The full Senate Commerce Committee (and not just the space subcommittee) is planning a hearing next Wednesday afternoon on “The Future of U.S. Human Space Flight”. A witness list has not been posted yet, but MSNBC’s Jay Barbree claims that Neil Armstrong and/or Eugene Cernan “may” testify. NASA administrator Charles Bolden, perhaps with other senior agency officials or presidential science advisor John Holdren, are likely witnesses as well.
If former NASA administrator Mike Griffin doesn’t make the list, don’t worry: he’s had another recent opportunity to express his thoughts on NASA’s plans in a speech earlier this week in Seattle. According to an account by Examiner.com, he complained about “considerable other drivel in the president’s proposals” and asked people to contact Congress “using actual paper letters signed in ink” to express their support Constellation and the Vision for Space Exploration. And about the Vision? He called it “the best space policy we’ve had since John Kennedy,” adding, “some things are good ideas even if President Bush thought so.”
It is clear that there are deep disagreements about NASA. It is time to have an open debate and expose the pernicious NASA leadership. Finally, Constellation will get a proper defence. Give ‘em heck, Mike!
“He called it “the best space policy we’ve had since John Kennedy,†adding, “some things are good ideas even if President Bush thought so.†“
If Griffin was so enamored with the Vision for Space Exploration maybe he should have followed it instead of going off the reservation and foisting the Constellation program onto America.
“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except
where critical NASA needs—such as heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems.”
Where is Griffin’s fuel depots? Advanced propulsion? Precurser missions like the Promethus Project and the Jupiter Icey moons mission? Oh ya he slashed all that to build the rocket to nowhere.
“In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs,
NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable
and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles.”
Proper defense my @**. I am sorry, but Constellation has had a free run for far too long. If people want to have an open debate, then lets have an open debate. But lets not invoke stupid ideas such as we can just pull money from elsewhere, and disregard it. And lets acknowledge that this is a compromise project, not a rule by fiat like the Constellation fanboys would like to believe.
By all means, lets have that debate.
“some things are good ideas even if President Bush thought so.â€
My personal view is that Mr. Bush was the worst President in modern history, but the one entirely correct decision he made was the “Vision” as origianlly proposed. I agree with Vladislaw, it’s way too bad the Dr. Griffin igorend it and went off on his Apollo on steroids tangant. Whatever problems Mr. Obama’s plans may have, they can’t possibly be worse than Dr. Griffin’s creation.
— Donald
Re: Open Debate.
Sorry to bring in the news but the debate already happened: The Augustine Committee was as open as you will get. The results are out and that is that. How many more debates do we need to see how bad Constellation is? How poorly funded by Congress and the former WH? How many?!
Oh well…
The beauty of the Obama plan is that there is no plan for the Federal government to build anything or go anywhere within this decade. And since there is no program to develop anything or to go anywhere, it sets NASA up for deep cuts in funding by Congress in the near future– which may be his intention.
We need to return to the Moon to find out if humans really can live long term under a hypogravity environment and also to begin manufacturing oxygen and possibly hydrogen on the lunar surface in order to dramatically reduce the cost of space travel within cis-lunar space.
President Obama’s hostility towards returning to the Moon and his advocacy of wasteful flag planting manned space adventurism clearly indicates that he doesn’t understand the full social and economic potential of the New Frontier and the Federal government’s role in helping to pioneer and exploit the natural resources of the solar system.
The previous post suggests that Bill Nelson is trying to cobble together a “look but don’t touch” exploration program that won’t go to an actual planet or and body at all larger than a small asteroid. I would be fascinated to see what Cernan and/or Armstrong would have to say about *that* should they appear
I agree with Marcel: this is a set-up for future deep cuts. Obama had targeted NASA for cuts in the first place, but the the political and public environment did not favor the cuts, with Constellation and clear plans in place. Once the blurr is established, it’s less of an issue to reduce funding significantly.
“I would be fascinated to see what Cernan and/or Armstrong would have to say about *that* should they appear”
I wouldn’t.
I honor those men because of their heroism and skill in accomplishing a national objective, and I’m always fascinated to hear about their experiences while they were in space. It doesn’t really matter that much to me what they think about space exploration policy, except to the extent that residual lunar dust in their lungs might convey some sort of expertise in that regard. I guess that goes for Buzz Aldrin as well, although I suspect he’d have something a little different to say.
Re avoiding large bodies, I could speculate that it relates to the campaign against obesity. The administration should well have us explore boulders and pebbles, though, and not restrict ourselves to planetary scale rocks, which are definitely minority items.
The future of human space flight is expensive. The only question is, is it too expensive? They were going to send a 737 into space 50 times a year and built a spyplane with no escape systems that used a Saturn V class thrust to put less than a quarter of the Saturn V’s payload into LEO. It was a disaster not because it was so expensive, but because they tried to do it cheap. The largest and most important part of the STS, the external tank, was dropped back into the atmosphere to burn up. Wings and landing gear do not belong in space and we could have been putting those empty second stages up there for the last 30 years and making space stations or even spaceships out of them. Think about a station made of a hundred external tanks. We have to learn from our mistakes and try again. I imagine if we had put a space station half a mile long up there sailing overhead every night with a couple hundred scientists on board, public funds might be more forthcoming.
With a respectful and nostalgic nod to External Tanks Corporation, I remember reading a bunch of studies on various approaches to conversion and exploitation of on-orbit external tanks. ETCorp and other companies tried to buy / lease external tanks for orbital use after launch, to a resounding brick wall response.
Two points:
IMHO the Augustine Committee was, in part, a face saving exercise to protect the guilty. The POR was a money pit just short of a Black Hole indeed, even after the program imploded, it continues to suck dollars away from useful progress. I would humbly suggest that those involved stop making waves otherwise pointed questions may be asked under oath!
If I were a taxpayer I would be asking questions anyway.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
The beauty of ‘ObamaVision’ is there is no simple (minded) goal that can be reversed by the next Administration determined to restore the American Space program to its socialist ideals. Instead there is solid research with an intent to make the US a dominant force in Deep Space Operations. Thus enhancing (catching up with) the experience of the Russians in Orbital Space Operations. If everything pays off *we* will have a sustainable Space Faring architecture providing mobility and security.
Not a Moon Burrow.
What your comment indicates is that that you don’t understand the full social and economic potential of the New Frontier and the Federal government’s role in helping to pioneer and exploit the natural resources of the solar system.
Assuming Paul Spudis is correct ~1.2 km^3 of idealised water reserves represents a Lake Windermere. Even with perfect recycling, no food exports and no “shuttle launches”… the terrestrial analogue supports 10,000 people. Under your plan the Moon Base would become a Ghost Town once the water rush was over. Whereas the real resources are in NEO, Main Belt and, ultimately, Oort Cometary Halo. These are better sources of water (hydrogen) and other raw materials already in situ for conversion into the real space Cities of the New Frontier. Such Cities will move to the resources and spawn. With luck we’ll get a Spindizzy!
The Flexible Path recognises that ultimately both Moon and Mars are Dead Ends. Although Mars is touted as being the “Ultimate Destination” as O’Neillian style space habitats and Coleian bubbleworlds are a science fiction premis too far for the non space cadet.
Your Federal Government may enable the tele-robotic pioneering of lunar resources but ‘exploiting’ them in any meaningful fashion? I think not.
OTOH the Vermin of the Skies may not be “Celestial Bodies.” Or, at least, a legal argument could be made. Unlike the Earth’s Moon.
In the final analysis your Moon Base is colonialist thinking, repudiated even by O’Neill.
He called it “the best space policy we’ve had since John Kennedy”
As I wrote yesterday:
It’s an involuntary reflex, like when your doctor hits you below the kneecap with a rubber hammer.
Someone trying to defend the NASA Constellation program will invoke the memory of President John F. Kennedy, his Moon speech to Congress in 1961, his speech at Rice University in 1962, and swear to us that JFK’s legacy will be forever tarnished if we don’t spend unrestrained taxpayer dollars on another Moon rocket.
The main problem with this claim is that it’s a fantasy.
JFK said “I’m not that interested in space” and that his sole interest was to show the world that American technology was superior to that of the Soviet Union.
The bloviating Griffin also fails to note the August 2009 GAO report that ripped on Constellation as lacking “a sound business case.”
safesimplesoon.com , Mike ! full steam ahead, bandaid upon a bandaid, billions after billions. Simple and safe. Soon can always be redefined.
@brobof
So you want to give government workers, $100 billion over the next 5 years to build nothing and to go nowhere. I guarantee you that they’ll do a good job at that:-)
A lunar base would be sitting on a sea of oxygen conveniently stored in the lunar regolith. So we’d already have nearly 90% of the elemental component of water– even if we never touched the poles. Oxygen of course also composes 86% of rocket fuel. And, of course, humans also breath oxygen. Finding hydrogen and possibly carbon and nitrogen resources at the poles would just be icing on the cake.
I’m a strong advocate of NASA’s Asterant light sail concept for capturing small asteroids an bringing them back to cis-lunar space in order to exploit their resources.
While I believe that O’Neill type rotating worlds will be the ultimate Earth-like habitats for humanity, we need to take take things one step at a time. First we need to use heavy lift vehicles to start deploying large rotating space stations that produce artificial gravity to see if humans actually can adjust to a simulated gravity environment.
Well Ben, I guess that means the wet workshop concept is a bad idea if no one will buy it. I have news for you, no one is going to buy anything out there. No condo’s on the moon or mars, no vacation trips to the asteroid belt, the market on geo satellites is stagnant. The whole space entrepreneur fantasy is ridiculous. In 1929 a far left scientist named Bernal really started the space age with his design for a spinning hollow sphere a mile in diameter with people living on the inner surface. Until there are a couple dozen of those out there I don’t think there is going to be much business going on. No one is going to stay healthy in moon or mars gravity and mars is just a big gravity well there is no reason to descend in to. The asteroid belt is where the resources are. When people have a place to live that is better than earth- then the carpetbaggers can head out and try and swindle some peasants.
If Armstrong testifies that the President’s program turns the U.S. into a second-rate space faring nation, it will be a seminal moment reported by the press, one that will end the debate. As for Buzz, well, he would have liked to have been the First Man. Armstrong is the First Man. Nuf said.
The President’s effort to reprogram NASA will be studied by policy grad-students for decades for its learning value, given it is the worst policy and political debacle likely for the whole of the Obama Presidency. But that’s not the only reason it will be remarked upon for decades. Up to this point, space has had a constituency of one, the President. Obama has unwittingly undone that by empowering Congress and shown those like Holdren, Garver, Kohlenberger and Shawcross that though the level of public support may not be vocal, Congress views our nation’s human access to space as a vital interest not to be toyed with.
Face it folks, the Obama commercial crewed space policy is circling the drain. And following Whitesides soon enough will be Garver, et. al. as they go forth to spend more time with their families. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get luck enough to see SpaceX follow in the footsteps of Kistler…that is, loosing its COTS funding for lack of performance (where’s those 3 Falcon 9 launches required for 2010, Elon?). What a fitting end that would be. Meanwhile, Constellation will continue and, soon enough, fly.
Marcel F. Williams wrote:
“A lunar base would be sitting on a sea of oxygen conveniently stored in the lunar regolith. So we’d already have nearly 90% of the elemental component of water”
I thought H20 (water) was two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. How does having oxygen equal 90% of water?
Here’s a big long list of stuff NASA will be doing under the new plan..
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=20493&catid=6#c
And that’s why the new plan is better.. there’s actually stuff being done soon IN SPACE, not building some impossibly expensive heavy lifter to redo Apollo.
Griffin rushed ESAS through because he knew that if hardware wasn’t being built by 2008, the whole Vision would get canned by the next Administration. That’s why LRO was able to go from idea to launch in 4+ years.
Too bad ESAS was expensive, retro, etc. and lacked any appeal outside of KSC, MSFC and JSC.
Gosh, how I pine for the days of Spiral Development and Admiral Steidle!
Let’s talk about President Obama’s plan for human spaceflight.
.
1) SpaceX will go to low earth orbit delivering payloads and astronauts to the ISS. Who is/will be their largest customer? The US government. The US will be buying services from a “Commercial” company. Same as they are doing today, except today they are buying hardware and services.
2) Some people claim commercial space will be cheaper. Liek when the aviation industry started up. When the aviation industry started up, people already lived on both sides of the continent. There was a reason to travel across country faster. The only reason to leave the earth is for scientific purposes. Nobody needs to get to the moon to see their family or take a job there. The President’s “experts” say it will be cheaper. They believe that as they fly more, it will be cost less. Makes great business sense, when you have a lot of customers. Where will all the custoomers come from? Elon Musk estimates the cost of taking astronauts to the ISS at about $20 million. What is he basing these estimates on? They achieved orbit in two of five attempts with Falcon 1 and have not launched any others since July 2009. They haven’t launched one Falcon 9 rocket yet and they know how much it’s going to cost to launch humans safely into space? I have my doubts.
3) I’m all for competition. If someone wants to challenge the status quo let them do so and let’s have a competition. What is Elon Musk’s business plan? To gain large government contracts. The current launch vehicle is already a commercial venture. There are over 30,000 people across this country working for private commerical companies to launch the Space Shuttle. There will be no layoffs, reductions in force, or loss of NASA civil servants due to the retirment of the Shuttle or the change in NASA’s direction. These civil servants will only move to other NASA programs. The only people affected will be the employees of the commercial companies already building and launching the Shuttle. This workforce has almost 30 years experience with launching humans into space.
4) Say this with me out loud. “For at least the next 5 – 10 years America will not have the ability to launch humans into space. We will rely pay the Russian space program to take us to the International Space Station.” We just spent billions of dollars to build a state of the art research facility using “dump trucks” to get there. We’re going to mothball the “dumptrucks” and contract rides in a ’57 Russian GAZ, until we build the really cheap cost efficient “Yugos” to get us there.
5) You don’t pull your team out for a season while you work on new techniques and methods for the next season. You can’t win if your not in the game. President Obama’s plan tells us to abandon a perfectly good, albeit a supposedly more expensive, ship and wait for the next new lifeboat to come rescue us. With all due respect Mr. President, no thank you.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
“So you want to give government workers, $100 billion over the next 5 years to build nothing and to go nowhere.”
I didn’t say that but hey let’s give ‘em 200 billion! It’s not my Tax Dollars.
However, if the American Congress gets its collective finger out, I am sure that you will see someTHING happen, someWHERE. But it won’t be a Moonbase. A Moonbase would ultimately cost trillions and be a Base to Nowhere. The sainted O’Neill ultimately envisioned a minimal Moon Camp to operate the Mass Driver. With advances in tele-robotics he wouldn’t even have needed that.
BUT HERE’S THE KICKER:
O’Neill was not aware of the vast numbers of NEOs conveniently located with a lower dV. But, admittedly, not a lower dT.
“A lunar base would be sitting on a sea of oxygen…”
as would most of these NEOs. Either in the form of regolith or cometary CHON. And others comprised of NiFe with a bit of Pt!
We don’t need a Moon mass driver to drive Moon mass into orbit. The mass is ALREADY THERE.
“I’m a strong advocate of NASA’s Asterant light sail…”
Marcel has there been one successful deployment of a solar sail to date? And if we are serious about moving the ‘vermin’ around we are going to need Nuclear! But that being said why bring them back? ISRU. It means just that. Chapter 11!
The amusing thing is I used to think like you, until I realised that with a bit of effort: humanity can go beyond “one step at a time” and capitalise on a “giant leap for Mankind” …by staying in free fall.
As to the rest of your mantra:
“First we need to use heavy lift vehicles” Nope EELVs and PDs will do.
“to start deploying large rotating space stations…” Nope. A small co-orbital gym module with exercise machines, a tether and a counterweight may be all that is really needed. It could double as medical facility if we fail to find solutions to surgery in zg!
Some of your gravity hugging thinking was out of date last century!
I would suggest “Stardance.”
The Moon is just another Well.
Given the relative atomic weights of Hydrogen and Oxygen, water by weight is in large part Oxygen, not exactly 90% (closer to 87.5%?), but close enough for this discussion. As an example, look at the relative capacities of the Hydrogen and Oxygen tanks of the ET.
The tether and counterweight will work just fine, I agree. Much less trouble to get one G with a couple thousand foot of tether instead building a wheel. But you are not being realistic when you ignore the big showstopper. Gravity is a secondary requirement AFTER radiation shielding. Man in space has always been about the radiation; kind of like when the guy said something about rocket science really being about cracks. There may be ways to actively shield, like surrounding the crew space with a giant balloon (remember the echo satellites?) and then filling it with charged plasma in combination with a computer controlled magnetic field generated by superconductors. But water is simpler. Moon water. Very very heavy moon water. You cannot push that kind of weight around with chemical energy or electric thrusters. Bombs.
Speculation about Oort cloud settlements may be too futurist for the Senate Commerce Committee.
But it does strike a chord about the difference between:
those who consider descent into a gravity well the main event, and the vehicle of transport to that gravity well a “use-one-time and dispose” afterthought,
and those who foresee a space vehicle, or vehicles, assembled and operated in space, never landing anywhere, but making multiple voyages, perhaps with landers in tow, but existing as an ongoing capability and resource, with a crew of cross-trained specialists and facilities beyond what we currently have in orbit.
Despite all the Star Trek re-runs, this second concept is new to politicians and voters alike, who have learned the “throwaway” approach to spaceflight, from October, 1957 on.
Imagine how the first of these solar system explorers might be designed, powered and configured. Is there anyone testifying before the Commerce Committee who can start to convey this idea?
Optimism about Obama Space is typical sentiment of new program trying to gain ground. The Shuttle was supposed to fly 60 x per year when it was ‘trying to gain ground’.
All projections of what will happen in the future wrt Obama Space are optimistic sentiments.
10 years from now I bet it won’t have turned out the way folks are talking now.
History is tough to beat
NASA Fan wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Hey, we can easily switch back to a realistic assessment of Constellation. It’s been done a thousand times, and still there are folks out there that don’t seem to get that it was killing NASA (and going nowhere).
As a “NASA Fan”, surely you understand that spending another 30-50 billion to “maybe” get to the moon by 2035 (once) is not worth either the money OR the wait, right?
” Did Chris Columbus stay home? Nooo… What if the Wright Brothers thought that only birds should fly? …And did Galoka think that the Uhlus were too ugly to save?” (“The Last Starfighter”)
I agree with NASA Fan, to a long degree. Hard-nosed realism should be applied when viewing any approach to spaceflight. POR, the private sector, Flexible Path. Each should be held to real world analysis, with regard to design viability, capability, cost, schedule, political support and sustainability.
Still, a modest bit of dreaming opens the mind and raises sights. If advanced propulsion and other technologies, the private sector, robotic probes and next generation in-space observatories pan out, the pieces will be in place for SOME kind of next step in human spaceflight, and it may not need to be a one-time-only show.
NASA Fan wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Optimism about Obama Space is typical sentiment of new program trying to gain ground. The Shuttle was supposed to fly 60 x per year when it was ‘trying to gain ground’…
and then there were some of us who knew that wasnt going to happen.
My “optimism” about the Obama space plan is that it can hardly do worse then the program that Mike Griffin came up with.
In fact if it takes the wind out of the sales of the “mindless exploration crowd” then that alone will have been worth the ticket.
What people who say that the POR was a “plan” miss, is 1) it was a plan to no where and 2) it was a plan that wasnt working very well. And I would argue because of both those things was unsustainable. Now what the plan itself does no longer means anything…and has not for some time. The folks who were pushing 60 flights a year of the shuttle were the people who were invested heavily in the shuttle system…ie NASA as a corporate group doing something that organized not the nation but the organization.
As has been documented in Space Review, agencies which actually depended on space systems to do something serious were very careful about falling in love with the shuttle. NASA didnt, like it doesnt with Constellation care at all what it does, just so long as it exist.
Its time to just wind all that up and move on to something else. I cant see that after 5 years 10 plus billion and nothing to show for it, things can be worse
Robert G. Oler
@Bennet
I”m not fan of the POR. For many of reasons cited on this blog.
I’ve long held the view that the NASA/WH/OMB/Congress/OSTP dysfunctional paradigm makes it IMPOSSIBLE for NASA to do anything that would remotely make a difference for humanity consistent with the optimistic projections being tossed about by all sides.
Transform that dysfunction and maybe something can come of HSF.
Till then, the future will look much like the past.
@ Vladislaw
“I thought H20 (water) was two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. How does having oxygen equal 90% of water?”
By weight, 90 grams of water is composed of 10 grams of hydrogen and 80 grams of oxygen. A hydrogen atom, of course, contains only one proton and no neutrons. An oxygen atom contains 8 protons plus 8 equally massive neutrons.
Since there’s plenty of oxygen resources on the Moon, you only need to ship the hydrogen component of water to the Moon. That reduces the mass needed to be shipped to the Moon to have water by nearly 89%.
There was a couple hundred million tons of water recently detected on the moon; Why are you talking about making water that’s already there?
@ brobof
Building a continuously growing lunar facility shouldn’t cost more than $10 billion a year and probably a lot less, IMO. Plus once you have it established, the area around it or near almost immediately becomes a place for investment for the emerging space tourism industry. Most space tourist would like to go to the Moon!
NEOs are not just a few days away, they’re several months away.
Light sails would be superior to nuclear rockets at least within the orbit of Jupiter. They don’t require any fuel and could operate efficiently from the Lagrange points to high Mars orbit. But nuclear rockets might have some advantages over light sails beyond the orbital arc of Jupiter. But I don’t think its going to be too difficult to deploy large aluminized kites at the Lagrange points. And, in the long run, it will probably be a lot easier to extraterrestrially manufacture a light sail than a nuclear powered Vasmir.
The reason we have programs that take ten years or more to get going is because we’re custom building all the equipment each time.
The advantage of a commercial space industry is that NASA would not have to worry about how they are going to get crew and cargo into LEO. With two or more qualified suppliers, they would even know what the cost would be (and it’ll be listed on a GSA schedule). They can already do this for launchers (Atlas/Delta), so all we’re really doing is moving up the food chain one step.
Imagine how quickly NASA could plan and execute a mission to the Moon & beyond, if their plan assumed they were starting from LEO.
It’s time for the parent to hand things off to their children – transfer the routine stuff to industry (crew & cargo to LEO), and let NASA focus on the hard stuff.
RobertV
So tell me then, do you regard all of what Bigelow has done and is doing as waste? Because you spend the majority of your time slamming SpaceX, and saying there is no market for taking people to space beyond scientist (which you equate with meaning government astronauts, a mistake if I ever saw one), despite the fact that we already have examples of private people flying into space, and reason to suspect that market may be much bigger.
As for mothballing shuttle, seriously, go talk to Bush & Griffin about that decision. Obama had to bring a mop to the mess they created
I’m all for Moon facilities/outposts/colonies, but you have to walk before you can run. Without a logistics system in place, you would not be able to support anything substantial on the Moon. Here are two different ways you could start a facility on the Moon:
1. Without a robust supply system, you do lots of R&D to work out all the issues you can think of. These people will be on their own for quite a while, so there are lots of complex systems that must be made more than redundant. This takes a long time, because there is a lot to take into account. You send lots of extra systems because they will have to be in service for quite a while.
2. With a robust supply system, you can start with non-optimized building blocks – habitats that are not too complex, and you know that there are more systems on the way. If something is not working out, it’s not a big problem, because you can either modify it fairly quickly, or replace it with the next version that’s coming. Feedback from the users is quicker to show up in the future deliveries.
We have plenty of analogies in our history to support the creation of reliable transportation to places far away – Clipper ships, Pan Am Clipper Flying Boats, the Transcontinental Railroad. Robust transportation systems make everything easier.
We need NASA to get out of the transportation business, and focus on R&D and exploration. The new NASA space plan starts us down that path. The Constellation program (and the end of the ISS) were stifling any competition.
In my eyes, the supporters of the status quo are only looking out for their pots of money – they are not looking out for the future of this nation.
1. A shuttle derived launch system using an Altair descent stage should enable us to land at least 10 tonnes of cargo on the lunar surface per launch
2. A shuttle derived launch system using an Altair descent stage should enable us to land a large pressurized habitat module or node per launch for a continuously growing lunar base. Just three launches per year would be needed to deploy two bedroom sized habitat modules and a connect node equipped with life support systems.
3. The best way to reduce cost on a new world, however, is to live off the land. The lunar regolith will provide astronauts with mass shielding for protecting habitats from galactic radiation, micrometeorites, extreme thermal fluctuations, and solar events. Lunar regolith can also provide them with a source of oxygen for air, water (when combined with hydrogen), and rocket fuel.
NASA and its private vendors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) are doing an excellent job especially when they are allowed to do their job. And our investment in space continues to help grow the American economy.
There’s no need for an unnecessary middle man to transport NASA astronauts into space. There’s not even enough traffic to the ISS to even support more than one company.
Private spaceflight companies need to stop begging for government contracts and tax payer money and focus their resources on the emerging space tourism industry which will probably dwarf NASA in manned spaceflight volume to orbit and to the Moon a lot faster than most people think.
NASA needs to focus on pioneering the solar system so that the privateers and settlers can follow.
Ben Joshua wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
“Speculation about Oort cloud settlements may be too futurist for the Senate Commerce Committee. ”
Alas so true! Indeed the whole concept of utilising space resources may be too futurist. And as for SPS!
With your Congress and, indeed, the whole global political class locked in the 20th Century, instead of a New Frontier the world will remain locked into the scrabble for the last remaining drops of oil… last squeezings of water; as we slip into planetary stagnation and feudalism.
NASA Fan wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
“All projections of what will happen in the future wrt Obama Space are optimistic sentiments.”
Agreed. In my heart of hearts, I think that it is already too late: Financial Meltdown/ EcoDisasters/ Peak Oil/ AGW/ Water Wars/ Population Collapse and a full on Clubbing of Rome. ObamaVision may be THE one last chance we get as a species before the technological window closes. But “Hey” at least we will be part of the solution to Fermi’s Paradox!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8213884.stm <– Depressing reading.
Gary Church wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Radiation is a killer! But cumulative Deep space missions are therefore for Boring Old Farts like me! GCRs are going to take a lot of stopping. However EM shielding may be a solution for CMEs and 'stormy weather.' Rutherford Appleton has some ideas:
http://www.minimagnetospheres.org/
Plastics are better than water, even the very heavy water and remember very very heavy water is radioactive!
I would also suggest that you read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Mag_Orion Hopefully under ObamaVision this will get more funding too!
Gary Church wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Because there is a legal case under International Law that the scarce polar hydrogen is "Common Heritage". A tragedy I know…
Conversely lunar oxygen wrested from the rock may be exploitable without too much fuss.
http://brobof.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/moon-pie/
Last but certainly not least
Marcel, Marcel whilst I to would love to see a 1950's style "continuously growing lunar facility" we can build the infrastructure ROBOTICALLY. The only human presence needed is a human boot on some recalcitrant 'Bot backside. They can plant a flag if needs must! Even with the logistical savings offered by using 'Bots we will still need an efficient delivery system. (In agreement with wot Coastal Ron wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 2:24 am.) I suggested an internationalised form of OASIS to the Augustine Committee but then the ULA came up with their "Affordable Architecture." Hmmm.
W.r.t. NEOs it's far, far worse than that! NEOs are not only months away, they are months away, decades apart. Missions are largely governed by the dates of close approach. Unless we have a kick ass space drive like LANTR/ MiniMag Orion/ Vasimr/…; a Closed loop LSS and all the other necessary technologies promised by an ObamaVision program.
W.r.t. Light sails whilst the idea is attractive, kilometer spanning technology has not been proven. In the final analysis the human species is not patient enough for light sails unless there are stonking great big lasers in cis-Venusian orbits. Congress might just agree to those!
NASA Fan wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Agreed! I do have a carefully guarded amount of optimism that the proposed direction will begin to address that conundrum.
NASA has been using solar photons to move space craft since the 1970s. To quote from the NASA website:
“NASA had a more positive experience with solar sailing in 1974 when the Mariner 10 spacecraft ran low on attitude control gas. Because Mariner 10 was on a mission to Mercury, there was plenty of sunlight around and this gave mission controllers an idea: They angled Mariner’s solar arrays into the sun and used solar radiation pressure for attitude control. It worked. Though Mariner 10 was not a solar sail mission, and though the radiation pressure it used was incredibly small, this ingenious use of Mariner’s solar arrays did demonstrate the principle of solar sailing.
Mariner 10, circa 1974, was not designed for solar sailing, but the spacecraft’s solar arrays worked surprisingly well as impromptu sails for attitude control.”
NASA needs to fund a robotic Asterant solar sail program for grabbing and returning 50 to 100 tonne NEO asteroids to cis-Lunar space– immediately, IMO. Then we could have a ‘real’ space depot program based on cheap extraterrestrial resources– not expensive resources that come out of the Earth’s gravity well.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 4:14 am
“A shuttle derived launch system using an Altair descent stage should enable us to land at least 10 tonnes of cargo on the lunar surface per launch”. The Altair is a non-reusable crew design, not a cargo delivery vehicle. If you want cargo, lookup the LM ACES 41 designs, which are based on existing or near-term technologies. Everything Constellation planned to launch into space was non-reusable.
“The best way to reduce cost on a new world, however, is to live off the land.” Great, let’s stick you out on the Moon with an Altair, and see if you can live off the land. How much equipment do you need to manufacture air & water? How much habitat space do you need to grow food? How many tons of supplies are you going to need for a crew of six to “live off the land” for 6 months? We have no idea what’s needed to do this, and it will take years of experimentation on the Moon before we know if we can live independently on the Moon. This is a long-term goal, but not a near-term reality.
You seem to contradict yourself with these two statements:
“There’s no need for an unnecessary middle man to transport NASA astronauts into space. There’s not even enough traffic to the ISS to even support more than one company.”
“NASA needs to focus on pioneering the solar system so that the privateers and settlers can follow.”
Which is it?
You have to ask yourself – what is NASA’s mission? Does it state anywhere in that mission that NASA will be competing with private companies for routine tasks? No, in fact the VSE states that NASA is to promote commercial companies.
Also, in regards to enough traffic to the ISS, we have 4 different cargo delivery systems contracted, and we currently have two different crew deliver systems (Shuttle & Soyuz). I don’t know about you, but I like redundancy, so creating at least two U.S. crew delivery systems seems prudent. Ares I was a single point of failure away from shutting down our space program, so I’m glad it’s cancelled.
Coastal Ron wrote:
You have to ask yourself – what is NASA’s mission? Does it state anywhere in that mission that NASA will be competing with private companies for routine tasks?
NASA’s mission is clearly defined in the law, the National Aeronautics and Space Act.
It would be nice if people would actually read it. They’d find no requirement for NASA to own its rockets, to launch humans into space, to send humans to the Moon or Mars, to define destinations or set schedules.
It does, however, mandate that NASA help grow a commercial space sector.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 4:14 am
things must be nice in the universe you live in….with “time on the Moon” of not much more then 1 week, (if that much) you have us extracting resources from the Moon sufficient to live there…and of course we cannot even do that in LEO.
the post are fun to read however…
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
“NASA needs to fund a robotic Asterant solar sail program for grabbing and returning 50 to 100 tonne NEO asteroids to cis-Lunar space– immediately, IMO. Then we could have a ‘real’ space depot program based on cheap extraterrestrial resources– not expensive resources that come out of the Earth’s gravity well.”
Or the Moon’s? Keep going Marcel you are nearly there.
Whilst solar sails are a fun idea and deserve some research and development eg our BRITISH “Cube Sail” (video)
http://www.ukfeatures.tv/en/categories/science/space-sail.php
… I actually wonder if you have read AsterAnts proposal as their plans are a couple of magnitudes lower than your version.
“AsterAnts is a concept calling for a fleet of solar sail powered spacecraft to retrieve large numbers of small (1/2-1 meter diameter) Near Earth Objects (NEOs) for orbital processing.”
http://alglobus.net/NASAwork/papers/AsterAnts/paper.html
500 kg? Maybe “immediately”. 50-100 tn ? I think not. I would also note in passing that we don’t have the capability to even spot this size of body until it is either hurtling past or destined for a fiery end!
But at least with new improved ObamaVision there is money in the kitty for exploring these alternatives to exploration. Something that we can all agree on. Obamaphobes like Michael Griffin excepted of course!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sectionfronts/politics/index.html
interesting news from UTAH
Robert G. Oler
Robert G. Oler wrote
“interesting news from UTAH”
A good old fashioned party purge. And this guy is a conservative too! Off with there heads! It is not good news for liberals. Utah isn’t really a swing state. A lot will change this November. The Nanny States of America under the leftist hegemony is coming to an end.
amightywind wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 7:25 pm ..
party purges rarelywork out well.
What the right wing of the GOP cannot figure out is that while they get excited over a really right wing candidate, most of the people in the Republic do not. Put it another way. I did not vote for Obama in 08, but there is almost nothing that would make me vote for Palin in 12…so in a Palin/Obama match in 12 I would vote for Obama.
That is why in 96, 00 and 04 I voted Democrat. Not so much out of love for the person who was the nominee from the party, but because the person who was the GOP nominee was simply unacceptable.
I suspect the Utah seat stays red, but the state is in no way typical of the rest of the Union.
Robert G. Oler
amightywind blew “The Nanny States of America under the leftist hegemony is coming to an end”.
Yes, and then we can roll back this new capitalist space plan, and reinstate the government run space plan. Because as everyone knows, the government can run things so much more efficiently than private enterprise…
amightywind, you spend too much time criticizing everyone else, but you don’t bother defending the old plan. Maybe you could show all of us why the old plan (Constellation, dump ISS & Shuttle) is so much better for the U.S. Taxpayer? Maybe there is something we’re missing – enlighten us.
@Coastal Ron
Depending on the Altair configuration, the Altair descent stage can deliver between 10 to 26 tonnes of cargo to the lunar surface– including cargo with very large volumes.
Humans have been digging into the ground and melting rocks on Earth for thousands of years. So I don’t think we’re going to have too much trouble digging up dirt and melting rocks on the Moon– especially since teleoperated machines will probably do most of the work.
NASA is already testing machines that can manufacture oxygen from regolith and they believe that they can deploy machines on the lunar surface that can produce up to 10 tonnes of oxygen annually. That’s about 5 times the amount needed to sustain 6 astronauts on the lunar surface for a year. And it doesn’t including recycling CO2 to make even more oxygen.
A Moon base is not a lunar city. The primary purpose of a Moon base is to determine how easy or how difficult it will be for humans to survive, both physically and psychologically, on the lunar surface and how easy or difficult it will be to utilize lunar resources to do so.
Flying into orbit is not a routine task. If it was routine then private companies and a lot more nations than just the US, Russia and China would have been sending humans into orbit decades ago.
How is NASA competing with private companies? They’re banned from using the space shuttle to launch commercial satellites. And the ISS is a government program. These private companies continue to trash NASA while begging for tax payer dollars. And they’re going to end up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
We’re talking about manned space travel. And there isn’t enough traffic to the ISS for more than one manned American spaceflight company. Space tourism to private space stations is the future for private commercial companies– not the ISS.
@brobof
The Asterants program wants to bring small asteroids into Earth orbits lower than geosynchronus orbit. It also requires more delta v to move objects even into higher Earth orbits as suggested by the Asterant concept.
I advocate capturing asteroids between 50 to 100 tones and transporting them to Earth-Luna L4 or L5 Lagrange points for processing. This would require less delta-v than bringing them to Earth orbit and should cause any anxiety for the chicken littles down on Earth. Eric Drexler, back in 1970s, advocated using light sails to transport nearly 2000 tonnes to cis-lunar space. I’m totally against that.
How much mass you can transport by light sail depends on the size of your light sail, the mass of your light sail (how thin the light sail material is), and how long you want to take to transport objects through interplanetary space (the longer it takes, the more mass you can deliver). Light sails have been envisioned to be only a few hundred meters across to nearly 100 kilometers across.
I advocate deploying very basic, relatively thick, Mylar light sails that are about 1 or 2 kilometers in diameter and weighing between 10 to 40 tonnes without payload at a Lagrange point. Mylar weighs only about 7 grams per meter square (7 tonnes per square kilometer). It would be easy for a 2 kilometers Mylar sail (28 tonnes) to achieve the delta-v (in just a few weeks) required to transport an equal mass of payload to Mars orbit within 6 months time if launched from a Lagrange point. Add just a few more weeks of travel time and you can triple the payload mass to Mars.
However, if that sail was operating within the orbital arcs of the Earth and Venus to grab NEO asteroids then it could transport substantially more payload mass back to cis-lunar space thanks to the higher solar intensity.
I should note, however, that newer and thinner materials are constantly being developed. Newer nanotube materials could be manufactured into sail material as thin as 30 kilograms per square meter.
Marcel, ideas for space projects are about as abundant as ideas for video games, and about as valuable. The point of Asterants was that they actually studied it. There was actual numbers involved. Now you’ve got some numbers there, but you need a heck of a lot more before you could even sensibly publish the concept, let alone get anyone interested in funding it.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 2:57 am
amazing how you can make all this happen with the wave of a hand…
really
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 2:57 am
amazing how you can make all this happen with the wave of a hand…
really
Robert G. Oler
LOL.
Totally agree.
Williams is another one who has yet to explain why the American Taxpayer should pay for these programs.
Double LOL.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 8th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
“party purges rarelywork[sic] out well.”
I thank the good people of Utah for reminding us all that congressman are citizen legislators, voted in to serve the interests of their constituents. House and Senate seats are not lifetime appointments. Being a congressman is not a career. Part of the problem with America is that the government is filled with self-appointed ‘indispensable men”. Haven’t the (Robert Byrd and David Obey’s done enough damage?) Left is hope that that problem is much reduced this coming November.
Thus dribbled from Coastal Ron’s pie hole:
“..Maybe there is something we’re missing – enlighten us.”
It is really quite simple. Most of you liberals hold the Chinese and Russian space programs in high esteem and run down the US program whenever you have the chance. I will say I admire the constancy of the Russian program, even though their spacecraft and rockets are technological crap. Ares I/Orion is a modern, more capable Soyuz well within US technological reach if recent testing is any indicator. It will provide US long term, low drama access to orbit to LEO, and with Ares V, well beyond. Now that the shuttle program is over the need for manned access to space is dire. I reject Obamaspace because it reduces NASA accountability to the tax payer for the same tax dollar, and adds absurd risk in its reliance on unproven organizations like SpaceX.
Griffin blames Nixon for canceling Apollo, but Nixon was right. Apollo had achieved its geopolitical goal as a substitute for a perilous nuclear arms race with the first flight. Continuing to fly people into space with expendable rockets was, and is, far too expensive to be practical.
But human spaceflight from the ground up is not inherently expensive. That’s why the Shuttle was built. All the energy that puts the Space Shuttle in orbit costs less than $850,000 and most of that is for ammonium perchorate for the SRBs. LOX delivered to KSC is about 60 cents a gallon, LH2 about 98 cents. Actual shuttle fuel is cheaper than gasoline.
Virtually all the actual cost of operating the Shuttle is in component fabrication, maintenance, support, and overhead on the Apollo-era facilities. All these costs occur because of particular design choices made early in the program, and were unanticipated when the program was planned. The reason it is much more expensive than anticipated is that the Shuttle had no development prototypes to test the critical new systems like the SRBs and TPS in actual spaceflight, to determine their actual cost and reliability in repeated use.
Operating cost and safety cannot be predicted from paper analyses. Here’s one example. I defy any engineer to anticipate that a woodpecker would punch dozens of holes int he ET foam and necessitate a rollback and the addition of personnel 24 hours a day to watch for birds when the Shuttle is on the pad. They just don’t teach that in engineering school.
Many Shuttle systems have been improved, for instance the TPS today requires far less maintenance than it once did. The last few flights have seen virtually no tile damage, and all the white tiles that used to fall off have been rplaced with flexible blankets which are remarkably durable. But much of what has been learned could only be implemented with a new design, and development prototypes are essential. That was why the X-33, X-34, DC-X and X-37 programs were started in the 1990’s.
I’ve been supporting Shuttle for 23 years and and I am a former industrial engineer. Human spaceflight today simply costs much more than it is worth. The answer isn’t to claim human spaceflight has an infinite value to match its nearly infinite cost. This isn’t the Sixties; a moon race today would be pointless.
The only real answer is the same as it was in 1970; reduce the cost of spaceflight so that its value will be greater than its cost. The Shuttle did not achieve this, but at about $50 million per seat it is significantly less expensive than Constellation would have been. SpaceX estimates $20 million per seat, which is about the best that can be done with ELVs but still too high. To make any research role practical and to increase the demand for tourism beyond one or two customers per year, the cost of travel from surface to LEO will have to be reduced to about $2 million per seat. This is still many times the cost of fuel, but it would not permit complete rebuilding of the vehicle between flights, or the current highly inefficient attempts to reuse large solid-fueled rockets.
A new generation of fully reusable spacecraft and launch vehicles, entirely liquid fueled, remains the only way to make human spaceflight something more than an expensive one-off stunt. Technology demonstrators like the X-37 and the X-33, X-34, and DC-X are essential to design such a vehicle through hand-on testing of critical systems in actual, albeit unmanned, flight. It is unfortunate that NASA abandoned all these efforts, not because of technical failure, but apparently because of lack of interest.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 2:57 am
“Humans have been digging into the ground and melting rocks on Earth for thousands of years. ”
Melting Rocks?
Moving swiftly on.
“especially since teleoperated machines will probably do most of the work. ”
“NASA is already testing machines that can manufacture oxygen from regolith and they believe that they can deploy machines on the lunar surface”
My emphasis in all cases.
And the need for Humans in all this?
This is why Obama ‘flipped off’ the Moon: “We’ve been there.”
(And characterised the environment so that we can go ‘back’ using MACHINES. Thus saving money on: life support; resupply; emergency return waste management and all the other unnecessary infrastructure required for a Base.)
Quick sorties using a Langley Light or equivalent are all that will be needed. If at all!
Living on the Moon to prove that we can live on the Moon is no basis for an exploratory space program and, as I have shown, the Moon as is not sutable for anything but a Hamlet.
“Flying into orbit is not a routine task.”
Tell that to the Russians.
The 1,754th [OMG even I didn’t realise it was that many!] flight of a Soyuz launch vehicle was performed on Friday, April 2, 2010 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 08:04 Moscow time (06:04 Paris time).
http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-release/2010/04-02-10-soyuz-success-1754.asp
It may not be cheap and it may not be safe but, with even more Soyuz launched from the Guiana Space Center, I think the word routine could be applied. So much for “Technological Crap” as intimated by some blowhards… We shall see if the American Commercials can compete with Russian and Chinese Commercials.
Wrt your second post; you can advocate all you like but despite decades of research we have yet to demonstrate the principle in orbit. (Fingers crossed for Cubesail!)
Dan Woodard wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Spot on Sir! Especially the last paragraph. Can I direct you to this other British space project:
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/images_skylon.html
brobof wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 11:09 am
almost everything Marcel advocates assumes “routine” operations then he goes and states that going into earth orbit, which is the only thing among the task he advocates that has been done sort of routine.
LOL
Robert G. Oler
dad2059 wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Williams is another one who has yet to explain why the American Taxpayer should pay for these programs.
HSF is in my view the largest entitlement that exist in Amerca…and it has affected almost all who are connected to it, including those cheering it on as advocates.
as Don Woodard says “Human spaceflight today simply costs much more than it is worth. The answer isn’t to claim human spaceflight has an infinite value to match its nearly infinite cost.
space advocates and NASA are great at telling the American people, with virtually no proof what is good for them to support in terms of human spaceflight. We are on the verge of launching another shuttle…it will basically do for about 1 billion dollars what the Russians have done for far less in terms of sending a module to the station…the parts that the shuttle will carry could have been bundled in something else…
and yet it is taken as a given that we should spend those hundreds of millions well…we just should spend them.
Now Marcel is talking about sailing asteroids back toward the EArth…sorry with our state of doing things, aiming a large rock at the vicinity of Earths gravity well…is something I will pass on
Robert G. Oler
@Robert G. Oler
“amazing how you can make all this happen with the wave of a hand…”
With a $20 billion a year NASA budget you can do some amazing things– if you want to. That’s $100 billion over the next 5 years, $200 billion over the next 10 years.
Or you can simply waste it by allowing Federal workers to use it to build nothing and to go nowhere (the Obama plan). And I guarantee you that government workers can do an excellent job at that:-)
@brobof
“Living on the Moon to prove that we can live on the Moon is no basis for an exploratory space program and, as I have shown, the Moon as is not sutable for anything but a Hamlet.”
If all you want to do is– explore– then robots can do that a lot faster and cheaper than humans can.
The primary purpose of using humans in space is to see if the human species can live beyond our planet of evolutionary origin in order to enhance the long term survival of our species.
And believe it or not, there are lots of people on Earth who would love to visit the Moon and even live there. I did a poll a few months ago on the liberal Daily Kos where 37% said that they would be willing to live on the Moon– forever!
Griffin blames Nixon for canceling Apollo
In other words, Griffin is as ignorant of space history as most people.
Or you can simply waste it by allowing Federal workers to use it to build nothing and to go nowhere (the Obama plan).
No, that was the Program of Record.
“If all you want to do is– explore– then robots can do that a lot faster and cheaper than humans can.”
Finally you get it!
The primary purpose of using humans in space is when ever and where ever the job CAN’T BE DONE BY ROBOTS! Otherwise it’s just a waste of precious resources. The profligacy of the last generation (Mea Culpa) without a substantive payoff means that we have to “Think Smart. Think Green.” Rather than grandiose New Adventures; we have to repair, repurpose and recycle the old ones. Hence Orion. Hence the ISS. And hence a solid, short term program of research and technological investment towards the goal of harvesting the wealth of the asteroids.
(The shuttle could have been recycled back in 2005 but it was trashed and dumped in landfill in exchange for a bright shiny Rocket to nowhere.)
Obama makes the best of a bad job as America cannot… the World cannot be backtracked into a Cx style Moon Base as the return on the investment is too small. L1 – Phobos – Ceres is the most direct Flexible Path for Humans to “Follow the Water!” All the rest can be automated.
As to the point of Humans in space. We are living and working in the ISS. There needs to be improvements for sure. Improvements in radiation mitigation, spin gravity, a working toilet and about a gazillion other small petty problems. By solving them we prove that we can survive in space. That we can survive in the vast ‘ocean’ between resources.
We don’t need planets! Except for this one and the ones our grandchildren will build for our great-grandchildren! Assuming of course that we don’t muck up this one first!
With regard to your poll: what was the question, what was the demographic and what was your sample. Alas getting people to die on the Moon is a very expensive way to build up biomass!
I’ve watched the Skylon project and its predecessor, hotol, for many years. It would require significant investment just to find out if it is practical and no private company can raise that much. NASA won’t invest in its own RLV projects, let alone one that’s British, and so far the British government has shown no interest. This would be a much better investment than Constellation since it might provide true reusable SSTO capability.
That said, air-breathing systems for space launch are not as attractive as they might appear, except for conventional turbofan-powered carrier aircraft like the White Knight. Air-breathing propulsion usually has only a narrow speed range where it is efficient, while a launch vehicle rapidly accelerates rapidly until it leaves the atmosphere. Moreover the cost of a complex airbreathing/rocket propulsion system like that proposed for Skylon may exceed the cost of using two stages with larger but simpler rocket engines, if both stages can land on the same runway and if reintegration of the stages before launch can be simplified.
Flexible Path NEVER intended to allow for a Lunar Return! It was conceived by people who were hostile to ANY Lunar plan from day one. The Augustine Commission just deceptively threw in the Moon on their Report as a tiny “oh, maybe we’ll still do that” mini-option. But their intent from the get-go was to terminate ANY new Lunar flights. That’s why all this bunk & nonsense about flag-planting jaunts to Asteroids is actually being taken seriously by Obama’s administration. ANYTHING to avoid dealing with the Moon, eh?!
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
@Robert G. Oler
“amazing how you can make all this happen with the wave of a hand…â€
With a $20 billion a year NASA budget you can do some amazing things– if you want to. That’s $100 billion over the next 5 years, $200 billion over the next 10 years.
it is post like this that really make me wonder (and sorry I dont know any other way to put it) If you are really watching the situation objectively.
Yeah NASA is getting a lot of money…and all of it vanishes (or most of it does anyway) doing Constellation which wont do any of the things you want done.
The money perpetuates a bureaucracy that thinks everything you are saying is fantasy.
The money doesnt allow for much actual investment in any of the technologies that you say you like.
and Obama’s does…and yet you dont support it.
I dont get it…really I dont
Robert G. Oler
Flexible Path NEVER intended to allow for a Lunar Return! It was conceived by people who were hostile to ANY Lunar plan from day one. The Augustine Commission just deceptively threw in the Moon on their Report as a tiny “oh, maybe we’ll still do that†mini-option. But their intent from the get-go was to terminate ANY new Lunar flights.
Better get your ESP-meter checked.
Their intent from the get-go was to have a sustainable program. They had nothing against the moon, except Constellation would never have gotten there, or anywhere else, in any near-term time frame or any affordable way. Flexible path is exactly what it says. Once the basic infrastructure is in place, if someone decides that the moon is a worthwhile objective, all that will be necessary is the (relatively trivial) development of a lander.
@ brobof
You cannot live permanently in a microgravity environment. Microgravity environments are inherently deleterious to the human body. So the ISS– is not– teaching us how to live permanently in space.
@ Robert G. Oler
If you don’t know what the NASA budget is, you should just say, “I don’t know what the NASA budget is or I don’t care what the NASA budget is!”
I saw Griffin speak in Seattle. He also mentioned how Nixon cancelled the last three Apollo missions. In light of AIG and the Wall St bailout all this NASA spending seems like trivial drivel. I wonder if all the Aerospace Workers AND Engineers AND Scientists ought to form an International Superunion! Then maybe Obama would pay attention to us! I will never ever forget this last 18 months of misery and the devastation that it has caused to my family. There was a Logan Utah guy who commented on Lori Garver’s Facebook page about how aerospace engineers don’t want to build windmills. Heck!! I would be overjoyed to have any job in the energy sector!
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
and this is another reason you strike me as not all that serious.
why wont you answer the question I posed? How can you be against a technology effort when everything you propose is in vast need of technology development or do you just think that this stuff pops out of nowhere or cash piles?
Robert G. Oler
One of the most quotable things Griffin actually said was that the average person assumes NASA is getting around a quarter of the National budget when they actually get 50 times less than that. That never seems to get into the lamestream media. They like bashing NASA and call it white collar welfare. Well it does not have to be. Carter could have started a solar Powersat program in 1980, but not only chose not to, he had the studies buried! NASA could be running a public utility company in space that beams down half a trillion dollars a year in clean electrical energy. Neglect from both right and left is responsible for this tradgedy. I ended up asking his wife why chose “apollo on steroids” over “mars direct”? Her answer, she claims, was the same as his, six months out, 18 months on the Martian surface, and six months back is just too damn long! IMHO We have the science to get to Mars in 39 days, but the engineering development might take a decade! Personally that is what I thought that I was born to do! The Obama cabal seems to want to push it off for another 25 years. Apollo was great precisely because it catalyzed technical innovations, that stimulated our economy. We sure could use a 60% efficient solar cell that costs 25 cents a watt! We ought to have an ARPA-E contest, like DARPA’s Grand Challenge, to not only make those solar cells, but the rest of the solar powersat and the cheap access to LEO to deploy them!
That is the one thing that I like about the Obama nonplan! They actually give some lip service to technical advancement. We should be testing closed life support on the space station right now! We should be testing robotic in-situ resource utilization for liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel production on mars right now! We should be developing a nuclear thermal rocket based on Americium, not 1970’s technology! We should be deploying a VASIMR to the ISS for reboost! We should be developing 200 MW class solar powersats! And ferromagnetic fluid droplet radiators constrained by mini-magetospheres for heat rejection. Light sails, microwave sails, magbeam, flightweight fusion reactors for space should also start being developed now! Not in 25 years!
If we are serious about colonizing mars, we are going to need the Martian version of the Earthship sustainble housing biotecture! We are going to need homes that produce all the water, food, electricity, and fuel that we need. We are going to need homes that recycle almost all the garbage we make. In short all the sustainable technology currently in vouge with the left is going to have to be advanced for the Martian winters, which are twice as long and at least twice as cold as the worst winters on earth!
Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
@Robert G. Oler
“and this is another reason you strike me as not all that serious.
why wont you answer the question I posed? How can you be against a technology effort when everything you propose is in vast need of technology development or do you just think that this stuff pops out of nowhere or cash piles?”
Please forgive me but how can anyone take you seriously when you think an amateur rocket company like Space X knows a lot more about space travel than NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed, and Energia.
Space X and Space X advocates like yourself really need to stop bragging about what Space X can do as far as manned space travel is concerned– until they finally do it! NASA has taken humans to the Moon. Space X has yet to take people anywhere.
Has a “Witness List” been posted yet for the Senate Hearings on Wednesday?
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 10th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Please forgive me but how can anyone take you seriously when you think an amateur rocket company like Space X knows a lot more about space travel than NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed, and Energia.
how can anyone take you seriously when you call a company that has invested hundreds of millions in a potential product “amateur rocket company”.
sorry…you are just a step above a mightywind
sad
Robert G. Oler
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@ Rand Simberg…..Flexible Path is a big excuse for us to NOT do anything! To think small all over again, and to STAY stuck in LEO for another decade or two more! Constellation is about getting us back to the frontier, for another round of daring exploration on another world. A call for us to expand the human presence there, and do much more than merely reach the place again. We’re back to the Moon to stay, this time, because the Altair lander will be capable of emplacing hab modules there. Flexible Path throws our attention in way too many directions all at once, and will lead to dead-end, big-brag, “Look, we got there first!” jaunts to asteroids, where believe you me, NO bases will be built, and NO industrial infrastructure will emerge ever. Because now, according to Flexible Path: We can NEVER go back to where we’ve been. Every destination now has to be 100% virgin territory, or we condemn it as passe & not worth a second look. Flexible Path leads to nothing—but the euphoria about being the first to go anyplace! A string of euphoric firsts will NOT lead to base emplacement NOR industrial development!
You know, Chris, nonsense doesn’t become sensible by adding lots of capital letters and exclamation marks to it.
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 9th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
brobof wrote @ May 7th, 2010 at 8:17 pm refers. ON THIS THREAD
Short term memory loss or wilful ignorance. Either way Marcel: Doh!
Rand,
Maybe he is going for a Kirk/Shatner imperssonation
Because HE’s goT To!!!!
Speaking of Captain Kirk, have you all noticed the total silence of the Sci-Fi community in all this save-or-kill-Constellation debate?? You’d think that all those Trekkies would actually want to see some of their big interstellar dreams become reality for once in their lives! You’d think that they’d be clamoring to rescue this deep space initiative, at those conventions that they always hold! (Let’s make Science Fiction real…..) But no. Alas, all those Star Trek, Star Wars, & Avatar fans are far too wrapped up in merely being entertained, than to actually care about REAL space exploration! [Hey, Sci-Fi fans: NASA is NEVER going to discover a race of blue-skinned cat-people, as long as it stays trapped in LEO!]
You’d think that all those Trekkies would actually want to see some of their big interstellar dreams become reality for once in their lives!
You’d only think that if you were unfamiliar with them. Most Trek people are uninterested in space. They’re more into fantasy.
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