Obama to scrap Moon, Mars expeditions - report President Barack Obama is set to effectively scrap all US manned spaceflight plans beyond Earth orbit for the foreseeable future, according to a newspaper report. The Orlando Sentinel - which has proven itself to have good sources in US space circles in the past - says that the White House budget proposal for the US space …
Moon, Mars, meh. Don't care, send robots. Why would anyone want to walk on Mars anyway? The ending of Total Recall put me off that idea.
Class-M planets, warp drive and transporter beams is where it's at. None of which are going to be sorted out unless we work on more pressing short term problems, like replacing fossil fuels as our primary energy source.
I really don't think finding 100 slightly different ways to launch a chemical rocket is going to achieve much either.
"Class-M planets, warp drive and transporter beams is where it's at. None of which are going to be sorted out unless we work on more pressing short term problems, like replacing fossil fuels as our primary energy source."
--Star Trek wishful thinking aside John, isn't it ironic that the very "pressing short term problems, like replacing fossil fuels as our primary energy source" you're crying for could possibly be resolved via the construction of Solar Power Satellites and the mining of Lunar Helium-3 for nuclear fussion powerplants -- both of which will require the use of manned and unmanned presence in space?.
What? You were expecting to create some new unobtainium energy sources out of thin air by simply ordering it up from a replicator?
...... in AIVirtual Reality Singularity String Theory Project ...... Present Future Production ..... for Media Mogul and CyberIntelAIgent Community Play.
"What NASA needs...... is a Taliban space programme." ..... Mike Flex Posted Friday 29th January 2010 00:19 GMT
How very true, Mike Flex.
And is it revolutionary and helpful to consider, rather than subversive and informative to ponder, the virtual possibility, and therefore, such is the crazy world that we live in, the real probability that the above quoted assertion should have been more accurately written .... "What NASA needs...... is the Taliban space programme"
And they can be probably also further refined and enhanced/enriched, with further processing to read .."What NASA needs...... is Taliban space programming" ..... with Super Sub Atomic Astute NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT Processing of MetaDataBase Protocols, SMARTer Enabling the Extraordinary Rendering of .... What a NSA needs .... is Taliban Space ProgramMING?
And the Question Mark Only Supplied for the Doubting Thomases out There.
"Unless there is a clear profit, human race is going nowhere in space."
A hard lesson that Mr. Zuppero (nuclear steam rocket scientist) had learned is still prettty valid.
So no surprise there.
Don't worry though, the third option Augustine commission proposed was going after asteroids and readying some refueling orbital stations for possible commercial haulage.
If there is any value beyond LEO for us at this stage, it's just asteroids.
"We are the wrong species for space."
A. Zuppero
Let's just have pint...
Lets see the 10,000 people that have any launch experience will be gone forever. No kid is going to study aerospace engineering since there are few job prospects. This is the death of America in space forever! Obama has created a technical Berlin Wall, we are locked in for the next generation. This is the end...
I am very sad. Now I really know what was meant by "Ich bin ein Berliner".
"NASA can't design space programs to create jobs... that's the view of the president".
He would even be on a better trip if he realized that Government can't "create jobs". It can just reassign money taken from either the future or the taxpayer. Which will then be missing in the economy. Which won't create those jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, in fact.
But apart from that, can I see real HORDES of apartment-sized interplanetary robots and also nuclear-powered spacecraft now?
The grand adventurer shakes his gaze from far horizons and settles into a rocking chair. We won't go because it's far. We won't go to the moon and Mars and do the other things in this decade or any other because it's hard and we're scared. Let others set sail for the great unknown to learn the wonderous lessons along the way and claim the rest of the universe for their own. We're tired. Tired and old and spent. It's cold out there. You go. We'll wait here and tend to our knitting and when you get back you can spin us a tale of wonders beyond imagining, wealth beyond the dreams of Midas - of petroleum waterfalls and diamond seas. Write if you find life.
"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song." And we shouldn't stop until we've found them all.
And thanks to Obama and his guiding economists, America will be the first to none of them. Never again will they raise a generation of pioneers and frontiersmen and, with time, they will fall into insignificance as other countries start returning with the mineral wealth of the new worlds.
While they sit playing with their Virgin Galactic aircraft and their LEO bottle rockets, I will watch the sunrise from atop the Olympus Mons and shed a single tear for those who took the first small step but are now too scared to explore further.
but what the hell would we do there and for what damned reason.
Sounds a lot like some Robinson Crusoe adventure for children.
Kennedy had good world political reasons for the space and the moon.
Things are different to day.
Scrapping the ISS, is absolutely stupid now when it is almost complete.
Let China go bankrupt on a voyage to Mars like the Russians did playing the Star War games.
We've done the moon, and we did it in style - FIRST! We've done LEO, and done it with style - SHUTTLE!
But after that, things get a lot, lot harder. All of this talk of "getting to Mars" is just hyperbole until someone has even the SLIGHTEST, realistic method of preserving the crew from radiation for that long a flight, outside of the Earth's magnetosphere. And to date, no one really has a workable idea, despite nearly a half century of talking about it.
We need to either REALLY up our game on space propulsion, to reduce the transit time dramatically, or REALLY up our game on very, very heavy lift and assembly in orbit to carry enough shielding - and, oh yeah, get used to massive nuclear power generators in orbit while we do that, because that's what it will take to power a Mars ship.
None of those are realistic in the short to medium term. NASA is still testing high velocity drives - but they are just small scale unmanned tests, nothing nearly large or powerful enough to drive a manned ship to Mars.
The Moon program had lots of technical hurdles to overcome - but most of them were met by scaling up existing technologies - or in the case of the flight computers, scaling down. But Mars will probably require whole new technologies, and until those develop we can't even get out of the gates. And ironically, the programs that are testing the new propulsion systems are in NASAs unmanned space flight program - the one that would be cancelled for a Mars program.
The only real issue becomes what if the Chinese decide they have NO PROBLEM with the safety of Earth-orbiting a fully fuelled 200MW fission reactor to power an ion drive ship to Mars...but the rest of the world does... Think they will listen?
We had the technology for getting to Mars in 1960, it is called NERVA.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html
But what we still don't have is a clear benefit for going there. If there was a profit to be made from going to space, we would have done it long time ago. Without it, it is all FAR TOO EXPENSIVE.
Funding space science is just funding a bunch of people who have an interest in something that really has little benefit to anyone else. Like funding train spotters, just more expensive.
Space "research" is very expensive and really generates very little useful knowledge. There are far more important areas of research here on earth that are far more relevant and have better payoff.
So Mars has some craters and CO2 and shit... So who really cares? A handful of scientists get a stiffy and work up PhDs but what real benefit is there? It's just infotainment.
Sure, 1960s space race generated an interest in science but most kids really just wanted the cool factor of dressing up in all mom's tin foil and being an astronaut. Now they all want to be rappers or whatever is cool these days.Tthe space race was really a political race. These are once-off events lose their shine pretty quickly. and, like telling a joke, it only really works once. By Apollo 13 they could not even get TV air-time until things broke and the voyeur effect kicked in.
Yeah, we got satellites, which are very handy, but launching satellites was achieved in 1950s and is a completely different thing from sending people to ISS or missions to moon or mars.
Yes, we got some spin-off developments in "space age" materials. But that's not enough. We will get spin-off developments from **any** research effort.
It's a very shortsighted view to claim that space exploration does not provide any benefit. The cable hooking this monitor up to the computer is a result of the space race, so is WD40.... the list goes on. Talk down space exploration because of cost all you like, but don't claim it has no benefit. You are simply wrong.
Robert Heinlein must be weeping in his grave... I don't agree with some of Heinlein's presuppositions about *why* humans must go to space (read C S Lewis's Space Trilogy if you want a thoughtful critique) but like Mikel a few posts up, I think that we give up something that's a critical part of our humanity if we don't push outwards. I agree we have to balance the cost of space exploration with economic justice and environmental sustainability on this planet, but it's not either-or, it's a both-and - as Heinlein would say, "Take big bites"!
I, for one, think that the decision to focus on research & development of a new heavy lifter, instead of sinking tons of money into redoing the same tech we've used 50 years ago, is a good thing for space exploration in the long term. A non-rocket tech would probably be asking too much, but even if we can "only" get a more efficient and reusable rocket *before* we start thinking about manned missions, it'll be worth the wait. Helping a private space industry develop is also a good thing - again, in the medium/long term.
I think that the "we're going to the Moon, RIGHT NOW" approach might be good to spark enthusiasm, but it's really big money for no clear benefit at all, not even as pure research/exploration.
However many billion for the ISS which has produced *some* science is a bad thing, yeah? But orders-of-magnitude-more billions for a trip to the Moon is a good thing? Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me.
I'd rather that space funds went into:-
(a) Sorting out pollution problems and environmental destruction on Earth. For the purposes of this, I don't care whether climate change does or doesn't exist, but it's undeniable that virgin rainforest is being destroyed, and the atmosphere and ocean are full of shit.
(b) Ensuring that everywhere around the world has clean drinking water, basic healthcare and education, even (especially) women, so that impoverished farmers don't get pissed off with the West and become terrorists.
Yeah, space exploration is exciting. So was the Circus Maximus in Roman times. So either we can blow the money on distractions from "compassion fatigue", or we can sort out this planet before we have the nerve to think we should head off somewhere else. If there's excess money floating around then fine, but the US is *still* illegally holding back money for UN aid programmes.
"NASA has never really built any rockets in its 51 years of existence; NASA hires contractors to do that."
Mostly true, anon. Although IIRC some of the early Saturns were built under direct NASA control at either Marshall or Decator, GA due to some of the complex mfg issues involved.
However all were built to *very* detailed NASA requirments. I was objecting to NASA's *continuing* tendency to not just set a functional spec but a detailed *implementation* spec, to the point where certain solutions (or contractors) are ground ruled out from day 1. I am hoping that instead of requiring a vehicle be designed and built to their *exact* requirements they use what is available and work from there.
"Getting to low earth orbit is neither routine nor easy. ...can attest that getting to LEO is hard" "just ask Elon Musk" "Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites who has blood on its hands after killing three of their own during a "routine" ground test.
I'm not sure what your point is but I'll say this. SpaceX's commitment demonstrated that the devil *is* in the detail *but* that a *wholly* new substantial launch vehicle can be built for less than $250m *including* 3 failed launches, if you're not operating by NASA purchasing and selection rules. If you are you spend c$1.1Bn on a hangar full of parts called the X33. If you hire a bunch of ex NASA staff to keep your VC backers happy you flush about $950m away and get a hangar full of parts called a Kistler K1.
Is it just me or does there seem to be a common link in these failed, expensive projects?
The Scaled Composites event was *stunningly* stupid. They call it "Critical temperature" for a reason. A neat demonstration of "Evolution in action." However as a *fully* reusable sub orbital system *any* lessons they learn can be incorporated into the *whole* fleet, as they will be coming back in 1 piece. OTOH unlike SpaceX it is *not* orbital by a *very* wide margin.
"Several statements from "new space" entrepreneurs concerning space flight safety acknowledge that an accident would be devastating for the commercial crew launch business, so they profess that each of them who are attempting to put human spacecraft in orbit (or sub-orbit) is committed to safety."
Same goes for existing players. Specifically Lockheed's work on the Atlas V for the Bigalow space hotel.
Note that *none* of the original US manned launchers were designed to be "man rated" at all. Atlas and Titan were designs were carefully reviewed to locate problems (I think Redstone was as well) and *limited* modifications made, along with tighter QC during construction.
So what *is* your point? Building a launch vehicle safe enough to carry people is difficult? If there fare paying "spaceflight participants" it's even more so? Only people with *no* awareness of launch vehicle history and design think that.
However the knowledge base is a lot bigger today. Russia launches crewed vehicles on a regular basis, China has done so and India wants to. Japan and France probably could on their own but don't feel the need. Europe through ESA has under the ARD project.
IMHO NASA's (and it's competitors) biggest achievement was in creating a supply chain. There are specs for "space rated" *stuff* you can look up and buy, rather than building (and testing) that have a track record of working in the environment. A truly "free trade" in launch services would probably be the best way to lower launch costs on a global scale. The US ITAR regs (or the closet thing to a protection racket some have ever seen) has done much to nurture local launch vehicle component development.
""NASA can't design space programs to create jobs... that's the view of the president"."
I think you'll find that that is pretty much what NASA did in the shuttle design process. Why it did that (and how *aware* it was that it was doing so) are other questions. The OMB's ludicrious funding profile rules (out of whack with pretty much *all* historical data on the spending profile of this kind of project) did not help either.
You might like to look into the history of the J2-s programme (the original one. Not the renamed Delta engine with an old turbopump design slapped on it) and the SSME combustion cycle choice (hint. "Keeping the winning team together")
So for understandable if near-sighted reasons the US soon cancels manned space programs.
In 10-15 years time the Chinese will make their moon-shot. This will be a cause of great national trauma for the USA, just as Sputnik & Yuri Gagarin were - and the president's knee-jerk reaction will be to rashly announce the intention before the decade is out, to send a man to Mars and return him safely back to Earth; and just like last time will not bother to ask NASA beforehand whether they can do it (they would of course say no).
The positive Mars Mission scenario: And like last time, yes they can do it, now with the even vaster expense necessitating partnering with Japan (also alarmed by China's show of capability) and a share issue in the mission that raises billions out of US patriotism, international venture capital and heat-felt Mars enthusiasm, thus avoiding an impossible tax bill, and making the investors a lot of money through the IP & media revenue.
or alternatively the negative Mars Mission scenario: instead of the above, two years into the entirely US taxpayer-funded project that is running behind time and over budget, New Orleans and 1/4 of the inhabited coastline of the Gulf of Mexico is destroyed by hurricane Katrina II, as the media call it. A million homeless people march on Washington demanding the mission is scrapped to pay for aid & reconstruction, and after a week of rioting they get their way. Meanwhile 4 Taikonauts return to Earth after a month-long stay on the moon.
The EU & Russia will effectively take over the operation of the ISS, it being a nice high-profile mission, but, compared to going to the moon or Mars, not actually that expensive or difficult to do now it's up there. They will also launch scientifically important and economically implemented but mass-media unsexy satellites & probes.
China and India will dominate the commercial satellite launch market.
The private space ventures will concentrate on sub-orbital tourism, with higher margins in this than launching satellites. But this will turn out to be a fad and the market will virtually collapse after a rocket full of "high-net-worth individuals" explodes.
And new instruments will detect a handful of genuinely Earth-like exoplanets; which will be an obvious target to point new SETI apparatus at...
"So for understandable if near-sighted reasons the US soon cancels manned space programs."
Dramatic but inaccurate. NASA has not cancelled its astronaut programme. it is running down the STS (which it never fully developed) and will focus on Aries V. If it wants to retain a US crewed launch capapbility *prior* to Aries V being "man rated " (WTF that means is another question) it has 2 choices.
1) Fund the 2 teams on the COTS programme to give option 5 (human, as opposed to just lab animal grade) transport to ISS. Space Exploration estimate 36 months maximum from contract start, of which 6 months is a float for unexpected problems. Not sure about Orbital Sciences. The Orlando Sentinel report suggests they are going to do just that.
2) Re-visit the view that *no* version of either of the EELV vehicles (Atlat V and Delta IV) is reliable enough to be "man rated "
Otherwise it's A.N.Others LV. BTW Ariane 5 *is* "man rated" (at least by the European definition, whatever that is) as it was designed to carry the Hermes space plane (AKA Dynasoar revisited) before it went down the pan.
You may feel this is NASA's darkest hour. Perhaps it will turn out to be the agency's finest instead.
you can gues what DVD Iv've got in my pocket.
That someone stops the spending on space travel. Who wants to go to Mars and set up camp? Who wants a space station on the moon; for what purpose? Are we trying to colonize because we are ruining our planet? Spend the money on cleaning up, and developing non-polluting items.
Why do we need a super-duper collider? TOYS!
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