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VP Pence Talks Moon Return and Mars Mission at NASA
Vice President Mike Pence spoke at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday about the agency's plans to send humans back to the moon for the first time in almost half a century and eventually on to Mars. He said: The next Americans who set foot on the Moon will start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch. And this extraordinary spacecraft will one day bridge the gap between our planet and the next.
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."
I propose we send them first to see if it's safe.
Spacex is sending Bill and Hillary, so I guess a new space race is on.
Then go to the Moon or Mars at your leisure.
1. Non-chemical propulsion
2. Nuclear powered
3. Rotating working/living quarters
4. Descent and ascent vehicles
5. Completely closed, long term life support
6. Magnetic Shielding against solar and other radiation
7. Whatever else is necessary so that it can just hang out in orbit and then be driven somewhere when you want.
Shooting people across the solar system in a tin can is stupid.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Since when did he become a portal to the moon?
The technology does not exist to do such a thing.
It's clear that Pence and Trump are working for the galaxy wide Reptilian conspiracy. And it is likely that one or both of these men are in fact Reptoids disguised as humans.
Sounds like somebody's getting ready to come in off the bench
You are welcome on my lawn.
like this:
https://www.buildtheenterprise...
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
On 11 December 2017 Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, the operative part of which is:
The paragraph beginning “Set far-reaching exploration milestones” is deleted and replaced with the following:
“Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations;”.
Now that Trump has done all the heavy lifting, signing a policy declaration, his work is done.
All of the stuff about having an actual program with funding and such are just minor details.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The technology does not exist to do such a thing.
The technology is basically just keeping the slow pace of incremental innovation that up to now has given us things like the ISS.
The main problem is that eventually reaching the point mentioned by the above poster is going to take at least several decades of progressive innovations and require multiple year to build each successive station, and that slowness doesn't fit into the short-term needed for a publicity stunt within the 1 or 2 cycles of 4 years each that your US politics has.
Meanwhile, shooting people in (single use) tin cans is somethings that can be done quickly enough to be a somewhat viable publicity stunt (despite being completely useless from the technological and scientific point of view)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I move that we close the patent office, as everything which could possibly be invented has been invented.
According to this guy, the moon (plus the sun and stars) were made in one day (the Earth took a bit longer) and are only a few thousand years old; what's the rush??
That's the point.
For instance...this is being worked on
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The overall concept is good. Not sure of hitching it to Star Trek is a hindrance or not.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Conservatives: Stupid liberals, all your ideas sound lovely but then YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY!
Also conservatives: WOO! SPACEFORCE! Our dicks extend into space now!
Why to burn all that money in entertainment to distract people... wait, I answered my own question.
But ... but ... The Market will arrive at the perfect decision if your friend should live or die ... anything not decided by The Market is communism ... you and your friend must be communists!!
(No, I don't believe any of that shit)
Talk is cheap. I'm skeptical that Mike 'The Electric Fence' Pence has many long terms plans at all, let alone something involving establishing a real, viable plan of landing people anywhere. It's easy to state a goal for political points. I don't trust him, Trump, or the Republican party to actually make an effort to follow through.
Actually neither one is "conservatives" really, just Republican traitors and criminal apologists trying (not hard enough..) to stay out of FEDERAL PRISON - and failing. Oh pooooooor Hunter, the witch hunt found his wife too? Awww.
He's part of their interstellar transport system and he is powered by magical undergarments.
Also child brides & oatmeals, various Utahn legumes, etc
... if they don't put a budget in place to support it. The way we fund things in the US means that any one president can say anything, but that doesn't mean a thing if Congress doesn't agree and fund it, and it still means nothing if the follow - on Presidents do not also agree and the follow - on Congress's do not continue to fund. It took us 8 years to get to the moon, over 3 presidents, and they all had to fund the thing... Frankly if Nixon had had his way, he would have killed it sooner than he did. And, of course, 90% of Americans these days do not understand the importance of the research done to get to the moon.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
actually, we had the technology to do it 50 years ago. Unfortunately we let that slip away. But, we can reclaim it and do it better now than we would have done it then.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
That could have been said when President Kennedy set the goal to go to the moon.
Greed is the root of all evil.
If he were serious about any of this then he would be telling us how they are going to boost NASA's budget. However, after increasing expenditures (a massive military budget expansion) and undercutting revenue (cutting taxes on corporations and the rich), the nation is running up a massive deficit.
What this all means is that this is just nice flowery talk and they are going to leave a financial train wreck for Democrats to clean up (again).
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Non-chemical propulsion
Like what? There is no alternative to chemical propulsion for a huge ship like this nor for the ascent and descent vehicles and those vehicles are generally designed with a specific planet in mind because it is very expensive to move large masses of fuel around that you do not need.
Shooting people across the solar system in a tin can is stupid.
Not as stupid as sending them to an unknown solar system in a tin can which will not be technologically equipped to deal with it after taking millennia to get there. The problem is that by "real spaceship" you really mean "fictional spaceship that all the cool sci-fi shows have".
"start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch."
The code for the keypad is 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42
So I guess we all have to hate the moon now? FUCK YOU NAZI MOON!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
What do you know... he's smarter than I gave him credit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
President Kennedy really had no interest in space and thought the project was a big waste of money. He only proposed it to one-up the Soviets.
and trolling, but the sad thing is my buddy is a Republican. I can't get him to stop supporting a party that's quite literally leaving him to die. Before the ACA he was having trouble getting insulin. He had to go to the ER a few times where they were forced to treat him with insulin. I'd moved out of the city and lost touch so I didn't know, but there was a couple times he almost died...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
some people just want to blame former President Obama for everything they do not like.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
Wikipedia article on the Lunar Orbital Platform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [Do check out #Critisisms section]
it's hard to talk about the sort of things the Republican party is doing without sounding like hyperbole. Nobody believes they would let a type 1 diabetic (e.g. born with it) die because they won't pay for his insulin. If you read off the stuff Dick Cheney was signing off on for Iraq when he was VP you just plain wouldn't believe it either. He funneled billions into companies he had investments in. It's almost cartoonishly evil.
There's a saying about telling a lie. If a lie's big enough folks can't believe it's a lie. It's like Gaslighting. You move the overton window so far so fast to the right that nobody sees it moving...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Then go to the Moon or Mars at your leisure.
1. Non-chemical propulsion
2. Nuclear powered
So what kind of drive system is this? Ion drive? 'Cause those don't go fast, and will never provide enough propulsion to get you off of the planet.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Thanks for the reminder on that - I'd forgotten about it. Sometimes leaders do the right thing for the wrong reason.
In any case, he did start the countdown to a successful audacious project that nearly all can agree paid off great dividends for the entire world. Many useful new technologies that were perfected to achieve that goal were invented.
Greed is the root of all evil.
None of those things are possible except in Space Nutters imaginations.
A combination of EMDrive and Space Nutters' wishful thinking should be enough.
But that was enough reason to get congress to open up the purse strings.
Every president this millennium has said that they want to go to Mars, but not one of them has been able to get the funds available to do this. Talk without money will go absolutely nowhere.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
What do you mean we "had" the technology 50 years ago? We still have the technology today. What we don't have is the actual vehicles today because NASA doesn't have is enough money to do it in the time span they've been given. Also NASA's budget isn't getting noticeably larger with each passing year.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I blame Obama for the extinction of the Dinosaurs.
The technology does not exist to do such a thing.
Given enough money I bet we could figure it out. I don't think most people would be willing to pay the bill to get that flying though.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Those were just old Republicans ready to meet Jesus and be damned to Hell as apostates, Obama had little to do with it except maybe some racist blood pressure triggers. Republicans have tiny diseased hearts generally.
It's all perfectly natural.
Nope e.g the Saturn V can't be done today because the designers are dead and the industrial supply chain doesn't exist anymore. It's not an Ages of Empires games where you invent the ballista and then you can build it at will by clicking on a building because it was invented and stays invented.
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success.
While many might argue that it has been unqualified, I'm fairly certain he meant unmitigated here.
"Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America ...blah blah.. an American crew ... blah blah..."
America, Fk yeah!
Coming to save the mother F'n space race!
America, Fk yeah!
Rockets are the only way!
Gravity, your game is through,
because you'll have to answer to...
America, Fk yeah!
I think Obomba doesn't get quite enough blame. Everyone loved him by default for one thing : not being Bush. He failed at this simple task and got away with it.
We can build ballistas today and we can rebuild Saturn V rockets if NASA wanted to do so. But NASA doesn't want to do so because rebuilding a Saturn V for today's needs is like restoring a 1964 Ford Mustang and expecting that it meets all current requirements of safety and features. There have been 50 years of development of rocketry since the Saturn V. Replicating one is going backwards. What the mission needs is a rocket with the same capacity as a Saturn V.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Into the sun, hopefully?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success.
While many might argue that it has been unqualified, I'm fairly certain he meant unmitigated here.
There is nothing incorrect about “unqualified” in this context as a superlative.
You gotta scroll down past the primary definition.
Most of those capabilities are unnecessary for either the moon or Mars, and aren't likely to ever be developed without active manned space exploration to drive the need for them.
What we really need is greatly reduced cost and deployed transportation infrastructure capable of frequent deliveries of large payloads, and people actually getting out there, discovering the problems that need to be solved, and working out solutions for them. Make it easy to get mass into orbit, and people will research stuff like magnetic shielding and advanced propulsion. Meanwhile, what we have is enough to start going to the moon and Mars. If SpaceX achieves their goals with BFR, the BFS will go straight from LEO to the surface of Mars with 150 t of payload and with a trip time short enough that simulated gravity, exotic radiation shielding, etc are unnecessary; then refuel and launch from Mars to land back on Earth. This isn't a tin can that can barely get a few humans there, it's a serious transport craft capable of supporting well-equipped research expeditions and colonization efforts. Blue Origin has similar ambitions focused around the moon.
The Lunar Orbiting Platform (or whatever they're calling it today), though...yeah, it's embarrassingly lacking in ambition and potential for meaningful progress. It can't even be occupied full time, and any reasonable lunar or Mars mission would blow right past it without wasting delta-v on rendezvous.
It could've existed if not for irrational fear of everything "atomic".
Guys who built them bombs in Manhattan Project were planning to personally cruise solar system in actual spaceships (size of a, well, ocean ship), propelled by detonation of small bombs behind, once a second. Physics and engineering actually worked!
Look up "Project Orion", or read George Dyson's book (his dad Freeman was one of the leaders).
Paul B.
The power of faith is a really big deal here, it means the astronauts can go with half the fuel and the missing thrust can be made up by the Hand of God.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
1. Using what for reaction mass?
2. Every nation on the planet would scream about this because of the hazard. Some would claim it's a nuclear bomb.
3. Would likely be heavy and expensive.
4. How big do you think this thing is going to be?
5. Almost impossible. Again: how big do you think this ship will be?
6. Incredibly costly power/size/weight wise.
7. You're basically talking a space station with interplanetary capability.
Come back in about 500 years. If we haven't extincted ourselves by then, then maybe we can think about doing something like this.
I propose we send them first to see if it's safe.
I'm trying to figure out how to work Stormy Daniels into this, and I just can't do it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
8. Mandatory steam punk attire.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Who the fuck said the SHIP would land on a planet, you fucking moron?
Meanwhile, Christopher Columbus is still waiting for his fusion powered aircraft carrier.
As long as people like this can even get their foot in the door, the project is in serious trouble. P.S. Homer Hickam rules.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
FTFY
I propose we send them first to see if it's safe.
I'm trying to figure out how to work Stormy Daniels into this, and I just can't do it.
Oh looky, triggered a Russian with mod points.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Screw the Moon and Mars...build a Real Space Ship
Then go to the Moon or Mars at your leisure.
1. Non-chemical propulsion
2. Nuclear powered
3. Rotating working/living quarters
4. Descent and ascent vehicles
5. Completely closed, long term life support
6. Magnetic Shielding against solar and other radiation
7. Whatever else is necessary so that it can just hang out in orbit and then be driven somewhere when you want.
I wouldn't insist on non-chemical propulsion. Other than that, it sounds exactly like the research NASA should be doing and funding, rather than the ridiculously useless Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway. And by "research", I mean "specify, design, engineer, build, launch, try it out," not just produce a pile of paper.
A nuke spacecraft still requires reaction mass.
And ice on Luna is a wonderful source of reaction mass for a nerva-type drive. Especially since it is an order of magnitude or so easier to get to, say, L5 (or LEO) from Luna than from Earth.
Hell, it would be easier to get reaction mass from Mars to L5 (or LEO) than to get the same reaction mass from Earth....
IOW, yes, we still want bases on the Moon and probably Mars, even with a proper spaceship....
In the long term, it may be easier to get reaction mass from Saturn's rings than from Luna or Mars. I haven't even tried to run the numbers on that. But Saturn isn't an issue for a loooong time. The Moon and Mars are useful as a source of reaction mass for a long time before Saturn can be made useful....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I blame Obama for a hangnail I got today. It stings!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
#3 and #4 already exist. There are nuclear powered satellites, and everything that ever got up there and back again happened on ascent and descent vehicles.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
All Blue Origin has is ambitions. Have they even put anything in orbit yet?
You know that funding comes from the Congress, right?
Yes, the President has some sway there, but if Congress doesn't go for it, all the policy statements in the world don't add up to an ounce of rocket fuel.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
1. Such as? You need a lot of thrust to make orbit, which means chemicals are about the only option. Once you're up, ion drive gives bugger-all thrust - it's great for keeping satellites where they belong, but it's not going to move a multi-hundred-ton manned ship anywhere fast. The only other possible option is 2.
2. The barely-tested technology of hydrogen propellant directly heated by a fission reactor? Good luck getting the influential governments of the world to permit launching that accident waiting to happen. It's take years of diplomatic wrangling. Still, it'd be good for getting to mars, once you've invented it.
3. That's... actually pretty doable. You don't need a full 1G. Even one-tenth gravity would be a lot more convenient than zero. Probably easier to spin the entire ship though, except for a little platform with the antennas on.
4. Development in progress, both private and public efforts.
5. Nice simple engineering problem. But is anyone actually working on this?
6. There are theoretical problems with this. The size of magnetic field you'd need, with the corresponding solenoid, is impractical.
I'd like to see a moon base too. But once you dig into the engineering issues, you find the real problem: Money. Manned space exploration isn't just expensive - it's bankrupt-a-superpower level expensive. It's the type of expensive you usually only ever see in a military budget. Billions of dollars doesn't cover it. Hundreds of billions. Trillions, if you want a long term presence. The ISS alone cost $150 Billion, and that's practically on our doorstep. Worse, it needs consistent funding - and with the balance of political power shifting every few years, America is in no state to commit to anything. China could, maybe.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2004-04-17
There are better ways to get thrust using nuclear power than what Project Orion wanted to do, and the US was actually pursuing some of them. Project Rover took place at Los Alamos for about 2 decades starting in the 50s, and showed that nuclear thermal rockets were possible and had a lot of potential.
The other option would be Ion Propulsion using a nuclear reactor as the power source. While acceleration would be slow it would also be the most propellant-efficient method we currently have, and would be great for long duration missions.
Of course if we are just talking about going to Mars on a regular basis, we don't really need nuclear anything. The best solution is a "cycler". Basically a very large ship or station in a permanent orbit which brings it near Earth and Mars on a regular basis. You only have to accelerate it up to speed once; after that you just send smaller shuttles to meet up with and transfer people/cargo every time it comes near you, with more shuttles meeting it on the other end to unload.
1-2. Nuclear thermal rockets still need vast amounts of hydrogen, and only halve your fuel mass needs (only double the exhaust velocity of simple LOX/LH2). Fusion currently only works at enormous scales due to huge ignition energy requirements (that hydrogen bombs get using fission bombs). 10's to 100's of thousands of tonnes, accelerator based heavy ion fusion (using mostly decades old tech) is probably the ultimate as can use cheap(ish) deuterium or H-B fuel using huge ignition power but accelerators (and ship) is many km long. The easiest practical alternative - Orion is very expensive to fuel. Cheapest fission bomb needs a minimum 15kg of U235, which costs around $600k, and with maximum impulse per bomb of around 30m/s to keep shock absorbers reasonable you need hundreds to go anywhere in reasonable time. So at least a couple of hundred million just for the bombs per mission, and still have craft that are 1000's of tonnes, but Orion would be our current cheapest option for moving a lot of mass quickly.
There is some hope that helion and/or Tri alpha energy Field-Reverese Configuration will make fusion smaller and more accessible, but not for another decade or two, and probably still only using insanely expensive tritium (even if Tri-Alpha is trying for H-B fusion).
Skilled Germans who understood US production methods and budgets could have planned most of that into the 1970's.
The USA had everything it needed back then. States who needed new jobs, workers willing to learn advanced new German engineering methods.
German quality control and design for large projects.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So what kind of drive system is this? Ion drive? 'Cause those don't go fast, and will never provide enough propulsion to get you off of the planet.
Either a nuclear thermal rocket, or something like Project Orion where you literally blow up hundreds of (small) nukes behind your spaceships.
Ion propulsion would work too, but would only really be useful for really long distances.
Of the three, only a nuclear thermal rocket could really be used inside earths atmosphere (Orion could have been also, back when we didnt think twice about testing nukes all over the place. But people are a little more picky about radiation these days).
So where is all this funding coming from? NASA's budget isn't the best right now.
when Musk has ppl on the moon, coming from BFS.
Assuming these idiots are still in office, Pence will have a difficult time explaining why we continue to throw money away.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ambitions and an active development program. They're at least working on something that could be useful for economically launching large amounts of mass, instead of screwing around with air launch or barely-physically-plausible SSTO spaceplanes or pretending there's no economic case for reuse.
I doubt they'll find developing their first orbital launch vehicle as smooth going as some of their fans believe (New Glenn's first launch has likely already been pushed back to 2021), but they're far ahead of everyone else who might compete with SpaceX.
Did he touch it? Did he?
Because when the space force starts destroying other stuff in space, it's going to be kinda difficult to get through. Some pretty simple BDR's with some pretty simple shrapnel boomers - think space grenades - sent up near geosynchronous orbits will make GPS a thing of the past, and lower orbit space shrapnel is the gift that keeps on giving. Every orbiting device destroyed makes a positive feedback loop to knock off more devices. Imagine a space shuttle sized orbiter turned into debris. Not a good neighborhood to try to get through. A fleck of pain nearly broke a window on a space shuttle. https://www.cnet.com/pictures/...
Imagine what a bolt would do. Now imagine the entire LEO with tons of debris
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I think quantum matter displacement drives and aborting the psychopaths who want the world to focus on their genitals, would probably be enough. Turn the space rescue farce, into something more reasonable, like the space guard much like the coast guard, where the central focus would be rescue.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What we really need is greatly reduced cost and deployed transportation infrastructure capable of frequent deliveries of large payloads, and people actually getting out there
So you're saying Uber?
Youâ(TM)ve never owned a German car
But that was enough reason to get congress to open up the purse strings.
Every president this millennium has said that they want to go to Mars, but not one of them has been able to get the funds available to do this. Talk without money will go absolutely nowhere.
A president could tell congress that going to Mars will defeat isis and al-queda, because they can't get there, and therefore we will be safe. And reasons. : (
I propose we send them first to see if it's safe.
I'm trying to figure out how to work Stormy Daniels into this, and I just can't do it.
Oh looky, triggered a Russian with mod points.
Ivan, you make me sick.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So you'd have to build something with the same functionality as the Saturn V, but better. What's the problem?
Actually we can't rebuild the Saturn V. It has been tried to rebuild one engine, but while the plans of the finished product are there, crucial parts of how *make* it were never written down, and it requireres craftmanship that no longer exists, so they are developing a new engine that can be built with today's methods and machinery. The military frequently has this kind of problem when trying to get spares for decades old hardware after running out of stock. For example, you just can't buy many of the chips that were sold 30 years ago, you might have to invest huge amounts to recreate the machines and processs to build them, so usually whole modules or systems are re-engineered with today's supply chain in mind, and even when functionally identical they look sery different.
Oh looky, triggered a Russian with mod points.
Slashdot might as well be The_Donald considering the concentration of MAGA racist neckbeards and russians.
This has not been a good week for the treasonous orange cunt. Noose is tightening. Womp womp..!
Just need to make sure the Russiapublican party goes down with him. Don't worry, Bob's on it.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
There are better ways to get thrust using nuclear power than what Project Orion wanted to do, and the US was actually pursuing some of them. Project Rover took place at Los Alamos for about 2 decades starting in the 50s, and showed that nuclear thermal rockets were possible and had a lot of potential.
Nuclear thermal is useful, but only around double the specific impulse of chemical. Not revolutionary, but would be handy for getting to Mars and back.
It was considered for Apollo third stage, but not worth the effort back then.
Orion's nuclear pulse drive on the other hand, is game-changing, with an order of magnitude better specific impulse, and massive thrust. :-)
You could send sci-fi sized spaceships with hundreds of crew to the outer planets and back. And we could have started building it in the 1960s. No fancy materials needed, just a lot of steel, like a battleship. The biggest task would be the economical mass production of the propulsion charges.
I'd buy a ticket to watch the launch - from a safe distance upwind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The technology is basically just keeping the slow pace of incremental innovation"
As in "real soon now"
Actually, like I said in the next sentence, not *real soon*, but "soonish after a couple of decades of lots of small incremental steps of innovation*.
But given the circus show that is your politics in the US, nobody is interested in starting a half-century long slow development project, because they won't be around anymore to reap the glory.
(And for the record, here around in Europe, we probably won't be able to pull it off neither :
We *would* be pretty capable to vote for a half-century budget for such research, but then we'll more or less waste all that budget to various sub-sub-sub-contracting chains, and divers countries squabbling for the privilege of playing some relevant role. See: ITER, etc.
Eventually, the whole thing will run ridiculously over budget. Several times.)
(Maybe China *could* have the dedication to try to pull it. Or maybe their economy will hit a wall by then).
Or, more accurately, "nope".
There are no *technical* reasons for not doing it.
It doesn't violate any currently known law of physics, it doesn't require any exotic new not-yet-existing matter (unlike a space elevator, which is currently impossible in practice, at least until chemistry has invented a way to produce kilometer-long strands of carbon nanotubes at a cheap enough cost).
Lots of the technologies already exists and/or have been tested on reduced scale
(only nuclear impulse propulsion, which *a* possible way to solve point 1 and 2 in one go, hasn't been in prototype yet.
But RTG + various electro-magnetic-based propulsion (e.g.: ion thrusters) is the current way used points 1+2 are done in several probes.
And the current preferred way to solve point 6 is simply using mass (put the water reservoir around the living quaters) instead of some fancy energy shield (like the Earth it self does, and thus leveraged by anything near-Earth like ISS).
The remaining points in the list (4+5) describe stuff which e.g. is mostly everyday life on the ISS ).
It "only" requires spending the next 50 years to advance the current tech to the point of have a giant base that can do orbit exchange between mars and earth.
Takes lots of time and a fuckton of money. But nobody is interested.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
(Orion could have been also, back when we didnt think twice about testing nukes all over the place..
It is actually not as bad as you'd think,
wikipedia: "From many smaller detonations combined the fallout for the entire launch of a 6,000 short ton (5,500 metric ton) Orion is equal to the detonation of a typical 10 megaton (40 petajoule) nuclear weapon as an airburst, therefore most of its fallout would be the comparatively dilute delayed fallout. Assuming the use of nuclear explosives with a high portion of total yield from fission, it would produce a combined fallout total similar to the surface burst yield of the Mike shot of Operation Ivy, a 10.4 Megaton device detonated in 1952. "
Large numbers could be launched at sea with no significant effect on global background radiation levels. Its not like ground-bursts.
Better if we could just launch a few, carrying the materials for an orbital ring.
No we can rebuild the Saturn V. What you're saying is we can't build one easily or cheaply or quickly. Given enough money and time, I guarantee you that NASA could build a Saturn V. But my point is what good would that do for any future space missions? Off the top of my head here are all the major retrofits that a Saturn V will need:
In addition to all that NASA would have to rebuild the factories to make all the original and modified parts.
OR
NASA could design and build a new rocket. In the end this option is cheaper, easier, and faster.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Maybe I'm just reading between the lines and seeing what I want but this sounds like Pence is preparing to take Trump's place in the very near future and is his way of raising his support - ``Look what I`ll do if I'm president'' ..
I agree. The only reason to look for habitable planets is to discover whether or not life has evolved elsewhere. As far as living off of planet Earth goes, it will be in a "spaceship" and it will likely travel from nebula to nebula picking up basic atoms and molecules for "fuel" or expansion of the spaceship. There is no reason at all to live on planets once we are fully space faring.
My only sadness is that I will not be participating in the space faring civilization. *sob*
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
It is actually not as bad as you'd think
I'm aware of the numbers, but you know that facts don't really matter much when the word "nuclear" comes up. Realistically, yes, the environmental harm from launching a couple dozen of these would probably be far less than the environmental harm caused by launching the thousands of conventional rockets required to lift the same load. But the harm from nuclear reactors is likewise a lot less than the alternatives we've been using for decades, yet nuclear power is still stigmatized and opposed by the general public. Fear trumps facts.
Stop it, you're giving me a woody.
A president could tell congress that going to Mars will defeat isis and al-queda, because they can't get there, and therefore we will be safe. And reasons. : (
Or that Mars has oil. Or that Mars has WMDs.
Nuclear saltwater rockets solve the mass production issue. All your critical masses of fissile material go in one big tank stuffed full of neutron absorbing structures. (Check thoroughly for leaks.)
And you don't need nearly as much shock absorption, since your exhaust is a continuous blast of dissociated water and decaying fission products.
So this wondrous new thruster weighs 230kg and produces 5.4N of force...requiring 100kW...which requires 2,500 square meters of solar panels. (That's how many panels the ISS uses to generate 90kW - so that's a realistic number).
OK - so 230kg of engine and about 100 tonnes of solar panels...for enough thrust to lift a bowling ball against Earth gravity.
Um...yeah...well, when you can make those thrusters about four orders of magnitude more powerful, do come back and tell us!