Good bye to manned American Spaceflight

[SirNitram]

The President is talking about America needs to be better in Math and Science, so we can still be a leader in the world but he's going to cut the space program. Did I miss something?

As the two articles I posted showed, he's INCREASING NASA's budget despite his proposed spending freeze. He's cutting one badly mad overbudget clunker and the mission to the Moon. Because, well, what will going to the moon get us?

[MKSheppard]

Wow. You've mastered the art of posting a picture in a thread. I am so proud of you.

By the opinion of Sir Nitram, expert Rokkit Injuneer, Ares I is a bad design and should fall apart. Yet there it is, soaring into the sky on a pillar of fire and working perfectly, proving that inline segmented stacks are feasible for space launch.

I'm OK with that (cancelling Constellation)

Cancelling something that will fly as a full up article in 2011 in favor of a nebulus heavy lifter that will exist only as dirty paper for five more years is not......smart.

I'm not okay with you stuffing the strawman of 'shuttle derived parts' being preference.

Considering how troublesome the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) was in actual service, I am so glad they finally dumped it in favor of modernized Apollo era engines where possible (J-2X); and switched to a different main engine, the Rocketdyne RS-68 for the first stage of Ares V, instead of SSMEs.

Shuttle hardware was very cost constrained during it's original development (Nixon cut the final acceptable cost of STS by half during it's gestation); and this led to a lot of problems in service.

I addressed why I didn't like Ares. Repeatedly. You, of course, have no real means to argue with it, so you make shit up.

Lay off on the redneck whiskey you're drinking. You raised no real points of objection towards Ares, other than the fact that you don't like one of the Engineers heading the program.

As for my preference, a lifting body with a MITEE-B derived engine would be ideal. I love my nuke propulsion. It's thrust to weight is much better than the glorified firecracker you're humping.

Shows how fucking retarded you are. I suppose having to decontaminate after each MITEE-B launch from Florida would provide an endless supply of jobs for white trash from West Virginia to do -- since the workers would only last at best a few weeks before they hit their radiation count and then developed fun forms of cancer later in life.

More than that, how are you going to shield the astronauts themselves from the hard radiation that a MITEE-B reactor generates?

If you light it off in an atmosphere, you'll get atmospheric scattering irradating the crew; if you light it off high enough to avoid atmospheric scattering; will your rocket be LONG enough and have enough hydrogen tank mass between the engine and the people capsule at front to act as shadow shielding?

It's not for nothing that all proposals by von Braun et al to utilize NERVA had them acting as drop in replacements for the S-IVB, and in unmanned cargo missions, where radiation to the cargo was not a problem.

For manned missions, well, you can see from this image how they planned to shield the astronauts from reactor radiation:

Link to Boeing/NASA 1968 Manned Mars Mission Study Image, this one is 3200 pixels wide

Notice how much space is between the Earth Return Stage Motor and the people tank?

But will support work on a heavy lifter

Making paper dirty is cheap. Building flight hardware is not.

with luck, will not include so poor an engineer as to make a public fuss and scene over the fact he doesn't want anyone checking his work.

Woooo!

In Martin-World, this didn't happen!



I think I'll paraphrase NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe on Constellation:

Basically, he said:

"Constellation has undergone problems during it's development cycle -- other alternatives don't have problems, because they've never reached that stage."

Oh. And long-term manned spaceflight research. And more science missions. And more push to private enterprise to man up.

Again, proposals and concept that is basically dirty paper.

We've actually spent several billions on Constellation, resulting in actual hardware.


A-3 Test Stand at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center being constructed to allow high altitude testing of J-2X engines up to simulated altitudes of 100,000 feet.

=
Ares Ullage motor system being tested


Orion CEV Abort System Attitude Motor Test.


The 920th Rescue Wing practices with a Orion CEV Mockup off of Cape Canaveral as part of the Post-landing Orion Recovery Test.

Oh wow. A moonbase. SHould I be impressed? The moon remains a useless rock outside of getting fusion up and running.

You know, you keep proving you're a dumb piece of shit with everything you post.

The Moon has gravity for free, without the needs for exotic methods such as centrifugal gravity.

The Moon provides cheap, free, limitless radiation and metorite shielding in the form of moon rocks that we can simply pile up on top of our pressurized shelters.

The Moon also has large amounts of cheap raw material that we can produce, either oxygen, water, or ROCKET FUEL, and has no pesky atmosphere or high gravity to make launch costs high, so it's cheap to mine things and shoot them into orbit from the lunar surface; as opposed to lifting them out of earth's gravity well.

For example, it takes between 9.3 and 10 km/sec to get from earth into LEO, while for the moon, it only takes 1.6 km/sec of delta vee.

Hell, a mission to set a manned station in a LaGrange spot is more useful!

What use is a LaGrange station without the supporting infrastructure that makes it worthwhile? It takes about the same amount of delta vee to get to L4/L5 as it takes to get to Lunar Orbit. But once you get to L4/L5, what's there?

Nothing.

No cheap minable fuel, no cheap radiation shielding (have fun outside the earth's protective magnetic field) at L4/5.

At our present level of technology, the best use for the L4/L5 points is for giant space telescopes --- which by the way, is one of the possible objectives of Project Constellation, to use the Ares V heavy lifter to place a very very big space telescope at the L2 point -- it would have 2,000 times the sensitiviy of the Hubble.

We do science and start prepping for real long term exploration.

And spending 200+ days on the moon isn't long term scientific exploration? You have a twisted definition of scientific long term exploration.

210 days? YOu mean.. LESS than a half of a single mission to Mars

Before we even THINK about going to Mars, we have to proof out all the concepts and equipment we are going to send to Mars; in much the same vein we did Gemini to prove out the fact that spacecraft could manouver in space, dock with others, that men could spacewalk with no ill effects, etc.

It would be nice to prove all this out, in an environment where if you fuck up, you're only a week from rescue, rather than minimally 200 days from rescue.

And besides, you get to Mars in 200 days with NERVA from the 1960s. I'm sure things can be improved with modern nuclear thermal rockets that we continued to develop with DoD funding as part of SDI (ref: Timberwind).

There's also other implications from having a ready made fuel and parts depot that requires only 1.6 km/sec of Delta Vee to escape from.

You could use Ares V to assemble a Mars ship in orbit around Earth; then send it to Lunar Orbit, where it would be tanked up with rocket fuel refined on the moon; allowing much less launches from Earth for a Mars mission; and a much much bigger ship.

[SirNitram]

So we're reduced to Shep arguing nukes are too dirty for use, when a NPL system has seperations between the core and fluid propellent(Not to mention it'd probably be Hydrogen, which is not exactly Cobalt in terms in half-life). Quite a change from his support for the Orion Drive, which was quite a bit dirtier.

Oh. And strawmanning me again by saying I 'dislike' the engineer, as if it were merely a personal preference. And posting lots of pictures with more strawmen.

Pathetic, as usual. But keep clinging to your firecracker. I'd like a thrust to weight ratio a bit higher.

[MKSheppard]

Concession accepted on pretty much everything.

So we're reduced to Shep arguing nukes are too dirty for use, when a NPL system has seperations between the core and fluid propellent(Not to mention it'd probably be Hydrogen, which is not exactly Cobalt in terms in half-life).

You really are dumb, aren't you?



On the far right is PHOEBUS 2; which was actually tested out in Nevada, producing 250,000 pounds of thrust from a mere 5,000 megawatts of thermal power.

Now, there is a way to calculate how much radiation is produced from reactors; and I've studied that intensively for an unpublished (as yet) section of The Big Book of Warfare.

And based on my rough calculations, if you lit off PHOEBUS 2; you would get the following intensities:

1,000 ft from it: 822,000~ REM per hour
2,000 ft from it: 206,500~ REM per hour
5,000 ft from it: 33,130~ REM per hour
8,000 ft from it: 12,950~ REM per hour

Considering that 1,000+ REM doses are pretty much 95% fatal...

Oh, I'm sure you can build some really big concrete and lead berms around the runway or liftoff pad to attenuate the radiation; but that won't work as the altitude of the MartinStupidMobile increases, and you become once again in the shine path of the hard radiation.

Also, fun fact -- a lot of materials become radioactively activated once they've been dosed with enough radiation -- e.g. this is why we have to bury nuclear reactors from submarines and ships in a trench in Nevada; they still retain enough radiation from the bombardment of their machinery by the intense flux of the core itself.

Basically, the ideal place for launching this MartinStupidMobile would be a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, usable for only one or two launches before it became too hot to handle.

Quite a change from his support for the Orion Drive, which was quite a bit dirtier.

Most Orion proposals tend to you know, actually get the ship off the ground -- one proposal used an assload of SRBs to get it up to about 40 miles altitude -- before the BOOM BOOM began.

Of course, if we went with this style of thing for MartinStupidMobile, then you would need some sort of heavy lift vehicle like say.....Ares V to get it high enough so that radiation wouldn't be a problem to the ground.

Oh. And strawmanning me again by saying I 'dislike' the engineer, as if it were merely a personal preference.

You've posted a single quote by a single engineer, out of what, the thousands working on the program, and act like that damns the whole Ares program, when you know, we have actual flight hardware taking off, flying and achieving virtually all of the objectives required for the first stage proof/validation flight.

And posting lots of pictures with more strawmen.

Only in your feble mind are those strawmen.

They illustrate how expensive actual flight hardware is to develop beyond dirty sheets of paper -- someone's got to build boilerplate capsules with roughly the same mass properties of the actual vehicle and then dump it into the ocean to see how it behaves; you got to build huge ass test stands for the engines, etc.

Pathetic, as usual. But keep clinging to your firecracker. I'd like a thrust to weight ratio a bit higher.

Lay off the fucking crack, you fucking retard. I've actually looked up thrust to weight ratios for various engine systems as part of my own research.

Basically:

Rocketdyne F-1 (LOX/RP-1): T/W of 82 at Sea level, 94 in vacuum
Rocketdyne J-2 (LOX/LH2): T/W of 34.5 at Sea level, 73 in vacuum
NERVA Model 2 (1970s Nuclear/LH2): T/W of 3.4 at Sea level, 7.46 in vacuum
Timberwind 250 (1990s Nuclear/LH2): T/W of 23.6 at Sea level, 30.3 in vacuum

Basically, Nuclear Thermal Rockets are space or near-space only systems, due to their lower thrust to weight ratios relative to conventional rocket engines; e.g. why von Braun used NERVA as a Third Stage replacement on the Saturn V; because at those altitudes and speeds, you didn't need a lot of thrust to achieve LEO.

[SirNitram]

Yes, yes, you feel proud. I don't care. I don't care that you use a 1967 design to compare to a design that would come in the 21st century, after decades of research into solving the problems of nuke propulsion. I don't care what you rename things in a desperate pursuit of cleverness.

What I care about is that I took your OP apart casually, and you've managed to incite me again into a tirade instead of staying on subject. American Spaceflight isn't dead. American Manned Spaceflight isn't dead. You just lost your Moon Mission you were psyched about. And on that note, I'm out of this thread. No point in quibbling over this stuff you drew me out on.

[MKSheppard]

Yes, yes, you feel proud. I don't care. I don't care that you use a 1967 design to compare to a design that would come in the 21st century, after decades of research into solving the problems of nuke propulsion. I don't care what you rename things in a desperate pursuit of cleverness.

Concession accepted.

I like how you haven't even noticed that the Timberwind series of pebble bed nuclear thermal rockets that were designed by the Department of Defense in the late 1980s/early 1980s in support of the Strategic Defense Initative still come out with a thrust/weight ratio noticeably less than chemically fuelled rockets.

And solving the problems of nuclear propulsion? I was unaware that between 1960 and 2009, we somehow managed to make superLead (TM), a magical unobtanium material that weighs 1/10th as much, and has the same radiation blocking properties as normal lead.

Oh wait, we haven't.

The sheer intensity of radiation from a poorly shielded nuclear reactor is staggering, and due to weight limitations of aerospace vehicles, they will be poorly shielded; with the only shielding generally consisting of a roughly two inch thick pressure vessel for the reactor itself, and relying on distance and the propellant itself to shield the crew pod.

You can see that concept illustrated very well in the 1968 Boeing/NASA Mars design.

That arrangement works only for space only applications, but not for in-atmosphere applications, due to atmospheric scattering.

And again, concession accepted. You haven't made any real substantiative points at all -- just pointless screeching which was taken apart like a rabbit in a blender.

[MKSheppard]

In fact MITEE-B is actually more important for how it works than it's ISP or thrust figures.

Older Nuclear Thermal Rockets had to either accept the cost in stresses on the reactor each time they turned it on or off, or spend a small amount of fuel in "keep on thrust" which lowered ISP; to avoid the stresses of a reactor start up/shut down cycle.

MITEE-B is Bimodal, you can use it in high power mode for thrust; and then switch it to low power mode for coast, which gives you electrical power during the coast phase, and avoids expenditure of propellant, keeping ISP high, and also avoids the stress on the reactor of startup/shut down cycles.

[PeZook]

Were you perhaps more honest, more intelligent, or just more literate, you'd note the lead designer showed himself to be a pretty damn bad engineer.

The obvious answer to that is to change the lead engineer, not abort the entire damn program right after it got through the first flight test. His team obviously isn't that bad if they built something that actually flies.

The first Titans blew up on the fucking launch pad and they're now some of the best rockets there are for a variety of applications.

The most ridiculous thing about the whole idea is that the very proposal says you should look into developing a heavy lift vehicle, yet you're cancelling a program...for development of a heavy lift vehicle!

The Ares I flew. It performed as well as could be reasonably expected. So hey, let's dismantle the infrastructure built to develop it and start from scratch! And right on the eve of retirement for the Shuttle fleet, so that the US will have to contract Russians to fly your people up to the ISS or for maintenance of orbiting satellites

Constellation wasn't just about the Moon, you know. The Orion would've been a spacecraft with capability unmatched by any other nation, capabilities vital to any interplanetary mission, like the ability to stay in orbit, completely unmanned, for weeks, and then perform an orbital rendezvous with a lander without any aid from ground-based radar.

Or do you think this kind of capability is completely unimportant for a Mars mission? Is humanity supposed to make the jump straight from fifty year old Soyuz to interplanetary spacecraft, with no steps in between?

And how the hell is Mars more important than the Moon? They're both dead rocks.

[MKSheppard]

And how the hell is Mars more important than the Moon? They're both dead rocks.

Shhhh. Don't tell him that.

Moon
4-5 days away via conventional rokkit
1.6 m/sec gravity
No atmosphere
Lots of shelter and possible raw resources

Mars
200 days away via Nuclear Rocket
3.69 m/sec gravity
Some atmosphere -- about 6 millibars
Lots of shelter and possible raw resources

The moon can be more quickly exploited, and offers better raw resources, due to no atmosphere, and significantly less gravity obstructing your efforts to put stuff in orbit.

[Ma Deuce]

Like what? I believe you, but I'd just like to hear what you have in mind.

There are obviously quite a few things that would have to be trimmed, given that your government is spending $1.4 trillion more than it earns annualy, which means cutting Constellation would only take less than a fifth of a percent out of that. Aside from the defense budget, one big thing that could be cut includes the bank bailouts, which are are in fact still going on at this moment to keep the "zombies" alive. But cutting costs isn't enough, the government also needs more revenue: A good start would be to completely reverse the Bush tax cuts, something Obama promised to do yet not carried through on.

But of course, this talk of cost cutting is now irrelevant, since NASA's budget is actually going to increase, with Constellation replaced by a new program developed from scratch. This is arguably even more retarded than simply scrapping Constellation to save costs.

[PeZook]

Well, if that proposal passes (it's far away from actual implementation, it seems), NASA will probably use a lot of parts from Constellatoin anyway and just incorporate them into the "new" program. It's certainly going to happen with the upper stage engines, since nobody sane is going to develop a completely new engine when you have one that's tried, tested and working, plus a crapload of firing/testing setups built up all over.

Then you'll have congressmen whose states contain facilities related to the Shuttle program pushing to keep the jobs in them, so there's a good chance the "new" rockets will use shuttle-derived tech anyway.

Yeah, it does seem that the idea this whole thing's just a political maneuver of some sort does have some merit.

[JCady]

Given the documented performance of NASA's manned spaceflight program, I am perfectly happy saying, "The ONLY government-funded space program will be unmanned probes through Caltech JPL. Manned flight is a frivolous game for private industry to play."

[PeZook]

Given the documented performance of NASA's manned spaceflight program, I am perfectly happy saying, "The ONLY government-funded space program will be unmanned probes through Caltech JPL. Manned flight is a frivolous game for private industry to play."

What is so bad about NASA's manned spaceflight performance? Is there a memo I didn't get?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Given the documented performance of NASA's manned spaceflight program, I am perfectly happy saying, "The ONLY government-funded space program will be unmanned probes through Caltech JPL. Manned flight is a frivolous game for private industry to play."

What is so bad about NASA's manned spaceflight performance? Is there a memo I didn't get? :wtf:

Are we talking classic NASA, or 21st Century NASA. To return to the Moon, 21st Century NASA opted to do the following: Try to pull a whole new rocket system inspired based (loosely) off the Shuttle SRB out of their asses. Not just one whole new rocket system, but two. This was widely seen as a boondoggle. Plenty of liquid fueled rocket designs out there that don't have the SRB's . . . interesting design quirks, but NASA has been infamous in recent years for a "Not invented here" mentality. This propensity for vastly overengineering things also gave us the Space Shuttle which, in itself, was designed by committee and was also (and still is) an enormous boondoggle.

To almost nobody's surprise, Ares is behind schedule and over budget. I'd not shed a tear if it got canned and NASA developed a heavy-lift launch vehicle (hopefully) comprised of tried-and-true technologies (which is something well-suited to government, since private industry sure isn't going to do it. Not until there's a profitable market to do so,) while farming out manned LEO spaceflight to private industry. The Moon is also a lousy target anyway (unless the size of one's manhood depends on AMERICAFUCKYEAH being the only nation to have landed humans there, and to keep it out of the hands of those filthy Commies/brown people/Eurotrash socialists.) Having NASA re-invent the wheel just to re-live the heady days of the 1960s seems rather silly at the outset. And, to be frank, the Bush administration's push to return to the Moon was put forth cynically (it boiled down to "Hey NASA, do an ass-pull and waste the wholly inadequate funding we're going to give for this effort; so we can look like we're doing something when we're really not") and was essentially doomed from the word go.

[Sky Captain]

Even though I`m not Ares I fan (why not modify already existing Delta IV or Atlas V for the job) canceling the whole thing after several billions have been spent on R&D and actual proof of concept test flight successfully performed seems rather wasteful. Also canceling Ares V to develop new heavy lift rocket at some point in the future - what`s the point? Ares V is a heavy lift rocket. It`s configuration is as simple as it gets having only 2 stages and 2 boosters. What could be gained by canceling it? Heavy launcher is the most important piece of hardware because without it serious deep space missions will be impossible.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Even though I`m not Ares I fan (why not modify already existing Delta IV or Atlas V for the job) canceling the whole thing after several billions have been spent on R&D and actual proof of concept test flight successfully performed seems rather wasteful.

Because the program's estimated total costs had grown from 28 billion to over 40 billion as of last year. That is a number that could only grow as time went on. It also wouldn't have flown human crews until 2019 . . . five years later than they were originally estimating. And the combined Ares/Orion human launch vehicle had an estimated per-launch cost of a billion dollars. Besides, old government/military-industrial complex projects never really go away. Bits and pieces will be relentlessly reused elsewhere.

Also canceling Ares V to develop new heavy lift rocket at some point in the future - what`s the point? Ares V is a heavy lift rocket. It`s configuration is as simple as it gets having only 2 stages and 2 boosters. What could be gained by canceling it? Heavy launcher is the most important piece of hardware because without it serious deep space missions will be impossible.

Ares V has yet to complete its preliminary design reviews and, would've been tuned to the needs of the Constellation program. Canning it now and developing something more general-purpose makes sense.

[tim31]

A minute's silence in thread for crew of Shuttle Challenger, January 28th, 1986.

[Sarevok]

...

[Sky Captain]

Even though I`m not Ares I fan (why not modify already existing Delta IV or Atlas V for the job) canceling the whole thing after several billions have been spent on R&D and actual proof of concept test flight successfully performed seems rather wasteful.

Because the program's estimated total costs had grown from 28 billion to over 40 billion as of last year. That is a number that could only grow as time went on. It also wouldn't have flown human crews until 2019 . . . five years later than they were originally estimating. And the combined Ares/Orion human launch vehicle had an estimated per-launch cost of a billion dollars. Besides, old government/military-industrial complex projects never really go away. Bits and pieces will be relentlessly reused elsewhere.

Also canceling Ares V to develop new heavy lift rocket at some point in the future - what`s the point? Ares V is a heavy lift rocket. It`s configuration is as simple as it gets having only 2 stages and 2 boosters. What could be gained by canceling it? Heavy launcher is the most important piece of hardware because without it serious deep space missions will be impossible.

Ares V has yet to complete its preliminary design reviews and, would've been tuned to the needs of the Constellation program. Canning it now and developing something more general-purpose makes sense.

Well, I agree Ares I is not essential. Howewer a heavy lifter whether Ares V, Direct or something else is a critical piece if Constellation program is ever to take off. No currently available rocket is capable of launching an Earth departure stage or Lunar lander in orbit. And if manned Mars mission is considered then something capable of orbiting a 100+ ton payloads will be absolutely essential.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not going to weigh on the heavy lift rocket issue, because my views on the matter are simplistic and not all that well informed. However, I have one specific question:

Most Orion proposals tend to you know, actually get the ship off the ground -- one proposal used an assload of SRBs to get it up to about 40 miles altitude -- before the BOOM BOOM began.

What do you think of the idea where they dig a deep pit under the plate and light off the first bomb in the pit? Would that work?

[Qwerty 42]

My girlfriend and I might trek down to Cape Canaveral in September to see the final shuttle launch. I know that it's important to try to reduce spending right now, but I've got a huge soft spot for the space program.

[Sarevok]

Moon
4-5 days away via conventional rokkit
1.6 m/sec gravity
No atmosphere
Lots of shelter and possible raw resources

Mars
200 days away via Nuclear Rocket
3.69 m/sec gravity
Some atmosphere -- about 6 millibars
Lots of shelter and possible raw resources

The moon can be more quickly exploited, and offers better raw resources, due to no atmosphere, and significantly less gravity obstructing your efforts to put stuff in orbit.

Why not asteroids ? The moon still has enough gravity to make returning stuff to orbit expensive. The moon is also relatively poor in useful resources. Asteroids have almost no gravity to speak off and there is so many different ones to choose from depending on which resource we need from metals to hydrogen fuel.

[MKSheppard]

Given the documented performance of NASA's manned spaceflight program, I am perfectly happy saying, "The ONLY government-funded space program will be unmanned probes through Caltech JPL. Manned flight is a frivolous game for private industry to play."

Oh yeah. I guess in JCady world, this stuff didn't happen:



Notice the DUCT TAPE above and right of Neil's head, above the SWITCHBANK OF DOOM.



Ken Mattingly (yes, that one from Apollo 13) salutes Reagan after the landing of STS-51C (the first DoD Shuttle flight).

Even though the shuttle may be a hodge podge of compromises to keep costs low, damn, it's awesome at times; especially in that image, when you consider that it just landed from orbit like a freaking plane -- go go landing gear.

[MKSheppard]

Plenty of liquid fueled rocket designs out there that don't have the SRB's . . . interesting design quirks, but NASA has been infamous in recent years for a "Not invented here" mentality.

Except that you know, Solids have become pretty good lately, and have largely replaced Kerosene engines for first stage "get out of low atmosphere" kick -- the ISP (ISPIE is yummy) of the latest solids is almost identical (give or take a few dozen ISP) with that of LOX/RP-1. And they're much less complex than a rocket engine.



Boeing Delta III SLV, notice the cluster of doom of solid boosters on the bottom.



Titan III SLV, notice the two huge Strapon SRBs.

This propensity for vastly overengineering things also gave us the Space Shuttle which, in itself, was designed by committee and was also (and still is) an enormous boondoggle.

Ha. The shuttle was crippled from the start by Nixon who cut the ultimate cost of the system by half, which doomed many of the various options which would have made the system vastly cheaper -- like a actual manned flyback booster first stage instead of the ET/SRB configuration.

Or they could have used a titanium spaceframe which would have weighed 2 tons more, but would have used a much lighter thermal protection system. This was nixed due to two reasons:

1.) Cost

and

2.) The USAF was starting up production of F-15 at the time and needed all the titanium they could get for large parts of EAGLESPAM's airframe, and didn't want NASA sucking away a big supply of it.

To almost nobody's surprise, Ares is behind schedule and over budget.

And this is a surprise? Unforeseen technical complexities arise; which must be solved with either time or money. NASA managed to keep Saturn on schedule due to massive quantities of money.

I'd not shed a tear if it got canned and NASA developed a heavy-lift launch vehicle (hopefully) comprised of tried-and-true technologies

You mean one using strap on solids and LOX/LH2 engines? Oh wait, that's Ares V.

I guess von Braun was an idiot for proposing Saturn V with strap on solids for MAX PAYLOAD.

The Moon is also a lousy target anyway

I've detailed before why the Moon is the ideal target for the first phase of manned spaceflight exploitation -- it's close by, it has gravity, making industrial processes a lot easier, and has a inexhaustible supply of oxygen, rocket fuel and radiation shielding in the lunar regolith.

[Mayabird]

*snip*

Why not asteroids ? The moon still has enough gravity to make returning stuff to orbit expensive. The moon is also relatively poor in useful resources. Asteroids have almost no gravity to speak off and there is so many different ones to choose from depending on which resource we need from metals to hydrogen fuel.

Because the good asteroids are even farther away than Mars. The moon is right freaking there. Have you even been paying attention? As John Young (the astronaut; I met him once, got to be the clicker for his slideshow) put it, "If anything goes wrong on the moon, you're four days from a can of beans." Good luck if you're 200 days out.