Good bye to manned American Spaceflight

[MKSheppard]

Don't get me wrong though. Mars is an inevitable step in colonization -- along with some of the bigger asteroids -- and maybe some of the gas giant satellites/moons, because they're not unbearably hostile to life like Venus or Mercury; in that you could live on them in a general pressure suit, rather than a super armored suit capable of withstanding direct lava flows.

But compared to the moon, they're much longer term steps in our EXPLOITATION of the solar system.

[PeZook]

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.

You can argue the Ares I is unnecessary (although, got any other man-rated rocket handy?), but how the hell are you going to do anything serious beyond LEO without a heavy booster?

This was widely seen as a boondoggle.

By who?

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.

You need to man-rate any of the other designs first, and if you want to use stuff like a Delta IV for crew launches, you put additional strain on Boeing, while perfectly good SRB production facilities go into disrepair. As for technical problems...it's a new rocket. At least it didn't blow up on the first launch, which is pretty remarkable by itself.

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.

The Shuttle was a result of more than just a "propensity to vastly overengineer things". How is it overengineered, anyway? For a system that tried to be everything at once, it's pretty streamlined and efficient (launch mass is 2000 tonnes, 112 of these end up in LEO). It simply suffered from a set of mucked up design goals.

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.

The Ares V was not going to be compromised of tried and true technologies now? I must've missed some radical new stuff they were going to use in it...

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.)

Or perhaps it's a great place to put a fuelling station, using its low gravity and abundance of oxygen to manufacture fuel for Mars ships, allowing you to haul more cargo there for less cash?

I'm also sure there's plenty of scientists who would disagree the only reason to land on the moon is to plant the flag.

Having NASA re-invent the wheel just to re-live the heady days of the 1960s seems rather silly at the outset.

You need to re-invent the wheel to go anywhere beyond LEO, because you decided to just forget it in the 70s. What's so strange about it? The world didn't have a heavy lifter of the same class as the Saturn V for forty years now ; Of course you're going to need a new one if you want to do anything in space beyond mucking around in low orbit!

[Akhlut]

Why does everyone think that the moon is a terrible goal to aim for? It's much easier to go there then anywhere else in the solar system that isn't earth, and it will give us much needed experience on how to build extraterrestrial bases and shelters, and it has a lot of opportunities for doing things, both scientific and industrial in nature. Hell, we can set up a few equatorial telescopes on the moon that can be arbitrarily big and have the advantage of not dealing with atmospheric distortion, among a lot of other benefits.

So, why do people think the moon is such a waste of time and resources?

[MKSheppard]

Hell, we can set up a few equatorial telescopes on the moon that can be arbitrarily big and have the advantage of not dealing with atmospheric distortion, among a lot of other benefits.

You forgot 1.6 m/sec gravity versus 9.86 m/sec gravity. Say hi to EVEN BIGGER MIRRORS!

And better yet, site them (along with radio telescopes) on the DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, away from any possible electromagnetic interference, shielded by the moon itself!

[Mayabird]

Umm...far side of the moon. It's light half the time, same as the front, but without the earthshine. Unless you found a really good crater somewhere that was always shaded. But hey, that light time would be a good time for repairing and so on.

But yes to the radio telescopes.

[Scottish Ninja]

I think he means human-generated electromagnetic interference, coming from Earth, which would presumably be relatively important in the case of the radio telescopes. I don't know so much about the optical ones, though I suppose it couldn't hurt.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

There's tonnes of light that is emitted around the cities that goes up in the sky and actually reduce the signal to noise ratio. Going to a dark place like the Moon helps. The only issue is that the sensors have to be shielded/cooled appropriately when the sun light comes shining.

[K. A. Pital]

To be fair, this won't be the only effort to produce a new generation of ultra-heavy booster to collapse due to financial difficulties (be they a mere pretext or a real issue). Energia unluckily happened to be produced on the verge of USSR's collapse, despite it being an great heavy rocket.

In any case, I have serious doubts that manned space exploration would be the top agenda for American leaders now and in the future.

The objective reality is such that without a serious drive for achievements the space exploration just fizzles out; the International Space Station is ridiculous as an "achievment" of space exploration, because all it did is replace the one previous permanently manned space station (whereas there could have been two space stations or even more, should the space exploration have continued independently).

China has some need for space propagandistic successes (as well as to prove the capabilities of their aerospace industry), so perhaps they are the ones I'd look towards. They need to experiment with new booster, orbital stations, probes and the like. For the US, it feels like a reinvention "of the wheel" (as some here said), and thus I feel both leaders AND people do not feel any huge urge to do it.

[Simon_Jester]

What bugs me is that a moonbase would be far beyond what we actually did: we're not just reinventing the wheel, we're then proceeding to upgrade from the old carriages to motorcars. Also, having large heavy-lift rockets like Ares would be very helpful for the unmanned interplanetary science program, because one of the big limits on what they can fit on the probe is the mass and volume that smaller boosters can send to other planets. I know people who would love to be able to design a science package for an Ares V launch, even with no manned mission involved. Well, I think they would. I'll check if anyone wants to call me on it.

Umm...far side of the moon. It's light half the time, same as the front, but without the earthshine. Unless you found a really good crater somewhere that was always shaded. But hey, that light time would be a good time for repairing and so on.

But yes to the radio telescopes.

Colloquially, many still call the far side the "dark side," even though it technically isn't. I mean, if Pink Floyd did it, it can't be wrong, right?

[Commander 598]

I personally like to think of "the moon" as just a giant [and pretty] asteroid, which is conveniently already captured and only a few days away.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

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.

You can argue the Ares I is unnecessary (although, got any other man-rated rocket handy?), but how the hell are you going to do anything serious beyond LEO without a heavy booster?

Nobody is saying that we shouldn't be building heavy boosters. If Constellation was serious about actually going somewhere, the heavy booster should've been its first, second, and third priorities. Not "build this new man-rated firecracker and leave the heavy booster to dangle out in the breeze at the mercy of future Congresses." Let private industry build a rocket capable of putting a small manned capsule into LEO.

This was widely seen as a boondoggle.

By who?

As I recall, at the time Constellation was announced, quite a few space exploration advocates decried at for not going anywhere near far enough to be credible. No real concrete goals were established apart from "Go to the Moon by 2020 . . . maybe." Instead of leveraging existing launch vehicles by, say, man-rating the pre-existing Delta IV rocket; NASA decided construct a whole new LEO rocket system, essentially from scratch.

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.

You need to man-rate any of the other designs first, and if you want to use stuff like a Delta IV for crew launches, you put additional strain on Boeing, while perfectly good SRB production facilities go into disrepair. As for technical problems...it's a new rocket. At least it didn't blow up on the first launch, which is pretty remarkable by itself.

Ares I would've been a corporate handout to Boeing anyway since Boeing was responsible for the second stage. And I'm sure they could've continued to use SRBs as side rockets on a liquid-fueled rocket core; instead of the liquid second-stage atop a giant firecracker design they were trying for with Ares I.

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.

The Shuttle was a result of more than just a "propensity to vastly overengineer things". How is it overengineered, anyway? For a system that tried to be everything at once, it's pretty streamlined and efficient (launch mass is 2000 tonnes, 112 of these end up in LEO). It simply suffered from a set of mucked up design goals.

They tried to build a vehicle that could satisfy everything at once and could fly the ambitious schedule needed to justify its cost. What they got was a vehicle that could do a bunch of things kinda-sorta well, and if they tried a schedule anywhere near as ambitious as they were hoping for . . . well, good thing astronauts have good insurance. And when you consider that of those 112 tons, a mere 28 of that is useful payload the STS loses some of its luster. A Delta IV vehicle which can put the same 28 tons of useful payload up into orbit weighs a scant 808 tons. Of course, the Shuttle is reusable; for a certain definition of reusable.

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.

The Ares V was not going to be compromised of tried and true technologies now? I must've missed some radical new stuff they were going to use in it...

Ares I is what I have a problem with. I'd have been reasonably satisfied if they'd developed Ares V first.

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.)

Or perhaps it's a great place to put a fuelling station, using its low gravity and abundance of oxygen to manufacture fuel for Mars ships, allowing you to haul more cargo there for less cash?

Earth-crossing asteroids? The Moon has a significant gravity well, compared to an Earth crosser. And the problem with the Moon is that once you go there, there stops being a pressing reason to go further until you've overcome all the challenges in making the Moon a useful place to be. Getting out to, and back from an Earth-crosser takes longer than a similar lunar mission, yes, but allows you to gain experience in developing technologies needed for a Mars mission. You can do in-situ resource extraction from an asteroid, and it would be a good practice for a Mars mission since you may well be staging your landing from Phobos (a captured asteroid) anyway. As far as I'm concerned, let the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everyone else land on the Moon and establish permanent presences there. A manned Mars mission is going to be an international effort, or ought to be.

[MKSheppard]

If Constellation was serious about actually going somewhere, the heavy booster should've been its first, second, and third priorities. Not "build this new man-rated firecracker and leave the heavy booster to dangle out in the breeze at the mercy of future Congresses." Let private industry build a rocket capable of putting a small manned capsule into LEO.

I'm sorry, but NASA isn't getting 5% of the GDP, like it did in it's glory years.

It only makes sense to develop the processes in Ares I, such as the newer, bigger segmented solids, and the new J-2X engines, plus the Orion CSM, and then use the experience gained to go on to Ares V which will use many of the technologies developed/proven in Ares I.

[Big Orange]

Not surprising, since the US Army stole much of Germany's hardware and personnel to begin with

Right, because in BO World, V-2 = The End all to everything.

There's nothing in common between the V-2 and the later U.S Army rockets -- except the nametags on some of the personnel -- what Von Braun and the others did bring to the table was knowledge and expertise -- they knew the little tricks they'd developed over the years with the V-2;

Here's old footage of the US Army's V-2 rocket testing from late 1946, but later on (after the USAF and NASA swiped many of their toys) the mass produced, strategically deployed rockets and missiles the US Army had after the mid 1950s (the Nike-Ajax and Nike-Hercules missiles) seem to me more like the progression of the V-1 concept. NASA in 1960 having a long succession of rocket explosions, a few years after the Air Force fully developed their Atlas rockets and the Army deployed its missile defence network, alongside with the cancellation of ambitious US Military space projects like that manned moon base and the X-20 Dyna-Soar, makes me wonder why NASA was given priority for space exploration (although it was likely a cynical ploy to make America's incursions into space seem less threatnening to the Soviets).

[Korgeta]

Well the cancellation of flights to the moon and such was to be expected, without saying it on paper, it's the start of a cutback on NASA itself. China will get to the moon and back before the end of the decade am sure of it. They have the money and resources, now the real question would be is would the U.S stand up to the idea that China may try and make the moon in an outpost of their own, a base and all the other things NASA had once planned. Intresting times await.

[Molyneux]

Well the cancellation of flights to the moon and such was to be expected, without saying it on paper, it's the start of a cutback on NASA itself. China will get to the moon and back before the end of the decade am sure of it. They have the money and resources, now the real question would be is would the U.S stand up to the idea that China may try and make the moon in an outpost of their own, a base and all the other things NASA had once planned. Intresting times await.

I don't know if I agree with that first point - the Bad Astronomer was fairly hopeful that this could lead to a revamp of NASA and maybe the first steps towards permanent presence in space (that did NOT involve the ISS).