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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.
Just to screw with Jeff Bezos perhaps?
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
Ha. Our species would adapt. It would not be the end of human existence. But just because it wouldn't mean the end of human existence doesn't mean that we shouldn't work hard to find carbon free energy sources and find ways to sequester carbon.
Your ridiculous reply shows that you are part of the problem.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
As a no-look comment I don't think our species can adapt fast enough, and by the way you're forgetting every other species of plant and animal life on the planet. An ecosphere is a more delicately balanced thing than you apparently think it is.
Robots/rovers can do everything humans can at 1/10 of the cost
..except get humans off this planet and living somewhere else.
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.
Tell me this: how do you explain the retro-reflective prism on the Moon's surface, that you can bounce a laser off of, and prove it did a round-trip to the Moon by measuring the lightspeed delay?
Isn't the standard answer to that that it was placed there by a rocket later? I don't think the argument was that we couldn't and still can't get to the moon, but rather that we didn't send people there back in the 60s.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
An ecosphere is a more delicately balanced thing than you apparently think it is.
So how are we going to set one up on another rock that doesn't have liquid water and an atmosphere ?
I'm not even talking about Mars at this point, just the Moon. A permanent installation/colony on the Moon would be a Good Thing in the long run. If you can see that far ahead anyway.,
> 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.
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TL;DR because I've already experienced such unimaginative thinking.
For reference, see shale oil mining.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
nope, read your kinetic energy link
A tungsten rod weighing 11 ton has the impact energy of only 9 tons of TNT...in other words, it's better to just use explosives on earth than waste time with any stupid wimpy-energy kinetic impactor from space. and the stuff can't be accurately targeted with its pathetic yield.
Weight from space in quantities humans could mine and refine is NOT like a nuke. Sure, a 1 kilometer wide asteroid is...but we're not talking about that.
People like this are called left-behinds.
Bruce Perens.
Odd. Life evolved here for billions of years with no need for space.
Tell that to the dinosaurs
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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.
Odd. Life evolved here for billions of years with no need for space.
Tell that to the dinosaurs
Well, according to ST:VOY, the dinosaurs left. Into space. And they're more advanced!
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?
It was pretty amazing the way they launched a 10,000 square mile movie screen to fly over Florida so that they could project the Saturn V launch - not to mention the awesome sound system.
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.