
The discovery of lunar water has changed everything for human exploration - nomadictribe
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/why-were-going-back-to-the-moon-with-or-without-nasa/
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simonh
It's interesting that ULA has such a different approach to reducing the cost
of space exploration, by using fuel from the Moon. For them that makes a lot
of sense. The upper stage of a rocket already get's pretty much into orbit but
currently leaving the spent stage in orbit has no value. If you could cheaply
refuel it from the moon though, suddenly it's a useful vehicle again.

That calculation doesn't apply for Spacex though because they're planning on
making their main booster stages reusable. That would dramatically reduce the
cost of putting fuel in orbit directly from earth. No detours to the Moon
required. Space technology and the future of space exploration has never been
more exciting.

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stuff4ben
Wish I could upvote more. This is why private companies need to be in the
space industry. They do things more efficiently because it's going to cost
them and their shareholders if they don't. I was thrilled to see the ULA
slides about their cislunar roadmap. I was born 30 years too early I think...I
likely won't ever get to space, but maybe my kids will.

~~~
iamcurious
It also costs governments to do things inefficiently. Money spent on something
is not spent on something else regardless of what organization spends it.

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habitue
It's really frustrating to see successive administrations dick NASA around
with apparently very little thought behind what they're being asked to do

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Bush rode out the STS program way after any sensible retirement date. Then his
team threw together the unfundable and questionable Constellation program.
NASA was "asked" to do this and couldn't for a variety of completely
predictable reasons.

Obama stepped and called Constellation "over budget, behind schedule, and
lacking in innovation." And he was right. He tasked NASA to build out the
Orion/SLS and continue to fund the Commercial Crew and Cargo program that
funds companies like SpaceX. This was done in NASA Authorization Act of 2010,
a measly 5 years ago, which is nothing in human spaceflight engineering
timelines. Its kinda incredible the SLS and Orion are where they are at
considering the very short timelines involved. The debut flight on the SLS is
in 2018 and I believe Orion is either completed now or will long be completed
by then.

On top of it, NASA keeps hemorrhaging money to the Russians for Soyuz lifts
instead of funding these programs. Charles Bolden writes:

"Since 2010, the President has received approximately $1 billion less than he
requested for NASA’s Commercial Crew initiative. During this time we’ve sent
$1 billion to Russia."

Congress needs to fund these programs if you want them to happen. NASA can't
work without a proper budget.

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legulere
> kph

Just why would you write it like that? Why not just use the standard km/h?
There also should be a space between the number and the unit (narrow non-
breaking is best for this)

~~~
david-given
Parallel construction to mph, miles per hour.

In my experience kph is more common than km/h.

~~~
exceptione
It's a bit off-topic, but kph is not common in my experience. I have a good
explanation: this is metric, which is a very convenient system. If you want to
express one measure against an other one, just use measure1/measure2.
€10/meter, 25kg/liter etc. You can be more verbose and replace "/" with " per
".

Adding constructs like kph sounds like the reintroduction of foot and elbow
sizes in the system. Please keep it consistent. /end of rant

~~~
david-given
It is consistent. It's consistent with mph, which is what people have been
using for decades to measure speeds.

Using a / is technically correct, sure, but it's also technical language and
where I'm from people are unlikely to use that. They simply wouldn't think to
abbreviate the 'per' in 'kilometres per hour' to a slash, any more than they'd
think to abbreviate 'miles per hour' to 'm/s'. So, kph.

~~~
freehunter
Even in America, where kilometers aren't used on any roads really anywhere in
the country, our speedometers still read mph and km/h.

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/11/2002-c...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/11/2002-chevrolet-
monte-carlo-ss-dale-earnhardt-edition-speedometer-opt.jpg)

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blisterpeanuts
I say we send a robotic craft to Saturn's rings, lasso a gigantic chunk of
ice, and haul it back to earth orbit. Solved.

And if that works, grab another billion ton chunk and send it crashing into
southern California, to solve the drought.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
That (with the exception that they're taking the water to water-impoverished
Mars, rather than Earth orbit or California) is basically the plot of The
Martian Way by Asimov.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in real life, because Saturn's rings
are more like diffuse snow flurries than mountain-sized ice chunks, as cool as
that would be. And coupling your little interplanetary probe to an ice
mountain really cuts into your delta-V numbers.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Hm, you're right, largest chunks are said to be several meters in diameter.
They'd probably have to drag the rings with a ginormous net to achieve the
same volumes.

For propulsion, I would go with a solar sail. Use it to get the craft to the
rings, then it becomes a net to scoop up the water ice, and the craft could
harvest the water for fuel to get home.

You could get a whole army of these things flying back and forth, and within a
century or so, Mars could, as you suggest, become terraformed.

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andrewstuart
Robotic exploration is far far greater value for money than human exploration.

~~~
jerf
This opinion was born and raised in an environment of government funding for
space. There is no fundamental reason why it should cost dozens of billions of
dollars to get to space. If private industry brings it down to a cost more
related to the true, fundamental price, it goes flying out the window. Merely
millions to put people in space is of a kind with oil exploration, building
transport networks, and all sorts of other situations where private industry
under solid government routinely invest by the millions or even billions. At
that point the argument actually _completely_ flips around; anywhere we can
afford to put a human, it is _more_ cost-effective to do so than send a robot.

~~~
adrusi
This is wrong. The fact is we take our humans back, but leave our robots in
space. It's harder and more expensive to prepare a return voyage, and the
robots can ultimately spend more time in space and for some applications that
means it will be more effective at gathering data.

~~~
jerf
"Anywhere _we can afford to put a human_ ", and I'll remind you, that's under
the new, wildly cheaper domain of space flight, not the current one. If only a
robot is affordable at all, there's no debate about which is "better". Clearly
that is not the argument being made, though, because then there's no point in
even repeating the line about robots being more cost effective.

If space flight is cheap, you're better off sending a far more capable human
than a robot, because if you're going to spend $3million for a robot or
$5million for a human, the human is going to be more than 40% more effective
than a robot. It's a totally different story than when the difference is
$12billion or $500billion.

