“Why do people believe that because NASA does not have money NOW
for missisions to asteriods, the moon and Mars that they dont have a
justafieable path? These destinations will be visited between 10 and 20 years from now. Why should they be budegeted now?”

For two reasons:

1. Leadtime: Look at any significantly large program NASA has been doing recently, and you will see that it takes at least a decade to do the planning, building and testing of the mission hardware. That means NASA needs to start coming up with detailed hardware plans NOW if they want to be using the SLS when it becomes operational.

2. Overall Budget Needs: Using historical analogies, it could be estimated that an SLS-sized mission payload (70-130mt) would cost at least $10B, and if we assume a decade to develop, that comes out to an average of $1B/year (it’s more lumpy than that in real life). Now add in 2-3 SLS missions per year that SLS supporters say we will be doing, and quickly it becomes apparent that NASA’s budget needs to increase by $2B/year, every year, for at least 10 years. So just funding SLS mission hardware will cost $20B/year once it hits it’s full launch tempo, but that doesn’t include the operation of all that hardware (the ISS takes $3B/year to operate).

So yes, if the SLS is going to be used, then NASA needs the money now to start working on the SLS payloads, and NASA will need an ever-increasing budget in order to keep the SLS busy.

How likely do you think it is that Congress will increase NASA’s budget by 10% per year, every year, for a decade?

It is known!

H/T George R. R. Martin.

While robots can do some things better than People,
People can still do some things that robots can not.

To start this off, a fact is that the Earth will be in Comet 73P’s debris field in 2022.

Thus the SLS most likely will have a really, really useful purpose as as an UNMANNED deep space delivery system around 2020-2021

While I myself would have preferred DIRECT to the SLS, our legislators did not. They appear to view it as necessary for manned Mars flight, and they view that goal as being in the national interest.

My assumption is that they are waiting for the economy to pick up before
funding the construction of the flight architecture.

It’s not the missions that need to be budgeted now. Rather, the development of the pieces necessary to put those missions together needs to be budgeted now if you’re going to put those missions together in 10-20 years.

All that NASA is building now is a 70-ton launch vehicle (SLS) and a crew capsule (MPCV). Among the things that are missing:

– A service module for lunar Lagrange point and lunar flyby/orbit missions
– Long-duration propellant storage for multi-launch missions
– A lander for lunar landing missions
– An ascent vehicle for lunar landing missions
– A transfer stage for solar Lagrange point and NEO missions
– A larger habitable volume for solar Lagrange point and NEO missions
– A proximity vehicle for NEO missions

If we’re going to mount a NEO mission by 2025 (the Administration’s goal), most of these items need to have their design, development, testing, and build started now or in the next two or three years. As Apollo showed, they’re long-lead items requiring a decade to field.

But there’s no budget for any of these things. Instead, we’re putting all of NASA’s human space exploration resources through at least 2025 into SLS and MPCV. Without at least some of the items from the list above, SLS and MPCV will only be capable of Earth orbit.

We did Earth orbit for 30 years. It was called Space Shuttle.

“People who say that NASA will not go to the moon, the asteriods and mars using SLS”

The proof is in the pudding. SLS is so expensive that it’s sucking up all the budget for any actual exploration hardware (the items in the list above). And without these items, NASA will not go to the Moon, asteroids, or Mars.

This is a fact. NASA’s own planning documents state that there is no funding for any “in-space elements” through at least 2025 using SLS/MPCV, even with substantial increases over the President’s budget runout. See p. 8 in the presentation below:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=38348

This is a shame, because much less expensive heavy lift alternatives to SLS exist. ULA could built a 70-ton Phase 2 EELV for $2.3 billion at last estimate. SpaceX has offered a firm, fixed-price, 150-ton superheavy Falcon for $2.5 billion. Either of these options uses less that one-year’s worth of the SLS/MPCV budget. Even if they doubled in cost, they’d free up on the order of $20-odd billion through 2025 for actual exploration hardware development.

“are anti-government people that want to see NASA fail and want to see the US fail.”

Speaking for myself, I do want to see NASA succeed in human space exploration beyond Earth orbit. But it’s not going to do it by spending all of its human space exploration budget on the launcher and crew capsule. NASA has to partner with the private sector, which is much more efficient at launch and other routine developments and operations, so that there is budget left for NASA to build the harder, deep-space elements of these missions.

“People who say that NASA will not go to the moon, the asteriods and mars using SLS are anti-government people that want to see NASA fail and want to see the US fail.”
B.S. We could be starting those missions NOW. I and others don’t want to see NASA fail. Instead of working on a dead-end vehicle like SLS, NASA could be developing and building cutting-edge tech such as: fuel depots, radiation shielding and advanced exploration vehicles like Nautilus X. Those are technologies for going beyond low earth orbit that NASA could be working on now with the money being wasted on SLS.

Want NASA to stay in low earth orbit indefinitely rather than doing ambitious deep space missions? Then keep supporting SLS.

Egad wrote @ September 13th,

“So if we truly intend to have a program of human exploration to some destination beyond low Earth orbit, there is a piece of the puzzle missing.”

Actually, Steven Squyres, Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council wrote that; I just quoted it. I certainly agree with it, of course, since it’s manifestly true.

Right now for your worries we need crater studies, infrared telescopes, a network of unmanned lunar seismometers — all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hobbit holes on the moon. And, should your fears be confirmed, unmanned electric propulsion gravity tugs. No holy heavenly hobbits required.