The search for microbial life, or nano bacteria on planets and moons in our solar system, while important, dwarf in comparison to the importance of finding habitable planets in neighboring solar systems. Its like we are only studying a pebble on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Sending humans spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, while they lead to fantastic discovery, do not efficiently use our tax dollars to get us to the stars where the most fantastic discoveries wait.

What the President has wisely done with his budget proposal is that he has given America a second chance to recalibrate a mission that was vastly underfunded, and lacked a unifying goal, that I believe we all have, but know is very far off in the future. That is, as Carl Sagan told us, to eventually set sail for the stars.

At the same time however, the President’s budget proposal cancels the bedrock of the current plan to take humans into LEO and deep space, which has many worried, especially in Florida.

I’ve come up with a solution that will abate everyone’s concerns, and one in which will eventually solve our goal of star flight, which could begin toward the end of this century if we play our cards right by not wasting huge amounts of money on human missions that could be accomplished by low cost robotics.

Here is the formula that I believe NASA needs to pursue:

Rewrite the NASA spaceflight charter to unify the United States, once and for all, around the goal of achieving eventual star flight.

The construction, delivery (via Ares V HLV), and human assembly of very large telescopes in the Lagrange points to discover habitable planets in neighboring solar systems around 2025

Vastly larger investment in commercial rockets to deliver astronauts to LEO by 2015, and cancellation of Ares I – except for use as SRB for Ares V

Continuing operation of the International Space Station to study space radiation on humans and provide deep space survival studies well beyond 2020

New kinds of habitable modules and medicines to fight cancer for use in ISS as well as in deep space that will mitigate exposure to cosmic rays to allow for safe operation for the human assembly of large telescopes in the Lagrange points to find habitable planets.

Deployment of plasma rockets to allow for speedy and efficient space travel for humans and robotic spacecraft.

Automated refueling and docking to catch up and exceed international partners like Russia and Europe for improving overall effectiveness of space transportation. (Almost none of the missions that I am describing will work without these technologies)

Development of automated semi autonomous In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) that would take mission cues from Earth like the Spirit and Opportunity, but for the task of landing on low gravity well objects in deep space to mine, extract, and transport water to human crews, or robotic spacecraft to refuel and provide radiation protection anywhere in the solar system. First demonstration of ISRU could take place on Moon to provide quicker relay environment, ensuring successful operation prior to use on asteroids and comets. And the 2016 sample return mission to Phobos and Deimos to demonstrate the ability of robotic ISRU to be able to perform targeting, landing, take-off and transport of resources from deep space to other robotic and human crewed spacecraft.

First we need to know, where are we going? Well, as I have mentioned, we are going to the stars, so we just need to know which star, or stars we should venture to. Well, we want to go to earth-like planets, but we don’t know where they are, so we need the adequate aperture and clarity to see the actual disk and spectra of orbiting planets around other stars. This means we need to launch a very large telescope(s) into space. These telescopes will be huge, and require a heavy launcher. We don’t have a heavy launcher such as Ares V, and it will be required to take up mirrors big enough to see earth-like planets in nearby solar systems.

Second we need to know, how will we get there, and how will we survive the trip? We need revolutionary leaps in antimatter and fusion technology, as well as other exotic propulsion devices. Obviously none of these mechanisms is ready to loft into orbit, or we haven’t seriously tried. Solar Sail technology could provide a current capability for a robotic interstellar explorer, but the scale of its size will require a lot of planning and infrastructure, and proposals for such a system seems dead in the water. The National Ignition Facility houses an ICF laser the size of a football stadium, and that would be a little large for an Ares V launch. So we’re not ready to propel ourselves there – we’re still developing the basic skill set to enable interstellar propulsion on the ground under the auspices of the DOE and NSF. As a result NASA can largely brush these issues aside for now.

In regards to surviving the trip however, there is a lot of work that can get done in space. How will we survive the bombardment of cosmic rays beyond the heliosphere? That will require studies that measure radiation levels, and general threat awareness in interstellar space. We already have spacecraft that are measuring the interstellar medium and its boundaries, like Voyager and IBEX. Next is how will we prevent or mitigate the affects of cosmic ray radiation? This can be most effectively tested in space with human crews. We already have that capability on the International Space Station. All we need to do is put our investment in producing mechanisms, and then study those devices on people in LEO and deep space, such as ways to kill cancer cells, but not healthy cells, as well as new kinds of hydrogen rich plastics, and modules with an inflatable bladder linings for filling with water, which can insulate from radiation, and test these modules on ISS and in deep space. NASA must also test ideas to protect from bone loss through artificial centrifugal gravity machines. To study these radiation mitigation techniques in deep space we can ferry astronauts in test modules to the Lagrange points via plasma rockets for a relatively short duration mission (40 days) to assemble the large telescopes needed to discover habitable planets. Plasma rockets, are ready to be flown, and will be flown on ISS for demonstration shortly. As you probably know they are VLASMR rockets (a type of plasma rocket), as well simpler rockets that utilize water as fuel.

Thirdly, long term survival and travel in space will be dramatically improved through ISRU, so we need to study ways of doing this. With a limited NASA budget we cannot afford very much human spaceflight, and since deep space flight involves heavy radiation bombardment we should take a step back and ask ourselves why should we subject ourselves to deep space travel unless we are doing very short term flights, mostly for the sake of testing there affects on humans. So instead of sending humans to run ISRU equipment in deep space, why don’t we send the robots and control them remotely from Earth. It is not required that we go to the surface, and it isn’t even required that we orbit the deep space body where the remote operation is taking place. This will ensure NASA budgets don’t get too out of control. Robotics are perfectly able, as Opportunity and Spirit have shown, to autonomously negotiate the landscape on Mars while taking critical decision-making cues from NASA scientists on Earth. A spacecraft is perfectly able to land on a comet, or asteroid, mine the body for water, inflate with water (via inflatable tanks), then use some of that water to fuel its trip back to ISS where it can inflate modules that have inflatable linings with water for protection from deadly cosmic rays and for use as fuel to ferry humans to deep space for short 40 day missions in order to assemble the very large telescopes while testing radiation penetration through those linings, which could be combined with hydrogen rich plastics.

We need to loft human payloads into orbit. The logical guess would be Ares I, but this is proving to be a dramatic failure in terms of keeping within budget and time constraints, so why don’t we invest vastly more in our commercial infrastructure while we dedicate NASA to building the heavy launcher to launch large space modules and the heavy mirrors to study habitable planets, unless we can design a fail-safe way to launch smaller components on smaller launchers like Delta IV and Atlas. The Ares I development that has been completed would not go to waste since Ares I would serve as the SRB’s on Ares V.

NASA would also survey the solar system’s low gravity wells like Comets and Asteroids for efficient water/resource extraction and transport by developing the robotics, which will be remote controlled by earth. This ISRU can also take place on the Moon to test equipment in a quicker relay environment to prove artificially intelligent automation can work in combination with remote control via Earth. We also need to demonstrate landing, take-offs, and transport of samples/resources to ISS on deep space objects to replicate how these ISRU spacecraft would perform once developed. The proposed sample/return mission to study Phobos and Deimos would demonstrate some of this capacity, as well as an unprecedented capacity to demonstrate military space defense. All one has to do is imagine how such features would provide military satellites with targeting, approaching, and then going on to other targets, as well as refueling. And all this could be done for the sake of exploration, avoiding escalation of space weapons.

All these different activities may seem dispirit, but they are not. They are all designed around our eventual voyages to habitable planets in the centuries to come.

No thanks, I’d rather just publish and let the chips fall where they may.

The Nixon White House killed the Apollo program and pushed the development of the space shuttle — but refused to fund construction of the permanent space station that the vehicle was designed to fly to. That’s why it was called a “shuttle,” after all.

But, like Bart Sobrel, I doubt any level of authority will ever convince Rand Simberg to simply accept reality.

The lunar surface could credibly be considered one of these, at least for humans in the near term. But we don’t like to talk about that …

“The NASA TEAM that will advise the ET Factory – it is looking more like the people”

Who’s “looking”? Shannon & Co. are a self-chartered “team”, and need some formal agency direction to tell the ET fab line where to go and what to do. Who’s making a decision here who’s sitting on money to make it happen? I guess we’ll see in the budget proposal if there is any provision for am SHLV. If not, Shannon & Co. can in-line all they want, and it doesn’t mean anything at all.

“Michoud and ATK are willing to go with the existing contracts, suitably modified”

Nice, I guess. The existing contracts are ending right now. Are they willing to keep everyone employed until a decision is make to extend these contracts?

Thanks for dropping by and playing. You have zero clues. Time to wise up and allow the pros to do their job. Maybe you should consider something other than FauxNoise for your information source and world view.

Quit being a revisionist. Here is a quote from HSFR final report Chapter 2 Historical Review concerning Richard Nixon and Apollo program:

President Richard Nixon did not end the space program, but he did much to scale it back. The trajectory of the NASA budget shifted downward. The Nixon administration was responding not only to the perceived decline in public support for far-reaching human space exploration, but also to the economic decline at the time. When a task group established by the administration presented options that included a lunar return and a program aimed at Mars, the President confined the nation’s crew-carrying space ventures instead to low-
Earth orbit.

What most everyone else has already acknowledge, but you continue to live in a state of denial. Richard Nixon was crook. Get over it.

I’d love an answer from you about that, since you are the one arguing for doing that with your Moonbase proposal.

Wow. Awesome. Who thought that one through?

Not gonna happen.

Nota bene the sentence about the Moon.