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VSE: Less steroids or less Apollo
4/10/2006 4:54:00 AM
By: Chris Bergin / Daniel Handlin
Once characterized as "Apollo on steroids" by NASA administrator Mike Griffin, the architecture surrounding the ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Study) has grown too heavy for its launch vehicles.

nasaspaceflight

According to NASA internal review documents obtained by NASASpaceFlight.com, the architecture may be sheared of much of its "steroid" capability, or be replaced by a radically different kind of lunar exploration technique - based around rendezvous thousands of kilometers above the farside of the Moon.
The weight problems with the ESAS have led to a recent NASA trade study that indicates that any simple variant of the original ESAS vehicles are now too heavy to be flown to the Moon. The results of the study conclude that drastic changes are necessary to ESAS assumptions, in order to make the planned flights to the Moon feasible.

As for our Euro pals in space, I am cautiously optimistic. They've got good technology, done good robotic missions and have a powerful economy but they lack manned missions and the European space exploration lacks political backing...every couple of years somebody like Blair or Chirac may or may not casually mention space in some vague manner but I would imagine that European nations would happily back the idea of a robotic Mars Sample Return.

Cracks and fins in the sand in an American desert look very similar to features seen on Mars and may indicate the recent presence of water at the surface

CLV Cost Escalation
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/ … scala.html
Editor's note: According to reliable sources NASA's initial internal estimate of what it would cost to modify the current SRB used for Shuttle missions to serve as the first stage of the new Crew Launch Vehicle had been around $1 billion. That estimate has been revised up to around $3 billion.

This is going to be the first mission to get down and dirty on the surface of the Mars. With all due respect to the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers…we’re going to get muddy.

Telemetry showed the failure, which occurred at 6:55 a.m. Moscow Time, was caused by "a sudden external impact on the spacecraft," RSCC said in a statement. The cause most probably was space garbage of unknown origin. The result was instantaneous depressurization of the satellite's thermal control system fluid circuit, followed by "a sudden outburst of the heat-carrying agent."

"And quite frankly I want to see Americans and our international friends in orbit sooner rather than later. And more importantly I want to see them in an all America rig and not some spam can from Russia that any tourist with a spare $20 million dollars can hitch a ride in.

In-flight checks of the New Horizons science payload are going well, as six of the seven instruments on board have completed tests proving they survived launch and demonstrated their basic functionality.