> remeber that we have really good CGI these days
> fuck it, fake it again
> usa! usa!
Corporations still require the theoretical research that only government can fund before they can work to make it cheaper and better. SpaceX can't afford to research all the necessary tech required to make a Mars trip possible, as it's expensive, time consuming, and doesn't reliably produce short term gains. It'll be more like a joint venture if anything else.
Ask the aliens for continuing help,theyâ(TM)ve been coming here for thousands of years already,spend the money on POVERTY and CLEAN DRaiNakING WATER!
That should be add the $900B from SS to make $2.3T :)
See its an easy mistake to make.
Living on his own bubble, directing a "great future" while he's blind to the suffering of the people.
This will end poorly for #Freedumbs.
Yeah that was my impression of his announcement today - Kennedy's speech is one of the great aspirational speeches "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" is brilliant, something we all remember after we hear it, especially because it was actually done. Trumps speech today was just an old man mumbling.
Why is this shit even news ?
And, uh, the way back? Oh, the budget cut... Y'know, you'd need to haul that much fuel up there... But we'll send some food and oxygen from time to time, promised.
Twitter? No, I fear there's no twitter up there. Perhaps we send a bi-annual CD.
Well yes climate change is very import.... HEY LOOK A WILD GOOSE !!
(1) SpaceX is going to land somebody on the moon in the next couple of years anyway.
(2) President Trump will get NASA to give SpaceX some money. My wagers are:
40% on $100'000 or less
50% on a friendly promise but no actual money.
(3) Trump will point to whatever Musk does and proclaim "I did that".
Send the flat earth types & man made global warming types first.
Every president promises some "big space plan" to try to show that they have "Vision".
Doesn't mean shit unless Congress also provides funding.
At this point NASA should be like kickstarter, they determine a set of prioritized goals, and however much Congress puts into their accounts determines how many of those goals can be achieved. That would also show how pathetically low our funding commitment is to space science.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm surprised Trump hasn't claimed to have visited the edge of the flat earth.
I think his presidency has finally put to rest the idea that the president has some sort of inside knowledge about extra-terrestrial visits. No way he would have kept that quiet.
Cheap storage VM.
idiot Dolan finally doing some good and not just grabbing some alabaman pussy lol...
hit him on the head few more times and maybe he stays in Paris climate accord instead of setting the whole country on fire.
Can Trump take the first trip to the moon?
NASA Flight Control: "Oops. We didn't load enough fuel for the return flight."
Let's start by sending Trump.
You're saying the moon could be as wonderful and successful as Antarctica?
Whoa !!
Seriously, though, who is enforcing this? And if this policy would never work in the US or the EU, why would we ever want it in space?
Eject the space treaty into space I say.
You are right that robots can be used for exploration dramatically cheaper than humans.
To me though, there are fundamental limitations to robotic exploration that can't be ignored. Robots are truly fantastic at exploring what they are designed to explore, but they fall flat in a bunch of ways.
For example, on Mars we've discovered that dust-devils are a fairly common occurrence. It took 5 robotic missions to get an inkling of that, and we didn't get a picture of one until mission 7. We didn't see it because we didn't have motion-triggered imaging until the newest robots because we didn't expect motion. A human would have seen it, said "hey, check that out", and snapped a picture.
Terrain "feel" is another example. We look at rover images and motor driver current graphs to try to understand what kind of terrain the rover is crossing. A human can observe "It's squishy here".
Robots fall terribly flat when you compare distances. A human, even in an EVA suit, can cover kilometers in a day. Our best robots cover kilometers per year.
When they get where they are going, the robots are still limited. The MSL carried a rock sample in its grinder for weeks because it was stuck and wouldn't fall out into the instrument. A human could have tapped or scraped that out. This dexterity has other benefits too. It's been 40 years since we dropped our first robot on Mars, and we still don't have the ability to flip over a plate-sized rock or dig a hole more than an inch deep.
Last but not least is Inspiration: This is important even though it's touchy-feely. Robots don't inspire human dreams the way manned exploration does. Those dreams are important, and I can prove it. Tomorrow a recycled rocket carrying a recycled spacecraft is going to fly to the ISS because one guy was inspired by the Apollo program and he really wants to go to Mars. Rovers don't do that.
It truly baffles me why anyone pays attention to anything Trump says, much less debate it. It's all gibberish until there is some actual action.
These responses are typical for WHY us meat sacks will never venture too far into space beyond ISS anymore. This saddens me, fundamentally we are all explorers. Why do anything interesting anymore when we can just send a robot? Why climb mount everest? Why Jump out of a plane? Why surf, play sport, drink alcohol? when robots could potentially do this not only better, faster, longer but without loss of life?
Loss of life... That asteroid is out there and it has our names on it. Is that not a good enough reason than any to colonise "off-world"?
The Why is He3