@Das Boese;….BEO is where REAL space exploration is!! Who cares about “routine excess” to LEO?!?!

Routine access to LEO is a prerequisite for sustainable expeditions beyond.

What the freak is all this: going around in circles, over & over again in LEO?! What the freak are we all doing up there, anyway, that’s so “important”?!

We’re learning how to survive extended periods of time in a microgravity and increased radiation environment, which is sort of desirable if you want your astronauts to return alive from their BEO trip. We’re also testing out procedures and technology that are necessary to enable that sort of trip.

Maintaining A Lunar surface base would be FAR more grander!!

It would also be far more expensive whilst not allowing any of the research necessary to eventually venture out into deep space.

How NASA could be directed into extending the freaking ISS into ANY further decades is beyond me!!

I believe it was your elected representatives that made that decision, not NASA, so you might want to take it up with them.

DCSCA IS COMPLETELY RIGHT!! LET’S DE-ORBIT THE ISS AS SOON AS IT CAN BE ARRANGED!! Then, let’s get on with the REAL exploration.

Sure, let’s do that.
Where do you want to explore? What do you want to do there that requires the physical presence of humans? How many do you need to send? How are you going to get there, what spacecraft, propulsion system, life support system? How do you ensure their survival and safe return?
Most importantly, how do you pay for it all?

Chris Castro wrote @ May 27th, 2011 at 1:34 am

The Flexible Path people are out of their freaking minds, that’s what! This petty avoidance of ever having to build a lander, because of the Lunar re-visiting potential, is a major flaw in their way of thinking.

That doesn’t even make any sense at all, Chris. Might I remind you that under Constellation, development of the lander was frozen and would not have occured until after the completion of Ares V in the 2020s?

The Moon is VERY much needed to be the proving ground of any farther deep-into-space initiatives.

The Moon is a proving ground for… the Moon. It teaches us nothing about deep space.

The Zubrin acolytes have things VERY wrong, in their assumption that NASA must mount a manned Mars expedition immediately.

I agree, although my reason is perhaps different from yours. I’m opposed to it because any realistically conceivable near-future Mars mission has a 100% fatality rate.

Having to deal with deep gravity wells is a given.

What, the moon isn’t a gravity well?

If humanity is ever going to do more extensive surface activities & further scientific work in space, in person. Something rather like the Altair L-SAM lander will ultimately have to be built.

If humanity is ever going to have a sustained presence on the Moon it will require a lander that is nothing like the expendable, “supersized Apollo LM” design of Altair.
Such a vehicle would need to be reusable, modularly reconfigurable for crew, pressurized or unpressurized cargo and capable of autonomous operation.

There are freaks in LEO???

Hmmmm

Interesting.

For God’s sake- NASA’s station management planning had it de-comissioned, de-orbited and gonig to splash the thing in 2016– all of 24 months ago

And yet they hadn’t even figured out how they were going to do it, since the USOS can’t deorbit itself.

to keep Constellation funded

Constellation is history.

You can keep trying to scramble and search for justifications to stretch the ISS out to ’2020 and beyond’ all you want

You can keep sticking your fingers in your ears and singing “I can’t hear you”

NOBODY knows what they’re doing up there

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

The crews spend more man hours maitaining the beast than doing any research and it has been permanently crewed since 2000

Aside from the fact that station maintenance itself is research, need I remind you that the station has been under construction until now, including a two-year gap after Columbia.

and returned nothing of value to justify the $100-plus billion costs– costs that roughly equal the price of purchasing, (not operating) 14 Nimitz class aircraft carriers.

Well it’s good you didn’t go for the carriers then, since the $100 billion include building the station and operating it for 30 years.

LEO is a ticket to no place and tevery dollar wasted on LEO is a dollar less available for BEO.

LEO is the ticket to BEO. Every dollar spent on BEO is wasted without viable routine access to LEO.

Soyuz will carry the crew loads

Soyuz will be retired before this decade ends.

“There’s no profitable economic rationale…”

…that your limited mind can understand. nuff said.

Building SLS with no payloads or input from our current partners on payloads for it, doesn’t seem smart. It will be interesting to see once NASA releases its plans for SLS, if it includes payloads, timelines and cost of the payloads. ITAR might be a big part of this issue.

America could have asked ESA and Roskosmos, but the answer would have been “not interested”. Nobody has any need for heavy-lift capability beyond what is commercially avaliable (or will be soon) for a long time.

It wouldn’t have mattered either way, since the decision for SLS wasn’t made based on need.

Besides, CCDev is the only way we’re going to increase the size of the crew to allow a crew member dedicated for payload ops. We can’t do that with Soyuz and Congress isn’t going to allow China to play.