NASA Opens New Office For Space Missions 104
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has been tasked with landing astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again. The new Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will be responsible for overseeing all this and more. 'America is opening a bold new chapter in human space exploration,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. 'By combining the resources of Space Operations and Exploration Systems, and creating the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come.'"
Re:Meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why these "Get to X by Y!" plans are stupid.
And look at what it does: "To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far". Because that's the most direct way to meet the goal. But either the giant rocket will be canceled when the Mars mission is, or it'll sit around trying to find justifications for its existence, wasting money that could be spent on better things.
Right now is not the time for grandiose missions with long time lines. That's a way to just repeat the Constellation debacle over and over. Instead, we should be focusing on building up capabilities. Especially the ability to assemble and refuel craft in orbit.
Once you're in LEO, you're nearly halfway to the surface of Mars in terms of delta-v. That's why monolithic missions are stupid -- everything you plan to send to Mars, including all the fuel for doing so, has to be lifted all at once from the surface meaning either the mission itself will be tiny or the rocket will have to be fucking huge -- probably both. With proper LEO capabilities, we could have a bigger Mars mission enabled by a smaller rocket, and with a shorter time-line from conception to conclusion.
But by all means, Congress, demand a Pork Rocket and a legacy-that-will-never-happen Apollo-style Mars mission. Shooting yourself in the foot may seem like a bad idea, but it makes such a pleasing noise that it definitely sounds like you're doing something!
Re:Meaningless (Score:3, Interesting)
Congress managed to focus on the F-22 program for 21 years now, the JSF/F-35 program for 15 years now, the War on Drugs for 40 years, the Shuttle Program for 39 years, so it's obvious that Congress can say on the same task for a long period.
Re:Meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
Congress managed to focus on the F-22 program for 21 years now, the JSF/F-35 program for 15 years now...
The F-22, the JSF, and the Shuttle all enjoyed wide popular support and provided jobs to powerful districts. The stupid drug war is also quite popular - I'm constantly arguing with people about it and I don't think I've ever gotten anyone to agree with me other than on marijuana. Congress is pretty agonizingly frustrating, but I can't fault them for doing what they were elected to do.
By the way, despite its warts, the JSF will save money overall. Of course, when it is grounded we will have no air force, no naval air protection, and no marine corp jet. Just some old national guard A-10s, a bunch of old bombers, and whatever the UAV fleet looks like at the time. There's some saying about putting all of your eggs somewhere or something... :)
Re:Meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why these "Get to X by Y!" plans are stupid.
No, they aren't. If you don't have a clear goal and a clear timetable to accomplish it by, then you're not going to achieve the goal, or if you do it'll take far longer than it should.
Just look at the Apollo missions. JFK says we'll go to the moon within the decade, and sure enough, with plenty of money and effort, they got to the moon when a decade before human spaceflight was a fantasy.
If we had this thinking today, there's no telling where we'd be: moon bases, space stations with artificial gravity, tourist trips to Titan, who knows. Sure, all this development requires lots of money, but if we hadn't wasted trillions on some stupid wars (plus a stupid drug war), we'd have that money.
Right now is not the time for grandiose missions with long time lines.
Grandiose missions require long time lines out of necessity. Not necessarily ridiculously long (Apollo got to the moon in less than a decade, though they continued with more missions for longer than that), but longer than a single President's term, and certainly longer than it takes for the House of Representatives to swing from one side to the other (2 years).
There's no way around this. Asking for anything meaningful to be finished within 2 years is fantasy, so if you're going to make that constraint, then you might as well just give up on doing anything great.
Instead, we should be focusing on building up capabilities. Especially the ability to assemble and refuel craft in orbit.
To build up capabilities, you need to have a clear mission. What's the mission for "assemble craft in orbit"? That's not a mission, there's no goal there. No non-technical person is going to see the need for that, or why it's even useful. What are these craft for? Where are they going? This is precisely why you need an over-arching goal, like "build a base on the moon", or "send a manned craft to an asteroid to land on it and collect samples". Remember, these "capabilities" you talk of cost a lot of money to develop, so you need a reason to develop them in the first place.
Once you're in LEO, you're nearly halfway to the surface of Mars in terms of delta-v. That's why monolithic missions are stupid -- everything you plan to send to Mars, including all the fuel for doing so, has to be lifted all at once from the surface meaning either the mission itself will be tiny or the rocket will have to be fucking huge -- probably both. With proper LEO capabilities, we could have a bigger Mars mission enabled by a smaller rocket, and with a shorter time-line from conception to conclusion.
Wrong (sorta). Yes, doing a Mars shot all-in-one is pretty stupid for the reasons you state. However, you still need "landing humans on Mars" as the overall goal of the mission, though the mission should include many smaller steps as you describe.
Basically, to make an analogy, you're talking about building a ship before you've come up with any ideas about where to sail it. Or building a car when there's no roads to drive it on.
So yes, better LEO (or other orbital) capabilities are important, but you're not going to sell the public, or really anyone outside of NASA, on "building capabilities". "Let's go to Mars!" however, has a much better chance of getting popular support, and then the details of the mission (e.g. developing the capabilities you talk of) can be hashed out later. Of course, with the way the American public is these days, wanting to cut all public spending that doesn't benefit billionaires and wanting to establish a fundamentalist theocracy, I don't have much hope that Americans would back anything that NASA might dream up. Heck, if astronomers found a planet-killer asteroid on a collision course with Earth, but determined that it's 75 years away and if we act now we can safely divert it, even then I don't think Americans would want to spend any money on that program.