NASA Unveils Strategy for Return to the Moon 377
mknewman writes to tell us that NASA recently announced plans to build a permanent base on the moon by 2024. The (still tentative) plans call for building the base on one of the moon's poles, which constantly receive light from the sun and have less temperature fluctuation. This base will start small in 2020 and grow over time with the hopes of eventually supporting 180-day stays and providing a jumping-off point to Mars."
Re:Nice... but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the OP said, I'll believe it when I start seeing it built. If they really do it, I'll still be alive and senile enough to appreciate the monumental and technical achievements not seen since (then) 55-60 years ago.
It will never happen (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that by 2015, we will be back on the moon due to Bigelow. Even now, the sundancer is a nice small module for launching as a good way to carry to the moon, as well as land on the moon for a station. Combine that with 2 launch systems, one for earth and one for the moon. By 2010, there will be at least 5 human rated systems (Russian, China, Space Shuttle (probably will not be fully canceled until we have orion going) or Orion, and the 2 cots system). By 2014, the Sundancer will have been in orbit for at least 3 years. That will make it acceptable for taking to the moon and landing on its surface. All that is needed is a landing system for it, a connection module, and a true lunar transport. Finally, the BA-330 will be available by 2015 (I would guess by 2011) and that will be used for the real transport to lunar orbit.
While I like the Ares V (love the capacity), I think that the only real chance is the direct launcher. It is the true safer, faster, cheaper approach.
Such a shame Sergei Korolev died. (Score:5, Interesting)
The other big breaking news... (Score:5, Interesting)
God I hope that's true.
And I hope the aquifer is substantial.
Damn... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's hope it works (Score:2, Interesting)
NASA at times does a great job of innovation and exploration. Anything unmanned, JPL and Ames do a great job with. Not to deride anyone at JPL, but its very hard to not be a little cyncical about this. I am very afraid of what the next administration may bring, whether it's Democrat or Republican, and am afraid that whoever is next may help put the axe on Bush's best initiative (though its been a bit bastardized lately.)
Here's hoping we get a moon base like the antarctic base, and can move on to Mars (although I don't believe that the one is necessarily dependent on the other.)
Fuel depots in orbit. (Score:5, Interesting)
As for putting a fueling station in lunar orbit, yeah, that's more difficult. The moon's gravity is low enough that 'wasting' the fuel to do direct lunar launches all the way back to Earth orbit would probably have to do until we come up with a 'cheap' way to get mass quantities of fuel to lunar orbit.
But, again, it might be cheaper to launch one big 'fuel depot' to the lunar surface and cut down on the need to carry return fuel out (from Earth) and down on the actual landing craft.
All right, I will take a shot. (Score:5, Interesting)
I will take the idea of spreading our risks around rather than trying to solve just one or several issues, thank you very much. NASA is acutally some of the cheapest insurance that our society has. As it is, a bunch of new jobs are about to come on line in aviation and aeronautics, due to NASA.
Re:Beancounters and budgets (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because that's been the modus operandi for most of the 20th century doesn't mean that it will be forever. I expect in the (very near) future it might go something like this: "after 100 years of pork, our once-noble republic is now bankrupt, and we have no resources to spend on moon shots."
See the St. Louis Fed's Is the United States Bankrupt? [stlouisfed.org]:
This means no more big expensive chemical-rocket-powered moon shots. If someone figures out antigravity (I'd bet that it shares as-yet undiscovered principles with Cold Fusion [slashdot.org]) in the next couple years that'd be an option, but Apollo is simply fiscally unrepeatable.
Don't mean to be too harsh on GWB & his co-conspirators (coupsters? [wikipedia.org] - whoever killed JFK never let go of the control they gained) - other countries are bankrupt too. But if you can find the United States on this ordered list of Current Account Balances [cia.gov], and compare its number to, say, Germany or Japan, you might begin to understand the U.S. economy's problem. Even though such industrialized countries as Spain, the U.K., Australia, France, Italy, etc are in close proximity on the list, if you compare the actual numbers you will surely realize that that certain 'empire' (military bases in 130+ countries) is in a class all by itself.
Recall that the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is probably somewhere around 12% (according to the Shadow Stats [shadowstats.com] guy), and that the rich have been screwing the masses [kuro5hin.org] ('us') for most of the last 150 years, concentrating 'our' wealth in 'their' pockets. Even if this moonshot thing was fiscally possible, it'd just be another way for the corporate class to concentrate the working stiffs' ('our') tax dollars in their pockets.
(I look at the positives of the situation - the end of this economic system will mean the end of the masses' ['our'] current state of Wage Slavery, where many spend 40+ hours/week slaving away at two jobs to make someone else ['the corporate class' or 'the bankers'] rich.)
Re:It will never happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Beancounters and budgets (Score:5, Interesting)
The money IS all spent on Earth. It'll be a while before it can be outsourced to Mars. As for pork, why do you think NASA is based in Houston? Answer: LBJ.
Re:In space "direct" != "efficient" (Score:3, Interesting)
Not true at all - every US Mars mission to date with the exception of Mariner 10 has been a direct launch. (What few gravity assist missions the US has flown have been mostly because the mission budget couldn't be stretched to cover the cost of a larger booster.)
Nobody in their right mind would launch a 'large' (presumably manned) Mars payload directly - it would be assembled in and launched from Earth orbit.
No, it would be much harder and much more dangerous. (As well as *much* more expensive.) A launcher than can put 100 tons of Mars bound components into LEO can only put 12 or so tons of the same into Lunar orbit or 5 tons onto the lunar surface - which means many more launches, both of components and of support for the assembly crew. Worse yet - you waste a great deal of mass and fuel on your Mars craft because assembling it on the surface means it has to be strong enough to withstand being assembled and launched from the surface rather than the far more benign assembly and launch enviroment of orbit. (This alone will boost the number of launches by 20-30% *over and above* the already vastly increased number required by moving it to the Moon in the first place.)
And that's just the problems caused by the weight issue - the problems caused by the lunar surface thermal enviroment, potential dust contamination, etc... etc... make the issue even worse.
Re:2024?? (Score:3, Interesting)
We didn't go to the moon from scratch in the 1960's. By the time Kennedy made his announcement considerable work was already in progress (and had been for some years) on various things that could be repurposed to going to the moon. (Most importantly the F-1 engine and Apollo capsule.) Additionally, NASA of that era had essentially a blank check (the Apollo program consumed on average 1% of the GNP by itself over the period 1963-69), where the NASA of today has live on a much tighter budget - with very little of the precursor work done.
Earth to the Moon (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who finished watching "From the Earth to the Moon" [imdb.com] earlier tonight, I can say that I can't wait for humans to return to the moon. We do need a permanent presence on the moon, for many reasons, such as; separation of the human species in case of global tragedy, explore moon's geology (where did that thing come from?), explore theories about colonization, biospheres, and self-sustenance, launch point for future missions to distant worlds (if we could build a manufacturing center on the moon, its 1/6th gravity would be very beneficial to launching new craft), and many, many, many more benefits both seen and unseen.
Returning to the moon is in humanity's best interest, and is clearly the path to the future. Focus on the space program will push development and inventions to help push the edge of what is capable. I see space travel as one of the grand challenges we will face in our lifetime, and it would be a shame to hesitate when we have already taken so many steps toward that goal. As someone who was born prior to the last Apollo mission, I feel it is a crime that we have abandoned the moon for the majority of my lifetime.
Unfortunately, the political winds have not been blowing favorably towards NASA, and it may take another visionary like JFK to take us back to the moon and beyond.
Radiation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Earth to the Moon (Score:2, Interesting)
The moon's gravity is 1/3 that of Earth's, so any human beings that reproduce and stay there for some number of generations will grow to be much taller and thinner. They're muscle structure might change a lot and by the end of the human race on Earth, they'll be completely alien.
Re:Earth to the Moon (Score:2, Interesting)
Apollo = 2.5 Iraqs (Score:3, Interesting)
I have read that for the $340,000,000 currently spent in Iraq we could have nearly 2.5 Apollo missions in today's dollars.
Re:Apollo = 2.5 Iraqs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Beancounters and budgets (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the biggest problems with the U.S. economy is the whole Information Economy idea. Yes, computers and networks and the right kinds of software make work much more efficient. No, having enough computers, software, and networks will not make any real work get done if we're not making anything in the first place. We're making intellectual property investments protected by U.S. laws, spending our money from that on Chinese goods, and seeing the money spent in China spent on counterfeit Chinese versions of our U.S. software, movies, music, and whatever else. Meanwhile, China is not being punished but is officially enjoying "Normal Trade Relations". China, of course, is only one example, but is the biggest example. Unless counterfeit goods can be stifled, manufacturing is still the answer to long-term stability and prosperity.
The U.S. has always been a manufacturing powerhouse, and it still is. The US does not have the kind of manufacturing leadership role it could though because it's cheaper in the short term to outsource labor or to build whole American-owned factories in China, India, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, or any number of other countries than to streamline manufacturing processes and automate factories in the U.S. for long-term prosperity. One of the biggest reasons for this is health-care costs in the U.S. -- GM and Ford, for example, have health care for current and retired workers as one of their biggest line items in their budgets.
In 2004, GM reported its liabilities for retiree health benefits alone to exceed $61,000,000,000 USD [ca.gov]. That's 2004 dollars unadjusted for inflation, as far as I can tell. Compare that to New Zealand's 2005 estimated GDP of $101,685,000,000 USD. Maybe compare it against the 2005 GDP of Latvia at $29,214,000,000 USD [wikipedia.org]. It's not hard to see that unfettered lawsuits against doctors, huge inefficiencies in health care, huge drugs costs, and other things are damaging the bottom line for big manufacturers in the U.S. at all. How to best solve the health care issue may not be clear, but that it needs to be solved should be like plate glass to anyone concerned.
Re:Never gonna happen (Score:3, Interesting)
When the Americas were colonized, it wasn't by and large the Well-To-Do, well-educated, aristocrats who left everything behind for America. Yes there were a few dreamers, and I won't deny it. However, most people who came weren't rich. They were the peasants, the cultural outcasts, and so on. Lord Fauntleroy wasn't interested in building the colonies. But for a peasant, it was their last chance. I think that's going to effect space travel and colonies far more than people realize.
We think Space Travel, and see Kirk beating up a klingon. Chances are that the real explorers will be 3rd worlders from Africa and South Asia, etc. On Earth, for good or for ill, the US, Europe, and other First World nations are Aristocrats. I just don't see rich Americans playing X-box being the type of people to colonize space. I think that for humanity, this is a good thing -- just don't expect the money to come into American coffers.
This has other problems as well -- namely language. Sure most highly-educated people can probably speak passable English, but I have my doubts that a random person on this planet can read -- literacy rates in many parts of the world are horrible -- let alone speak English. We'll have to solve such a problem before we can have large scale open colonization. What exactly do you do when you have large, barely literate colonists all speaking different, unrelated languages? How do you counter ethnic strife caused by bringing Serbs and Croats together, or Indians and Pakistanis, or any other groups. How do you get an emergency message around, or give safety warnings, etc. in 25 languages, and so that marginally literate new arrivals can understand them? What happens if two religious groups get into a fight -- Sunni Vs Shia in Iraq, or Christians Vs Atheists, who knows.
The long term problems of Space Exploration are more likely to be human conflicts and inequalities we bring along from Earth, much more so than anything Technological. If the scientific leadership (the first astronauts and engineers who know how the station works), do things (intentional or unintentional) that inflame people's passions, you could fairly easily end up in a riot or worst-case war that could destroy the colony.
Re:Apollo = 2.5 Iraqs (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, we do. We aren't talking about a single or even a few missions, but a permanent base. Permanent base means regular trips to rotate crew and bring in supplies. Regular trips must be cost-effective so it can be maintained even during financial difficulties - and, frankly, the chemical rocket was/is anything but cost-effective.
The Apollo approach - using a single rocket that launches from the surface of Earth and goes all the way to the Moon and hauls a rocket capable of both landing and rising back up from the lunar surface, and finally returns back to Earth surface - is all fine and good for a single trip, but regular trips require splitting the journey into three stages (Earth -> terrestial orbit, terrestial orbit -> lunar orbit, lunar orbit -> Moon) and using a different vechile for each. Maybe you'd use the Shuttle (or whatever replaces it eventually) to reach orbit, switch to a solar sail there (one that never lands but just moves between terrestial and lunar orbits) and, finally, the station would send a lunar lander to get you down from the lunar orbit ?
But the point is: the Apollo way of doing things is not suitable for regular Earth-Moon travel, especially if you need to supply a lunar base.