University Sponsored Trip to the Moon?

Psiolent writes: "An aerospace and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Oklahoma has been promoting the idea of a university sponsored trip to the moon. What's really interesting is that those in charge are actually considering it. Even though it is still in the idea stage, it is a provoking idea. Read the article from the University of Oklahoma student paper, the Oklahoma Daily." I think clearly any major university could do a moon trip if the money and willpower were available, and the publicity would be great - unless the traveler(s) didn't come back.

This is talking about unmanned rovers.

[Christopher Thomas]

The article mentions unmanned rovers, not a manned mission. This might indeed be do-able on a university's budget.

Research groups routinely send things to low earth orbit atop commercial boosters. A one-way moon probe carrying a couple of light autonomous rovers could be lifted for a sane price, especially if you use something like an ion drive to get from LEO to lunar orbit (no idea what engines they're actually planning to use for the transfer orbit).

Re:Useless make-work bogs the economy

[Fenris2001]

you'd have piles of money going into the solution of problems that were solved as much as 35 years ago

Well, no. Seeing as how the technical challenges of building a booster as big as a Sat V were overcome in my father's time, all we'd have to do is spend less than $100m (as aerospace goes, this is nothing) on tools, dies, and materials. And this is NASA, remember, the people who took the DCX and blew it up. The Russians have a booster (Energya) that costs less, lifts more, and can be launched in a blizzard. It's only flown twice, mostly because there isn't anything that big to launch anymore. (Soviet Navy wanted to fly 100+ tonne spy sats because they couldn't build them smaller)

If you wanted to jump-start the economy, you'd privatize space. Disband NASA, or turn it into something more like NACA, it's predecessor in the 1910s and 20s that helped early air travel take off (no pun intended :^).

As it is, we have Goldin saying one thing while JSC does another, we have high-level admin folks sneering at aerospace startups, and we're ignoring cheap, reusable launch vehicles while we try to build the "bext big thing". Can you imagine where air travel would be today if NACA had discouraged startups like Douglas or Boeing? Or if they had waited to build airplanes until they had jet engines?

Offering prizes is a good idea, as it will stimulate interest in the private sector. But nothing will get done until the NASA monopoly ends.
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Re:This is talking about unmanned rovers.

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

"The article mentions unmanned rovers, not a manned mission."

Damn... I was hoping they'd send one of those annoying engineering professors that is only there because of tenure, so he could serve out his remaining time there...

"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

Not quite.

[Spamalamadingdong]

Well, no. Seeing as how the technical challenges of building a booster as big as a Sat V were overcome in my father's time, all we'd have to do is spend less than $100m (as aerospace goes, this is nothing) on tools, dies, and materials.

When Boeing was looking at using the F-1 for the booster engine of their proposed Jarvis, they found that it would cost over $1 billion (IIRC) just to re-engineer a 20-odd-year-old (then) engine. You forget that most of the drawings are missing, and essential elements like heat-treatment schedules for turbopump parts were never part of the drawings. Most of that was lost when the contractors went on to other things and they tossed their files in the trash.

I wish it was as easy as starting production of F-1's and J-2's again and plugging in modern electronics, but it's not.
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Well...

[Magus311X]

The publicity would be great if the students didn't come back.

Just great amounts of BAD publicity.
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Why not start the apollo program back up?

[snoop_chili_dog]

If I were in Congress I would start the whole moon program up again. That would jumpstart the economy. Sure it was expensive, but it gave us a huge economic boom. Not only that, but I think one of the reason the USA seems to be stagnating is because we have always been a frontier nation. We've been focusing inward for too long. Let's go to the next frontier. (I refuse to call it the final frontier.)

Re:Why not start the apollo program back up?

[OmegaDan]

Just immagine how bad we'll feel when the french beat us at something!

Re:Maybe they'll get some science done

[Guppy06]

1.) They weren't JUST jet pilots. Most of them had masters degrees (usually in engineering), and some had doctorates.

2.) They weren't ALL jet pilots. There was at least one geologist sent up that I can think of.

Useless make-work bogs the economy

[Spamalamadingdong]

The only reason the Apollo program produced economic benefits is because it was cranking out solutions to problems nobody had solved before. The benefits fell out when those solutions turned out to be applicable to other things. If you commissioned somebody to build Saturn V's today, you'd have piles of money going into the solution of problems that were solved as much as 35 years ago. Who's going to have a use for that? It would just be useless make-work, as economically damaging as western water projects and inner-city job training for jobs that no longer exist or have a union keeping new people out of the craft.

If you wanted to jump-start the economy, you'd put up money for solving new problems. Better yet, you'd put up money for certain scientific and environmental achievements, with the requirement that the technology developed for them would be available royalty-free to everyone in the USA. Instead of just going to the moon, have a prize for delivering water to the ISS. You might have some people building robots to make a mass-driver near the lunar pole and send crater-ice down to LEO, and some other people building a laser to launch frisbees of ice into orbit from the Mojave desert. You'd have solutions that could then be applied to all kinds of other things, and you'd get a boom.
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Re:Useless make-work bogs the economy

[snoop_chili_dog]

That was what I was suggesting. I just didn't spell it out. It would definitely stimulate science. Also, there are drugs like interferon that can be made in high orbit. The problem with the US is that we haven't had a challenge is so long. The internet makes for a poor frontier.