Slashdot Mirror
US Eyes Robot Moon Missions as it Prepares For Astronauts' Return (reuters.com)
The United States wants to send robotic explorers to the moon as soon as next year as a preparatory step toward sending astronauts back there for the first time since 1972, a NASA official said on Monday. From a report: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning a series of lunar missions beginning next year aimed at developing the capacity for a return to the moon, said Cheryl Warner, a spokeswoman for NASA's Human Exploration Directorate. NASA will work with private companies, which have not yet been chosen, on the missions, Warner said in a phone interview. U.S. President Donald Trump in December signed a directive that he said would enable astronauts to return to the moon and eventually lead a mission to Mars. Last month he ordered the government to review regulations on commercial space flights.
Like holding SpaceX to a higher standard than NASA to hold them back?
NASA deserves to be embarrassed. They wasted all the years between Apollo and now.
Seriously, private space, esp SpaceX, but also BO, SNC, and BA, are all pushing to get to the moon ASAP. SX may actually be there with 100+ tonnes of cargo before 2022. If that happens, hopefully, it will put CONgress to shame for their throwing away our money on SLS.
As to these private landers, the best thing that can happen is for NASA to put several on the moon and then have them repeat the feat on Mars.
Finally, if Trump/GOP really want to help new space, they would quit arguing over ISS and simply do 2 private space habitats by attaching to ISS and then having NASA vet them before casting off. In addition, how about spinning off the American lab to the private space station? Once that is going, we can upgrade in the future. Perhaps buy a new larger module to add to the private space station, with loads of new science set-p.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"wasted" how? Space is empty. It's a deadly vacuum. Send cameras on wheels. There's nothing there for people.
Haha. Sure. We're going to go back "again"
Maybe NASA will have more luck with robots. With the sophistication of modern forensic technology, there's no way they'll be able to pull off another Hollywood soundstage moon "landing" in this day and age.
I will them all the best. It would be cool to get to the moon after all
Just to screw with Jeff Bezos perhaps?
Yeah sure. We'll just sit on our asses on this one ball of rock until we use up all it's resources, poison it to the point where we can't even exist on it anymore, then our entire species will just die. Great plan, genius.
NASA had to learn the hard way so far as safety goes, and they're not motivated by profit like a private corporation is, so I'm perfectly okay with them keeping everyone on a short leash until they prove they can be at least as safe as NASA operations.
NASA deserves to be embarrassed. They wasted all the years between Apollo and now.
NASA takes their marching orders and gets their budget from Congress and the President. The fault lies with the owner of the purse strings if it lies with anyone. The Space Shuttle was a reasonable idea that failed because it had to satisfy too many groups and it sucked all the oxygen out of the room for decades. Then each President tries to give NASA a new priority but never pursues the funding to make it happen during their administration. Basically they make it impossible for NASA to do their job properly.
NASA has their faults to be sure but they are quite competent at many things. Cutting edge research, scientific exploration, technology development and transfer, and more. Though the Space Shuttle was a boondoggle it also was an amazing piece of technology that shows how capable NASA is. The problem for the last 30 years is that NASA has basically been stuck being a bus service to space instead of being tasked with pushing the boundaries of exploration and technology.
Wow, someone is absolutely guzzling the Kool Aid. If every gram of carbon contained in every gram of fossil fuel were spontaneously released into the atmosphere at once, the world and the human race would adapt and survive, Chicken Little. I can't stand people trying to scare the shit out of everyone needlessly about everything.
... should be to mine asteroids.
Talk about "security issues," like placing tariffs on imported cars because what if there's hostilities and we have all these foreign vehicles, how about our national dependency on those same foreigners for metals and minerals?
Had we not lost our goddam minds, we would have hospitable habitats for launching miners and for refining the ores before shipping to Earth or even manufacturing on the Moon and then using Amazon Prime, taking advantage of its free shipping.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Then all Elon needs to do is cram 14 people on a rocket and blow it up.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
NASA had to learn the hard way so far as safety goes, and they're not motivated by profit like a private corporation is, so I'm perfectly okay with them keeping everyone on a short leash until they prove they can be at least as safe as NASA operations.
*cough*Challenger*cough*
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If you say so, idiot.
Sure. NASA learned from that and other accidents/disasters before it, and don't want to see that happen in the private sector. I'm perfectly okay with that; why aren't you?
Shut up GOP INCEL retard you know nothing about this.
A mission that the government hasn't yet selected the vendors for isn't going to launch next year.
Of the vendors, only SpaceX has the technical capability to launch a payload to the moon on a few month's schedule, using the Falcon Heavy. However, there is no landing vehicle in existence at this time. Note that this has to be a cryogenic rocket, because it has to spend days in space before landing, unlike all of the existing SpaceX boosters. SpaceX boosters use a kerosene-based fuel and would freeze in the time required. Their new methane engine has had firing tests but no space vehicle exists for it yet. SpaceX has a very ambitious schedule and could be flying its new "BFR" larger manned rocket in 2022, especially if the government gives it a mission and thus financial support.
Bruce Perens.
Al-Qaeda in Outer Space might reprogram the robots for terror! The horror! AE911Truth org
Manned missions are a deadend and a huge waste of money. Robots/rovers can do everything humans can at 1/10 of the cost
There's NASA, and then there's congress. Congress is pushing SLS, which is at this point an albatross around NASA's neck, because of its profit production for various companies in the states of various congress people.
In fairness to NASA and congress, we didn't know SpaceX would do so well when SLS was proposed and approved. But it's time to kill it.
Bruce Perens.
"we use up all it's resources"
There seems to be an endless supply of apostrophes, though. It's means it is, Ricky.
How are we "using up" resources? Are we throwing them into a black hole?
Technology gets better, remember? We're using less and less resources all the time. Technology has made your 1960s Big Space fantasies into a Luddite farce.
" up all it's resources, poison it to the point where we can't even exist on it anymore, then our entire species will just die."
Oh look who grew up in the 1970s with its gloom and doom. BTW, evolution is still happening. There were no humans a million years ago, and there won't be any in another million.
And if you're so concerned about our entire species, what are you doing about your own mortality? What about the people alive right now and right here?
Oh yeah, let me guess: sweet fuck all. You're much happier living in your sci-fi fueled religious fantasy.
No, you're a moron. There's going to be more plastic THAN FISH in the ocean by 2050 and we're already poisoning what IS there into mass dieoffs. You're just a meat curtained faggot trying to minimize serious problems.
Trump is going to need someone like you in his prison cell for the decades to come.
Trollololol.
Not impressed.
We'll just sit on our asses on this one ball of rock until we use up all it's resources, poison it to the point where we can't even exist on it anymore, then our entire species will just die
Finding a second ball of rock where we can repeat this procedure isn't really helpful.
Sure. NASA learned from that and other accidents/disasters before it, and don't want to see that happen in the private sector. I'm perfectly okay with that; why aren't you?
They did?!?!?!
If NASA had the capability to learn - and to retain that learning - the Challenger never would have happened.
Recognize this:
...
NASA officials argue that the figure is much lower. They point out
that these figures are for unmanned rockets but since the Shuttle is a
manned vehicle "the probability of mission success is necessarily very
close to 1.0." It is not very clear what this phrase means. Does it
mean it is close to 1 or that it ought to be close to 1? They go on to
explain "Historically this extremely high degree of mission success
has given rise to a difference in philosophy between manned space
flight programs and unmanned programs; i.e., numerical probability
usage versus engineering judgment." (These quotations are from "Space
Shuttle Data for Planetary Mission RTG Safety Analysis," Pages 3-1,
3-1, February 15, 1985, NASA, JSC.) It is true that if the probability
of failure was as low as 1 in 100,000 it would take an inordinate
number of tests to determine it ( you would get nothing but a string
of perfect flights from which no precise figure, other than that the
probability is likely less than the number of such flights in the
string so far). But, if the real probability is not so small, flights
would show troubles, near failures, and possible actual failures with
a reasonable number of trials. and standard statistical methods could
give a reasonable estimate. In fact, previous NASA experience had
shown, on occasion, just such difficulties, near accidents, and
accidents, all giving warning that the probability of flight failure
was not so very small. The inconsistency of the argument not to
determine reliability through historical experience, as the range
safety officer did, is that NASA also appeals to history, beginning
"Historically this high degree of mission success..."
That was written by someone a lot smarter than all of us combined.
Yeah sure. We'll just sit on our asses on this one ball of rock until we use up all it's resources, poison it to the point where we can't even exist on it anymore, then our entire species will just die.
Or, alternatively, you can start healing the environment, one step at a time. Only fools see the vastness of space as a solution. Conquering that vastness requires a species that is on its best shape, not a bunch of ragged wannabe's. A sick civilization will never make it to space, or thrive in the long term [and that's my personal solution to the Fermi paradox].
Every commercial and national space agency across the world would be exploring space if not for NASA. NASA has spent trillions of dollars on space technologies and space exploration research and development. No private company could ever spend that much money on 60+ years of R&D. NASA has been and still is the undisputed leader in showing the world how to create the technology needed to explore space. Showing someone what technological feats are possible makes it easier for others to accomplish what was only theoretical at the time. It's the same paradigm for the militaries across the world. A great deal of military technology is also used to reach and explore space.
Before the US actually fielded stealth aircraft no other country was even attempting it. It took 25 years for other countries to either steal or independently develop their own stealth aircraft by reverse engineering US efforts. And the US's main antagonists, Russia and China, have never deployed their stealth capabilities in any real world applications. On the other hand the US and Israel are the only countries who have actually used stealth aircraft in actual combat. China and Russia are big on promises but weak on the follow through. The reason Russia has been dragging it's feet in delivering it's top of the line air defense system in Syria or Iran is they can't take the chance that Israel would show any potential buyers how easy it is to defeat the Russian's third rate military hardware. Think about this. Russia is supposed to be providing military protection for their Syrian client state but they stood mute when Israel destroyed over 50 Syrian/Iranian targets in just one night. The Iranians offered a weak declaration of innocence but they have also stopped their bellicose threats in the face of real not imaginary or CGI created explosions.
... should be to mine asteroids.
Mining asteroids is one of those stupid ideas that sounds great until you actually think through the economics of it and the practical realities of actually doing it. It requires technology substantially more advanced than any we have or are in danger of developing any time soon. It requires an economically sustainable space based economy and infrastructure. And even if we solve that problem by pretending such technology is within our grasp, the economics of asteroid mining still don't make any sense. Not to mention that the ONLY way to make use of such materials (given our lack of any space manufacturing infrastructure) is to drop them on Earth from orbit thereby creating a de-facto WMD. (hint: large hunks of metal dropped from space have a LOT of kinetic energy)
Talk about "security issues," like placing tariffs on imported cars because what if there's hostilities and we have all these foreign vehicles, how about our national dependency on those same foreigners for metals and minerals?
That's one of the bizarre arguments one hears for tariffs by those who favor them - that somehow they tariffs are addressing a national security concern. It's complete nonsense of course. As if every country in the world that makes steel (for example) would somehow simultaneously be unwilling to sell it to us and we somehow would be unable to make any of it ourselves. Even a global (non nuclear) war isn't going to somehow make global trade somehow stop.
Had we not lost our goddam minds, we would have hospitable habitats for launching miners and for refining the ores before shipping to Earth or even manufacturing on the Moon and then using Amazon Prime, taking advantage of its free shipping.
No we would not. We might be further along than we are but we wouldn't be anywhere close to the science fiction scenario you propose even had we devoted substantial portions of global GDP to the purpose. Maybe it will happen someday in the distant future but we're likely talking hundreds of years unless there is substantial political will to fund development of a space economy. Heck the last moon mission was around the time I was born and even if NASA was off on a wild goose chase that doesn't explain the behavior of the other 95% of the world's population. Asteroid mining isn't going to happen on an industrial scale in your lifetime. Get over it.
> because of its profit production for various companies in the states of various congress people.
Absolutely. That was and is a significant problem.
> But it's time to kill it.
What if it could be completed for half as much money? Would it be a good idea to kill it if instead of $16 billion, it only cost $8 billion?
I ask because that's where we are now - halfway done. $8 billion has already been spent and it's gone. We can't get that back. It'll cost $8 to complete it.
Manned missions are a deadend and a huge waste of money.
I could not disagree more. You can never declare any form of exploration a dead end before you have actually done the exploration. There are literally entire worlds to explore and things to discover that cannot be learned unless we actually send people there to learn them.
Robots/rovers can do everything humans can at 1/10 of the cost
They demonstrably cannot do everything humans can do nor can they do it anywhere near as fast or with similar flexibility. We don't have robots that capable here on Earth so your argument is dead before it even starts. A geologist dropped on the surface of the Moon or Mars can accomplish FAR more in a vastly shorter time than any robot we are in danger of developing. We're talking multiple orders of magnitude increases in productivity. Spirit and Opportunity took 8 years to cover the distance the Apollo astronauts covered in 3 days. There is a huge amount of technology relating to manned spaceflight that you literally cannot hope to develop unless you actually plan to send people into space. Not the least of these is discoveries relating to human physiology - good luck studying the effects of space travel on humans just using robots. We are still benefiting from the advances of the Apollo missions which have paid for NASA's budget since its inception as well as every robotic mission we've ever done many times over.
Yeah, they did.
https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch5.htm
The decision to launch the Challenger was flawed. Those who made that decision were unaware of the recent history of problems concerning the O-rings and the joint and were unaware of the initial written recommendation of the contractor advising against the launch at temperatures below 53 degrees Fahrenheit and the continuing opposition of the engineers at Thiokol after the management reversed its position. They did not have a clear understanding of Rockwell's concern that it was not safe to launch because of ice on the pad. If the decisionmakers had known all of the facts, it is highly unlikely that they would have decided to launch 51-L on January 28, 1986.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't even need to poison Mars it comes pre-poisoned with CO2.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every commercial and national space agency across the world would be exploring space if not for NASA. NASA has spent trillions of dollars on space technologies and space exploration research and development. No private company could ever spend that much money on 60+ years of R&D. NASA has been and still is the undisputed leader in showing the world how to create the technology needed to explore space. Showing someone what technological feats are possible makes it easier for others to accomplish what was only theoretical at the time. It's the same paradigm for the militaries across the world. A great deal of military technology is also used to reach and explore space.
Before the US actually fielded stealth aircraft no other country was even attempting it. It took 25 years for other countries to either steal or independently develop their own stealth aircraft by reverse engineering US efforts. And the US's main antagonists, Russia and China, have never deployed their stealth capabilities in any real world applications. On the other hand the US and Israel are the only countries who have actually used stealth aircraft in actual combat. China and Russia are big on promises but weak on the follow through. The reason Russia has been dragging it's feet in delivering it's top of the line air defense system in Syria or Iran is they can't take the chance that Israel would show any potential buyers how easy it is to defeat the Russian's third rate military hardware. Think about this. Russia is supposed to be providing military protection for their Syrian client state but they stood mute when Israel destroyed over 50 Syrian/Iranian targets in just one night. The Iranians offered a weak declaration of innocence but they have also stopped their bellicose threats in the face of real not imaginary or CGI created explosions.
Don't forget Brazil.
Yes youre going to die.
There will be no "singularity" to save your completely irrelevant human consciousness. You are not and will never be immortal.
Stop living like a total selfish cunt and you might make friends and even get laid sone day. But youre still going to DIE. Suck it up princess.
Maybe he can start a rapture for you and all the other technocrats. SAD religion based on technology is sad. You cant escape tge consequences of your actions. Grow up.
Send cameras on wheels
Actually we can send a sophisticated lab on wheels.
There's nothing there for people.
There's a lot of knowledge there for people.
If plastic is so cheap that mankind is throwing it into the ocean, how do you think it will be profitable to harvest it from there?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wow, someone is absolutely guzzling the Kool Aid. If every gram of carbon contained in every gram of fossil fuel were spontaneously released into the atmosphere at once, the world and the human race would adapt and survive, Chicken Little. I can't stand people trying to scare the shit out of everyone needlessly about everything.
Keyword: spontaneous. And the biological response to that is death; an asteroid is a spontaneous change in the biosphere and it can result in an extinction level event. If you meant gradually, then probably but again - it's a matter of time table.
People like this are called left-behinds.
Bruce Perens.
Wasted by stupid shit like "Muslim outreach". Why the fuck were our tax dollars funneled to NASA in order to run PR with a death cult?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Trollololololol
Go back to 4chan or reddit, the adults are trying to have a conversation here.
At the moment we don't mine asteroids for it.
My point is simple: the plastic in the oceans is a problem right now. But plastic is still to cheap to mine it from the ocean, so the problem remains.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No. NASA should be damn proud of what they've still been able to accomplish despite political bullshit attacking them since the Apollo days.
Which is why, when another problem recurrent problem arose, seen on multiple launches, of ice forming on the liquid fuel tanks, and breaking off, causing near accidents NASA quickly halted all further launches until a fix could be put in place, thus avoiding the repeat of a lost shuttle and crew.
Oh wait, that's not what happened. They kept launching, and ignoring the videos of ice chunks passing close to the shuttle until one fatally compromised the wing of the Columbia resulting in the loss of shuttle and crew. Only then was a fix for the ice debris put in place.
And returning to the situation with the Challenger, the excuse you quote does not give NASA any sort of pass. As the Feynman quote you are responding to says quite accurately:
"In fact, previous NASA experience had shown, on occasion, just such difficulties, near accidents, and accidents, all giving warning that the probability of flight failure was not so very small."
There was a clear pattern of increasingly severe compromise of O-ring integrity with lower and lower launch temperatures, and the fatal launch was 15 degrees colder than any previous launch, and 27 degrees below the recommended launch temperature limit. It is entirely on NASA that this information was not in the launch procedure guides used by launch managers. There was no excuse for the relevant facts not being known.
An additional point is that in the lead up to the go-ahead for that launch NASA managers had spent hours badgering Morton Thiokol management into signing off on the launch. This is disastrous practice for any safety procedure - demanding that you get the answers that you would like to have, until you get them. So yet more bad management practice at NASA.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The moon is just another gravity well. Why use a bunch of energy to get into earth orbit (halfway to anywhere) and then use more to go down another well if you really want to go somewhere else?
Wheels are so useful in space.
There's NASA, and then there's congress. Congress is pushing SLS, which is at this point an albatross around NASA's neck, because of its profit production for various companies in the states of various congress people.
The SLS has the virtue of being able to carry all of Congress into solar orbit in one shot. Let's keep it and hope.