https://www.nasa.gov/feature/sending-american-astronauts-to-moon-in-2024-nasa-accepts-challenge/
NASA Moon and Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxvFsqevSdw
It'll not be a thing that matters after a 2020 trump win
fact
First step, enough of the stupid ass space force and actually fund a legitimate organization that has real world benefits and scientific advancements.
And back up the budget allowances as well.
Sad thing is, even if he does supply funding, Trump will just sit on his hands until its too late, just like he did with the wall.
That being said Pence is a very good speaker and fairly charming, it was a good speech but I agree too, I'll also believe Trump cares when we see real results in the form of significant funding.
If it was under any other president this would be somewhat interesting.
I say this as I have a nagging feeling that its intended to be an ego boost(so he can claim to be the president that had us go back to the moon) and figure into some childish plan to build hotels on the moon.
Going to the moon has always been an ego boost. There's not really much science to do there. There's a potential that the Helium-3 deposits on the moon could be useful if we ever get fusion to work on a large scale, but I'd rather we spent money on Mars, Europa and Enceladus at the moment.
He's not, and he isn't. I see this fine-praise shit levelled at people in contemptuous positions a lot (especially with, loathe as I am to admit it, Hitler) and usually it's the most banal, generic compliment to sugar a bitter pill, or even to try and glaze over the nasty aspects of someone. It is patent bollocks. He's reading a pre-prepared speech as rehearsed, there's utterly not an inch of charm or charisma in the man, he looks like he's trying to pick a fight with words itself half the time because he's squinting angrily into the middle-distance like a belming twunk, prodding the SHIT out of his podium like it's just told him it wants to shag his daughter. He's a witless fuck and the arch-baron of some utterly heinous policies. Don't be like "ooh, he was good with his hands at least" just because you think it might be unfair to criticize him.
The moon is a natural jetty that also happens to be intensely rich in minerals. It will be the #1 place to build and launch rockets to go to mars, Europa, or Enceladus. Besides Europa is constantly being bombarded by the excess of radiation jupiter traps in its field and Enceladus sucks ass compared to Titan.
I have no clue where you got the idea that mars takes priority over the moon.
Moon-> Mars->Ganymede->Titan->Gas scraper cities on Uranus.
more importantly we should go back to the moon and build a base because that shit would fucking own
I would always love to go back to the moon regardless of the President behind it but I'm skeptical that it is even possible with how longthe SLS has taken. I feel like there's no time to take care of all the stuff you need for such a missions success, lander, suits, rover, etc.
But if they can pull it off, more power to them.
even if they get sls flying the RS-25 engines the damn thing is build around are a massive bottleneck. they haven't made any for years, they don't have a large supply of them, and they're frankly a massive cash cow that's fiendishly complicated to assemble. All of that was fine on Shuttle since you brought them home with you and refurbished them but SLS is just going to dump them in the ocean each time.
NASA has a production line building more with the goal of simplifying the design but its still a very expensive engine for disposable use and AJ/RD are making a hell of a lot of money off of them
What the fuck are you talking about
As others have said, that's a great sentiment to have, and the president/vice president can say whatever they want; however, without a rocket to take us there, and the infrastructure for it this looks like a lot of hot air. Good engineering takes time, money, and skilled people. The government at the moment seems disinterested in supplying NASA with any of those three.
the government seems disinterested in science in general unless it helps with 'energy dominance' which in of itself is a fucking luddite's idea of an energy policy
It is rich in minerals and that's why I mentioned Helium-3, but sending a couple of astronauts there again is a waste of time. If this was about building a moon base, I'd be all for it.
I am saying that Mars is more interesting for science. The moon has been investigated by several probes already. Not sure what you're talking about in regards to how controlling the moon means you control the fate of Earth.
Enceladus and Europa are considered to be the most likely places to have life other than Mars. Titan is also a candidate but less so.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/17/the-most-likely-cradles-for-life-our-solar-system-mars
I was referring to mineral value and profit potential not prospects in life and the person who controls the moon can put nukes, bunkers and soldiers on the moon, It'd be the ultimate impregnable fortress for the next century at a minimum that could project power throughout the inner solar system. You are correct about Europa though but water isn't a scarce resource as far as the solar system is concerned.
I imagine that the moon will end up being like Antarctica in that no one country owns it (when we eventually get a base going, that is.) I don't really see what the point in soldiers on the moon is though. It'd be ludicrously expensive and they could be easily killed by a few missiles. I like to think that the world is moving away from conflict, although that may be optimistic, so I imagine that the moon is only ever going to be used for peaceful reasons.
I'd not heard of the hypothesis regarding gas giant life before, but that's pretty interesting. In terms of water being plentiful, that's true, but I suppose it's more about the form the water is in and about whether there are things like amino acids available. Apparently life began on Earth roughly 400 million years after it came into being, so it does seem like life pretty much shows up as soon as it's possible. It's just a shame that we only have a sample size of one to make predictions.
Antarctica probably isn't the best thing to bring up with this, you know, with china building stations on other nations lands there.
I do have to say that realistically speaking there is going to be a good amount of time before any nation sets up a moon base, sets up the equipment to go to and from the moon. What is lacking in not the will but having a mixture of private and public investment coupled with reusable landers.
It's a bit of a mundane angle to take when you're talking about another manned moon landing, but I think the discourse between the conspiracy theorists regarding the moon landing hoax theory would be great if we ever did another manned mission.
Oh boy.
Having control over the Moon isn't worth any sort of military power here on Earth, we can already start wiping everyone the fuck out with nukes this instant if it came down to that. The Moon is too expensive for the business of killing one another.
Moon and Mars are realistic destinations for scientific research. The value and prestige lies in who can be the most successful at manned exploration of these two places.
Agreed, SLS hopefully goes away and dies in a corner soon, if (big if) it had actually flown in 2016/17 then perhaps we'd look at it differently and be able to plan how it could be sped up, improved and utilised but Boeing have fucked that up. I did hear however that the first RFP for the ascent portion of the three part lander is going out sometime this/next month so we'll get a feel for how serious an effort this is when that comes out.
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The current state of world's space exploration capability disallows a successful 2024/5 Moon landing, not unless we see an Apollo-style increase in funding and fervour towards reaching this goal in not just the US, but Europe and Japan as well. SLS isn't fit for purpose, the added complexity of involving Gateway and lunar orbit assembly of the lander is only going to slow things down.
Realistically the only organisation that stands a ghost of a chance is SpaceX with Starship-Super Heavy and I don't think it's going to happen, not in the timeframe quoted here.
Talking specifically of the US, in the days following the announcement of this goal it was clear to see that politicians in America don't care about this, the distant possibility of taking Orion launches away from SLS (it's entire reason for being) had the relevant people desperately trying to shoot down the idea because it would mean government money would stop flowing where they want it to.
NASA's space launch vehicles are no longer about fulfilling a purpose like the Atlas-Mercury, Titan-Gemini or Saturn-Apollo systems were. They are signed into law with particular requirements that ensure political goals are satisfied, not exploration or pioneering goals.
I mean is there much more research needed to be done there? I'd have thought a base would be the next step if there was a next step.
So let's set aside the politics for a second, and just look at the technical approach.
NASA still seems committed to the Lunar Gateway approach, placing a space station into high lunar orbit as a waystation between Earth and the lunar surface. This is, quite frankly, a dumb idea. Space travel isn't about distance, it's about change in velocity - stopping at a space station on the way to the moon is like stopping in Miami for gas while driving from New York to San Francisco. It's inefficient from a simple dV perspective. It also offers little in terms of safety - even if you have a crew on standby in the station while another crew goes down to the surface, what could they actually do? The biggest dangers are either too fast for them to respond (depressurization), or something they couldn't really help with (what are they to do if the ascent motor fails to ignite - are we going to double-size our landers just so we can send a rescue crew?).
NASA's been going down another obviously wrong path for the past decade or so with their big new rocket, SLS. Which is basically cobbling together a normal launcher out of Space Shuttle parts. Same engines, at least at first - we'll burn through the stocks of RS-25Ds, even yanking some out of museums, before switching to new, cheaper RS-25Es. The boosters are from a Shuttle upgrade that was tested but never flew. The initial upper stage is taken from the Delta IV. They're literally just kerbaling together existing parts... and they've taken seven years and 14 billion dollars to do it, more if you consider SLS as an extension of the Constellation program, or even as an extension of earlier Shuttle-derived concepts like NLS or Jupiter.
There have been some signs lately that NASA is reconsidering the total dedication to SLS. They've been talking about using Falcon Heavy to launch crew to the Lunar Gateway (using a Centaur as a third stage, which is just kind of nuts). It might just be a negotiating ploy to get Boeing to stop dragging their feet with SLS... but it could legitimately work. And using a $150M booster makes a hell of a lot more sense than a $5,000M booster.
What NASA's been silent about is BFR, or whatever they're calling it now ("Super Heavy", apparently, which is perhaps the worst name ever). That's specced to be about 50% more powerful than SLS, even without refueling - with orbital refueling, it could put as much into lunar orbit as SLS could put into earth orbit. It could launch the entire Gateway in a single mission, while SLS will take five. Such a large booster could revolutionize the entire moon program... and despite a multi-year head start, SpaceX seems to be further along with their giant rocket than NASA. Both of them are currently scheduled for a first test flight in 2020... and NASA was talking about it slipping, before the Trump regime suddenly decided to care about space exploration. I have little doubt SpaceX will slip too, space is hard, but NASA's done nothing but slip for nigh on a decade now.
Other than those two things, the approach seems fairly sensible. Single-use descent stages are kind of bad, but not something that can really be avoided without massively larger rockets. And if the intent is a permanent manned base on the Moon, they could perhaps be repurposed after landing. Reusable ascent stages is logical.
The big question is the development timeline. They're cutting the development time in half, if not more. Getting this program done by 2024 will take near-Apollo levels of effort - not just budget, but also quality of management. Apollo flew in the time it did because it was extremely well-managed. It was a crash program, they cut every corner they could... but they flew on time. If NASA wants to be back on the Moon in five years, they need to manage their projects much better.
God I can't believe I'm about to defend SLS.
NASA didn't necessarily choose SLS, they were told to build it by Congress, namely those who stood to lose the shuttle work. Even then, in 2012 the only real offer of heavy-lift was ULA. SLS wasn't the best implementation of the right choice, but it was politically workable and had a path that led to Saturn V capability. There was no viable path to an alternate vehicle that wasn't Shuttle-derived. Jupiter was a completely different competing concept (and actually Shuttle-derived) to what became SLS, which is essentially an Ares IV.
SLS is a halfway compromise between the Shuttle-Derived crowd (Jupiter) and Constellation crowd that has failed to achieve either concepts goals. RS-25s (Jupiter) on an Ares V (Constellation) core boosted by 2 Ares-I 5-segment SRBs (Constellation) lofting Orion (Constellation) and an RL-10 powered 2nd stage (Jupiter).
I'll repeat it again though, SLS was a political compromise. It was designed to be harder to cancel, not necessarily a better rocket than what Constellation was offering. But it was the only rocket that NASA was going to be able to get supported by congress so they bit their collective tongues and got on with making up programs that could use it. There was nothing inherently flawed about Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift. SLS is inherently flawed though.
/SLS Defending (if you can call it that)
You are correct however, SLS has taken too long and cost too much. It hasn't suffered the underfunding issues that Commercial Crew had. The blame for the utter, complete failure of SLS is at Boeing's feet. Like other projects (JWST comes to mind) it's a cost-plus arrangement, Boeing can do jack shit to meet the quoted schedule and cost requirements because they still make a profit no matter what. So they dragged their feet, and here we are.
COTS/Commercial Cargo cost just under $6.7 billion dollars for 31 missions and resulted in 2 new medium lift vehicles and 2 cargo spacecraft.
Commercial Crew has cost $8.5 billion and has resulted in a Crew Vehicle that is ready for a manned test flight. Boeing got in on this cash-cow as well and you'll be no doubt surprised to hear that they may well not fly their new capsule until 2020 at this rate.
The difference between SLS/JWST and the Commercial Cargo/Crew programs is fixed-price contracts. If you go overbudget or overtime, you start losing money. This has led to shit getting done faster and cheaper unsurprisingly.
The problem going forward is NASA having the faith and courage to support companies who have thrived on getting these things done on-time and on-budget with fixed price contracts. That means shunning Boeing and their ilk, because they have proved without a doubt they aren't able to competently develop space systems in this environment. NASA needs to embrace the rapid innovation on show at companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin or Sierra Nevada Corp. NASA needs to give the push that ULA needs to actually realise things like ACES into being.
It isn't just NASA however, the moldy residue of the shuttle program needs to be scoured from congress. There was a time where SDHLVs were a good idea and that time has gone. There isn't a single SDHL infrastructure that can match up to development efforts that are currently underway. The biggest blocker are the politicians who want rockets built in certain places. That isn't how shit gets done now. I can tell you for a fact however that for as long as there is a republican President in the White House, the Alabama rocket mafia aren't going to be put under any real pressure and therefore nothing is going to change.
(#FuckShelby)
put more money into JUICE and similar endeavors not this
you have committed the crime of thinking otherwise to this rather awkward individual representing with the name Jessica Cannon.
The SLS design would never have really been a good rocket. It's an evolutionary dead end, just like all the other hydrolox+SRB rockets. Delta IV, Ariane, SLS, H-2, they're all pretty much going nowhere. Hydrolox just doesn't have the thrust to work as a main stage without some sort of high-thrust booster, and solid rocket motors just can't be reused, only scavenged for parts. They chased the specific impulse, at the cost of actual practicality. The Shuttle at least kind of worked, the high-efficiency engines were expensive but reused, and the boosters were relatively cheap (and subsidized ICBM development, too). Everything after that is just a dead end. Not one that was obvious except in hindsight, I'm not blaming them for going that route, it just clearly isn't going to be the Way of the Future, any more than pure-hypergolic rockets or main-stage monoprops or boranes.
But despite that, if SLS had flown in 2013 or 2014 for under $1B, it would have been a good rocket program. That absolutely could have happened if it was managed well (and, as you said, was fixed-fee instead of cost-plus). But no, they've spent the best part of a decade with their dick in their hands, and all we've got to show for it is a couple static-fire tests of engines we already knew worked, a couple half-completed prop tanks, and some renovated launch infrastructure.
And while SLS was circling the parking lot, newspace went from a vague hope to kicking everyone's asses retrograde. Not just SpaceX, but Blue Origin is beating Aerojet in the engine-sales department, and is building their own heavy-lift rocket, and then there's the Smallsat Launcher Battle Royale going down. And few of them are wasting time and money the way Boeing has been - Virgin Galactic, maybe, fuckers spent a decade to not make it past the Karman line?
SLS should have been shit-canned years ago. It long since stopped being the best way forward, and trying to complete it is just chasing a sunk cost. And now we're warping missions to fit SLS, just because it's the only part of NASA guaranteed to get funding (until Shelby finally gets voted out).
I think SLS/Ares V would've been good to have for after Shuttle until the Commercial sector was ready to do the lifting. Too bad Constellation was taking forever and Ares 1 was a disaster waiting to happen.
I just hope this push doesn't give them launch fever on a rocket that isn't ready.
I honestly feel like if NASA has to have a tentpole vehicle program akin to SLS they should go back to having single-stage-to-orbit dev along the lines of X-33 and DC-X.
At least those were genuinely ambitious and promising programs (especially with the X-33's main problem of composite multi-lobed tankage cracking being a materials science issue long, long since solved by now).
Did we miss something the first time?
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