50 Years After Walking on the Moon, an Astronaut Anticipates Our Return (apnews.com) 58
In 1972 — half a century ago — Charles Moss Duke walked on the moon.
Now 86 years old, he's ready for America to get back to exploring the moon, reports the Associated Press: Duke said he does not begrudge NASA for ending the Apollo program to focus on space shuttles, the international space station and other missions in more remote parts of space. But he looks forward to future missions that build off of what he and others have learned from their time on the moon, which called "a great platform for science."
Duke also noted that he's encouraged by the commercial partnerships that have developed around space exploration, like Space X and Blue Origin [and the companies he describes in their video as "the others"]. Those options, he said, "make space available for more people and more science and engineering and unmanned stuff."
"That compliment is going to be really important in the future," Duke went on.
The article notes the first of NASA's huge Space Launch System rockets is scheduled to blast off later this year, "with crewed flights planned subsequently." In the video interview, Duke adds that "With Artemis, NASA is going to be focused on deep space, to the moon and beyond, and I'm excited about that..."
"The more people we get into space, and can see the beauty of the earth — and the incredible emotion that you [feel] when you see the earth hung in the blackness of space — it's going to affect a lot of people."
Now 86 years old, he's ready for America to get back to exploring the moon, reports the Associated Press: Duke said he does not begrudge NASA for ending the Apollo program to focus on space shuttles, the international space station and other missions in more remote parts of space. But he looks forward to future missions that build off of what he and others have learned from their time on the moon, which called "a great platform for science."
Duke also noted that he's encouraged by the commercial partnerships that have developed around space exploration, like Space X and Blue Origin [and the companies he describes in their video as "the others"]. Those options, he said, "make space available for more people and more science and engineering and unmanned stuff."
"That compliment is going to be really important in the future," Duke went on.
The article notes the first of NASA's huge Space Launch System rockets is scheduled to blast off later this year, "with crewed flights planned subsequently." In the video interview, Duke adds that "With Artemis, NASA is going to be focused on deep space, to the moon and beyond, and I'm excited about that..."
"The more people we get into space, and can see the beauty of the earth — and the incredible emotion that you [feel] when you see the earth hung in the blackness of space — it's going to affect a lot of people."
This makes me sad... (Score:5, Funny)
We were supposed to have a well established Moon Base well in advance of 1999, when the moon spun off and became a rogue planetoid, roaming the galaxy.
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The more you spend, the more you save!
Re:This makes me sad... (Score:4, Funny)
John Koenig was extremely lucky to get that gig as Commander, what with all the illegal crap he did in the past for Phillip Vandamm. He might not have been completely innocent with regards to that atomic waste explosion.
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We were supposed to have a Moon Base by 1980, according to UFO. That show was produced in 1970, and it seems that by 1975 when Space 1999 came out Anderson had realised that his prediction was a bit too optimistic.
Re: This makes me sad... (Score:2)
Wow, I remember the crappy school textbooks from long ago with illustrations of moon bases with huge, impractically glass domed spaces with people all wearing jumpsuits, likely with all sense of style and individuality monstered out of them so it was really a dystopic view of the future, and saying "by 2010 we will be living on the moon blah blah blah."
I expect the actual moon experience to be like an expedition to Antartica, with all of the cramped and uncomfortable spaces that come with it.
I was 2 years old during Apollo 11 (Score:3)
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I was supposed to have a flying car by now [youtu.be].
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No you wouldn't, the cost with chemical rockets is just too high; only government chosen people, millionaires or lottery winners will be going to the moon for decades.
What we need is a cheaper lifting tech, extreme scramjet designs (mach 11 to mach 24) someday might be part of that
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It's interesting to consider the economics of that. Consider a Saturn V. It used what would be about $19 million in fuel to get to the moon and it could take about 41 tons of material there in a trip that took a little over three days. I'm not saying you would use Saturn V's for this, just getting a baseline on fuel usage. So, if you have some sort of shuttle service from Earth orbit to the Moon's surface, or even something like a space elevator or skyhook at the moon and a transfer station, then you don't
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"No you wouldn't, the cost with chemical rockets is just too high"
Only because to this point most launchers threw away most if not all of their launch vehicle on each flight (Delta, Ariane, R-7) or had to basically rebuild the recovered vehicle (Space Shuttle). We're starting to see vehicles that are at least partly reusable (Falcon 9) and may be seeing fully reusable vehicles in the near future (Starship). If the launch/crew vehicles can be made fully/rapidly reusable than the costs of access to space wi
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Meanwhile the actual real launch cost is "down" to $117 million, was billions before. In the ongoing war between investor hype vs. high cost of reality bet on reality.
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Falcon 9 is $62M charged to customer right now, which is NOT all costs.
Musk claims that will be down to $10 million in 2 - 3 years.
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Nope,you're linking 2 year old article, not "at the moment", and even there says launches could cost customers up to $91M
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you're linking 2 year old article, not "at the moment"
Yes, you're right. Compared to 2 years ago, at least on some flights, this cost has been decreased by several million thanks to fairing recovery and reuse. You can still use it as an upper bound on the estimated cost.
and even there says launches could cost customers up to $91M
It can have a price tag of $91M. It doesn't cost SpaceX $91M, which is obviously what this thread was about. [slashdot.org] What's with all the straw men? You're all over the place. (And do you also think it costs Apple $1k to build an iPhone?)
Re:I was 2 years old during Apollo 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
I was supposed to be living on the Moon by now.
Nobody is going to be "living" there. How many colonies are there in Antarctica, of the bottom of the ocean?
Both are easier, cheaper, more interesting places to live, and have valuable resources. But we have science bases and robots instead.
Manned exploration is cool, but the Moon is not the Americas or Australia. More like Mt Everest.
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Wow, No imagination At All. Very Disappointing.
karma down dude..
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Wow, No imagination At All.
Oh I can imagine it, in detail. ( within the limits of aphantasia [slashdot.org] )
It is like the chances of me having sex with Jennifer Lawrence. Imagination is not the limiting factor.
Makes for a good fantasy, and i love fantasy. It is just not a reality. I'm still hoping for a permanent science base, like in Antarctica.
Re: I was 2 years old during Apollo 11 (Score:2)
We will probally have people stationed there for long terms, but would YOU want to live there?
Even the most extreme introvert will want to come back to Earth. The moon will get boring as fuck.
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Antarctica and the ocean are essentially illegal to settle due to international treaties and agreements.
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Dude, trans-fats are dangerous for your health! Everyone should fear those!!1
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly shelled out $456,548 to a construction company in Delaware to install a fence around President Biden’s Delaware beach house, according to newly-released records.
Would you like to compare that to the amount of government money spent defending Mar-a-Lago? Trump's various golf courses? What does this even have to do with the topic of government expenditures on space travel?
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The protection always goes where the President is located.
Or do you expect all future Presidents to remain in the safety of their basements?
Was that meant for me? I was not the one making a specious argument about money being spent on Presidential protection. Although I would say that civil servants who have money spent on special accommodations for them should make some effort to keep the costs from being excessive. They should also try to avoid any of the money spent from effectively going into their own pockets. Oh, they possibly should also not hypocritically campaign on how much the previous incumbents golf trips cost the taxpayer, promise
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I know people from the other party who think the world is flat.
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https://news.yahoo.com/biden-a... [yahoo.com]
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has told colleagues that some construction might resume along the border wall to plug some "gaps," The Washington Times reported on Monday.
According to the report, Mayorkas said that while Biden had frozen Defense Department funding for the wall, "that leaves room to make decisions as the administration, as part of the administration, in particular areas of the wall that need renovation, particular projects that need to be finis
Apollo Program (Score:3)
Re:Apollo Program (Score:4, Informative)
I am old enough to remember JFK saying, "we choose to go to the moon". The whole thing was a massive publicity stunt. .. and then shut the whole thing down, in favor of more useful projects in earth orbit.
It sounds like you only remember one soundbite, and not the speech. Try reading it. Kennedy explains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
Indeed. Clearly there are no tangible outcomes for Rice in playing Texas, but they do it anyway. (I'm assuming Rice was a local losing sports team?)
He was speaking in Rice university stadium (Housto (Score:4, Informative)
> I'm assuming Rice was a local losing sports team?
You may be familiar with astronauts talking to "Houston".
In fact the first word transmitted from the moon was "Houston".
The Houston complex is adjacent to Rice University, built on land donated by Rice. Rice worked very closely with NASA in the early years and had the first space travel science department.
Kennedy made his famous speech while standing on the football field at Rice.
https://www.ricefootball.net/j... [ricefootball.net]
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Yeah, sigh, I know.
The joke about Rice was pencilled in by Kennedy. The rest came from his speech-writer.
He was making a joke. So don't take my reference to the joke quite so seriously.
But i take it Rice had a hard time?
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> I'm assuming Rice was a local losing sports team?
You may be familiar with astronauts talking to "Houston". In fact the first word transmitted from the moon was "Houston".
The Houston complex is adjacent to Rice University, built on land donated by Rice. Rice worked very closely with NASA in the early years and had the first space travel science department.
Rice is in downtown Houston, JSC is in Clear Lake, not quite adjacent to each other. The land, donated to Rice by Humble Oil, was then sold to the government for $30. Humble Oil (Exxon-Mobile) then developed Clear Lake City. Per NASA: [nasa.gov]
On Sept. 19, 1961, NASA announced that the $60 million manned space flight laboratory would be located in Houston on 1,000 acres of land to be made available to the government by Rice University. The land was owned by Humble Oil Co. and given to Rice to give to the governme
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It's called humour. Have a little fun some time.
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I am old enough to remember JFK saying, "we choose to go to the moon". The whole thing was a massive publicity stunt. .. and then shut the whole thing down, in favor of more useful projects in earth orbit.
It sounds like you only remember one soundbite, and not the speech. Try reading it. Kennedy explains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
Indeed. Clearly there are no tangible outcomes for Rice in playing Texas, but they do it anyway. (I'm assuming Rice was a local losing sports team?)
I'd say the $1 mill they get to play gives them plenty of reasons to schedule Texas; such games are pretty commonplace as payday games for small schools. Occasionally one pulls off an upset, such as when Appalachian State beat the University of Michigan.
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I gain the same impression. It only recently dawned on me that the U.S.A. fancies itself to have won the space race, whereas in most of Europe, opinions tend to swing towards the U.S.S.R. and Russia to this day still is the country most people think of when they think of of a country with advanced space capabilities. But when reading about it the view seems to be that the U.S.A. won when a man was put on the moon and that that was the original goal of it, who could do that first, which seems to be retroacti
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and Russia to this day still is the country most people think of when they think of of a country with advanced space capabilities.
I would love to know where you find these 'most people'.
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The USSR was concerned about getting as many firsts as possible, but it was certainly America that decided that the moon was the finish line in that race. Meanwhile the USSR had many other firsts, with space stations, women in space, space walks, soft landing probes, rovers, visiting Venus and Mars...
The United States basically abandoned all the other races to focus on getting a man on the Moon. No American woman went to space until the 1980s, and interplanetary exploration was limited until the 1970s. Same
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No American woman went to space until the 1980s
They waited until they had one that was actually qualified for the job, as opposed to shoving a random factory worker into a tin can to show that anyone healthy can survive a trip in their tin can.
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Seems rather arbitrary. Sally Ride was an academic, but joined NASA and became an astronaut. She was a mission specialist, i.e. not involved with piloting the Shuttle. She was along for the ride, to do science in space.
Valentina Tereshkova was an acomplished parachutist, essential at the time as the Russia Vostok capsule was not capable of soft landing. The mission requires the cosmonaut to bail out at high altitude and parachute to the ground. She was involved with the operation of the crash, doing some pi
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Who won the space race is a matter of goals.
The apparent goal was to do stuff first. In that regard the Soviets can be said to have won by some measures.
The actual goal was to be the last to be able to afford it. In that regard, the USA won a crushing victory.
The USA won the space race by actual if not perceived intent.
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What's the value? (Score:3)
Is there really anything to be had from putting men on the moon that cannot better be done by a machine apart from showing that it can be done?
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We could build an Ark Fleet, and start by sending off Ship B. THAT would improve the planet, a lot!
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Returning to the Moon is a good way to test out some of the technologies needed for visiting Mars. Mars could potentially be self sustaining for human colonization, which would increase the species chances of survival if something catastrophic happened to the Earth.
The Moon has some resources that would be of use for a trip to Mars too, and while it might be possible to acquire them robotically, once you have a system capable of landing the equipment and boosting the output back to orbit, it's not that much
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Mars could potentially be self sustaining for human colonization, which would increase the species chances of survival if something catastrophic happened to the Earth.
This really feels like reading too much science fiction. — All that money is far better spent avoiding such a thing.
Private sector (Score:2)
It will be the private sector doing this, no doubt about it.
The whole "second moonshot" was bandied about by every US president during the past 20+ years with the ever pushed back launch date, and pun intended never got off the ground.
Yeah ok (Score:1)
Do people still fall for this cold war propaganda? Please only reply if you are invested in space x