American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

Rxke · 2004-01-12 12:40:37

1300$ per pound... If people were mice, we could all start going on a holiday in earth orbit without breaking the bank...

Still, if they'd charge you, say 2-3000$ a pound, it'd still be waay cheaper than what Tito paid. Wonder how much of a market there is for this kind of budget.... Musk is talking about manned flights, so i'm wondering...

a 4 meter diameter payload fairing could acomodate more than two tourists, i'd think. So a maximum ticket of 6 million for the launch... plus some onboard entertainment (heh)

Bill White · 2004-01-12 15:06:40

1300$ per pound... If people were mice, we could all start going on a holiday in earth orbit without breaking the bank...
Still, if they'd charge you, say 2-3000$ a pound, it'd still be waay cheaper than what Tito paid. Wonder how much of a market there is for this kind of budget.... Musk is talking about manned flights, so i'm wondering...
a 4 meter diameter payload fairing could acomodate more than two tourists, i'd think. So a maximum ticket of 6 million for the launch... plus some onboard entertainment (heh)

Falcon is too small to add life support and a re-entry system.

You probably could stick Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne crew compartment on top of a Falcon but then you'd end up in LEO with maybe 6 hours of oxygen and no heat shield for re-entry.

Oh yeah, no parachute either but if you burn up (or suffocate) before the time came to open the chute, well then,who needs a parachute?

Rxke · 2004-01-12 15:21:33

I mean the FalconII (or whatsitcalled)

Elon Musk kinda let it slip he was actually looking forward to do manned spaceflight in an off-the-record remark...
Four meter diameter is large enough, IIRC the Apollo capsules were smaller, and Mercury and Gemini definitely so...

clark · 2004-01-13 06:32:15

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/c … 124wna.xml

Presidential Directive Calls for Sweeping Changes at NASA
By Frank Morring Jr.
January 11, 2004

President Bush is set to announce a new human space exploration agenda this week that would steer NASA away from using the space shuttle to service the International Space Station, by developing a new modular space vehicle for a return to the Moon in 9-12 years to practice for an eventual landing on Mars.
The White House Office of Management and Budget has already plugged in an extra $800 million to NASA's Fiscal 2005 budget request to fund early work on the project, which Bush is expected to outline in a Wednesday address. The initiative would drive NASA's budget up 5% a year after that, according to sources familiar with the development of the new policy, but the agency will refocus its present spending on the new effort as well.
Space shuttle flights would be halted after about 2010, and NASA would backpedal U.S. involvement in the space station later in that decade, the sources said. The effort to develop an orbital space plane (OSP) to deliver crews to ISS would be scrapped, they said, as would NASA's work to push advanced technology for reusable launch vehicles. The space agency would be reorganized with a new headquarters office--initially designated "Code T" after its anticipated internal mail code--in charge of coordinating the exploration program.
Under plans to be announced amid the excitement of the Mars Expedition Rover landing and the Stardust comet sampling success, the U.S. would return to the Moon as early as 2013, but only as a stepping-stone to Mars, asteroids and other objects beyond Earth orbit. Early spending on the initiative would go for robotic systems to assemble and sustain a human-tended lunar base, but the plan does not include permanent human habitation.
Instead, the Moon would serve as a nearby proving ground for the modular components that would be needed to get humans out of Earth orbit. Bush has ordered NASA to focus its efforts--and spending--on a commercially launched human spacecraft that could be adapted to different missions, much as the 1960s-vintage Apollo capsule was. Indeed, early thinking sees the vehicle as another capsule that could make the fiery return to Earth from space relatively safely.
"You have the accident to thank for this," said one source of the new presidential policy, which Bush signed last month after an interagency review of space policy triggered by the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). The review and Bush's decision have been closely held, and those who described it spoke only on condition of anonymity.
The CAIB cited "a failure of national leadership" in previous efforts to replace the 1970s-vintage space shuttle fleet, and suggested that by 2010 the nation should have the technology in hand to develop a new vehicle based on "past and future investments." Bush's new policy, formalized in a presidential decision directive, would develop that vehicle along the same lines NASA followed in the 1960s when it was fulfilling President Kennedy's vow to send a man to the Moon.
Because the 5% annual boost to the roughly $15 billion NASA has been spending annually would not cover the cost of developing a new program, spending on other programs would be slowed or halted as the agency focuses on its new primary mission. The new space plan does not set a topline cost or target date for a Mars landing, but in a time of record federal budget deficits the policy of funding the new activities by dropping old ones is sure to spark intense debate in Congress as job-producing projects are terminated or downgraded across the agency.
Among those would be the space shuttle, which remains grounded while engineers try to meet standards for on-orbit inspection and repair set by the CAIB as prerequisites for a return to flight. Under the new Bush policy the shuttle return-to-flight activity would continue, and the vehicle would be used to orbit and install station elements supplied by NASA's international partners.
But once that work is completed, the shuttle would be phased out, and NASA would start reducing its role in ISS operations, leaving logistics and crew transport to Russia, the European Space Agency and perhaps the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). By 2016 the U.S. would leave most station funding and operations to its partners, but even before then NASA would shift the focus of its microgravity research to the life-science work needed to sustain humans on the Moon and in deep space.
The agency has been running studies on exploration for years, and, until the Columbia accident, was following a strategy based on those earlier studies of incremental technology development to enable unspecified exploration. This "stepping-stone" approach came in for criticism by many who believed a specific destination like the Moon or Mars was necessary to inspire commitment to such a large-scale, long-term endeavor.
Among personnel already recruited for the new activity is Gary L. Martin, the agency's "space architect" responsible for overseeing the stepping-stone strategy. That strategy apparently will be continued under Bush's new policy, although with an extended focus on getting humans to Mars. The Project Prometheus space nuclear power initiative, NASA's principal exploration-enabling effort, will be folded into the new activity.
AS DESCRIBED BY sources last week, the main focus of the new space policy would be on the vehicle that sustains humans in Earth orbit and transports them to the Moon and beyond. Getting to orbit, the most difficult stage of any space mission, would be left to the existing fleet of evolved expendable launch vehicles already developed by the Defense Dept--Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta IV.
Those vehicles were already planned for human rating under the Orbital Space Plane project, and while OSP would be scrapped, its requirements would be applied to the new vehicle where appropriate. That vehicle would be produced on an assembly line to save cost, much as Russia produces its Soyuz and Progress capsules, and outfitted with the necessary add-ons to meet specific mission requirements. For example, a lander and service module probably would be used to deliver crews to other bodies, just as they were in the Apollo lunar missions.

How do you get public aprovel and acceptance of 60's era technology? Rename it!

clark · 2004-01-13 10:18:02

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/india-04a.html

Bush Unveils Deeper US-India Space, Nuclear Cooperation

The US logically sees India as a counter force to China.
Monterrey (AFP) Jan 12, 2004

US President George W. Bush announced Monday that the United States and India would deepen cooperation on civilian nuclear activities, civilian space programs and high-technology trade.
In a statement released on the margins of the Summit of the Americas here, Bush said he and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had also agreed "to expand our dialogue on missile defense."
"Cooperation in these areas will deepen the ties of commerce and friendship between our two nations, and will increase stability in Asia and beyond," the president said.
The two nations will take "a series of reciprocal steps," including expanded engagement on nuclear regulatory and safety issues, missile defense, and seek ways to enhance cooperation in peaceful uses of space technology, said Bush.
On the high-technology trade front, the two sides will tighten restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Bush called the expanded cooperation "an important milestone in transforming the relationship between the United States and India. That relationship is based increasingly on common values and common interests."

This should not come as a surprise. Containment of China...

Bill White · 2004-01-13 12:17:29

clark quotes this above. . .

Because the 5% annual boost to the roughly $15 billion NASA has been spending annually would not cover the cost of developing a new program, spending on other programs would be slowed or halted as the agency focuses on its new primary mission.The new space plan does not set a topline cost or target date for a Mars landing, but in a time of record federal budget deficits the policy of funding the new activities by dropping old ones is sure to spark intense debate in Congress as job-producing projects are terminated or downgraded across the agency.

Josh Cryer, read this bold bit carefully. I believe there is a certain matter of a bet, right?

clark · 2004-01-13 12:21:08

I was waiting for one of you guys to pick up on this... hehe.

Choose your 'scoop', becuase they all are contradict one another on one point or another. When you don't have news to report, you just report to make it sound like news.

We will know more after tonight- Congressional briefs are occuring as we speak.

Bill White · 2004-01-13 12:28:39

I was waiting for one of you guys to pick up on this... hehe.
Choose your 'scoop', becuase they all are contradict one another on one point or another. When you don't have news to report, you just report to make it sound like news.
We will know more after tonight- Congressional briefs are occuring as we speak.

Do you really think the President's announcement tomorrow will be free of ambiguity?

I will now make a prediction of my own.

Despite vigorous denials (our President NEVER waffles or vacillates, right?) the President will retain substantial "wiggle room" concering exactly what his space vision is all about.

clark · 2004-01-13 12:32:41

Do you really think the President's announcement tomorrow will be free of ambiguity?

No, of course not. However (always the but), the proposal will be hammered out inside Congress, following along the guidelines he sets.

He will mention Mars, it's the rationale behind most of this endeavour. It's the driving force to sell it.

clark · 2004-01-27 09:58:20

Adrian or Josh, would you lock down this thread please.

I am done posting updates seeing as that an American moonbase is a declared objective of the Bush Space policy, and this thread is over 300 posts long (sometimes the threads break down after this number of posts).

It was fun following this, and more fun being right!

I predicted, on March 12 2003:

I think we will be back on the moon, with a base, by 2015-2020.

Bush Space Policy, Jan. 16, 2004: [http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11605]http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11605

Lunar Exploration
Begin robotic missions to the Moon by 2008, followed by a period of evaluating lunar resources and technologies for exploration.
Begin human expeditions to the Moon in the 2015 2020 timeframe.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-28 04:20:13

Sure, I'll lock it for ya clark... I was tempted to to leave a word in edgewise, but I won't. :angry: :laugh:

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#301 2004-01-12 12:40:37

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#302 2004-01-12 15:06:40

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#303 2004-01-12 15:21:33

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#304 2004-01-13 06:32:15

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#305 2004-01-13 10:18:02

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#306 2004-01-13 12:17:29

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#307 2004-01-13 12:21:08

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#308 2004-01-13 12:28:39

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#309 2004-01-13 12:32:41

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#310 2004-01-27 09:58:20

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

#311 2004-01-28 04:20:13

Re: American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think

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