
Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement - mcamaj
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/21/senate-panel-authorizes-money-mars-mission-shuttle-replacement/90793160/
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nickff
The worst part of this news is the continuation of the Space Launch System
(SLS), which has cost over seven billion dollars (not including Ares
development costs), and is expected to end up costing forty-one billion by
2025, by which time they expect to complete a total of four launches
(destination: nowhere important, and probably late).

Vulcan (from ULA), New Glenn (from Blue Origin), and Falcon Heavy (from
SpaceX) are all better platforms for space exploration, which could enable
science (such as the Europa mission) and travel (to Mars), and cost far less
than SLS (in development and $/kg to orbit). NASA should be spending money on
missions, not rocket development.

~~~
maxxxxx
The correct acronym for SLS is Senate Launch System.

~~~
HillRat
Oh, are we planning to launch the Senate into LEO? That seems like a winner of
an election-year policy proposal.

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sehugg
We expect headlines to be "truthy" these days, but this bill does not actually
authorize money for any Mars mission. There is no Mars mission. There is
policy, and a strategic framework, and a critical decision plan, and a
Congressional goal of new propulsion tech and a new spacesuit:
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-
bill/334...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-
bill/3346/text#toc-id35ffe0125e0f4c929eae4f08ea6c9a31)

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TeMPOraL
Great!

> _• Expand the full use and life of the space station through 2024 while
> laying the foundation for use through 2028._

So does that mean ISS is _not_ going to be abandoned by 2024?

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Retric
Keeping something launched into LEO 1998 in operation for 26+ years seems to
be pushing it. Many parts have been replaced over time, but the shell is in a
very harsh environment. Hopefully with the modular nature they should be able
to let old sections go.

~~~
TeMPOraL
My worry here is that if ISS gets shut down completely without another station
being already at least partially in orbit, there won't be enough political
will to start another project like that.

~~~
Bluestrike2
Historically, that's probably the most likely outcome. NASA has always faced
tough political battles for funding all the way back to the middle of the
Apollo program and nowhere has that been more apparent than when NASA was
trying to replace one major project with another. If you're interested, John
Logsdon's _After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program_ is a
fascinating--albeit depressing--book on the politics of NASA funding. It
mainly focuses on Apollo and the transition to STS (and covers some of the
alternative paths people at NASA wanted to pursue), but I have no doubt
whatsoever that many of the same challenges will plague any ISS replacement,
whatever it may be.

~~~
mturmon
Here's a nice Logsdon essay on the interaction between NASA and the freshly-
elected President Reagan --
[https://www.gwu.edu/~spi/assets/docs/The_Survival_Crisis.rev...](https://www.gwu.edu/~spi/assets/docs/The_Survival_Crisis.revised_Logsdon%5B1%5D.pdf)

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Grishnakh
Oh please. Sure, they'll authorize money for some big things right now, then
in a year or two they'll change their minds (after new people are elected) and
pull the plug on it. They've done it over and over.

The only way the US can get anything done in space exploration is if it can be
fully funded and completed in less than 2 years. So a little probe here and
there is completely doable, but a Space Shuttle replacement or manned Mars
mission or any other big project is a complete no-go. It won't ever happen.

~~~
nugga
Some people call SLS the senate launch system [1] because it's a blatant jobs
program. It'll be inefficient and overprized project to deliver stuff that the
private sector could handle much better.

[1] [http://www.competitivespace.org/issues/the-senate-launch-
sys...](http://www.competitivespace.org/issues/the-senate-launch-system/)

~~~
whyenot
"Some people" in this care are the Competitive Space Task Force, a _"
coalition of leading conservative and libertarian thinkers from organizations
committed to creating a free and competitive market for U.S. spaceflight"_. As
one would expect from an organization with that particular point of view, they
believe the SLS is a complete boondoggle and private industry should do the
work.

I wish there were a more neutral source of information. The best I have found
is Wikipedia, which obviously has its own limitations. Bill Nye is for it, the
Planetary Society was against it, but is no longer against it.

I don't know. Why it is necessary for US taxpayers to pay for this OR
subsidize companies like SpaceX is a mystery to me. Spend the money on
something that will have a greater impact on the lives of those paying the
bill.

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greglindahl
NASA paid SpaceX & OSC in advance to produce cost-effective vehicles that NASA
then bought. Paying in advance to create new products like this is a standard
commercial transaction, and it saved NASA a lot of money compared to buying
what was already available, according to NASA.

Sounds like you don't want to fund space at all, but that's a different
discussion.

~~~
Grishnakh
It's not even unique. NASA didn't even build the F-5 rocket engines that sent
men to the Moon; Rocketdyne did. That's the way government contracting has
pretty much always worked. The government typically does a bunch of R&D work,
and works with commercial companies to actually build things, especially in
quantity.

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Animats
At least they want to fund the Commercial Crew project. Space-X should have
sent a manned Dragon capsule to the ISS by now. There seems to be political
pressure to hold them back until ULA can catch up.

(Space-X now claims they know why they had a pad explosion. They're saying
"breach in the helium system".[1] But what caused that? What part has to be
changed? This just came out a few hours ago, so the details are lacking.)

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13031308/spacex-
falcon-9-r...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13031308/spacex-
falcon-9-rocket-explosion-cause-cryogenic-helium-system)

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SEJeff
Word on the street (read r/SpaceX) is it was caused by a failing COPV.

~~~
jbott
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_overwrapped_pressure...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_overwrapped_pressure_vessel)

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hacker42
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but space exploration strikes me as a waste of
money and energy. The universe is clearly no good for space travel, otherwise
we would witness aliens visiting us. It's empty and hostile. This planet is
the only realistic long-term home. Sure, space stuff gets kids into science,
but I wonder how many more kids we would get into science by investing
billions of dollars in education instead. We know enough about space for now.
We've sent robots to Mars and the photos show it's just dust.

Right now we need to solve sustainability, global warming, super bugs, cancer,
aging, friendly AI, pollution, global cooperation etc. Space can wait.

~~~
akiselev
Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to
[https://spinoff.nasa.gov](https://spinoff.nasa.gov) and marvel at the
literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a
tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs,
roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water
purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of
the things made possible or greatly improved by NASA research and funding.

No other organization on this planet has done more to bring different
scientists together with ample funding and an inspirational mandate.
Biologists, physicist, material scientists, engineers, and even sociologists
have come together under one roof resulting in a dizzying list of technologies
that would have taken much longer to hit the market or never made at all. NASA
is a multidisciplinary research and technology powerhouse unrivaled in human
history. Space is just what brought everyone together.

But maybe I'm biased ;)

~~~
elif
But would NASA out-perform a research university with the same budget, tasked
with addressing the aforementioned problem/solutions directly rather than
incidentally?

~~~
akiselev
Yes. NASA is drastically different from an academic institution and the
difference in administrative culture alone allows it to be a more effective
multidisciplinary research organization working on everything from pure
science to industrial ready technologies. For example, Black and Decker
developed the first cordless vacuum after their engineers got an idea while
working on cordless drills with NASA in the same research center where they
were working on Apollo 11+ and photovoltaics. Universities are simply not made
for this purpose, since they focus on basic research and education.

Furthermore, much of NASA's success is due to the mix of scientists from
different fields, universities, and business working on one problem. When the
best of the best come together, it results in a cross polinatiom of ideas.
It's not just being in the same building or sharing a cafeteria while working
on disparate grants, but a day to day sharing of knowledge to tackle a single
problem.

~~~
mturmon
This is a really well-informed comment and I wanted to say something else in
support of it.

A Caltech scientist who had worked with DOE and NASA labs made an offhand
comment about the kind of work that those labs are suited to do that stuck
with me - he said they should be trying to solve problems that are "national
lab hard" \- kind of a play on NP-hard.

What he meant is that these environments are suited to solving complex cross-
discipline engineering/science problems ("make the right measurements to
understand the climate system", or "find the processes and materials to make
air travel safer", or "put a huge infrared telescope in space").

These are not problems that are suited to a university research structure.
They don't get solved with $300K/year grants, small collections of discipline-
focused PIs, and transient grad students.

