

Obama Nasa plans 'catastrophic' say Moon astronauts - RiderOfGiraffes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8565243.stm

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gamble
NASA has two options:

1\. Massive budget increases to fund missions to the moon and Mars.

2\. Realign its goals to match the budget they have now.

The Bush-era plan to return to the moon without actually paying for it was the
worst of all worlds. Obama's plans may not be inspiring to those who want to
relive '69, but I respect that he's willing to tackle problem realistically.

We've also got to face the fact that human spaceflight is a prestige project
with no scientific value. It's time to force NASA to focus on science. If
people want to fart around in free fall, then that's something for private
industry to concern itself with.

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PostOnce
"No scientific value", eh? If you contemplate the implications of that
statement for the briefest of moments you will be staggered by how wrong you
are.

Exploration leads to discovery. Medical discoveries of the effects of
radiation and low gravity on the crew, previously unobserved properties of
things great and small, things that men may notice that instruments are not
designed to notice, and unknown unknowns that we can't yet imagine.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Men in space necessitate certain things:
filtration systems, radiation protection, extracting water from Mars and the
Moon economically, advanced materials, robotics. Terraforming Mars is one of
the end-goals of human space exploration. Humans in space are an incentive to
do so. Earth has finite resources, and an expanding population. This is
science that we ought to contribute to.

Manned space exploration also causes people to be interested in space, to
pursue degrees in science, and to contribute to research here on Earth.

That being said, you must surely admit that contributions to science can be
indirect as well as direct, and that manned exploration of space provides
both.

I am not in any way an expert on space exploration, but there are a great
number of highly knowledgeable people who would love to elucidate the
situation for you. ##astronomy on freenode has a bunch of bright people in it.
Talk to them, or maybe #space, or take a trip to your local planetarium,
museum, or university; get an opinion from someone who has some specific
knowledge so that you can engage in debate from an informed perspective,
rather than, say, rigidly adhering to things you thought up on the toilet
while listening to political talk radio.

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andrewcooke
If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances.
They are a by-product of doing something hard.

But if you choose the actual task to be one that is useful, you _also_ get the
results of the task.

So yes, throwing money at space exploration will get you some advances as by-
products. But so would throwing money at, say, fusion research, or extremely
high speed ground transport, or nanotech, or, heck, I dunno, synthetic
(biological) life... _and_ you'd have the chance of getting something useful
as a direct product.

I worked in astronomy, which is also pretty pointless from a practical point
of view (and also has close links with space research). A _lot_ of effort is
put into making things look pretty and exciting exactly because people
believing - for no sound logical reason - that it's a wonderful thing is what
keeps the money rolling in.

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motters
Those old timers don't realize that space is about more than nationalistic
grandstanding and sticking flags into moonscapes. If you want to see real
activity in space that means that getting stuff out of the Earth's atmosphere
has to be significantly cheaper, and the only way that's going to happen is if
space becomes a bigger industry than it is today - which means
commercialization.

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ericd
Getting stuff out of the atmosphere with chemical rockets will always be
extremely expensive. The only way it's going to get significantly cheaper is
with alternative lifting methods, such as an electric powered space elevator.

~~~
motters
One of the biggest expenses in current space operations is ground crew, which
typically numbers in the thousands. Under the status quo there is simply no
incentive to reduce this number, and there are often incentives to increase it
to create new jobs. In the original space shuttle concept the ground crew was
supposed to be no larger than a few hundred, but it didn't work out that way.

Commercializing rocketry should mean that ground crew size and turnaround
times can be minimized, since there is a direct financial incentive to control
costs.

~~~
ericd
Fair, but even if it were extremely efficiently run, even the fuel costs of
lifting large masses into orbit and the associated size of the vehicles
required, as well as the resultant complexity of such a thing would be
prohibitively expensive. Much cheaper, but still not where it needs to be.

In order to do anything serious in space, it needs to become MUCH CHEAPER to
put things into orbit. That is what a space elevator could accomplish. Not to
say that we're ready technologically... we need to become a whole lot better
at producing long carbon nanotubes.

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iuguy
In other news, group of people associated with special interest claim plans to
restrict or cancel special interest in the face of reality is catastrophic to
said aforementioned special interest, not to mention other connected (no
matter how tenously) special interests.

I'm not sure that this is really news in the genuine sense of the word. News
is Obama announcing the change.

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vegashacker
_The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was "disappointing"._

I kept re-reading this and saying, what? He thought going on the moon was
disappointing?? Ooooooh, "it" == "Obama's decision". :)

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avar
As wasteful as the proposed Constellation program was at least it would have
gotten humans out Low Earth Orbit again.

Is Obama's plan for increased commercialization anything more than moving
around the pieces that are already there? Most of the parts for the space
vehicles are already made by subcontractors, aren't they just changing how the
oversight is done?

Even with those rules changed NASA is still going to be responsible for the
astronauts. It'll take years and billions of dollars to man-rate vehicles that
we wouldn't have thought twice about using back in the 70s as long as they
didn't explode on the first couple of test flights.

Maybe money flowing out of the Space Shuttle program will get us there sooner,
but with the US rebooting its space program every time time a new president
takes office I'm starting to think the Chinese are our best hope for getting
to the stars.

~~~
jordanb
Nearly 50% of the money NASA sends to contractors goes to three organizations:
Lockheed Martin, The JPL at Caltech, and Boeing.

The rest goes to other Military-Industrial "Usual Suspects," like Grumman and
Raytheon.[1]

These organizations are principally interested in maintaining their cushy
position and soaking up tax money. They are not particularly driven to push
the envelope.

Obama's plan is a "shifting" around of the contracts, yes, but it's shifting
away from organizations like Lockheed Martin to organizations like Scaled
Composites. Away from fat lazy organizations to ones with some hunger and
drive.

That's also the reason why it's probably DOA in Congress.

[1] <http://www.govexec.com/features/0808-15/0808-15s13s1.htm>

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mturmon
Lumping JPL/Caltech in with LockMart and Boeing does not make sense. The first
is a research lab mainly concerned with conceiving and building robotic
(unmanned) missions. The second two are mainly involved with operating manned
flight systems. No comparison.

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vrode
Consider these points 1\. Most of the technology needed for spaceflight may be
both developed and tested on the ground. 2\. Therefore, the exploration of
near planets without a solid technological base (and we don't have one, do the
research: I mean the correlation between developed and required technology)
has merely a sign value, and remains close to none practical use for
scientists. 3\. Spaceflight and exploration might be a great inspiration for
the whole planet of aspiring space engineers, but even I, a space-geek, agree
with your administration on this matter. This is not a time to inspire, this
is a time to pull up some strings in the economy. And in the meanwhile a
competitively set industry private or not might push the technology forward to
earn the financing they long took for granted.

Many people fail to separate two things: a) the process of evolving technology
and exploring space; b) the process of putting people to orbit. Why do you
think the space station will be trashed so soon? It has little to none value,
but sucks the resources FROM the technology.

So if we want to 'harvest' H_3 from the Moon surface, why do we need people up
there? The fact is that we actually don't. Even modern robotics as simple as
it is, may do most of the resource gathering job cheaply. While human presence
and life-support will increase the cost and move this perspective even further
into the future.

All eyes are turned where there is a prospect of financial gain. Right now,
the gain is negative because of the lacking technology that needs investment.
That is exactly why we have 3-5 people in space and not a large colony of
workers. We use more money on supporting those three, than on making ground
for some larger operations.

Where am I wrong?

~~~
teeja
Not, that I can see. Once we have a plan for doing something based on
measurables with a stipulated and affordable goal, then we should act. Until
then, keep doing science.

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another
(I made a similar comment regarding a previous article along these lines. The
same point applies.)

Even though the "United States gives up on space" narrative is temptingly
simple, it's also (in my opinion) simply wrong, and substance-free commentary
like this is disappointing. (If you base your opinions on the unsupported
statements of old astronauts, you can look at Buzz Aldrin's comments for a
different perspective, but I'd recommend doing your own research instead.)

Much of the gloomy commentary on this announcement is uninformed. Canceling
the Constellation program is a forward step and an essential step---it makes
possible the very dream, bold human spaceflight, that this article mourns. At
the very least, read the Augustine Commission's summary report; it's only 12
pages. Note their statement of the goal of space exploration: "human expansion
into the solar system". That's cause for excitement, not mourning.

~~~
another
Bolden's speech yesterday is (IMO) worth reading, especially the middle
section regarding Constellation:

<http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/434022main_bolden_WSBR_20100316.pdf>

Note also the $6B increase in NASA's budget.

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brown9-2
_"I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in
technology and its moral leadership... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the
essence of human existence."_

What does exploring space or landing on the moon have to do with "moral
leadership"?

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smhinsey
Do they have inside information on this plan? My understanding is that it
isn't going to be released until April 15. All I have seen about it is sort of
ballpark speculation based on prior acts/statements.

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zandorg
I saw a DVD of the Apollo 11,12,13 landings and it was a joke - just a bunch
of guys jumping around and cracking jokes. The automated Mars robots looked
dignified in comparison.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I'd be interested to see what DVD you have of the Apollo 13 moon landing.

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zandorg
Correction: Apollo 15-17 (just checked my email for the correct DVD title).

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
<grin>

