New Mars Forums

nirgal

Banned

Registered: 2002-05-14

Posts: 157

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

Link

It seems as if NASA is finally beginning to openly talk about going to the Moon and Mars again. I hope congress and the president support this fantastic new plan. Now Nick Lampson can show that he is serious about his call for a bold new space initiative.

Preston

Banned

Registered: 2002-06-02

Posts: 72

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

It would seem to me that some small commission that is part of NASA is designing visionary schemes that will be ignored by the administration and O'Keefe. They would prefer to ramble on in CEO-speak and management lingo that has little to do with space.

Phobos

Member

Registered: 2002-01-02

Posts: 1,103

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

Even though I found the idea of building a space station at the libration points interesting, I wonder how worthwhile that really is.  Oh well, if NASA and its political leash holders finally gets the initiative to send people zooming around the Solar System they can build bases at the libration points to their hearts content.  One thing I found somewhat disturbing though was how the author indicated that building such a L-base would lead us not to fly just one mission to Mars but two or three!  Whatever happened to a sustained effort to keep people there indefinately.  I think NASA has tossed the vision of Mars Direct out the window.   On the flip side though I got the impression they did want to build something of an indefinately staffed base on the moon, so that's good.

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To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd

Number04

Member

From: Calgary Alberta Canada

Registered: 2002-09-24

Posts: 162

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

I do think that it's kind of dumb that there is so much intrest into the subject, but we are all at the mercy of NASA. I think if enough interest can be generated thru the mars society and what not, NASA might take more notice. Or even other governments.

Mark S

Banned

Registered: 2002-04-11

Posts: 343

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

Can't say yet whether this new exploration roadmap will have the political support it needs.  I think that the plan is the same as the "Bush Mars Initiative" that Richard Hoaglund was referring to over the summer.  In that case, it will have the support of the president and the NASA chief, but findng support from congress will be much more difficult.  The NExT roadmap sounds very similar to Rep. Lampson's Space Exploration Act of 2002, and perhaps his endorsement will cultivate bipartisan support for the measure.

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"I'm not much of a 'hands-on' evil scientist."--Dr. Evil, "Goldmember"

RobS

Banned

From: South Bend, IN

Registered: 2002-01-15

Posts: 1,701

Website

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

This proposal for an L1 Gateway is important for several reasons, both political and scientific.

1. As you can see from some of my postings, it is possible to do quite a lot without building a new heavy-lifting booster if you can assemble small payloads and if you use solar electric or solar thermal rockets. But you need assembly points, one deep in the Earth's gravity well, one at the edge. L1 is perfect for this. Thus this proposal can be supported by the Space Shuttle lobby; it does not "dejustify" their program.

2. The moon lobby and the Mars lobby can agree on L1, rather than fighting with each other. L1 allows the creation of a common transportation architecture (especially if you remember that many lunar vehicles need heat shields if they are to aerobrake into low earth orbit).

3. The International Space Station lobby can support L1 Gateway because it complements their facility.

4. As the article notes, we have relatively little "deep space" experience. Developing that experience and the automated operations it requires is a key to going to Mars.

Complementing existing facilities and supporting their inevitable lobbies is a good thing, since you'll never beat them.

             -- RobS

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

RobS! You're a fount of wisdom about the politics of this new proposal!
    I hadn't considered it from that angle, but I agree with you 100%. This initiative brings everyone on board, nobody is left out. So potential objections and opposition by various vested interests are anticipated and neutralised at the outset. Brilliant!!
    Without different groups of people trying to scuttle the thing because they're nervous about losing their jobs, it might actually stand some chance of success.

    Thanks, Rob, for one of the most encouraging posts I've read in a long time!
                                       

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

AltToWar

Member

Registered: 2002-09-28

Posts: 304

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

This proposal for an L1 Gateway is important for several reasons, both political and scientific.

1. As you can see from some of my postings, it is possible to do quite a lot without building a new heavy-lifting booster if you can assemble small payloads and if you use solar electric or solar thermal rockets. But you need assembly points, one deep in the Earth's gravity well, one at the edge. L1 is perfect for this. Thus this proposal can be supported by the Space Shuttle lobby; it does not "dejustify" their program.

2. The moon lobby and the Mars lobby can agree on L1, rather than fighting with each other. L1 allows the creation of a common transportation architecture (especially if you remember that many lunar vehicles need heat shields if they are to aerobrake into low earth orbit).

3. The International Space Station lobby can support L1 Gateway because it complements their facility.

4. As the article notes, we have relatively little "deep space" experience. Developing that experience and the automated operations it requires is a key to going to Mars.

Complementing existing facilities and supporting their inevitable lobbies is a good thing, since you'll never beat them.

             -- RobS

I will agree with you that the competing camps in nasa will have to be dealt with to get to mars.

I think this is sad, though.  If too many lobbies continue to compete for their large budget pet projects, little is likely to actually be done in a timely manner.

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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. -Henry David Thoreau

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: NASA Reveals New Plan for the Moon, Mars & Outward - Just great!!!

It was at the end of the life of shuttles completion to get ISS fully built. That Nasa was putting forth a plan of moon before Mars as a means to build knowledge that was gone from the earlier exploration under Apollo.