Can you also show me where the American people said “make the resulting NASA system cost at least 6 to 10 times more expensive than a commercial system.”? Also did the American people say “and make sure it is laden with pork and includes at least 3-4 extra engineers per position so every space state gets a piece of the pie.”?

Come on, NASA’s record, influenced by congress and it’s drive for corporate donations for pork speaks for itself, why try and defend the indefensable.

MW: NASA’s not a corporation.

So it doesn’t have to accomplish anything?

Its purpose was to do a job that the American people asked it to do and which the private corporations refused to do. And NASA did it!

So if the American people told it to jump of a bridge, you’d count that as an accomplishment?

And most American’s consider the Moon landings as one of our greatest achievements.

Seeing as thirty years ago, the opposite was true, it seems NASA’s greatest accomplishment is fishing for compliments.

You should have seen the hysteria in New York when John Glenn returned from space as a hero in 1962.

You could throw a parade for just about anything in New York.

We learned that a reusable winged vehicle was possible to develop…

Nonsense. There was nothing to “learn” there. “We” knew in advance is was possible to develop a winged reusable vehicle.

…and now private space companies are developing their own.

Which has nothing to do with NASA’s (lack of) accomplishments.

We also developed an incredible hydrogen engine, the RS-25, that is going to be use as an expendable rocket engine for the SLS program.

Isn’t that like being proud of eating a sandwich you made almost half a century ago?

And I’d like to see it used for the Delta IV.

Because you like saying and doing random things?

You imply that every time you say NASA can’t build the SLS.

I’ve said no such thing, liar.

Indeed, the low level radiation on a long trip is cumulative. But that does not change the fact that as, even you say, people in transit to the Moon or in Lunar orbit will be susceptible to intense transient radiation events. Yes, as I said they would be protected in a base once they got to the Moon, but they have to be in those other two vulnerable situations to get to the base and thus require the same type of radiation protections. Those fast but overwhelmingly intense transient solar and cosmic events can happen at any time without warning. That fact exists no matter how much you shorten the time. Thus, all you would accomplish by shortening the trip time is to somewhat lessen the probability of a disaster on any one trip, not stop it in the long run. There will be disasterous trips due to radiation, no matter what, if radiation shielding does not exist. This is my field, Marcel. You evidently know less about it than you think.

“In the long run, however, the only way we’re going to dramatically reduce the cost of space travel for both NASA and private commercial space launch companies is by– dramatically increasing the demand for rocket launches!
WOW! For once you spoke the truth. And SLS is slowing that process by cannibalizing funds from Commercial Crew and using up money that could be used for implementing depot technology, radiation protection technology and landers now to speed up our return to the moon.

“Since I’m strongly in favor of utilizing the ULA’s ACES technology for the manned SLS upper stage while also utilizing the RS-25 engines for the ULA’s Delta IV rocket, the increased demand for such components could dramatically reduce the cost of space travel for both private industry and for NASA.”
Using ACES technology with boosters other than SLS would increase both total tonnage lifted from Earth for less cost and demand for those components to an even greater extent (as the ULA study indicates). Just replace the name “Ares V” with “SLS” when you read the ULA study and you’ll get the idea.

“However, these funds are not available for a lunar base program because NASA’s still running an expensive LEO program in the form of the ISS ($3 billion a year) and the ISS related Commercial Crew development program.”
Again I reference the studies I have already mentioned. Why cancel ISS when we can cancel SLS, get back to the Moon without developing an expensive new rocket and build that lunar base for what we would have spent on SLS?

“MW: You imply that every time you say NASA can’t build the SLS. NASA doesn’t build rockets, NASA vendors do. And, someday, even a company like Space X might become a NASA and a DOD vendor. “
SpaceX is already a NASA vendor and they’re working on getting the DOD. And NASA is indeed building SLS from the standpoint that they will be designing and developing it while constantly overseeing and supervising the work done by the contracted commercial companies (In the same manner it can be said they built the Shuttle). SpaceX is a vendor as much as those other companies are, the differnce being SpaceX is designing and developing their launchers themselves rather than NASA doing it.

Prez Cannady: “How does putting a single man in orbit on throwaway for $625 million each a starting year after the Soviets amount to an achievement? How does a handful of lunar layovers costing $140 billion amount and teaching us next to nothing about exploiting space amount to an achievement?

MW: NASA’s not a corporation. Its purpose was to do a job that the American people asked it to do and which the private corporations refused to do. And NASA did it! And most American’s consider the Moon landings as one of our greatest achievements. You should have seen the hysteria in New York when John Glenn returned from space as a hero in 1962. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then just check Youtube:-)

@Prez Cannady: “How does fielding a $1.2 billion a launch semi-reusable death trap amount to an achievement?”

MW: We learned that a reusable winged vehicle was possible to develop and now private space companies are developing their own. We also developed an incredible hydrogen engine, the RS-25, that is going to be use as an expendable rocket engine for the SLS program. And I’d like to see it used for the Delta IV.

@Prez Cannady: “Please, child. Show me where anyone said any such thing.”

MW: You imply that every time you say NASA can’t build the SLS. NASA doesn’t build rockets, NASA vendors do. And, someday, even a company like Space X might become a NASA and a DOD vendor.

Marcel F. Williams

Rick Boozer: “Going to the Moon is a deep space mission since it is beyond the radiation shield protection of the van Allen belts, even though it is not beyond Earth’s gravity well. As an astrophysicist I can tell you lunar missions face the same radiation hazards from CMEs, cosmic rays etc as asteroid or interplanetary missions. The Apollo astronauts were lucky none of these events took place during their time in transit to the moon above the belts, in lunar orbit, or on the lunar surface. The one exception would be if the astronauts can wait it out in a moonbase covered with enough regolith, but that won’t help anyone in lunar orbit, caught out on the surface or on their way to the moon.”

MW: The Moon is only a few days away. A round trip to an asteroid, on the other hand, would be a multi-month journey through interplanetary space that could expose astronauts to deadly levels of radiation during a major solar event. Lunar habitats can be easily shielded from cosmic radiation and solar events by a few meters of lunar regolith in a place where there is no shortage of such material. This is one of the reasons why I’m against lunar sorties and for a lunar base. You’re correct that astronauts traveling within cis-lunar space to the Moon would be in danger, but they’d be in a lot more danger traveling several months through interplanetary space. The travel time between LEO and the Moon could be substantially reduced if more fuel could be utilized– another reason for using the SLS to deploy large amounts of fuel to space depots:-)

Rick Boozer: “As for the rest of your list regarding technical points about SLS . . .
None of the points you made address the economic realities of the situation. The laws of economics are as unforgiving as the laws of physics in space as they are anything else. Cost seems to always be the least important issue to you, and rockets get built with money. Plus I never said anything like the SLS is incompatible with depots, just not as econonomically practical. There are studies, including the one I cited earlier that show the issues you brought up can be worked around. The workarounds are a lot less expensive than building SLS. And here is yet another article illustrating nonSLS solutions:
http://ulalaunch.com/site/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf”

MW: NASA is not a corporation so the real question you have to ask is if the SLS/MPCV development is sustainable with the $8.4 billion a year President Obama inherited from George Bush for manned spaceflight related activities. I’ve seen no budget higher than $4 billion a year for SLS/MPCV development, so the answer is clearly yes. That should leave $4.4 billion for developing a lunar lander and lunar base architecture.

However, these funds are not available for a lunar base program because NASA’s still running an expensive LEO program in the form of the ISS ($3 billion a year) and the ISS related Commercial Crew development program. The Augustine Commission’s solution to this problem was to increase the annual NASA budget by about $3 billion. But because the President terminated the Constellation (a program I did not like) and any return to the Moon (a program I did like), the Congress became hostile to any budget increases for an agency with no clear direction. And, ironically, this has allowed Congress to cut the NASA budget while significantly underfunding Commercial Crew development.

But the economic burden of continuing the $3 billion a year ISS program is NASA’s real problem, IMO.

In the long run, however, the only way we’re going to dramatically reduce the cost of space travel for both NASA and private commercial space launch companies is by– dramatically increasing the demand for rocket launches!

The Federal government, or a smart State, could do that easily, without any tax payer funds, by simply setting up a national and international space lotto system so that average people in America and around the world could risk a dollar or two every year for a chance of winning a trip aboard a private commercial American space rocket to a private American commercial space station plus $250,000 to compensate them for their time off for astronaut training. The $250,000 might be enough for billions of people in third world countries to participate all by itself:-) NASA could also subsidize the national space lotto component with a billion from its own budget to guarantee at least 6 to 10 private launches per year which should add more confidence and stability for those seeking to invest in commercial crew industries.

Since I’m strongly in favor of utilizing the ULA’s ACES technology for the manned SLS upper stage while also utilizing the RS-25 engines for the ULA’s Delta IV rocket, the increased demand for such components could dramatically reduce the cost of space travel for both private industry and for NASA. Commercial utilization of the SLS to deploy Bigelow’s Olympus space stations should also help to reduce the cost for the SLS architecture.

“This is the year RGO”

You sound like a Cubs/Orioles fan…..

Aggies RGO

“E.P. Grondine; it should be pretty easy to get past the astronaut cultists to do planetary defense, since, Hollywood notwithstanding, astronauts are nowhere close to being necessary for it. If in fact what you are trying to do is defend the planet rather than look for more excuses to launch and admire heavenly pilgrims.”

It isn’t the astronaut cultists, though there’s enough of them around, who have an entirely unrealistic view of the jobs and lives of astronauts.

It’s generally the Mars utopianists, along with some anti-nuke tech greens. And then you have the astrophysicists and ET folks in charge of the telescope budgets.

And the entire whole is institutionally entrenched and supported.

Some 30 years after the Alvarez’s initial work, I still read articles about “THE ASTEROID IMPACT THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS”. Like that’s even close to right. That’s when it isn’t a volcano or something else like gradual climate change.

Get it straight: it was the impact of three COMETS or comet fragments.

And climate collapse and starvation caused by comet impact killed off the mammoth. Period.

We’re going to need astronauts to construct and maintain the necessary detection systems. See CAPS.

RB –

“Objective reality will be the way it is regardless of our subjective wishes.”

In my experience, not as long as objective reality can be avoided.
And when it finally can not, there’s usually some kind of mental escape mechanism.

Consider the Ares, for example.

We could have had DIRECT and two manned launch systems…

And Griffin is now one of Romney’s space advisors.

Not really. He didn’t want to do it. It only happened due to pressure from the White House.

Try as I might, can’t even find second or third hand reports of Griffin opposing COTS between his appointment and August 2006.

You sound like a Cubs/Orioles fan.

@Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 31st, 2012 at 7:11 am

Might be interesting to hear any local chatter you pick up fromk the locals at the bars and and grocery stores.