“The asteroidal next-to-zero-g situation leads astronauts into a big morass of problems. You cannot stand, walk, or drive upon an NEO surface.”

So what! That’s not the goal of going to an asteroid, especially one that small enough to be captured and dragged around by our puny abilities. How many times do you have to be told that?

“Furthermore, all this IGNORANT talk about a Lunar Return being a mere Apollo Redux…”

Talk to former NASA Administrator (and Constellation architect) Michael Griffin – he is the one that coined the phrase “Apollo on steroids”.

“…and then these same people having NO problem at all with an ISS Redux”

We could have put the ISS in orbit around the Moon or at one of the Lagrange points, would that have made a difference to you? I doubt it.

It was put in Earth LEO because that is the closest place to do zero-G research in space. Earth LEO wasn’t the goal, zero-G research in space was.

It’s amazing you don’t understand this.

NRC Committee on Human Spaceflight Needs Input.
Posted by Marc Boucher Posted June 4, 2013 8:30 AM

The National Research Council Committee on Human Spaceflight Needs is
looking for input from communities interested in human exploration. The deadline for
submissions is July 9.

http://spaceref.com/exploration/nrc-committee-on-human-spaceflight-needs-input.html

Now’s the time to let YOUR vision for space be heard!

Bob Clark

“Yes I am that flexible”

Which is something I’ve always admired about you…

“Ed Weiler was right, I guess, in that no lives were lost because of his decision.”

Not yet, at least, and hopefully never.
But I think you’re thanking the wrong the wrong person for that particular blessing, as well as the fatality free warning at Chelyabinsk.

“I agree that we ought to spend more on threat detection”

Glad to hear that, Hiram.

“but Congress hasn’t shown a lot of interest in it. Certainly not on the scale of certain “cosmological research” telescopes you’re talking about. Certainly not on the scale of large LEO habitats either. Impact threat detection is a profoundly low priority to Congress, and George Brown didn’t change that much.”

Hiram, of ourse you meant to say that Griffin’s contempt for the Congress’s instructions did not change their interest in NASA handling this problem for the nation.

Hiram, to handle an impactor you have to
1) find it, and
2) get a payload to it.

The current mission develops the technology necessary to accomplish both of those goals within the current budget. And it will give a great deal of the information necessary for determining the proper payloads as well.

Ed Weiler was right, I guess, in that no lives were lost because of his decision. Good job, Ed!

I agree that we ought to spend more on threat detection, but Congress hasn’t shown a lot of interest in it. Certainly not on the scale of certain “cosmological research” telescopes you’re talking about. Certainly not on the scale of large LEO habitats either. Impact threat detection is a profoundly low priority to Congress, and George Brown didn’t change that much. That’s sad, but we’d better get over it. If we killed off JWST, SLS, and ISS, do you really honestly think that money is going to go into impact detection? Get real.

Case closed.

Yes I am that flexible

“I believe Lice Cycle Cost is hat you are referring to. Then again it all depends on the requirements.”

Not so much life cycle as operational costs.

And the reason I divide up the transportation segments is because they each have distinct challenges, and they can each up upgraded without affecting the others. Each can also be run by different organizations, and each can also have multiple providers. It’s not the only way to run a transportation system, but I think it’s the least expensive initially.

“Now you have laid out your own version of HSF but I surmise that you did not run any specific trade studies to actually show that this is a feasible option.”

We did. My team (i.e. me, myself, and I) have worked tirelessly on this…

I did pattern this off of the ULA “Affordable Exploration Architecture 2009″ study, so it’s not like I am the only one that has thought of it. And if you look at history, transportation systems between transportation nodes have been very instrumental in opening up frontiers.

“I think a good example of that is the Spudis $88B plan. ”

I disagree. I like the way he builds up the robotic exploration assets on the Moon, but otherwise his assumptions for what comes after that are pretty unrealistic. Somehow he goes from mining water to creating a “cis-lunar transportation system”, and ignores whether sourcing water from the Moon is competitive with other sources.

“How do you define reusable? The idea associated with reusability is that you eventually come back to Earth.”

Again, we only have to look into our history to see that whenever new frontiers have been opened, they stay connected.

As to reusability, over at NewSpace Watch Clark Lindsey wrote a short piece (behind their paywall now) about the challenges of creating a reusable launch system. My thought is that reusable launch systems don’t affect or change the behavior of the satellite launch market for quite a while, but they can affect the crew & cargo market. For instance, if NASA only has to pay $20M to send someone to the ISS instead of the $70.6 Russia is charging, they might send up more people on short trips (I’ll leave the details for another post).

Bottom line though is that we haven’t been able to demonstrate that expendable transportation systems dramatically change the economics of getting humans to LEO and beyond, and I think reusable systems will do that. Unfortunately Congress doesn’t care about lowering costs, so I realize this is just wishful thinking for now…

I believe Lice Cycle Cost is hat you are referring to. Then again it all depends on the requirements. The VSE as far as I can recall did not call for settlements, or exploitation. Regardless, the enormous expense, once again, was to make Constellation a Shuttle follow up. Even though I believe it might have worked (remember we are talking NASA HSF, not US HSF) politically at least. It was totally unrealistic to start with…

Now you have laid out your own version of HSF but I surmise that you did not run any specific trade studies to actually show that this is a feasible option. Again you have to have a mission and associated requirements. If the goal is space exploration the solution space is so vast that anything can do including Constellation. Now if you start saying it has to be done under $10B then Constellation is of course out of the picture but we still haven’t created the proper requirements.

I think a good example of that is the Spudis $88B plan. What are the $88B based upon? If they are following the usual NASA approach I am almost 100% certain that you can triple or even possibly decuple the cost, e.g. Constellation.

The main reason why commercial may in the end be successful is that they have a limited budget to work with and have to make profit to survive, hence becoming self-sustaining. Does it have to be reusable? I don’t think so at all.

if the goal is the settlement of planetary bodies first in our Solar System and then outside of it then some form of reusability will be necessary. But assume that tomorrow “warp-drive” is available, once you are light years away from Earth and settle on a distant planet, what is the point of reusable? How do you define reusable? The idea associated with reusability is that you eventually come back to Earth.