Manned mission to Luna in 2018

Commodore · 2005-08-03 21:11:37

Its very much a catch-22 Greg.

My biggest concern is that the untrained voter will look at this plan as say "Hey, thats like Apollo 18" and say what the hell are they spending all this money on something we did (by then) a HALF CENTURY ago. Public interest could disapear even quicker than it did in the 1970's.

Personally I'm wondering just how much of that 12 tons of cargo to the surface is made up of consumable gases. Based on those 4 big tanks I'm going to say quite a bit. After all these years of learning how to and how not to recycle air and water for a couple months at a time on space stations, can't we use the same technology on the moon?

If you reduce the required mass just for survival for a week by using oxygen and water recyclers and carry much less comsumables you either reduce the need for that massive TLI stage (although that tank would be a great start for a base, its criminal to throw it out), or vastly increase the amount or science or construction payload you can carry.

What we need is a more robust "service module" capable of delivering and suppling a CEV from LEO, to the surface, and back to LEO.

GregM · 2005-08-03 21:17:32

Has it every been any different. When in history has the vast majority of people taken a great interest in there own personal education and self betterment. And have the people that taken the interest had the means? Go back a few hundred years and only a small percentage of the people had university degrees.
China has potential to do great things like any other nation or group of nation. China will also face many of the challenges others face. However, china is not going to pas the united states over night in space or economic strength.

Good points John.

Although comparing a University degree of today is not like comparing a University degree of several hundred years ago. What we would call engineers, technologists, and technicians now would have been called for the most part “tradesmen” in that time, and were schooled as apprentices.

The larger point that you make however is good concerning the percentage of the population aspiring to be professionally skilled and improving their lot in life. I agree with your observation: obviously it was not a majority of the population then or now. However, the question really is whether enough citizens of a nation are ready, willing, and able to support a great national cause in order to get the job done – not necessarily the majority. The great exploring nations of those days past had a sufficient volume of motivated skilled workers, fiscal depth, and national will to accomplish what they did. Does the United States have those ingredients now in order to continue leading in the exploration of the final frontier?

The postulation that I am putting to those who are unhappy with what they view as the sorry state, direction, and pace of the U.S. space program is that it is that way because the majority of the nation is satisfied with how it is and is projected to be.

I am asking those dissatisfied: “Why do you think that is?” “Why is it not a burning national priority to get people back to the moon in 8 years and on Mars in 15 years?”

“Why is the national will to do better than that not there?”

I ask if those who are dissatisfied feel as if is because the United States has peaked as a great nation and society – and has lost the interest to lead in the manner that it once did.
Does America want to be a nation of lawyers and celebrities – instead of engineers, scientists, and explorers?

That is the root question – not if NASA management is unimaginative or incompetent. NASA is only a tool and product of the nation it serves.

Oh, and by the way, of course China will not surpass the U.S.A. anytime soon, but at an annual GNP growth rate of 6% to 10%, how long will it take?

And one other thing: I am personally happy just to see the plans and efforts being put into place for the U.S. space program. It's the best thing to come along since the early 70's.

GregM · 2005-08-03 22:24:38

Bush said "finish ISS, then Moon and Mars," and Congress said "don't whack the Shuttle Army," but beyond the meddling with Hubble and "concerns" about ISS, NASA spends its money as it wishes.

You are completly incorrect. Every proposed NASA program and budget line item is approved by the White House and gone over line by line by House and Senate subcommittees and the GAO. Take the time and read a NASA budget some time. Take a look at the millions and millions of dollars of added non-space pork barrel projects that NASA has been forced into spending of its budget inorder to placate members of congress. Although NASA initiates its budgets, it does not "spend its money as it wishes"

And how NASA spends the money they do have is what is most often debated.

You just contradicted yourself.

Space travel has NEVER been a "national priority" for the citizenry of any country ever, and it is has actually never been a priority for any government either. The one time that space was "important" was as a political stunt to show up the Commies' when they were waging a (fairly sucessful) campaign against Capitalism and Democracy. You whining about "national apathy" about spaceflight is ludicrous in context.

You are a young man, aren't you? You wouldn't remember the 60's. "Showing up the Commies" WAS THE NATIONAL PRIORITY OF THE DAY, not some little daliance. Maybe you are too young to remember the cold war. Allow me let you in on a little historical secret: it was the pivotal geopolitical event of the last half of the 20th century. The space race was a big part of it. Although the NASA budget peaked out at only about 1% of GNP in 1966, the point is that NASA got "whatever it took" to get the job done. That makes it a national priority. And in terms of national psychology of the day, the space program in the United States was a very big deal. TV networks would break away to live specials to cover a space event all the time. It was constant headline news, and astronauts were seen as heroes. It was a big deal in those days. The national attention and support that the U.S. space program recieves now is a tiny fraction of what it got then.

Blah blah blah, anti-American propoganda... I have not been that impressed with the product of Chinese schools by comparison... then there is the wildly out-of-control disparity in wealth combined with the fair trade reallignment of the Yuan/Dollar ratio, Chinese infrastructure (energy imparticular) racing to the breaking point, environmental problems (affecting health), poor worker conditions and general civil unrest... Ah and the state control of the economy, which has never worked, and the general institutionalized graft & bribery... Oh no, things are no where near rosy and gay in the PRC as you see in the America-hating Newsweek with glossies of Shanghi and Hong Kong.

You miss the point. Again. I was not saying that the number of Chineese engineering grads is the be all and end all, but rather simply just an example of the national direction and effort that many emerging nations are currently making, as opposed to the US or "the west" in general. How long do you think all of those "2nd rate" universities in those countries will remain that way anyway? It is their national priority to get better, and they will. In the larger picture, if you really feel that the rise of the East is just a passing fancy that won't last - well you are certainly entitled to your opinion. I would suggest that you get over your xenophobia though and look at things objectivly however. The U.S. government feels differently, as exemplified by their new alliance with India announced last week.

You are an angry young man, aren't you?

GCNRevenger · 2005-08-03 22:56:35

Oh please, and if NASA said "we need X to achieve your goal, mentioned here on line Y" for modest variances in allocation, they would get it hands down. The White House does not have the expertise nor the desire to tell NASA how every single penny is to be spent, and the process is to large extent a rubber stamp. As for the GAO, reading budgets thats what they do, but they are not there as a fiscal gate keeper as you incorrectly make them out to be.

"And how NASA spends the money they do have is what is most often debated."

Debated HERE on NewMars... Obviously, perhaps you ought to brush up on your reading comp.

""Showing up the Commies" WAS THE NATIONAL PRIORITY OF THE DAY, not some little daliance."]

Yes, a refresher course is definatly in order... I was stating that the space program was merely an instrument, a tool of the cold war, and that the program itself was not a said national priority. "Case in point," why it closed down so suddenly afterwards without outcry. Obviously.

"It was constant headline news, and astronauts were seen as heroes."

And they didn't even bother to televise the entireity of the third mission until it almost claimed the lives of the crew. My, your memory must be failing you.

"I was not saying that the number of Chineese engineering grads is the be all and end all"

Yet this was the FIRST point of Sino-superiority you mentioned, foremost of all the other points... but I didn't confine my rebuttle to Chinese education - listing several reasons why things are not as good as they seem - in the subsequent passages either, so why precisely are you incorrectly assuming that I ignored your overall point?

"I would suggest that you get over your xenophobia though and look at things objectivly however."

Actually its called nationalism, and is born of rivalry, not biggotry... Kind of odd that a citizen of the Cold War era does not understand this... Nor the alliance with one of the more democratic and anti-terrorist states in the region, India.

So "open minded" that the only concepts you have to parrot are the ones Newsweek/CBS/New York Times give you... And you are a raving, foolish old "child of the 60's" aren't you?

Stormrage · 2005-08-05 17:03:32

2218 to the moon? How exicting. I can't wait when i am 75 years old (if no one is stupid enough to cause a big war or i croak before then) when the first manned missiom to mars will happen. After all i am only 17 i got my whole life to look forward to this.

srmeaney · 2005-08-07 17:29:47

Going to the Moon

City on the moon (support and employment for 1 million people) = 5 million billion dollars
-food production facilities
-resource processing facilities
-mfg. plants
-nuclear reactor powerstations

regular free passenger return service (100 people/day each direction) 100 years = 5 million billion dollars

Its a lot cheaper than the commitment to Mars colonization and it would be a two week holiday for tourists.

GCNRevenger · 2005-08-07 21:22:19

2218 to the moon? How exicting. I can't wait when i am 75 years old (if no one is stupid enough to cause a big war or i croak before then) when the first manned missiom to mars will happen. After all i am only 17 i got my whole life to look forward to this.

As I have mentioned in reply to Palomar and RobertDyck, the late date to the Moon is all about money... rather, the lack thereof. NASA can theoretically squeeze about $10Bn of its ~$16Bn annual budget for manned spaceflight, give or take a billion. It costs about $6.5Bn a year to operate the Shuttle and the ISS until 2010, and another $4Bn a year to operate ISS without Shuttle (sending CEV for crew/cargo) until 2017, the projected ISS "mission end" date.

So, NASA will be spending on the average 50% of its annual budget on half-finishing/propping-up the ISS until the year before the first Moon landings, which really tends to slow things down. And, since salery is a constant, long slow developments tend to cost more then short fast developments, which drives the date even futher.

NASA will be doing well to have a crew capsule and The Stick ready by 2011... And, that $10Bn is best-case, assuming that Griffin can do some serious restructuring/bloodletting from the inefficent buracracies and pork-projects, plus assuming that there is no big Shuttle/ISS budget increase.

NASA is having to do VSE with one hand tied behind its back because of the worthless ISS.

srmeaney · 2005-08-08 00:30:10

Call the moon a tax free haven for the private sector.

Casinos, Financial institutions, multinationals, as long as they are hq'd on the moon...and up the taxation rates on all companies located on earth to fifty percent of profit, directors salaries, ect. (+1 % per year after that until it hits toatal government ownership)

SpaceNut · 2005-08-18 20:47:27

Appearently Hubble has been called upon to image some of the old Apollo sites.

Why Is Hubble Looking at Apollo Landing Sites?

Title Mapping Resources Potential of the Lunar Surface for Human Exploration chart of view times and site location being imaged.

srmeaney · 2005-08-18 22:11:45

To prove to the nutters that America Went to the Moon.

publiusr · 2005-08-25 12:34:38

The problem is that Griffin cannot cut as much as he would like. The 'we don't need to cut science missions crowd' is the problem. Mars isn't going anywhere--and as long as we nickel and dime NASA to death with one itty-bitty Delta II flight after another--neither will NASA.

We have focused too much on payloads and not enough on the rocket. I love the in-line SD HLLV, and it has to get money from somewhere. Rove has signed on--and a lot of the Solid South is made up of space states. Griffin wants to cut shuttle but cannot because it would make too many enemies.

That crutch of a Delta II has to go.

GCNRevenger · 2005-08-25 13:03:13

WTH are you talking about? The Delta-II? Each Delta is a pretty small slice of NASA's unmanned probe missions, which are already one of the smaller and most productive fractions of the budget. You aren't making any sense.

Shuttle derived also makes lots of sense, since the hardware other then the orbiter is generally good and alot closer to what we need then any clean-sheet or EELV based option.

publiusr · 2005-08-25 13:05:55

It was part of the agreement. Nickels and dimes do add up. Not ISS/STS level--but it is one of the thousand cuts:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/421/1

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2005-10-01 17:41:30

some talk on the CEV idea and Nasa's Mars idea

Moon-to-Mars Plans Emerge: New Agenda or Apollo Retread?
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/05 … plans.html
NASA Unveils Plans to Return to the Moon; Planetary Society Responds
http://planetary.org/news/2005/cev_0919.html
Design choices may hurry humans to Mars
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7937
NASA Revives Apollo - While Starving Space Life Science
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1066
NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/

SpaceNut · 2005-10-03 11:34:11

While I view the goal of going to the moon with the Griffin plan on steriods at least a step, others have viewed this plan more negatively for its cost, lack of reusability and for its non definative answer of why other than to say we where told to do it. The public as a whole would have rather been in the dark about the cost if seeing results and lots of missions. The reusability of design would get an answer due to build scheduel and volume of action. But the why question other than because we have been told to do so, that is the one hardest to say yes to.

The why is not about mining, finishing what we started, science or of busy work for engineers. It is about the need to explore, to settle the unknown lands and to see if there is life elsewhere out there. To be prepared if we should meet up with it and to create the ability to go beyound our own place of origin.

http://www.spacepolitics.com/ has posted this topic:

A question of why, not how
In an article in this week's issue of The Space Review, I examine the media's reaction to the release two weeks ago of NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) report, explaining how NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon. That response, gauged by an analysis of editorials and columns, showed a significant negative reaction to the plan. Much of that is wrapped up in the $104-billion price tag that has become indelibly associated with the plan. However, a more fundamental issue is that many don't see a reason why humans should go back to the Moon: after all, the arguments go, we went there 35 years ago, and robots can do everything humans can much less expensively. Now that NASA has explained how we're going back to the Moon, the agency needs to do a much better job articulating why, if the ESAS plan is ever to come to fruition.

With some of its readers comments here

constantinos1 · 2005-10-03 14:20:13

Hello
Is it possible that the private sector will be able to go to the Moon and to Mars
Has enough money and infastructure?

pete · 2005-10-03 14:24:31

Haha, yeah right. Now, who's probe needed to hitch a ride to Saturn?

Come on, this was a great success for both NASA and ESA. You guys built the Orbiter the Europeans built the lander. Why not?

Yeah, thought so. They aren't serious at all, I mean, just look at their miniscule budget... with the cost of aerospace technology in Europe, thats a useless sum. And Russia? Come on, their vehicle can't survive reentry from Lunar transit velocities, so it will be stuck in LEO just like Shuttle. Doing what? Why, propping up the ISS to go in circles of course. Maybe a few million from tourists... big deal.

Well, I think ESA is doing quite a lot with its small budget e.g. Rosetta, Mars Express, Venus Express, Smart1 and a host of other unmanned missions currently in progress. I could go on and on. In terms of unmanned missions ESA and NASA are on eye-level. Unfortunately there are a lot of politicians in Europe who just hate the idea of spending money on manned missions. With Kliper there is a real chance that this might change though. We know very little about Kliper thus far. The Russians say that it can go trans-Moon and survive reentry. I'm not sure about it but why not?

After all, Kliper is a small lifting body with very small wings. The concept is radically different from the US Space Shuttle. So it won't face the same problems with heat insulation. The Russians seem to be very interested in German technology originally developed for the X38. I forgot what it is exactly but it might be some form of carbon/carbon. I'm therefore not certain that Kliper cannot be used for a translunar trajectory. And even if Kliper has to stay in LEO, it can still be used efficiently to launch crews separately. After all crews have to be launched seperately in Mike Griffin's scenario as well.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all against NASA's plan. I think it's great and I wished ESA had this kind of funding! They will never have it and I think it's still remarkable how much science they get out of their budget.

Peter

constantinos1 · 2005-10-03 14:28:20

Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all against NASA's plan. I think it's great and I wished ESA had this kind of funding! They will never have it and I think it's still remarcable how much science they get out of their budget.

Yes, it is a great accomplishment for the European Space Agency
They get almost 3billion Euro (~4billion dollars?i am not sure)
and they do a lot of things

pete · 2005-10-03 14:43:15

Oh I doubt that Josh. Private industry doesn't have a prayer of being NASA's salvation because they can't radically reduce the cost of what NASA needs. Sure they could save some hundreds of millions off ISS ferry duty, or a few hundred million off Moon/Mars stuff, but those aren't going to save enough money to really be a paradiegm shift or anything that would speed up a Mars trip signifigantly.
NASA is still the only outfit in town that will go to Moon/Mars without a clear and safe financial payback.

Oh yes, I couldn't agree more. What's the incentive for private business of spending 100 billion bucks on a trip to Mars? What's in it for them. Oh you're saying, they can do it more efficiently. Ok, but only after completely new technologies become available. Private business will not be able to pay for their development. I hate to say it, but only the government can spend something like 20 billion dollars on let's say a Prometheus-type nuclear-electric propulsion system, invest one or two decades in development time and not worry about ever recouping this investment with one or two decades of interest.

So the government wil have to go ahead and when technologies are sufficiently developed private enterprise will have a shot at making a profit and fine-tuning technology.

Peter

constantinos1 · 2005-10-03 15:25:37

ok, to Mars is expencieve and without profit for the private sector
What about a colony on the Moon made by the private sector?

John Creighton · 2005-10-03 15:41:00

ok, to Mars is expencieve and without profit for the private sector
What about a colony on the Moon made by the private sector?

It will be a few decades before a privet enterprise is turning much of a profit on the moon. Government will first pave the way.

GCNRevenger · 2005-10-03 16:16:52

I would say at least two decades away

Government has to pave the way, but private industry has to put some money, real money and not pretend Space Ship One kind of money, too.

Government should build the beachhead, that is construct a base suitable for perminant habitation somewhere close to a potential mining site, and then sell LOX at cost sans startup fees.

NASA might also work on reuseable lander technology, like the uber-reliable COBRA engine that the USAF is still working on, and pay to develop an Earth-side RLV of some sort (at least in the 10MT range) if private industry doesn't... Then give away the blue prints.

NASA might go one step further and do a little prospecting while they explore the Moon's geology (or vice versa!) and test mining techniques to mitigate the risk factor that scares investors so.

constantinos1 · 2005-10-06 12:47:13

I have recently heard an idea and i would to know if it is feasible
The idea was about creating a company for the sole purpose of taking mankind into the Moon. The company or enterprice or corporation would rely on donations and other funding
What do you thing ? It is feasible? When i first heard it sound to me like a crazy idea. But i would like to hear other people's opinion

GCNRevenger · 2005-10-06 13:49:01

Short answer, no. Donations and media fees alone aren't enough.

pete · 2005-10-06 14:19:57

Well just ask all your friends if they want to contribute 100 billion bucks. Sure they can't expect to get any money back from their investment. After all, it's just for fun.

100 billion dollars, which is the suggested price tag for the mission according NASA boss Mike Griffin, is actually almost a bargain price because it's 55 percent of what the Apollo project would cost in today's dollars. But if you plan to do something more ambititious, maybe like a little colony, your friends will have to pay a little extra, easily a few trillion dollars.

But even 100 billion is half the GDP of a country like Greece.

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#26 2005-08-03 21:11:37

Re: Manned mission to Luna in 2018

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Re: Manned mission to Luna in 2018

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Re: Manned mission to Luna in 2018

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