— Donald

I could actually support that, very easily. But it is not likely to happen. So I support the current ESAS since it is as you stated recently “the only game in town”. If they do for whatever reason decide to go with SDHLV / EELV I’ll support it.

And I think it is a military necessity for them to do so. We can’t “afford” to depend on one launch vehicle for national security reasons. Now if Falcon IX comes to pass, and I think it will, one of the EELV’s can die as far as I am concerned. But we need to have a backup plan for launching national security payloads.

Donald: “All of the problems we’ve had with the Space Station have been large launch vehicle related,”

You have a point, but the Shuttle is actually a large launch vehicle with only a medium launch vehicle payload capacity. But you also make my point; who is to say that there will be no launch vehicle related problems with your scenario of launching moon missions one piece at a time? In fact it is almost guaranteed that there will be. I just don’t believe such a mission plan could survive long with the possibility/probability that it could take six months to mount just one mission to the moon that is only the operational equivalent of Apollo 14 or Apollo 17 at best. I can just hear Senator Mondale re-incarnate saying “We did better than this in 1969! If this is the best we can do 40 years later we should stop wasting this money.”

Well we’re are attempting to build a LEO space station using the 20 ton at a time method, it hasn’t worked out so well thus far.

How so? All of the problems we’ve had with the Space Station have been large launch vehicle related, and if it were being launched on smaller vehicles we probably wouldn’t be having these problems. The Station itself has proven remarkably resiliant and flexible, able to survive repeated logistical disasters created by the Shuttle and politics. It has proven very easy to repair when things fail. The small module size undoubtedly contributes to this success. If the Space Station were another Skylab, it would be far more difficult to maintain.

Monte: You make an outstanding point regarding planets and star systems. I would extend it a bit further. Before these observations, our star system was seen as typical and therefore Earth could be typical. Now, our star system may be common but it is certainly not typical, which means that we have learned something very important about our own planetary system and, by extension, our own planet.

The salient point, here, is that to my knowledge _nobody_ predicted this in advance. We could never have known it without looking. In science, you _must_ look first, at as many examples as possible, and only then can you draw your conclusions. Today, I fear there are far too many scientists drawing conclusions with precious little looking.

Paul’s hubris is wrong, stupid, and dangerous in just about every sense. He’s assuming that he is smart enough to separate the local special case from the wider situation and understand the local without its context, i.e., that he is smarter than the universe. If there is one lesson the history of science should teach us, it’s that anybody who does that will ultimately be proven unambiguously and comprehensively wrong.

— Donald

Paul, you’re caricaturing Donald’s point. It seems very likely that extraterrestrial life *would* improve understanding of which aspects of terrestrial life are inevitable and which are contingent on this planet’s features and history. So while it wouldn’t help us understand life on earth _per se_, it would change the *context* of the questions we ask about it.

Analogy: the surge of data on extra-solar planets has overturned a lot of what once seemed solid theory about how solar systems form and what kinds of planets are to be expected at what distance from a star. Turns out we had grossly over-generalized from a sample of one.

Well someone very well should know, and you should care, as it is an essential part of going back to the moon in such a manner as to not make the mistakes we did with ISS.

I do not “know” the exact optimal LEO payload capacity that is needed to return to the moon in such a fashion (I don’t claim to have all the facts as some here do [not talking about you Donald]), but judging by history I think 100 ton to LEO is much closer to that optimal than 20 ton is.

Why do I think this? Well we’re are attempting to build a LEO space station using the 20 ton at a time method, it hasn’t worked out so well thus far.

On the other hand Apollo lofted over 100 ton to LEO, and it got the job done. And the Apollo Applications studies indicate that the Apollo infrastructure was capable of doing much more than just “flags and footprints”. A heavier cargo only “LM taxi” launched without a CSM and landed on the moon autonomously could have provided much longer lunar surface stays and even the establishment of a permanent manned presence on the moon.

My fear is that a 20 ton at a time method applied to a moon base will end up just like the ISS; years of delays with all energies being expended just to build and supply the base (ISS) rather than the base (ISS) actually accomplishing something.

Donald: “I still believe that if the VSE is to succeed politically….”

And as I have stated to you many times before, the most politically viable method of enacting the VSE is to use the current political clout behind STS; IE keep the SRB lines open, keep the ET factory busy as well as the SSME factory. And before anyone jumps me about my “wanting to maintain the STS army” that is not true. Doing away with the orbiter will cut the “STS army” numbers, and again politically those numbers can’t be cut overnight anyway. It must be done through retirement and other natural attrition to be politically palatable. The CEV, CEV launch vehicle and SDHLV can be operated with lower manpower than the current STS, but you can’t just flip a switch and make it happen.

…. Oh wait, isn’t at least one high-ranking NASA suit a Planetary Society cult members? Cue the ominous-sounding sound track …

Griffin appears to enjoy the support of many in the space business, and in politics (both Democrat and Republican). Many observers note his willingness to question old ways of doing things, and praise his emphasis on “small, smart spacecraft instead of big, expensive ones”, while deputy director of the SDI. Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, has said that “Mike is the right man, in the right place, at the right time.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Griffin

Planetary Society President, Wes Huntress said, “Mike is an excellent choice because of his passion for space exploration, his technical expertise and his long experience in space flight engineering. He resonates with the President’s new vision for space and will add a down-to-earth insistence on logic and realism.” Huntress served as NASA Associate Administrator from 1992 to 1998.

Dr. Griffin is a longtime friend of The Planetary Society, and the co-author of a Society-sponsored report on Extending Human Presence into the Solar System. Lori Garver, the Society’s Washington representative, attended the confirmation hearings and submitted the following report….

http://planetary.org/news/2005/nasa_griffin_031
105.html

Fratricide, please more fratricide.

— Donald

If that is the level of discourse, than I’ve no respect for you as a scientist and I will quit here.

— Donald