US signals new space race: Trump wants astronauts back on the moon within five y
29 replies, posted
https://news.sky.com/story/us-signals-new-space-race-trump-wants-astronauts-back-on-the-moon-within-five-years-11676176
One small step closer to fuckable aliens
While I agree with the premise, this is just another Trump distraction.
We have too much shit to deal with on this planet to waste time and money just so a guy can stand on the moon and do literally nothing.
How are they going to do that when you slashed their funding? Hm?
Good idea, and let's drop Trump off while we're there.
Moon is the gateway to the rest of the solar system. Serves as a good jumping off point since you're not having to launch out of high gravity like on Earth, plus it's got plenty of resources to help facilitate further exploration.
Whilst it's true that a moon base is potentially a good idea, SpaceX's BFR is designed to be refuelled whilst in LEO and a moon base isn't really necessary for how they've designed it. I would argue that there are too few resources available to get a moon base setup right now anyway, as NASA's budget is laughably small.
How will NASA do this with an unfinished SLS, no lander and no next gen space suit?
It's looking more and more likely that the SLS is going to get dumped and BFR will take the next astronauts to the moon. The BFR's 2nd stage doubles as a lander anyway. Space suits don't really need to be next gen - we've had the technology for ages and the existing ones are totally adequate for the task.
oh hey another bush era idea, give nasa a goal that they can't possibly meet and then slash their budget to make sure they can't.
hello constellation 2
At least it's 5 years and not like, 10. Probably increases the chances of it happening before someone else comes along and scuppers it.
Maybe a moon base would be more impressive to any aliens that might find us
You know, because what we've done so far is equivalent to tagging that shit and leaving a spare wheel behind before driving off
ehhhhhhhh
The moon might be pretty good as a blueprint for a mars base, but launching rockets from there doesn’t sound like a very good idea. Unless you’re producing fuel/oxidiser on the moon (unlikely to happen anytime soon), you’re just double dipping on the the gravity wells - worse, the moon has no atmosphere, so you can’t aerobrake to land there. Refuelling rockets in orbit is a much more efficient way of doing things, if you wanna go to mars.
I'm assuming he made the deadline 5 years just so he can have it happen during his second term, which he's cocky enough to think he's going to get a second term.
GIVE MOON, NO FUNDING THO, MAGA HARD
There ain't no time like the present to plan for the future
While the general idea is something I can agree with, the reasons Trump wants to do this are stupid. It's just blatant dickwaving.
The problem is that NASA's running out of usable space suits. The first all-female spacewalk isn't happening because NASA doesn't have enough suits to fit a crew of women.
NASA's current spacesuit tech is adequate, although we're talking like... 1970s? era design so some updating is probably in order. One way or another, NASA needs to make more of them, and they're like $35 million (accounting for inflation) each so some serious funding is going to have to come out of Congress soon just to keep astronauts going up to the ISS, never mind the President's insane moon pipe dream.
i dont think the lunar gateway will be finished enough to support this within 5 years
much of our research that has lead to solutions to problems on earth comes from shit in space, it's not like it's completely pointless to go up there
/BEGIN SUPREME PESSIMISM
Yeah, nah.
This isn't going to happen while NASA is being impeded by the Space Launch System (SLS) Architecture for two reasons, capability and timescale.
There is a version of SLS that is worth the effort and that's the Block 2 version, which combines 2 new and improved "Dark Knight" solid rocket motors, the SLS core stage and the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) to deliver a very impressive amount of payload to TLI.
That version of SLS will not be ready by 2024, it won't be ready probably until the 2030s if SLS lives that long. Block 2 could feasibly be used to send an Apollo style mission to the South Pole of the Moon, no other version of SLS will be capable of that and will require the lander to be sent to Lunar orbit by other rockets piece-by-piece. Assembly of said lander will difficult without somewhere to aim for, but it is politically impossible (timescale-wise too) to fund both a charge on a Human-rated lander system for 2024 and have enough of Gateway in place to support it.
We could *maybe* see the EUS by 2022 if they immediately gave the responsibility for it to literally ANYONE BUT BOEING. Boeing have done a horrifyingly bad job on SLS, to the point where a very very significant portion of space related activity have moved away from the model of contracting that SLS is using. They anticipate producing one core a year and Jim Bridenstine believes to enable this goal that the SLS would have to launch twice a year. No amount of money gets SLS core production to that level. You don't undo eight years of Boeing dragging their feet in just 2 years.
The only other candidates for building the EUS are:
Blue Origin, who have yet to fly a rocket into orbit, but have lots of experience with the type of fuel it would use and are building a similar stage for their large orbital rocket.
ULA, who have oodles of experience and even have an undeveloped design (ACES) in place that would need less adjustment than any other, they're also providing the ICPS that SLS Block 1 is using anyway but considering that Boeing is half of ULA's ownership probably will be influenced into not making a bid for building EUS.
BO have never had timescale pressure because of Jeff Bezos' Amazon money, they also haven't demonstrated a successful ability to really fly in space.
ULA are slightly less ponderous but as a large multi-state venture they have serious "inertia" when it comes to getting things done quickly but if anyone could do it, it would be them.
(Don't even mention SpaceX, they aren't relevant to EUS.)
EUS will not be ready for 2024 imho,
I haven't really mentioned cost, but it goes without saying that SLS is ludicrously expensive, one set of the RS-25 engines that will be used on the core stage are more expensive than entire rockets.
So NASA are politically unable to achieve this due to being forced to use a rocket that is A) not able to do this mission without several upgrades OR established infrastructure in Lunar orbit that isn't even developed yet. B) Can currently only fly once per year, starting (incredibly optimistically) in 2020 and that flight rate will be very hard to speed up in time.
Outside of SLS's problems, here are the other problems:
A) There isn't any kind of real work ongoing on a manned lunar lander, 5 years will not be enough time to develop one that is safe enough for modern NASA to put people inside.
B) The people who truly control NASA's budget in congress are all invested in the SLS jobs program in their states to keep getting those rocket builder votes (fuck Shelby). So there aren't really alternative options that are politically possible.
C) Even if they somehow manage to get out of using the SLS architecture. No single currently flying launch vehicle can launch Orion to TLI without distributed launch, let alone the development time required to work out:
Docking the lander bits in Lunar Orbit with or without gateway.
Docking Orion to a fueled second stage in orbit of Earth and performing TLI.
Rendezvous and Docking with the lander in Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit of the Moon.
Landing and Returning to NRHO
D) This entire post wasn't worth typing out, because neither the current Administration or Congress will give NASA the funding required for a fast paced return to the lunar surface.
E) By 2024 it's not unlikely we will have greater capabilities that render SLS utterly obsolete (Starship/SuperHeavy, Vulcan Heavy ACES, New Glenn).
Disclaimer: I liked SLS once upon a time, I thought it's a great rocket for the issue that NASA faced in 2011/2, in that the Shuttle was retiring and developing a Shuttle-Derived Heavy Launch Vehicle seemed logical and no commercial company apart from ULA had demonstrated the kind of capability that SLS offered. However, Congress meddling and Boeing's milking of the cost-plus contract have killed this rocket.
I wonder how differently things would've gone if NASA had decided on following the Jupiter proposals and built real SDHLVs. I guess we'll never know.
/END SUPREME PESSIMISM
/BEGIN SUPREME OPTIMISM
LET'S FUCKING DO IT LADS
/END SUPREME OPTIMISM
obama shitcanned constellation because bush proposed the whole thing without budgeting a fraction of what it would take to do it.
"We grab our delicious nuclear missiles, power them up even further with precious coal as if it was nitrous, strap on our people to them with duct tape and shoot'em at the moon! Bonus points if we nuke any dirty aliens!"
somewhere between the insanely expensive border wall that won't solve any problems and the absurdly large american defense budget, America will magically go to the moon
No lie, if the US legally declared war on the moon they'd have boots on the ground within months.
alright mr nasa man. nasa themselves planned the deep space gateway in which they first go to moon and then mars before trump signed the directive to make nasa go to the moon. i guess they'll change their mind if they see what you think, one guy vs thousands of very educated people who spend their livelihood on this and who came up with the deep space gateway after so much research and effort. in other words, i just don't think one guy is credible compared to a huge organization that does this for a living.
NASA has to contend with congress, I don't. NASA is obviously an organization full of brilliant people, but if they made all their own decisions, the US wouldn't have been without a man-rated rocket since 2011, and I doubt the Space Shuttle would've been running for as long as it did. The SLS (and lest we forget, it's predecessor, Ares) is an expensive rocket built on the same principles as those used to get to the moon back in 1969.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.