Neil Armstrong Speaks out on Constellation...

[eion]

What Mars' atmosphere does offer is some very nice free radiation shielding.

You think 60 pascals of atmospheric pressure will offer any appreciable protection from radiation? Dirt is cheaper in both locations, and you can simply pile up more in both locations.

Yeah, I do actually. If it's Solar Flare radiation. To effectivly stop that kind of radiation you need about 12cm of water or the equivilant. On Mars, the CO2 in the atmosphere gives you 21 grams of protection looking straight up, or about 65 grams on average, so solar flare radiation isn't really a problem, even if you camp out in a clear plastic bubble on the surface.

But eion, I hear you say, what about Cosmic Rays? Well, those are a bit more of a bother. Instead of 12cm of water for protection, you'd need several meters of water to do the job. Since it just isn't possible on a spacecraft to provide that kind of protection at the moment, travelers are stuck taking that extra 15rem for the 6 month trip to Mars, and 15rem for the trip back. But once you get there, it's a different story. Throw out half the radiation because you've got a planet under you. That average of 65 grams of atmospheric protection cuts the radiation down by almost half again, which leaves us with about 10rems per year without any additional protection.

That's kind of a high level, higher than what a nuclear worker would be permited in one year, but the risk isn't all that great considering. A 40 year old woman (and women being at greater risk than men) at 10rems a year would take 60 years to accumlate enough radiation to give you a 10% chance of getting cancer within the next 30 years, i.e. by the time you're 130 years old, and probably already dead. Astronauts flying for 60 years face far bigger risks than radiation.

If you're really worried about 10rems a year for our Martians, you can cover (note cover, not bury) the hab roof in a half meter of sandbags and surround it with bags of borated ice. The roof alone will take you down to 6rems a year.

Repeat after me: I will not place large transparent domes with large habitable volumes in a hazardrous environment.

I agree, but then we're talking about greenhouses, not your bedroom. And by the time our Martian colony wants to build larger inhabitable domes, the cost of the glass or thicker plastic material won't be an issue.

Placing them underground in hydroponics/soilponics labs with precisely controlled lighting will ensure a greater turnaround in plant lifecycles, and as a bonus, you can access it even in times of heavy solar flares, and you gain extra protection against random events like meteorite strikes, a lander going awry, from knocking out your food/air supply.

Do you have 500 megawatts of spare power sitting ready to go on the Moon that I don't know about? Because that's how much you'd need to grow 250 acres of crops under minimal artificial light.

You might be able to grow everything you need for a few people, but the power requirements are still 2 megawatts per acre. With the natural radiation shielding offered by the Martian Atmosphere, not to mention its nearly Earth-identical day/night cycle you can grow all you need with just 340mb of atmosphere under your plastic greenhouse dome (Plastic which you can make on Mars thanks to the abundance of hydrogen and carbon, two things the Moon lacks)

And any idiot who puts the landing ellipse of a lander within sight of your greenhouses should be shot on sight.

And who the fuck said anything about getting air from these plants? Sure they’ll make a bit, but we have near infinite chemical reserves to tap into for our oxygen on both Mars and the Moon.

The atmosphere also offers abundant CO2 feedstock for oxygen extraction, fuel production, and ballooning.

Hey wow, so does the lunar regolith.

Please identify the carbon or hydrogen in this graph

Without carbon and hydrogen you cannot make:
-Food
-Fuel
-Silicon metal
-Plastics

And much much more. Guess what Mars has plenty of?

Also, what’s easier, shoveling tons of regolith into your oxygen reactor, or turning on a pump and sucking in as much CO2 as you want?

Hopefully Obama is slowly backtracking and will relaunch a SDLV (Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle) program in the near-term

Considering the shuttle production line has long been shut down it would cost more than Orion/Ares to restart the line.

I honestly don’t know why we’re fighting about this. We agree. I don’t care what SDLV they use, Ares, Jupiter, DIRECT, Not-Shuttle C. They’re all good. Ares is nice because it’s ready to go. I don’t care. The point is not to throw away 30 years of experienced and tested hardware. I want them to keep making ETs, SSMEs, and SRBs. It’s the best heavy lift vehicle out there right now. Just a shame they designed the STS upside down and have to take an extra 68,585 kg up every time.

but without an ambitious goal like Mars, a heavy launch vehicle just doesn't have the payload manifest to support the cost.

Wrong. There's a long list of scientists who would KILL to have the heavy lift capability of Ares V to loft giant radio observatories, telescopes etc into space. Imagine something like hubble; but ten times bigger.

And since scientists get to direct NASA’s goals I guess that’s enough… Wait a minute, NASA isn’t one of those political footballs that gets tossed around and chewed on by both parties is it? They aren’t reliant on a public interest in their survival and future are they?

Those are excellent scientific goals, and worth every penny it takes to launch them. But not a single one of those require a mission beyond maybe the L2 point if we want to put them in the radio shadow created by the Moon. Developing heavy lift vehicles capable of launching a manned mission to Mars means we have developed heavy lift vehicles that can launch unmanned, and damn heavy, platforms to Lunar orbit.

NASA needs the Astronauts, and it needs them to be pushing the edges of discovery. The ISS may well turn out to be an excellent zero-gee research facility, but few kids are going to get excited about taking a trip down the street to the gas station, but tell them they’ll going to Disneyworld, and watch what they do. No one every names a high school after a robot.

I think you and I agree that Mars is our eventual destination. We both want to go to Grandma’s house, but you want to stop at the gas station on the way. I’m telling you we have enough gas and sodas to get to Grandmas, and she’s got enough to keep us happy while we’re there, and get us back. We don’t need a pit stop, it’s just going to cost us more money and slow us down.

I'm absolutely alright with the Russians charging us $50 mil a seat; gives NASA all the more incentive to fund commercial space-taxis.

As a short term thing, yeah, we can pay the Russians $50M a seat while we wait for our new launcher to come online -- but Obama just lengthened the delay from five years to more like ten-fifteen years with his dumbassedry.

And Space Taxis? LOL. I dare you to man rate SpaceX's Falcon 9 Heavy.

Someone’s going to manrate at some point. It’s only a matter of time and money. If the government told them, “Do it for less than $30 mil per seat and you can keep the change,” I think you’d see a lot of interest. The Russians just set the bar, now we can let private enterprise limbo under it. We just have to stop paying them on a cost-plus basis and treat them the way any sane private employer treats a contractor.

If I had my dream though, it’d be a scaled up version of the Black Colt rocketplane, which has some very attractive features for both the military and the private sector that’d be doing the bulk of our low-weight LEO work.

[open_sketchbook]

I still can't figure out for the life of me why any of this shit really matters. All this colony shit is a pipe-dream; it's money better spent on making our planet less shitty. Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped blowing money on rocket-powered dickwaving contests we could take the money and put it towards making Earth better so we wouldn't have to run off into space in the first place.

Furthermore, is it even possible to create self-suffient colonies in space or on other planets? I don't mean "technically" possible or "possible with five hundred years of terraforming" possible, either. We can't create truly self-suffient bases at the south pole for fucks sakes, but of course we can do it in space, which is only fifty kabillion times more inhospitable. It just costs too much to get up there and move around; too much money, too much time, and too much risk to throw a bunch of people around in tin foil capsules. How are we even supposed to pull off these multigenerational basebuilding and terraforming projects when we can't even agree on a space budget for more than a decade?

[Uraniun235]

I still can't figure out for the life of me why any of this shit really matters. All this colony shit is a pipe-dream; it's money better spent on making our planet less shitty. Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped blowing money on rocket-powered dickwaving contests we could take the money and put it towards making Earth better so we wouldn't have to run off into space in the first place.

It wouldn't. We'd just use it to buy more guns and drugs and shit. Seriously when we piss away so many billions of dollars on the "war on drugs" and all the prisons and cops and ruined lives that entails; and when we piss away trillions of dollars each decade on giveaways to the "defense" industries; and when we piss away all the money that went into ever-bigger SUVs, and soon into whatever shitty 'hybrid' technology's being pushed at the moment... what the fuck makes you think an extra few billion a year will actually get spent "correctly"?

If you really want us to wait until Earth-bound society is "fixed" before going out into space we might as well hit the button right now and hope there's enough resources left for the next species to have a crack at doing things right.

[eion]

I still can't figure out for the life of me why any of this shit really matters. All this colony shit is a pipe-dream; it's money better spent on making our planet less shitty.

NASA 2010 Budget = 18.72 Billion Dollars
US Military 2010 Budget = 685.1 Billion Dollars

Again, the total cost of NASA to the American tax payer is about 60 bucks per taxpayer per year.

In short, shut-up, you have no clue what you're talking about.

Furthermore, is it even possible to create self-suffient colonies in space or on other planets? I don't mean "technically" possible or "possible with five hundred years of terraforming" possible, either. We can't create truly self-suffient bases at the south pole for fucks sakes, but of course we can do it in space, which is only fifty kabillion times more inhospitable. It just costs too much to get up there and move around; too much money, too much time, and too much risk to throw a bunch of people around in tin foil capsules. How are we even supposed to pull off these multigenerational basebuilding and terraforming projects when we can't even agree on a space budget for more than a decade?

Nice quantifying there, didn't know they had settled on the kabillion as a unit of measure. We went to the Moon, and stayed there for days at a time, carrying everything we needed with us both ways. Using ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) you only have to carry enough fuel, supplies, etc. to get you to Mars (or the Moon even), and then you can make everything you need, with perhaps the exception of food for short stays, there, including all the fuel, air and such you'll need for your return trip. Repeat this a couple dozen times and whamo you have a small fort of hab units sitting at a landing site, making enough fuel, food, air, and such to sustain a small population of researchers and prospectors.

20 years or so down the line you build up enough infrastructure to manufacture green-house gases on an industrial scale, pump them into the atmosphere, and when they raise the global mean temperature by ten degrees, the CO2 ejaculates out of the soil and you have yourself liquid water in the equatorial regions and enough atmospheric pressure to forgo pressure suits. All that in 100 years if you do nothing else to raise the temperature or add atmosphere. It aint rocket science.

Again, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and it's idiots like you who cause the yo-yoing of the space budget in the first place.

[Sarevok]

Eion you are dumb as a rock. Care to cite costs for your one shot glory trip to Mars ? Here is a hint. Mars is worst of the inner planets to explore. There is too little sunlight for solar panels so you carry fucking huge ones or a damn nuke reactor. The atmosphere is thick enough to stop pure rocket landing but too thin for parachuting heavy landers. The gravity is weak enough to cause health problems but too strong to overcome easily.

Mars is the fucking Antartica of the solar systen. Hard to reach, hard to live in and hard to get out off.

[Commander 598]

Mars is the fucking Antartica of the solar systen. Hard to reach, hard to live in and hard to get out off.

And don't forget the part where it's probably not good for anything but some science outposts.

[eion]

Eion you are dumb as a rock. Care to cite costs for your one shot glory trip to Mars ?

Who the fuck said anything about a one shot glory trip? A reference for a cost-effective, scalable, and potentially continuous, Mars mission would be Dr. Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct proposal which comes in at about $55 Billion (1996 Dollars) paid over ten years for I believe 4 complete missions using all currently available technology. NASA thought it was good enough to base all their current Mars (and hell even Moon) missions on.

Here is a hint. Mars is worst of the inner planets to explore.

Mars is the worst of the inner planets for manned exploration? You really just said that? Let's go from the hub to the spoke on that one:

Mercury: All the problems of the Moon, and we don't even know what the fuck they have in the way of resources, plus you're stuck at the bottom of a huge gravity well that takes YEARS to get into or out off.

Venus: potential for atmospheric exploration using balloon cities, but an average surface temperature of 460 °C and an atmospheric pressure of 9.3 MPa means nobody is going to the surface until we terraform the bitch, deep gravity well.

Earth's Moon: No abundant Hydrogen, NO atmosphere, No abundant carbon, slow rotation, takes too much energy to reach/escape.

There is too little sunlight for solar panels so you carry fucking huge ones or a damn nuke reactor.

Or you could use geothermal power once a source is located, and what's wrong with nukes in space exactly? RTGs work just fine on all our outer-planet explorers. Just build a reactor with an extension cord, have a robot grab it out of the Earth Return Vehicle, drive it out to a deep enough crater, and tell everybody to stay a ways back. Problem solved, plenty of power.

The atmosphere is thick enough to stop pure rocket landing but too thin for parachuting heavy landers.

Aerobrake, Parachute, retro-rocket. Lather, rinse, repeat. And the lander only has to be heavy if you plan to bring everything you need with you.

The gravity is weak enough to cause health problems but too strong to overcome easily.

They'll be getting plenty of exercise running around doing science shit, and you can spin the capsule on the way there and back if you're really going to be worried about them. As for the long-term colonists, if they don't plan to ever come back to Earth, why should they care if they can no longer support themselves in Earth's gravity?

Mars is the fucking Antartica of the solar systen. Hard to reach, hard to live in and hard to get out off.

And yet we not only went to Antarctica, we're still going to Antarctica because it keeps teaching us new things. I think some guy with a weird accent had something to say about doing things because they are hard.

If not Mars, where? If not now, when?

[eion]

Mars is the fucking Antartica of the solar systen. Hard to reach, hard to live in and hard to get out off.

And don't forget the part where it's probably not good for anything but some science outposts.

I don't grant your premise, but what the fuck is wrong with Mars if all it is good for is science? I could name half a dozen scientific disciplines whose members would cut out their genitals with a spoon for the chance to work at some "science outpost" on Mars

-Geology
-Biology
-Climatology
-Hydrology
-Metallurgy
-Psychology
-Botany

When you think of Mars, think of Virginia circa 1600. We know there is wealth to be made there, we just maybe don't know exactly how.

[PeZook]

This may sound retarded, but...

What is all the business of "man rated" versus not in terms of a lift vehicle? All the stuff I can find seems to be talking exclusively about things people are intending to stay in for quite some time, not launching something from the ground.

Does it have to do with acceleration; IE, you can put cargo through harder accelerations than you can safely put humans through? Or is it something more nebulous?

It's actually a lot more complicated than what Shep said ; See here

A man-rated vehicle is much different than an unmanned one not just in reliability, but also things like control systems, launch escape systems, allowed spacecraft configurations, etc.

It's often more cost-effective to design a man-rated rocket from scratch than modify an existing one, though that depends on the rocket, of course.

[Serafina]

Well, the potential payoffs of space colonization are gigantic.

Not so much actually settling mars or luna - but rather space habitats.
Why?
Well, simply because that would allow us our population by orders of magnitude. Strip-mining a single large asteroid would give us many times the usable surface area than the surface area of earth. Furthermore, space habitats really aren't that much more complicated than settling mars - you still need to live in a closed enviorment etc.

But before we can do that, we have to travel to mars eventually. It's the perfect testing ground.

And while the money spent on NASA could be transfered to other uses, the specialists could't - a rocket scientist is not much use in agriculture.

[MKSheppard]

The Obamination Speaks at KSC today

What's that guys? It's time for a Horsemanization! I shall horsemanize this speech in GREEN. MY FAVORITEST COLOR!

In the interest of sanity, I'll skip large parts of the speech; which opens with a history lesson of manned spaceflight, and the usual politicanese.

<SNIPPOO>

So let me start by being extremely clear: I am 100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future. (Applause.)

So committed, that you're forcing us to start all over from square zero, and throwing away the last six years of development time and R&D money.

....


All that has to change. And with the strategy I’m outlining today, it will. We start by increasing NASA’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years, even -- (applause) -- I want people to understand the context of this. This is happening even as we have instituted a freeze on discretionary spending and sought to make cuts elsewhere in the budget.

So NASA, from the start, several months ago when I issued my budget, was one of the areas where we didn’t just maintain a freeze but we actually increased funding by $6 billion.

Of that, $2.5 billion goes to simply terminating Constellation and closing out the program via contractor payments; $1.8 billion goes to Climate Science funding, and $2 billion goes to the ISS; leaving virtually nothing for actual development of things that go places with people in them. LINK

By doing that we will ramp up robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the Sun’s atmosphere;

You mean Solar Probe, which was approved and begun in the last year of George W. Bush's presidency?

new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations

You mean like the Mars Science Laboratory, a one ton nuclear powered rover that was approved for development in 2006, under George W. Bush's administration?

and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble, allowing us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before.

You mean like the James E Webb Space Telescope? Development of it began in 1996 under the Clinton Administration.

We will increase Earth-based observation to improve our understanding of our climate and our world -- science that will garner tangible benefits, helping us to protect our environment for future generations.

There are so many NASA programs for earth observation that began earlier under Clinton and Bush II which are just starting to be launched or reach the final phases of development; that I don't know where to start

And we will extend the life of the International Space Station likely by more than five years, while actually using it for its intended purpose: conducting advanced research that can help improve the daily lives of people here on Earth, as well as testing and improving upon our capabilities in space.

That's nice. You do realize that the ISS alone takes up a third of your so-called budget increase for NASA?

This includes technologies like more efficient life support systems that will help reduce the cost of future missions. And in order to reach the space station, we will work with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable. (Applause.)

You mean the NASA COTS program that effectively was begun and signed contracts with private companies under George W. Bush's administration?

Now, I recognize that some have said it is unfeasible or unwise to work with the private sector in this way. I disagree.

Oh, look, his patented strawman! I was wondering when you'd show up! *pets strawman*

(snip random talk about how private companies built space hardware for NASA)

By buying the services of space transportation -- rather than the vehicles themselves -- we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met.

Yes, because SpaceX is such a high quality top tier organization. The best they can do is cheap lift of a couple tons into LEO, for an acceptable level of launch failures. Manrated stuff is beyond them.

In addition, as part of this effort, we will build on the good work already done on the Orion crew capsule. I’ve directed Charlie Bolden to immediately begin developing a rescue vehicle using this technology, so we are not forced to rely on foreign providers if it becomes necessary to quickly bring our people home from the International Space Station. And this Orion effort will be part of the technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions. In fact, Orion will be readied for flight right here in this room. (Applause.)

So you're turning an advanced manned spacecraft that would have flown to the moon and to near earth asteroids into a glorified rescue capsule. How the hell are you going to carry out your grand plans without something more advanced than a lifeboat?

Next, we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced “heavy lift rocket” -- a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems, and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.

What new technologies are required for a heavy launch vehicle? ABSOLUTELY NONE. It is just a matter of national will to commit to the cost of designing and developing systems on a massive scale. You're just kicking the can down to avoid making a hard decision NOW.

And I want everybody to understand: That’s at least two years earlier than previously planned -- and that’s conservative, given that the previous program was behind schedule and over budget.

So in your brilliant wisdom, you are delaying the program and increasing the amount of time that the United States will not have a man-rated vehicle from five years to a decade or more. And newsflash, it was no surprise Orion/Constellation was over budget and behind schedule -- it was actually being built. Other projects are behind budget and ahead of schedule because they aren't being built, other than paper studies.

At the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment -- right away -- in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster for less cost, and to live and work in space for longer periods of time more safely. That means tackling major scientific and technological challenges. How do we shield astronauts from radiation on longer missions? How do we harness resources on distant worlds? How do we supply spacecraft with energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These are questions that we can answer and will answer. And these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on Earth.

We answered all those questions 40 years ago with Apollo Applications, and then updated the questions 20 years ago when NASA began preliminary planning to support George H.W. Bush's Mars initative. You just want to delay the program so it's not your problem anymore.

So the point is what we’re looking for is not just to continue on the same path -- we want to leap into the future; we want major breakthroughs; a transformative agenda for NASA. (Applause.)

Now, yes, pursuing this new strategy will require that we revise the old strategy. In part, this is because the old strategy -- including the Constellation program -- was not fulfilling its promise in many ways. That’s not just my assessment; that’s also the assessment of a panel of respected non-partisan experts charged with looking at these issues closely. Now, despite this, some have had harsh words for the decisions we’ve made, including some individuals who I’ve got enormous respect and admiration for.

But what I hope is, is that everybody will take a look at what we are planning, consider the details of what we’ve laid out, and see the merits as I’ve described them. The bottom line is nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am. (Applause.) But we’ve got to do it in a smart way, and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things that we’ve been doing and thinking that somehow is going to get us to where we want to go.

Some have said, for instance, that this plan gives up our leadership in space by failing to produce plans within NASA to reach low Earth orbit, instead of relying on companies and other countries. But we will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan, in ways that will help us improve our technological capacity and lower our costs, which are both essential for the long-term sustainability of space flight. In fact, through our plan, we’ll be sending many more astronauts to space over the next decade. (Applause.)

On what? Russian Launch Vehicles under contract? You just cancelled a man-rated launch system that would have flown in five years for....nothing. And if you seriously believe that SpaceX can man-rate Falcon 9, you're insane.

There are also those who criticized our decision to end parts of Constellation as one that will hinder space exploration below [sic] low Earth orbit. But it’s precisely by investing in groundbreaking research and innovative companies that we will have the potential to rapidly transform our capabilities -- even as we build on the important work already completed, through projects like Orion, for future missions. And unlike the previous program, we are setting a course with specific and achievable milestones.

In the immortal words of a recent congressman: YOU LIE!

Bush's Speech Announcing Constellation

• Finish the ISS by 2010. (last shuttle mission this year will finish it out basically)
• Fly Manned Orion by 2014. (slipped by now to about 2015~)
• Return to the Moon by 2015-20 (You can achieve a 2015 return if you do a repeat of Apollo 8; and the best a manned landing can be made is 2019; which is the first manned flight of the Altair lander is under current schedules).

Later, NASA announced that in 2020 a Mars mission would be reviewed; with a tentative eye towards a 2030+ date.[/b][/color]

Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. (Applause.)

As opposed to Constellation, which would have this occur this decade.

And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space.

Under Constellation, we'd have those spacecraft by 2015-2018~; as it would be a simple matter of converting the Earth Departure Stage of Constellation into a wet workshop living space for astronauts on these long duration missions -- just like the proposed Apollo Applications manned flyby of Venus using a Block III Apollo CSM and a wetworkshop S-IVB.

So we’ll start -- we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.

Once again, this was also proposed during Apollo Applications and for Constellation Applications; so what are you proposing, other than a decade-long delay as we're forced to ground zero and starting all over?

(Applause.) By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it. (Applause.)

You won't be landing on Mars without a heavy lift vehicle, which you cancelled in favor of a nebulous design which won't even have it's design picked until five years from now.

But I want to repeat -- I want to repeat this: Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies. So I’m challenging NASA to break through these barriers. And we’ll give you the resources to break through these barriers. And I know you will, with ingenuity and intensity, because that’s what you’ve always done. (Applause.)

Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach -- and operate at -- a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does. And that’s how we will ensure that our leadership in space is even stronger in this new century than it was in the last. (Applause.)

You know, George W. Bush was smarter than you when he announced Constellation six years ago:

"Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement."

.

.

Aw to hell with it, I'm tired of further fisking.

[MKSheppard]

I've had some more time to think -- and I realized it.

He's throwing up all these grand visions to divert anger away from his plan to kill off manned spaceflight in the United States.

Key points:

1.) This speech could have been lifted from the Constellation planning documents of the last couple years, except with a 10+ year delay tacked onto everything, and major system components such as the Ares family terminated, the Orion spacecraft of which so much money has been spent on, reduced to a glorified lifeboat. He talks about replacements, but is incredibly vague about them.

2.) He talks grand visions of new manned spacecraft, but offers no money to fund their development -- all the money in his so called budget increases is not going towards the part of NASA that builds and develops manned spacecraft.

3.) He talks about grand visions of new heavy launchers, but offers no real monetary increase to fund their development -- and this is the kicker, he says a decision on the heavy launcher will be made...by 2015. Considering he's up for election in 2012; this is a 'kick the can down the road, it's not my problem no more' decision of such gargantugan scope I haven't seen in a while, if ever.

[Cecelia5578]

this is a 'kick the can down the road, it's not my problem no more' decision of such gargantugan scope I haven't seen in a while, if ever.

Well, if the last couple of days of the left blogosphere are any indication, he's not facing any significant blow back from rank and file Dems on this one. I think its partly a "screw the Republicans-if they are for it it can't be good" sort of thing, combined with a certain type of luddism with regards to science and engineering that is sadly prevalent among some parts of the American left.

But hey, if the privatization of space wets your panties, then you gotta be thrilled at this.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I increasingly am thinking that politicians are nothing but Official Spokespeople for their handlers and backers, with the lion's share of the the center of gravity firmly behind the guys behind the curtain. People like Reagan and Obama get elected for who they seem to be, but have no idea what they are doing or have much in the way of substantive independence.

In any case, the "left" should have five things made clear to it:

1.) The termination of civilian manned spaceflight through NASA is unlikely to be resumed later except at enormous cost (as is expect in any large industrial "fresh start"), and probably given through private contractors, likely enormous graft and not tailored to national and public needs, if it is indeed much more than a pipedream.

Bottom line: support Obama if you want U.S. manned spaceflight to be expensive, not tailored to public purposes, with expensive corporate logos, if at all.

2.) The corporate-welfare component of NASA spending is not at all curtailed in this scenario, but rather expanded and directed with much less public gain for its cost. Companies without proven capabilities, at best, will be larded with well-meaning but open-ended and hopeful contracts. Rather than tight-fisted, responsible, and realistic ones. And what we will get will be whatever the Holy Market decides is in the interest of the hoarders of private wealth to provide, not whatever is in the democratic interest or desire.

Bottom line: support this if you'd like, but you're a fool if you think it amounts to less corporate giveaway.

3.) The cessation of manned civilian spaceflight means heavy spaceflight in general and probably eventually manned spaceflight will be dominated largely or even entirely by the military-industrial complex, for defense purposes with corresponding reductions in democratic responsiveness, corporate-welfare-to-public-gains ratios, and providing alternatives to the militarization of space.

Bottom line: support this if you want the next American astronaut to wear a USAF pressure suit and be piloting a USAF spaceplane eventually loaded with weapons.

4.) Florida is a demographic swing state and vulnerable to recent political events. The old white population, which is heavily overrepresented for obvious reasons among the retiree community, is vulnerable to right-wing propaganda and agitation of the Tea Party/anti-health care/American heritage variety. The space program produces the only major tech industry in Florida, and its manned cessation will result in an exodus of jobs. Taken together, this makes the Constellation termination extremely dangerous for not only Barack Obama's political fortunes, but those of the Democrats in general.

Bottom line: support this if you'd like Democrats to lose in Florida in 2010, and if you'd like to risk a GOP victory in 2012.

5.) Lastly, left-wing politics draw their moral force from humanistic progressivism; the idea that the human condition has moral value, and that it should be improved, expanded, and protected. In the long run, it is impossible to avoid the reality that the human species will not be able to survive, much less at the expense of the environment, without developing space as another complete sphere of human civilization: commerce, living, development, expansion. The environmental movement draws it moral force from attempting to not make our future generations be coerced into supporting our baleful or irresponsible decisions. Therefore, the eventual goal of general human space development and colonization must be supported if one is consistent. And manned, civilian spaceflight is intrinsically a step forward to that goal.

Bottom line: if you believe in the moral power behind left-wing politics, then you must support Orion or you are a hypocrite.

[Samuel]

this is a 'kick the can down the road, it's not my problem no more' decision of such gargantugan scope I haven't seen in a while, if ever.

Well, if the last couple of days of the left blogosphere are any indication, he's not facing any significant blow back from rank and file Dems on this one. I think its partly a "screw the Republicans-if they are for it it can't be good" sort of thing, combined with a certain type of luddism with regards to science and engineering that is sadly prevalent among some parts of the American left.

But hey, if the privatization of space wets your panties, then you gotta be thrilled at this.

Can you give links to some of the more prominant idiocy?

[Cecelia5578]

Here's one example of a thread in which I think I may have been the only person to speak out

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/04/15 ... spin-this/


Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/ ... n-For-NASA

[DudeGuyMan]

I know I'm opening myself up to space fanboy flames, but I really couldn't give a fuck less about this, or who gets to be the first one to reach Mars and go "This cost a trillion dollars and there's nothing here, but yay us!"

[Gil Hamilton]

"Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement."

The problem is, Shep, that he's mistaken in this statement. The Moon might have abundant resources, but the problem is that getting them is a pain in the ass. The moon has lots of useful metals (Fe, Mg, Ti, et cetera), but it is severely lacking in volatiles. Of the breakfast of champions elements (H C N O P S), virtually all of the first three is delived by solar wind in scant amounts, oxygen must be baked out of the soil (doable), and good luck with finding phosphates and sulfates. You'll end up having to scrape hundreds of square kilometers of lunar soil to get volatiles you need to support a base and you can't eat the stuff raw, it must be rather radically processed before it can be used to feed workers. That's why any lunar base MUST be supported from Earth.

Yes, you gain alot from using the Moon as a construction zone, but you lose most of that advantage since much material and support to support a major industrial site must be shipped from Earth, since the Moon can never be self-sufficient for a large number of people. This defeats the purpose, since while your rocket doesn't have to leave the Earth's gravity well as it's mostly out of it, the sheer amount of material needed to support thousands of workers does. You might as well just do the construction in orbit and have your industry there, rather than try to establish the Moon as an industrial base. At least a Martian colony can be made alot more self-supporting than the Moon.

[The Romulan Republic]

3.) He talks about grand visions of new heavy launchers, but offers no real monetary increase to fund their development -- and this is the kicker, he says a decision on the heavy launcher will be made...by 2015. Considering he's up for election in 2012; this is a 'kick the can down the road, it's not my problem no more' decision of such gargantugan scope I haven't seen in a while, if ever.

I think Obama plans on still being President in 2015. Second terms and so on...

[ThomasP]

The more I've read on the cancellation of Constellation, the more conflicted I feel about it. I see positives from both sides of the issue, most of which have been covered.

I do understand that the US needs a heavy-lift capacity and an orbital infrastructure in order to really go anywhere else, and Constellation would provide at least the beginnings of that framework; I'm just not sold on the notion that it would ultimately be used for that purpose, versus simply being a political tool to drum up short-term support.

If NASA were to start talking realistic plans to do something beyond LEO (and I don't mean vaguely saying "we'd like to go to Mars"), I'd feel a lot better about supporting Constellation as a stepping stone. In the meantime, while NASA's focusing on an Apollo do-over, we've got private companies on the verge of nuclear powered VASIMR rockets. I think I'd feel better about the whole thing if there were some kind of real long-term roadmap, something showing real intent to move out of orbit on a permanent basis, instead of being subject to the next guy's budget cuts.

As long as the whole thing is subject to political whim, I have the strong feeling that this cycle is just going to keep repeating itself. Or the public (manned) program is just going to go away.

[The Romulan Republic]

I increasingly am thinking that politicians are nothing but Official Spokespeople for their handlers and backers, with the lion's share of the the center of gravity firmly behind the guys behind the curtain. People like Reagan and Obama get elected for who they seem to be, but have no idea what they are doing or have much in the way of substantive independence.

I disagree, in this case at least. Maybe I'm a poor judge of character, but I do believe he is sincere in his support for the space program. His actual stated goals (including an NEO mission followed by going to Mars) aren't bad. But (as he was criticized for during the Health Care debate), Obama is too cautious. I think what we're seeing is par for the course with Obama: a smart and visionary man who lacks the daring to go as far as he might.

That said, as again is usually the case, Bush's plan was probably worse. It was an expensive, bloated piece of idiocy which put returning to the Moon ahead of going to Mars or NEOs.

In any case, the "left" should have five things made clear to it:

1.) The termination of civilian manned spaceflight through NASA is unlikely to be resumed later except at enormous cost (as is expect in any large industrial "fresh start"), and probably given through private contractors, likely enormous graft and not tailored to national and public needs, if it is indeed much more than a pipedream.

Bottom line: support Obama if you want U.S. manned spaceflight to be expensive, not tailored to public purposes, with expensive corporate logos, if at all.

Agreed that Obama is apparently basically privatizing the manned space program. However, while I'm not exactly thrilled, I'm not sure this will be as crippling a blow as you seem to think. See below.

2.) The corporate-welfare component of NASA spending is not at all curtailed in this scenario, but rather expanded and directed with much less public gain for its cost. Companies without proven capabilities, at best, will be larded with well-meaning but open-ended and hopeful contracts. Rather than tight-fisted, responsible, and realistic ones. And what we will get will be whatever the Holy Market decides is in the interest of the hoarders of private wealth to provide, not whatever is in the democratic interest or desire.

Bottom line: support this if you'd like, but you're a fool if you think it amounts to less corporate giveaway.

Normally I'm not a free-market worshiper, but I have to admit, private business has made some advances in space flight recently that, in my opinion, put NASA to shame. See: the X-Prize and Spaceship One:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne

3.) The cessation of manned civilian spaceflight means heavy spaceflight in general and probably eventually manned spaceflight will be dominated largely or even entirely by the military-industrial complex, for defense purposes with corresponding reductions in democratic responsiveness, corporate-welfare-to-public-gains ratios, and providing alternatives to the militarization of space.

Bottom line: support this if you want the next American astronaut to wear a USAF pressure suit and be piloting a USAF spaceplane eventually loaded with weapons.

I'll concede this may be a legitimate concern.

4.) Florida is a demographic swing state and vulnerable to recent political events. The old white population, which is heavily overrepresented for obvious reasons among the retiree community, is vulnerable to right-wing propaganda and agitation of the Tea Party/anti-health care/American heritage variety. The space program produces the only major tech industry in Florida, and its manned cessation will result in an exodus of jobs. Taken together, this makes the Constellation termination extremely dangerous for not only Barack Obama's political fortunes, but those of the Democrats in general.

Bottom line: support this if you'd like Democrats to lose in Florida in 2010, and if you'd like to risk a GOP victory in 2012.

Are there really enough people employed by the space program to swing the election unless its absurdly close to begin with?

The problem is most people don't give jack shit about the space program. If anything, spending money on NASA during a
Recession and anti-big government climate is what will cost him votes.

Never mind that Obama claimed in his speech that his plan will create jobs. And that you have not bothered to present any evidence to the contrary as of yet.

5.) Lastly, left-wing politics draw their moral force from humanistic progressivism; the idea that the human condition has moral value, and that it should be improved, expanded, and protected. In the long run, it is impossible to avoid the reality that the human species will not be able to survive, much less at the expense of the environment, without developing space as another complete sphere of human civilization: commerce, living, development, expansion. The environmental movement draws it moral force from attempting to not make our future generations be coerced into supporting our baleful or irresponsible decisions. Therefore, the eventual goal of general human space development and colonization must be supported if one is consistent. And manned, civilian spaceflight is intrinsically a step forward to that goal.

Bottom line: if you believe in the moral power behind left-wing politics, then you must support Orion or you are a hypocrite.

You actually make a decent point there.

[Samuel]

Normally I'm not a free-market worshiper, but I have to admit, private business has made some advances in space flight recently that, in my opinion, put NASA to shame. See: the X-Prize and Spaceship One:

They got 60 miles up. You need to get hundreds before you actually can do anything useful. It really isn't that impressive.

Also, reducing NASA funding isn't needed to encourage private business in space. You could subsidize their projects just as easily with NASA at full strength.

Never mind that Obama claimed in his speech that his plan will create jobs. And that you have not bothered to present any evidence to the contrary as of yet.

Canceling a program reduces the number of jobs available.

[eion]

Normally I'm not a free-market worshiper, but I have to admit, private business has made some advances in space flight recently that, in my opinion, put NASA to shame. See: the X-Prize and Spaceship One:

They got 60 miles up. You need to get hundreds before you actually can do anything useful. It really isn't that impressive.

And when was the last time you went 60 miles up? Baby-steps Samuel. Freedom 7 only got 116 miles up, and in less than a decade we were landing men on the moon.

If rich idiots tourists going up in SpaceShipOne help fund a private rocketplane that can go anywhere in the world in less than an hour, I'd call that a success for private industry. You don't have to go orbital to make money off of space.

[The Romulan Republic]

They got 60 miles up. You need to get hundreds before you actually can do anything useful. It really isn't that impressive.

Yes, but they did it for 25 million dollars. What they could do with a larger budget...

Also, reducing NASA funding isn't needed to encourage private business in space. You could subsidize their projects just as easily with NASA at full strength.

True.

Canceling a program reduces the number of jobs available.

Unless you simultaneously create new programs, of course.

[eion]

They got 60 miles up. You need to get hundreds before you actually can do anything useful. It really isn't that impressive.

Yes, but they did it for 25 million dollars. What they could do with a larger budget...

For a claimed 100 million dollars (or one-sixth of what is costs to launch the space shuttle) you can have this little beauty: The Black Colt