NASA Moon Launch May Be Delayed After 2020 261
krou writes "The Guardian is reporting that NASA is quietly revising its internal estimates of a 2018 launch for its Ares V rocket. Although publicly the date given for the launch was 2020, the internal launch date was set for 2018. The shift in dates seems to be linked to 'growing budget woes,' and 'engineers say that means the public 2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.' NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m. 'This was to be allocated to early work on the Ares V heavy-lifter, and the Altair lunar lander. With only a half-billion dollars now available, this work cannot be done.'"
Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Due to economic realities.... (Score:3, Insightful)
As more people want things at home, mission to moon and the entire manned space programme shall be delayed indefinitely.
Once the shuttles are retired, I have my doubts whether the entire manned program doesn't get canned.
(Big) Business as Usual (Score:3, Insightful)
Planning a project and then cutting the budget is a common tactic used to divert more of the work and cash to contractors. In this case the intention was to cut the booster program and use already available hardware such as the Delta Heavy instead. This sort of behavior was an epidemic during the previous administration, but the present one showed signs of staying the course. Not long ago Obama was (mis)quoted as saying that possibly we should use available "military" hardware. The misquote, or possibly misstatement on his part, was in the fact the the hardware is used by the military, but comes from civilian sources that already supply the same to NASA.
So America has given up? (Score:5, Insightful)
So America has given up on the space race, huh?
I guess it's up to China and India now.
Can't we do ANYTHING anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
We went from having no rocket program of any kind in 1945, to deciding to put a man on the moon in 1960, to actually doing it in 1969. Now, we decide we want to go to go back, and can't make any progress at all.
Our national labs are filled with nothing but bureaucracy and useless political management. There's no sense of urgency, there's no focused direction.
Seriously, we can't do in 20 years today what we did in 10 half a century ago? Come on. This shit's just sad.
Why so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Forty years ago we managed to do it in eight years from the time Kennedy called for it. Including designing the Saturn V pretty much from scratch.
Now, we won't be able to manage it in twelve-plus years, even using as many off-the-shelf components as possible.
Which is really kind of pathetic.
Re:Why so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m
In other words, the amount cut from the NASA budget for the next six years is about the amount spent on the Iraq war every two weeks.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
It was all a lie. (Score:5, Insightful)
For all its grand announcements and associated fanfare the United States government has no intention of going back to the moon. The reason. There are no people, that is no eligible voters on the moon, so there is not point in going there.
However, China does not care whether there are possible eligible voters there or not they just want the high ground. So they will go.
Re:Can't we do ANYTHING anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just that, if we compare ourselves to our parents, and to our grandparents, you'll see that the more you go back in time, the more things get done.
It is "this" generation that is uberly educated, creative, analytical, that is doomed to procrastination, and nothing ever gets done. I love to be in it.
Mike Griffin's Fault (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, Griffin isn't NASA Administrator anymore, since Obama accepted his resignation as Obama was being inaugurated.
Next up, I don't notice Griffin taking any responsibility himself for leaving NASA in disarray after years running it. Even though he messed up its budget [wikipedia.org]. Yes, Bush deserves blame for messing up NASA, including by putting a CIA Star Wars hack in charge of it, who wasted our time suppressing climate change research results. But Griffin doesn't have any standing to criticize anyone else until he owns up to his own bad work setting back our space program, now apparently by decades.
Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like flamebait but I swear it's not. I would love to hear someone knowledgeable explain to me why (at least as it seems to a layman like myself) NASA did amazing things for so long then hasn't done anything to capture the public's imagination for decades. I understand how massive the funding was in their heyday, but every other technology sector seems to do more with less over time - is NASA's mission just impossible to accomplish for less than 3% of GDP? Or did they hire worse and worse recruits over time? Or did the wrong people get put in charge? Or does this stuff just get harder to do?
This has baffled and saddened me for years. I really do want to hear an answer from someone who has some insight...
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheap, fast, and reliable. Pick two—and reliable is a required option, meaning we can either get to the moon cheap or fast. In the 1960s they picked fast; this time we went for cheap.
But hey, Congress has corporate bailouts, Social Security, and national healthcare to pay for instead of useful projects. *rolls eyes*
Re:Due to economic realities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes for a sort of depressing answer to the Fermi Paradox. Why haven't the thousands of advanced species conquered the universe yet? Oh, they will. It's just not practical right now. Maybe during the next budget period they can establish a group to consider returning to space. It'll happen eventually. They've been meaning to do another manned orbital mission for the last few thousand years. They'll get to it as soon as some immediate priorities are sorted out.
Re:I call bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can't we do ANYTHING anymore? (Score:1, Insightful)
We went from having no rocket program of any kind in 1945, to deciding to put a man on the moon in 1960, to actually doing it in 1969. Now, we decide we want to go to go back, and can't make any progress at all.
Our national labs are filled with nothing but bureaucracy and useless political management. There's no sense of urgency, there's no focused direction.
Seriously, we can't do in 20 years today what we did in 10 half a century ago? Come on. This shit's just sad.
In 1945 you went from having no rocket program to having the German rocket program packed up and shipped back to America. Maybe that's why you can't make progress anymore, all the scientists from countries you invaded are dead. If only Iraq really had WMDs eh, you could've had their scientists and knocked together another "American" scientific landmark.
G1 USA. (Score:4, Insightful)
When these things are delayed, the true cost escalate massively.
It's mind boggling to me that Obama is shit-eating happy to hemorrhage 2 Billion a week at Iraqistan, for nothing and no one, but the space program gets fucked up the ass.
This isn't about going to the moon at all: it's about retaining the expertise that America paid dearly for in the 60s! The huge sums invested (yes, "invested") in the space program kept US aeronautics and engineering at the top of the world for 50 years.
But now the Euros make better planes, and US engineering is being rapidly eclipsed.
As expertise is lost, so the budgets escalate, and the delays get bigger, further escalating costs.
Pretty soon the USA is an "also ran" in space, and shortly thereafter it becomes an "also ran" on Earth. The writing is on the wall: only massive investment in science, technology and expertise can save the USA from utter collapse under the weight if 53 trillion dollars in entitlements.
While space investment (under NASAs most specific commission - to provide all their data to any US firm) return well in excess of a dollar for every dollar invested, there are a couple of things that the USA simply MUST do in order to avoid total melt down.
1) Don't start any more wars, and finish the ones you got going on now.
2) Invest heavily in space technology
3) Secure the supply of energy to the world for the entire future.
Number 3 can be achieved by singlehandedly getting Fusion power tamed. I'm not talking about that ridiculous ITER thing - because the only thing which will come from that fiasco is a pile of Ph.D.s about 10 metres tall - and most of them won't be 'merkin Ph.D.s!
No, the small-scale, tiny fusion efforts like Focus Fusion and Bussard's Polywell reactor - if practical will yield results for sums under a billion - while the potential payoff is measured in the hundreds of trillions of dollars in this century.
It should only take 2 years max (Score:1, Insightful)
Why can't we just dust off the rocket we have and make it run again. Surely it can't be that hard. We did it the first time on computing power that is a fraction of a 486. Wal Mart still runs a lot of their operations on 1970's technology. Why are we re inventing the wheel ???
Re:Why so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the fruit of our lousy political and education systems!
No. This is the fruit of our new Project Management philosophies.
Last time they did this, they asked the engineers "hey, how do you want to build a big rocket?" The engineers answered "strap five of those smaller engines together, and we'll be good to go."
Now it seems like they have to put together a project plan to create each and every nut, bolt and washer. Then they have to have a nut, bolt and washer design document inspection. Don't forget they have to invite the nut, bolt and washer quality control team to the nut, bolt and washer design document inspection. Then they have to create the nut, bolt and washer master test plan. And they have to have another document inspection of the nut, bolt and washer master test plan. ...
I could go on and on about nuts, bolts and washers, but I'm bored typing all this project management crap already, and it's only been one paragraph. Repeat this process for three million parts, and 20 years seems like a bargain.
Re:Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Nobody would have guessed in 1969 that commercial airliners would still look exactly the same 40 years later.
And they will look exactly the same in another 40 years. Minor cosmetics and incremental differences in size not withstanding.
Airplanes look the way they do because that is how something needs to look to do the job it does at the price we are willing to pay.
Oh, I know, some people still think moon rockets would not look so much like like a phallus if they were designed by women.
But Horatio Greenough had it right. Form follows function.
Focus? The focus doesn't matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1961 the Apollo program [wikipedia.org] was founded when US President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969 it was accomplished when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. It took eight years. I was four years old at the time they landed. I watched breathlessly each launch, each landing, and all the reports in between. I actually recall trying to convince some of the adults in my life the significance of these events. The Moon! That ball in the sky! Men are walking on it! I failed miserably. I lived in Watts at the time. They didn't care then and they don't care now.
It had never been done before. Practically none of the necessary materials science, engineering and physics were even understood at the time. They performed orbital vector calulations sometimes using computers, and sometimes using banks of people operating calculators.
40 years later we carry computers in our pocket that have more power than all the computers in the world at that time. Our cars have better navigational equipment. It has been done before. The problem has been solved - we've done it many times. The physics, mechanics and materials are well understood. But now we can't figure out a way to do this again in under a decade. It's over. We're officially sliding into decay.
Now I point to that ball in the sky for my son [bayqongyr.com] who's five, and I say "That ball in the sky! We knew how to get there once. My parents did it, but we forgot how when I grew up. If you study hard - if you really want it - you might go there too." And then we point the telescope at Mars.
/And it's Orion. Try and spell it write, ok?
Re:Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:2, Insightful)
But going to the moon AGAIN isn't a new breakthrough. That would be like discovering penicillin, saving a million people, and then 50 years later not being able to make penicillin again.
NASA, as currently directed, just sucks.
Re:Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the public's imagination that's at fault if that really is the case. NASA continues to do spectacular, amazing things.
The NASA current missions page:
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/ [nasa.gov]
Does the Cassini-Huygens mission do nothing for you?
That Hubble Telescope doodad not honking your horn?
Spirit and Opportunity are things that make you go "meh"?
If you (or rather some notional "member of the public") would rather be watching tonight's new episode of "The Apprentice" than reading about one of these missions, then where does the lack of vision lie?
Re:In a nutshell, this SUX (Score:3, Insightful)
This Is How Hubble Was Sent Up With Blind (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress messed up the Hubble Space Telescope project a few decades ago by similarly setting unrealistically low budgets. The scientists agreed to the budget because that was the only way to go forward. Perkin Elmers, the prime subcontractor for the lens, had to take all sorts of shortcuts to meet that budget. They had to skimp on quality control. Instead of multiple tests, they used the same system that guided the polishing of the lens to verify the polishing was correct. It turns out that a bolt was inserted backwards in the measuring laser. Of course, this meant that the mirror was wrongly-ground and that the error was not caught.
The Ares Project is more important not only because it represents the next generation of American rocketry, but also because lives will be depending on the rocket. The early Apollo and Shuttle projects claimed lives because of shoddy work. History is in danger of repeating itself.
Congress and NASA should either do it right, or not do it at all. Astronauts assume the risks at every launch, but we should not let them take that risk if it is too significant. NASA should just put the ball down and walk away if it believes that the project cannot be done correctly on the current budget. Not for political gamesmanship, but to protect astronauts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
We had delta SSTs. We quit them. I reiterate:
"Airplanes look the way they do because that is how something needs to look to do the job it does at the price we are willing to pay."
We are not willing to pay for SSTs. They lost money. If you don't do SSTs you don't need scissor wings.
We can't afford the fuel expense and risk of VTOL, and saucery things just don't fly worth squat.
We will have aircraft that look like what we have today until we develop radically better engine technology, and or run out of Jet A fuel.
They are not likely to get much bigger that the biggest Airbus. They are not likely to get much faster.
We had no reason then or now to expect anything but incremental changes.
Re:Why so long? (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, sorry, but do you seriously think the Apollo program wasn't managed like a project, with quality assurance and heaps of subcontractor management hazzles? If so, perhaps you'd better not read any histories [nasa.gov]. The sound of illusions shattering can be so disheartening...
Aerospace engineering had damned well better be managed and QA'd to within an inch of its life, if the metal is to get off the ground at all without killing everybody in a five hundred meter radius, simply because Bert thought Ernie knew which tank to fill with LOX (or Ken thought Bill always used the metric system of measurements). And even so...
2020 was a myth anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like reading "they wandered for 40 years" in the Torah. It's just meant to signify a very long time that you're not really going to care about. In a few years it will be pushed out again, and again and again. You see we're NEVER going back to the moon and manned spaceflight will be a memory by 2020. The ISS will be gone. The Shuttle will be gone, The Russians and Chinese will have focused on satellites and space based weapons. The Indians will also be in the commercial satellite business. The Europeans will will simply declare space science an unaffordable luxury of the Evil White Man. With no heavy lifters, no missions and no stomach for the challenge and the risk, mankind will have seen the end of manned spaceflight. Perhaps in a hundred years we'll take another look at it, but who knows? It will probably be against Sharia by then.
Re:Why does NASA suck so much? (Score:3, Insightful)
To your point, NASA continues to do great, worthwhile things. But "spectacular?" No. Not in the same way their early triumphs were. Cassini-Huygens is great but does it compare with Mercury, Apollo, Voyager, Skylab or the Shuttle? No.
Maybe it's okay, we just aren't trying to do anything that catches the public imagination in the same way those older things did. But I think that's also the reason that if you ask Joe Public - who through public opinion has a great impact on NASA's funding - what NASA has done for the last 20 years, he may mention Hubble then he'll say that NASA is in the business of delaying shuttle launches that he wasn't sure why they were happening in the first place.
Re:G1 USA. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't mean to troll, but what does it matter if it's the Chinese or 'Euros' that end up on the moon next?
Why does it have to be the USA?
Any advance in space-technology is going to benefit mankind as a whole.
If Europe is more prepared at this point to go into space, then let it be europe!
...told you so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Every time that a space and lunar exploration story has run on Slashdot for the past three years, I have answered it with a reminder that space and lunar exploration is a fantasy because the USA is ...well... stone dead broke.
And every time that I point this out, my message gets zapped to -1. And I always get replies that I am (1) a luddite, (2) a moron, (3) an asshole, (4) a fool who doesn't understand how absolutely important space and lunar exploration to human existence, and (5) a twit who doesn't realize that the space and lunar exploration programs are already blasting off because the money has been fully allocated for the next lunar and martian Apollo missions and vast teams of engineers are working on it right now as we speak.
Well, as it should have been obvious to anyone who is not collecting a fat pay check from NASA or isn't a total Tekkie buffoon, the USA actually is broke, politicians lie, budgets can be quietly revised, and whatever importance space and lunar exploration actually does have for human existence, it's going to have to wait for another hundred years or so. Get used to it because it is your reality.
You aren't going to see people walking on the moon or Mars in your lifetime. You will be lucky if in thirty or forty years from now if you can rent a tiny car once a year and drive to what once a shiny mall back in the glorious Lindsey_Lohan-cute_superstar era (before she converted to Islam and became president).
So, be a mensch, and stop modding me down to -1 for simply pointing out the plain honest truth to you'all. Be thankful that someone is willing to do it.
Come'on Slashdaughters, the 20th century is over. The boom times generated by cheap oil is passing. There will continue to be fantastic scientific discoveries, but they won't be implemented in the same way that they were in the era of your youth. With exploding populations, financial disintegration, and environmental collapse, we will be lucky if we are able to marshal all our scientific, engineering, and political skills to maintain a lifestyle for our special class of people that is equal to 1900, forget about returning to the era of 2000, which will only be available to the rumored ultra-rich 'cloud people'.
So get real, delicious Slashdaughters, and stop thinking about space and think about place. Your place in the real world. The cold dark world.