Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak 452
coondoggie writes "Things don't look good for NASA when the report outlining its future begins: 'The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. [NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most complex and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations.' Today the Augustine Commission handed to the White House the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee summary report, after months of expert review and testimony. Many observers expected a bleak report, but ultimately the future of US manned space flight will hinge on how the report's conclusions are interpreted. Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."
Re:How can you... (Score:5, Informative)
I think he means worship of the almighty dollar.
Re:seed the planets (Score:1, Informative)
This treaty [wikipedia.org] suggests that perhaps it's not possible currently (legally) to exploit the resources of other planets.
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:5, Informative)
Carrying any significant amount of raw materials from NEOs to an LP requires a lot more than "trivial" amounts of fuel.
The only way to practically move an NEO is by utilizing the mass of the NEO as fuel. The typical suggestion is to do this with mass drivers (you can't use ion engines because you need high thrust). If you're moving icy NEOs you can "just" make rocket fuel and propel it with traditional thrusters.
All of this is way beyond our technology level, and requires mass in orbit that we're unable to get from Earth.. so you need to mine the Moon for it in any case.
Different summary (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, not to be whiny, but I didn't like this particular summary, as it mentions the panel's conclusion that NASA's current path is unworkable, but doesn't make any mention of the alternative paths forwarded presented by the Committee (and discussed in the article). Here's an alternative summary, with some links to the actual report summary (which I suspect none of the commenters so far have actually read):
A summary [nasa.gov] of the Augustine Committee's [nasa.gov] upcoming report on the future of US spaceflight has been submitted to the White House and NASA, and made available to the public. The committee's analysis found that NASA's current plans for a human lunar return by 2020 are unworkable, with NASA's status quo not likely to place them on the moon 'until well into the 2030s, if ever'. Raising NASA's budget by $3B/year opens two primary options: 'Moon First' with a lunar return and possible base-building starting in the mid-2020s, or 'Flexible Path,' which would initially focus on building an in-space architecture for supporting progressive exploration, starting with Lagrange points and Near-Earth Objects (asteroids and comets) in the early 2020s, and exploring the moons of Mars or Earth in the mid-2020s. Options for a heavy-lift launcher were also outlined: NASA's current plans for an Ares V, a less costly 'directly Shuttle-derived' vehicle, or the least costly (but politically most difficult) 'new way of doing business' of purchasing launches on an upgraded EELV. Other key findings are that the ISS should be extended to 2020, that developing in-space refueling would benefit all of NASA's options, that NASA should make use of commercial crew transportation [thespacereview.com], that NASA should revive its space technology development program (which had largely stagnated in past decades), and that while Mars should be the ultimate destination for human exploration, it is not the best first destination. The White House and NASA will review the report and announce NASA's forward path [nasaspaceflight.com] in early October.
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:3, Informative)
Carrying any significant amount of raw materials from NEOs to an LP requires a lot more than "trivial" amounts of fuel.
The delta-v required once you've achieved Earth escape velocity, to the closest NEOs, is 0.8 km/s. That's *half* of what you need to get from lunar surface to lunar orbit, in other words the Apollo lander module's fuel supply would be enough for a trip to a NEO and back, once you've gotten out of Earth's gravity well.
All of this is way beyond our technology level
Not really. It just hasn't been tried yet because NASA, for all its achievements, isn't exactly a daring and innovative agency.
There's no big technological barrier preventing us from an L4 - NEO - L4 trip. It's totally within the realm of possibility. It only needs to be done.
Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
NASA is an independent agency of the US government; the NASA administrator reports directly to the President (but doesn't serve on the cabinet). NASA and DoD do have overlapping interests, co-operate on a lot of stuff, and have a lot of inter-agency agreements, which you can find at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/codeid/ [nasa.gov] but if NASA were under DoD, there wouldn't be any need for inter-agency agreements.
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:3, Informative)
delta-v is irrelevant, you're comparing the millions of tons of raw material on the Moon with the minuscule amounts of raw material that you can get from an NEO with current rocket technology.
Or, let me put it another way, once you land on the Moon you have access to millions of tons of raw material for 0 delta-v.
Once you setup shop at a LP you have to spend delta-v every time you want some raw materials. That's why it is more sensible to talk about moving the NEO to the LP.. and that's the part that is way beyond our technological capabilities right now. Flying out to an NEO, planting a flag, leaving some footprints, sure.. you could do that with Apollo era technology, I guess, but what's the point?
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:5, Informative)
Wherever humans end up going outside LEO, we're going to need good radiation shielding. The ISS is protected by Earth's magnetic field. Moon and the Lagrange points aren't.
There's also the problem of bone loss. ISS was originally supposed to have CAM, the centrifuge accomodation module. This would have been a dedicated lab that could spin to simulate lunar or martian gravity. Current medical science can only guess as to how 1/6th or 1/3rd gravity will affect bone mass. If it's as bad as zero gravity, human spaceflight is going to be even more challenging, but bottom line is we just don't know yet. With CAM on ISS, we could have at least collected some data points.
Re:How can you... (Score:5, Informative)
Urban legend. http://tafkac.org/science/saturn_v_blueprints.html [tafkac.org]
They're on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center
Re:Keep in mind (Score:4, Informative)
Its a little sad how obsessed that report is with international partnering ISS, Shuttle, etc. It is way to much looking back and not enough looking forward. Not sure I'm surprised considering the makeup of the group that wrote it. They are a bunch of status quo people, still cowering in the shadow of the Shuttle accidents to the point they couldn't do anything bold if their lives depended on it. They needed a Richard Feynman, Robert Zubrin, Isaac Asimov, Kelly Johnson, Burt Rutan, Elon Musk, or Robert Bigelow. Instead they got a bunch of bureaucrats, trying to figure out what is wrong with a bureaucracy, like that is gonna work....
Its nice sounding to say how space exploration should be international and global and you do gain some resources and expertise partnering with the Russians, Europeans, Asians etc. But you also start with one organization drowning in its own bureaucracy, NASA, and multiply it by 10 more bureaucracies drowning in red tape all fighting for different agendas. By the time you build consensus you end up with a program to no where, and compromised by compromise. I could be wrong but I think the international cooperation part of ISS is a key reason it ended up another 10 years late and devoid of anything resembling a point. My impression is the Russians want nothing to do with NASA again after ISS.
Only way you are likely to get to Mars is to find a nation/organization with a laser focus, a visionary leader, the right people with the right skills and most importantly willingness to invest the resources in doing something bold and adventurous instead of wallowing in wars, weapons and socialism. I kind of doubt that would be the U.S. at this point. You figure China and India are probably the only two with the potential. India has too many problems, too much poverty and an obsession with fighting wars with Pakistan. China might be the one but its not like that country exactly has its ideals in order, question whether a corrupt bureaucracy can pull it off thanks to one party dictatorship.
No doubt someone will say we should spend it all at home until there is no hunger, poverty, disease etc.... The problem with that is its a bottomless pit. You can spend an infinite amount of money on it and make little progress, especially until we stop making so many babies.
This world seriously needs people breaking through frontiers and doing things that are hard or we will turn in to more of a miserable treadmill planet than we already are, full of people going nowhere.
Re:Return? (Score:3, Informative)
Third-party evidence for Apollo moon landings [wikipedia.org]
Re:Fine by me. (Score:4, Informative)
First, that's not actually true, at least for Apollo, and, second, the Hubble is actually an argument for manned spaceflight
For the cost of a Hubble servicing mission we could have launched another one to replace it; from what I remember, the people who built Hubble offered to build a second for a small fraction of the price of the first, and if you were building half a dozen on a production line over a decade or so then they'd be pretty cheap.
It's noteworthy that not a single science satellite since Hubble has been designed for in-orbit servicing; it made sense back when NASA were claiming they'd charge $10 million a flight, but it makes no sense now that we've discovered that the real price tag is over a billion a flight.
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:2, Informative)
Note that a space station orbiting the Moon is also easier to reach from Earth than one in a LP.
Actually no, it's not. They both have the same delta-v requirement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget [wikipedia.org]
From LEO to lunar orbit is 4.1 km/s.
From LEO to L4/5 is *also* 4.1 km/s.
I imagine it's actually cheaper to go to the L-point on the line between Earth and Moon but it's less interesting than 4-5 IMO.
Re:Baseline shuttle extension (Score:4, Informative)
Umm.. that's a nice strawman you've setup there and knocked down for yourself, well done.
Making oxygen, potable water and methane fuel from lunar ice (using solar or nuclear power) is currently on the plan for lunar exploration.. it'll be done with a fully automated processing plant that is basically as complex as a truck engine. Digging a hole in the ground and planting a habitat module in it that can be covered with dirt to provide radiation protection is something than be done with manual labor, but more likely will be done with a 1 ton backhoe type vehicle, which btw will run on methane.
But hey, you wanna talk about processing metal on the Moon? Fine. The metal you will find there is a result of meteor impacts and is very pure. On Earth, meteor impact metals are the most pure ores we mine. A solar furnace is all you need to melt this kind of ore and forming it into useful products is easy at small scales. What kind of small scales? The kind necessary to make fuel tanks. The kind necessary to make rocket motors.
That kind of "cottage" industry on the Moon is all you need to bootstrap an outbase into a colony.
Re:How can you... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How can you... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know anything about the process that led to the space shuttle? Yes NASA solicited design bids--many design bids. Not just from the usual suspects (Boeing, Rockwell, Lockheed, North American, etc., etc.) but also from surprising sources such as Chrysler (they had a neat SSTO design). NASA, contrary to your suppositions, does not do everything in house. In fact, even the launches are technically operated by ULA, a joint effort by Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Well yes, NASA collected a large number of competitive design proposals for the space shuttle, many of them quite innovative. It then tossed them out and picked a contractor which would build the design the folks at NASA Marshall had in mind:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm [astronautix.com]
Following the usual charade of competitive bidding, NASA picked the same prime contractor as for X-15 and Apollo, who could be trusted to build precisely the vehicle NASA had in mind. North American Rockwell was selected to build the orbiter, with its Rocketdyne Division making the main engines. Thiokol was selected on political grounds for the solid rocket boosters. Martin Marietta would build the External Tank, but at the government Saturn IC factory at Michoud.
It's worth noting that pretty much the exact same thing happened with the current (like to soon be past) architecture. NASA spent about a year soliciting innovative competitive proposals [nasaspaceflight.com] from a number of companies, such as t/Space, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, and then selected the most promising proposals for further study. Then the new administrator Michael Griffin came in, threw out all the competing studies, ran his own 2-month study which (surprise!) said that Griffin's own design from a couple years prior was the best one, and then essentially made NASA the prime contractor for what's now known as the Ares I rocket.