Obama cancels moon return project.

[Greyhawk1]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8489097.stm

It was a stupid idea from the beginning. What a colossal waste of money on 40 year old technology.

NASA - can you please get back on track with your human spaceflight goals?

Replace the shuttle, expand the ISS into a LEO refuelling station/way station. Establish bases at the lagrange points...develop new drive systems.

2010 isnt 1969. If you wanted a base on the moon you should have done it in 1969. You dropped the ball big style then - dont drop it a second time by making the same mistake twice.

This was a good call by Obama.

[Java Jawa]

No - this was a terrible call by Obama. I don't care how we get back to the Moon, the goal was whether we could live there. You can't blame NASA for saying "hey, let's go with what works for now - this is just a testbed for future efforts".

Besides - the Shuttle cost even more than the entire Constellation program to date, and blew up more than Constellation probably would have.

As for establishing bases at the Lagrange points . . . . why? The astronauts would just get fried from the intense solar radiation.

[pjknibbs]

As for establishing bases at the Lagrange points . . . . why? The astronauts would just get fried from the intense solar radiation.

They have a little thing they call radiation shielding--you'll note that astronauts managed to get all the way to the moon and back without dying of radiation poisoning.

[Java Jawa]

As for establishing bases at the Lagrange points . . . . why? The astronauts would just get fried from the intense solar radiation.

They have a little thing they call radiation shielding--you'll note that astronauts managed to get all the way to the moon and back without dying of radiation poisoning.

. . . because they were in space for a matter of days, no doubt.

I was under the impression that our radiation shielding technology hadn't progressed significantly since the 60s, and that prolonged exposure to radiation in an exposed piece of space, such as the Lagrange points, would be lethal.

[Rive]

No - this was a terrible call by Obama. I don't care how we get back to the Moon, the goal was whether we could live there. You can't blame NASA for saying "hey, let's go with what works for now - this is just a testbed for future efforts".

I don't think we should go for the Moon. Really. The entire space-related engineering staff can't make a toilet work. No mining, no full recycling life support, no nuclear propulsion. It's just a damned toilet with partial recycling

As for establishing bases at the Lagrange points . . . . why? The astronauts would just get fried from the intense solar radiation.

That's half of the challenge...
The other half is the long range space travel - and for now, the Moon is just an unnecessary stop for both part.

[Usenko]

It was a stupid idea from the beginning. What a colossal waste of money on 40 year old technology.

Not if 40 year old technology works.

Anyway, just because something LOOKS like 40 year old technology doesn't mean that it is - in general configuration and so forth, cars look much the same as they did in the 1950s - but I'll bet you don't see them as being the same! That because apart from the more streamlined shape, most of the changes over that time have been where you can't see them - improved safety, vastly better efficiency, electronic driver aids etc.

Something a lot of people don't get - Physics doesn't change. A blunt capsule will ALWAYS be a good way to return from orbit. Yes, a space-plane (like the Shuttle) is good for Low Earth Orbit, but the current architecture was designed for Deep Space operations too, so wings etc. would be nothing more than useless weight if you're going to the moon or Mars.

The shape and configuration of the Constellation hardware is derived from (highly successful and efficient!) 40 year old technology (and physics). Little else is. The cockpit and structure all incorporate the latest technological developments. It is both inaccurate and unfair to deride it as old stuff.

NASA - can you please get back on track with your human spaceflight goals?

It's a bit hard when politicos change the rules every couple of years. They need the politicians selected for Charisma rather than technical information (Yes, Mr Obama, I'm looking at you!) to BUTT OUT and let them do their job.

Replace the shuttle,

Their trying to do this. They're having mission parameters changed every couple of years, which is making it difficult.

expand the ISS into a LEO refuelling station/way station.

What?! Why do you want to do this?! It's designed as a research laboratory, and nothing shy of replacing the whole thing will work for what you want! It has no tanks for propellant; if they're re-boosting the ISS, they actually use the engines of visiting spacecraft. It also has no mechanisms for transferring fuel (not surprisingly, since no-one in their right mind would have suggested this). And how are you going to get the fuel there in the first place?

People often don't get this - space is BIG! Parking a spacecraft at the ISS will actually (at some times of the day and at some times in the year) actually make it pretty much impossible to go to the Moon, Mars or anywhere else! Refueling in space sounds nice (after all, a similar thing works for aircraft), but in reality when you consider the effort needed to get the propellant into orbit, it's really much smarter to launch the whole lot in one go.

You might consider building a deep-space craft in orbit and launch it from there, and there are excellent technical reasons for doing so. But that's not taking a hastily adapted collection of originally independantly designed laboratory modules, docked together to save money (which, let's not forget, the ISS is . . ) and trying to convert it into a refueling platform.

Establish bases at the lagrange points

How do we learn to do that? Obama has just cancelled the base at an easy location (i.e. the Moon[1]), where we were going to learn the techniques for surviving in space. And then you want us to shoot for difficult locations like the Lagrange points?!

...develop new drive systems.

This is happening, but anything new is a long time from hardware. Do you think America should be without a launch capacity while they wait for some new vapourware engine system?

Bear in mind that the Space Shuttle Main Engines are by far the BEST rocket engines in the world at this point in terms of their specific impulse[2]. You're saying to ignore proven, mature technology in favour of something that may or may not work.

2010 isnt 1969. If you wanted a base on the moon you should have done it in 1969. You dropped the ball big style then - dont drop it a second time by making the same mistake twice.

Actually, Obama is making PRECISELY the same mistake that was made in the 1970s - He is cancelling a well-designed program in favour of half-baked ideas that SOUND nice. NASA was getting to the point where they could have achieved some stuff. Now it starts again.

This was a good call by Obama.

This was self-evidently an idiotic call from Obama. He's not an idiot. But he's listened to bad advice.

[1] The Moon is actually a really HARD place to live, because its environment is so hostile - hard vacuum out the door, paucity of the resources humans need to survive. But it's a paradise compared to the Lagrange points. Although you don't have air, you at least have rocks that might be processed into air; water may be present in ice, which can be used to make air and fuel (as well as for drinking and growing food). The Lagrange points may have collections of rock and space junk, but they're not easily accessed, because of the basic problem everyone fails to get - vis a vis SPACE IS BIG.

[2] There are engines that are better when cost is taken into account, not surprisingly - the SSME is designed to be re-usable[3], whereas other options like the RS-68 are designed to be expendable, and therefore sacrifice a little efficiency for cost-effectiveness.

[3] For a given value of re-usable. They DO have to strip down and pretty much rebuild each engine after a launch!

[Nyax]

Well i actually think cancelling the Moon missions was a good call. The reason?

Returning to the moon and establishing a permenant base, would require a COLOSSAL amount of cash, and it's money NASA just hasn't got, and won't be getting any time soon.

So rather then waste money on trying to do something you can't afford, do stuff you CAN afford.

[GHarper]

<snip>

SPACE IS BIG.

quoted for Truth

people think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space!

(with apologies to Douglas Adams)

[Aro]

Wonder how long it would take a private corp to set up a base on da moon...

[amtct]

Wonder how long it would take a private corp to set up a base on da moon...

Ask Bill Gates .

[Tracker001]

Wonder how long it would take a private corp to set up a base on da moon...

Ask Bill Gates .

It didn't take me long. But there is one small
problem

Spoiler

Show

the Moon is hurled out of Earth orbit by a massive explosion in Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2, where nuclear waste from Earth has been dumped and stored on the dark side of the Moon. The 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are cut off from Earth, and traveling through the cosmos on an unknown trajectory.

[Mailo]

From a scientific point of view, Obama's decision was the right call. The cost for a manned base on the moon could easily finance dozens of deep-space missions with unmanned probes. Landers on planets, space telescopes, earth-examining satellites etc, each of which alone would bring more scientific knowledge than a moon base, which is actually rather pointless. I know, sad for us SciFi-freaks But what could have been researched there? That we can bring humans to the moon? Done. That humans can survive in hostile environments? Done, submarines and deep sea labs. Experiments in lower gravity? Done, ISS.
Not hard to imagine though, since good ol' "W" and science didn't exactly see eye-to-eye. I remember when he announced his "Going to the moon and mars" program ... scientists all over the world were outraged at this waste of resources.

[LordSypher]

Spoiler

Show

the Moon is hurled out of Earth orbit by a massive explosion in Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2, where nuclear waste from Earth has been dumped and stored on the dark side of the Moon. The 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are cut off from Earth, and traveling through the cosmos on an unknown trajectory.

Since the dark side of the moon is the side facing away from earth, wouldn't this have caused orbit decay not escape?

[amtct]

Spoiler

Show

the Moon is hurled out of Earth orbit by a massive explosion in Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2, where nuclear waste from Earth has been dumped and stored on the dark side of the Moon. The 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are cut off from Earth, and traveling through the cosmos on an unknown trajectory.

Since the dark side of the moon is the side facing away from earth, wouldn't this have caused orbit decay not escape?

Yep and its imposible also because I don't think a nuclear explosion can make that.
BTW ,those guys on Moon Base Alpha had ships but they never used them to escape from the moon,or the monn was traveling at the speed of light and they didn't had time to use them.

[BeidAmmikon]

Can't afford aiming for the Moon.
But can always afford a few wars here and there.
Does it matter where you go outside Earth, as long as you GO?
No, it doesn't.
Want expansion in outer space? First establish a perimeter on the ground.
(Why is it that the most "powerful" country does not get to enjoy pacifist leaders who want to bring glory to their nation otherwise than by waging wars? Kennedy was one of those.
For everything we think we grasped, we must think again.)

[Usenko]

From a scientific point of view, Obama's decision was the right call. The cost for a manned base on the moon could easily finance dozens of deep-space missions with unmanned probes. Landers on planets, space telescopes, earth-examining satellites etc, each of which alone would bring more scientific knowledge than a moon base, which is actually rather pointless. I know, sad for us SciFi-freaks But what could have been researched there? That we can bring humans to the moon? Done. That humans can survive in hostile environments? Done, submarines and deep sea labs. Experiments in lower gravity? Done, ISS.
Not hard to imagine though, since good ol' "W" and science didn't exactly see eye-to-eye. I remember when he announced his "Going to the moon and mars" program ... scientists all over the world were outraged at this waste of resources.

Ah, the cold voice of Logic. And you are correct, of course - IF we confine our discussion to Scientific utility.

But this is the real world. And Scientific utility will NOT get us where we want to go, not on its own.

If humans were logical, we'd already be ramping up efforts to send robot probes everywhere. One of the places we'd be making huge efforts (and to be fair, we are doing this one fairly well!) is Mars, where we'd be actually sending construction robots to build the first basic human habitats - not for Scientific research as such, but as the first step in colonisation. We'd not have set foot there just yet; the ultimate prize is a terraformed planet for Earth's excess population[1], and we'd not be risking human lives until there was a fairly good chance for them to survive. As things stand, only a very brave or very foolhardy astronaut would set foot on Mars; there are too many problems still to solve.

But we're NOT logical. We're emotional. And if we want to see sufficient resources devoted to space to ultimately secure extra worlds on which humans can live, robots are not going to cut the mustard. As a book I once read said (I wish I knew who it was, because it's beautiful words!), "It would be a grievous break from our past if we do not ensure that someone like us did not walk the surface of the worlds beyond; not because we need them to as such, but simply because they are there."

We need goals that can capture the emotions of people. And I believe a moon base could just do that.

[1] If we were logical, one could admit that we'd probably not HAVE so many excess population. I digress however.

[mad_axeman]

Actually, Obama is making PRECISELY the same mistake that was made in the 1970s - He is cancelling a well-designed program in favour of half-baked ideas that SOUND nice. NASA was getting to the point where they could have achieved some stuff. Now it starts again.

He's not and they weren't.
The project was already horribly above budget and behind schedule. He was cancelling a project that appears to be badly run and poorly planned.

[Mailo]

@Usenko: How about a project to take visible light photographs of earthlike planets around other suns and determine whether there is life on those planets? That got cancelled because of lack of funding, while there seemed to be enough for a pointless moon base. If I were evil, I could suggest that life on other planets did not fit into the christian fundamentalist worldview of a certain ex-president and thus discovery of it was forbidden ...

[Rive]

If humans were logical, we'd already be ramping up efforts to send robot probes everywhere
...
But we're NOT logical. We're emotional.
...
We need goals that can capture the emotions of people. And I believe a moon base could just do that.

The NASA belongs to the USA, and they have some other problems for now to worry... A moon base could be beautiful, but it's not me who pays the bill for that.


Robots are not enough. We have some robots on the Mars, but those robots couldn't gather as many knowledge during those years as a manned expedition within a week.


But a manned expedition requires some equipments which are not available now. Propulsion, life support and so. To develop such equipment, we need experiments first. That's what the ISS for. But with the Constellation alive the ISS is doomed. Without the ISS the moonbase and Mars-travel is doomed. Deadlock.


There was a heroic time for space exploration, which ended with the ISS plans (and died with the first cancelled module ). What we need now is not another heroic time but some work to make survivable, achievable the next heroic efforts.

[Usenko]

You'd be evil.

I'm not sure if you'd be correct though . . I'm yet to meet a Christian with a problem with that concept. And I know a lot of Christians. Maybe Australian Christians are different. *shrug*

I have some experience with a mindset that is far more insidious and much harder for scientific people to deal with.

Obviously, I'm excited about exoplanets. My lab manager comes in quite often with the latest titbit he's gleaned. He might tell me that (for example) an exoplanet has been discovered orbiting a star with some particular significance (e.g. 40 Eridani A has a planet - allegedly the primary of the Planet Vulcan, of Star Trek fame!).

But when I tell kids about what we've discovered, there's a real lack of interest. The question that is so often asked is "So why should I care?"

The thing is, it's easy to understand why a human would be interested in a moon base. There are PEOPLE there. Ultimately, I think that's all we (as a species) are actually interested in.

You and I know that exoplanets are an earth-shatteringly important discovery. Each one is itself significant in all kinds of ways. But as a general rule people do not see the importance.

We can deal with this tendency in two ways.

1) We can try to change peoples' views. This is tricky at best. People in the know might recognise the significance, but I doubt the majority of people will ever care.

2) We can harness it. We can BUILD the bases in space, on the moon, on Mars - and use the enthusiasm (and subsequently money) generated thusly to further more important exploration programs.

I believe any attempt to rely on the first will fail, inevitably. This is why I am so interested in the second approach - it may not be a needed step technically, but it is certainly a critical step socio-politically.