
NASA aims for first manned SpaceX mission in first-quarter 2020 - callwaiting
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-spacex/nasa-aims-for-first-manned-spacex-mission-in-first-quarter-2020-idUSKBN1WP1CS
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no1youknowz
A bit of a contrarian opinion. But nasa, whilst lauded for their achievements
thus far. Due to the issues like:

\- politics surrounding it

\- regulations

\- money dependent on jobs (think SLS program)

\- ever changing goals (bush, obama, now trump)

Should now just be a research only facility and fully give the mechanics of
space exploration to private facilities such as Space X, rockets and Bigelow
for the habitats for example.

To clarify this more. Nasa should be given monies by the tax payer for various
projects.

Invest in such projects that require 100 years to come to-fruition to projects
that can be achieved within 10-25 years and absolutely no government
interventions! Just leave them alone and let them to their glorious work.

They should be projects that the private sector can't invest in because it's
too costly. That said however, they should also act in a VC capacity. That
researcher that wrote a paper about newer modes of transport? Throw $10m at
him, put a team around him consisting of nasa scientists and engineers and see
what comes out of this. Do this for 10 or 100 ideas and we'll get a lot of
inventions.

Finally for gods sake, the current budget is 0.49% of the total spend.
Increase that to 5%. If all the current engineers dedicated to the failed SLS
program and moon base machinations were reassigned on separate projects like
:-

\- vasmir ion engines

\- portable space nuclear reactors

\- simulating gravity without needing a spinning chassis

\- solving the galaxic cosmic rays problem with space ships

(and I could go on...!)

Would be a total game changer.

~~~
zaroth
These types of ultra long open-ended research projects with no driving
commercial or defense need, or real-world short term deliverables are just the
kind of project you can dump billions of dollars into and get roughly nothing
back in return.

At the Starship even a couple weeks ago Elon quipped when it comes to
schedules, "Long is wrong, tight is right." The point is that humans respond
well to aggressive but achievable goals with big payoff in the short-term. It
focuses the effort on what is actually needed to achieve mission success.

To put it more succinctly, necessity is the mother of innovation.

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, it helped when NASA had this:

 _" We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard;
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one
we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"_

~~~
jjoonathan
Yes, and the equivalent of 175 billion dollars per year (4% of federal budget
times 4.4T$/y). I'm going to go out on a limb and propose that the money may
have helped, too.

~~~
TrueDuality
That is not how inflationary comparisons work with government budgets. The
entire documented cost of the Apollo program[1] was $25.4 billion over 11
years. Adjusted for 2018 dollars that's $153 billion over 11 years, which
works out to just about $14 billion per year.

The total expenditure in the 2018 United States budget was $4.109 trillion[2]
or %0.34 of yearly expenditures. Budgets do not follow inflationary trends
even remotely, the 1961 expenditure[3] was $181.588 billion (wow that's pretty
crazy). For the year that makes the Apollo program %1.2 of the federal
expenditure.

Another useful point of reference, the entire NASA organization in 2018 had an
operating budget of $19.2 billion and this has to cover all of the mandated
projects such as the SLS. They're also responsible for maintaining and
monitoring a lot of infrastructure for other agencies (the weather service,
DSN, etc) which wasn't the case during the Apollo mission. NASA itself is kind
of left with scraps.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget)

[3]:
[https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_...](https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1960_1970USb_20s2li011mcn_F0f)

~~~
jjoonathan
> That is not how inflationary comparisons work

Right, but normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous
than normalizing to the federal budget, which is not excellent for this
purpose, as you point out.

In any case, thanks for digging up more numbers.

I stand by my claim that money (and enough assurance of continued money to bet
everything on one large project) is key.

~~~
Dylan16807
> normalizing to the price of bread and milk is even more ridiculous than
> normalizing to the federal budget

No it's not. Maybe normalize to the median income if you don't like bread and
milk, but how much the government spends on education, health care, interest,
military fleets, farm subsidies... that's not relevant to NASA's budget.

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tzfld
Overall, the fact that the US experiencing the longest period without
capability of sending humans into space seems to be a serious organizational
problem.

~~~
umvi
Is there much value in sending humans into space besides studying how the
human body deteriorates in microgravity?

~~~
Jwarder
With the caveat up front that I'm a huge idealist about space: I think
humanity would greatly benefit from building large populations in space. Once
the systems are in place then any power generation, industry, or agriculture
done in space means less pollution here on earth. Solar energy is "free",
asteroids are "free".

The setup isn't trivial, but in the long run I think it is best for everyone.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
>Solar energy is "free", asteroids are "free".

The rocket equation says that if you want to do anything besides sitting in
one place, it's super expensive. Moving mass around requires throwing huge
amounts of mass away.

~~~
zipwitch
Or very small amounts of mass and a whole lot of time.

~~~
bdamm
I think you mean velocity. Lots of velocity.

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jacquesm
Given the fact that there are still some pretty difficult tests ahead and that
they already incurred a significant delay as a result of the explosion in
April I wouldn't bet on this happening on the proposed time table. Too many
uncertainties.

~~~
Robotbeat
Much like everything in aerospace, the NET (No Earlier Than) date is not the
most likely date. In fact, it's almost tautologically obvious that you'll
usually miss the earliest possible date, no matter what the endeavor. If
Quarter 1 2020 was really the most likely time, they would've most
appropriately given a NET date of by the end of this year.

It's a little frustrating that there's so little understanding of this,
though. I blame lack of education.

~~~
mikelyons
If society stays in Spiral Dynamics stage orange, the education system will
only cover things like this once there is profit in educating the public on
it, like if asteroid mining becomes a thing (just an example, likely not
feasible).

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rjf72
Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really
cool. Here [1] is a video Q/A with Musk, Bridenstine, and the two astronauts
who will fly on the first commercial crew shuttle that he (Bridenstine)
streamed.

For those unaware of the backstory there Musk recently had a major reveal of
SpaceX's StarShip program. Bridenstine made a pretty direct jab the night
before saying "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow. In
the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see
the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American
taxpayer. It's time to deliver." [2]

That was generally not so well received, since SpaceX is engaged in Commercial
Crew (the program to get astronauts to the ISS on commercial launches) but so
is Boeing. And SpaceX is substantially far ahead of Boeing on this front. So
it felt like a partisan and biased sleight since Boeing, who went unmentioned,
has substantially more political influence and clout.

In the Q/A Bridenstine acknowledged he was not really correct on his
assumption, which makes me like this guy even more (as he does _genuinely_
seem heavily driven to get the American space program back on track) - even if
I think he should have figured this out before racing to publicly Tweet. Looks
like he genuinely wants to get Commercial Crew going ASAP and was worried that
SpaceX was putting it on the backburner since StarShip is also a really big
and extremely ambitious program being done at the same that as Commercial
Crew.

[1] -
[https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb](https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb)

[2] -
[https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/117771110630074777...](https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1177711106300747777)

~~~
coldtea
> _Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really
> cool._

Why would it be cool / unexpected? Isn't most of SpaceX's funding public money
funneled through NASA?

~~~
rjf72
When a public figure makes a negative statement against a group or individual
in modern times, it's generally a carefully calculated political play that's
about as authentic as you'd expect of a politician. Because of this, even when
their statement is wrong (and it often is) they'll simply double down on
stupid. His rapid followup visit, let alone his public acknowledgement that he
was incorrect were major indicators that he's authentic.

And this is a big deal because he is not only the most ambitious administrator
NASA has had quite a long time but also the most politically capable. And that
leaves me highly optimistic for the future of NASA. Bolden (the previous
administrator) was everything you want on paper, but in practice he lacked
both ambition and political skill. I've no doubt he very much had a love for
space and technology, but he simply didn't have the toolkit to make it matter.
As a result of this NASA ended up achieving little more than inertial progress
for 8 years.

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kd3
Bridenstine is the best thing that happened to NASA in a while:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg)

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Maybe. He's done way better than I expected, I thought he'd be another idiot
from congress who says global warming is fake - because that is what he was
when he was in congress. He pretends today that he never said those things or
changed his views or evolved or some bs (I figure that is just what he had to
say to be in congress as a republican, I don't think he's so stupid as to deny
reality in real life). He's played the political game and tried hard not to
anger the SLS senators. If he was really effective, he would have figured out
how to direct the SLS congressmen into doing something useful with that
largess instead of the wasted billions and time that went into the Senate
Launch Service.

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UI_at_80x24
If you are interested in the Space X vs Blue Origin vs ULA, and/or want to
learn more about the birth of the private space industry I can recommend a
book called: The Space Barons.

It's an interesting read to be sure.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons)

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wnkrshm
Why should we send people further than orbit, rather than robots? Robotic
missions have been huge successes - you could have teams of people lead many
robotic missions instead of one very limited human visit.

~~~
keiferski
Robotic missions are multiple orders of magnitude less inspiring or
interesting to society as a whole, probably because human beings like to see
human beings doing things.

For a good example, consider that the Moon Landing was a global, civilization-
wide event, whereas even the most famous robotic mission has never been
anything more than a popular news item of the week.

~~~
JulianMorrison
But the latter moon landings were news items of the week. And the latter
shuttle flights weren't even that, unless they were carrying interesting
cargo.

~~~
KuiN
The last human on the moon was almost 50 years ago. Shuttle flights (barring
obvious exceptions) were pretty routine; definitely not the most inspiring
missions. But humans back on the Moon, or on Mars, in the 21st century and
setting up colonies? That's completely different proposition.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Building a colony on Mars or Luna, beyond the celebratory beginning, is
brickie work in a spacesuit. The inspiration will pale rapidly.

~~~
wnkrshm
Even billionaires can find their lives boring. No human is safe from adapting
to their environment and the banality of it.

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zarro
After the death of the Peenemünde scientists its been all downhill for NASA.

