Gingrich promises moon base

[Patroklos]

Not that I believe one second that any of those predictions will come true regardless of who is president, he has an unintentional point.

Our current space vehicle initiatives are gold plated, filled with all sort of capabilities and missions that are not useless are also tangential cause a diffusion of efforts and support.

If they can build a simple taxi to the moon and back in the 1960s with a slide rule, we should be able to do the same with a few more capabilities in the 2010’s with all the tools at our disposal. Material science alone makes it dramatically easier.

So I disagree with Newt. It’s not about opening expanding the scope of our projects, its about narrowing them. The goals can remain lofty.

BTW, this is a problem military vehicle development suffers from as will, if not more so.

[PeZook]

If they can build a simple taxi to the moon and back in the 1960s with a slide rule, we should be able to do the same with a few more capabilities in the 2010’s with all the tools at our disposal. Material science alone makes it dramatically easier.

Seriously? Orion's capabilities are gold plating and useless to the mission of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon? How?

[dragon]

We couldn't do it by the end of his second term. If Constellation had continued through the Obama administration, and if a hypothetical Gingrich administration weren't planning to take a giant chainsaw to the federal budget, it would be at least remotely possible. But since it didn't, and they would, he is just "promising us the moon," in the old sense of the phrase.

Well we could if we were willing to throw resources at it. Especially since our space infastructure is alot more than it was when we started the moon orginal moon rush. We could lower the cost if it was a joint mission. We know Japan is out of action for the time building as they have more import things to do plus one of the spaceports the Kakuda was heavily damaged and closed.

The Kakuda Space Center, located in the Miyagi region close to the most serious damage, is JAXA’s rocket development and testing center and is Japan’s equivalent of the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

A JAXA public affairs representative at their Chofu Tokyo headquarters, contacted by phone this morning, said there is currently no timetable for Kakuda’s reopening.

link


So Japan's wouldn't be able to help out much. The EU has not said anything about manned missions to the moon despite having the tech they could work with us building the base. However since we don't want to bankrupt the US more than it is we need a cheaper solution. Look how much it cost for the moon landings adjusted for today.

The issue is not money. The issue is leadership. NASA's average Apollo-era (1961-73) budget, adjusted for inflation, was about $19 billion a year in today's dollars, just 5 percent more than the agency's current budget. Yet the NASA of the '60s accomplished 100 times more because it had a mission with a deadline and was forced to develop an efficient plan to achieve that mission

[url=ttp://www.marssociety.org/home/press/tms-in-t ... ntheblock/]link[/url]

So they went from very little space infastructre to a designing, building rockets and landing on the moon in 8 years. Theres 27 launch sites around the world, we have a space station, we have private comapanies designing and building their own rockets.

Wired Science News for Your Neurons SpaceX Launch Successfully Delivers Satellite Into Orbit
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SpaceX launched a Malaysian satellite into orbit late Monday night, the second successful launch for the private space exploration company, which aims to cut the cost of orbital transport tenfold

link

[PeZook]

NASA's budget during the space also paid exclusively for development of the necessary infrastructure and hardware and experience. NASA has far more stuff to fund now, from mainitaining the extensive facilities, through running a truly massive amount of robotic missions, maintaining the ISS plus development of next-generation space hardware.

And yes, a clear goal would come in handy, because every administration keeps changing it. But Constellation was to take twice as long as Apollo even when it did have a clear goal, and that was purely a problem with money.

EDIT: Plus, of course, 19 billion is the average budget, but when they temporarily needed more money (say, in order to pay for the Saturn Vs and their production run), they could easily get it. In 1966, for example, the budget totalled 32 billion in 2007 dollars. Which,by the way, was 4.5% of the federal budget. Clearly, the level of financial commitment is insignificant now compared to Apollo, despite the fact NASA has a lot more on their plate today.

EDIT 2:

So they went from very little space infastructre to a designing, building rockets and landing on the moon in 8 years. Theres 27 launch sites around the world, we have a space station, we have private comapanies designing and building their own rockets.

Out of these 27 launch sites, only a grand total of three are capable of handling heavy lifters, and one is in such disrepair that it would be more economical just to build a new one. The two remaining ones are both located at the KSC.

[Simon_Jester]

I think he's just posturing- and ignoring that Apollo itself was meant (hoped, anyway) to be the first of a series of developments- Skylab, two-week stays, and so on.

Orion and Constellation were meant to pick up where Apollo left off, not to just mindlessly clone Apollo and plant a few more flags on the Moon.

We couldn't do it by the end of his second term. If Constellation had continued through the Obama administration, and if a hypothetical Gingrich administration weren't planning to take a giant chainsaw to the federal budget, it would be at least remotely possible. But since it didn't, and they would, he is just "promising us the moon," in the old sense of the phrase.

Well we could if we were willing to throw resources at it. Especially since our space infastructure is alot more than it was when we started the moon orginal moon rush. We could lower the cost if it was a joint mission. We know Japan is out of action for the time building as they have more import things to do plus one of the spaceports the Kakuda was heavily damaged and closed.

No, because we don't have a rocket design, or a capsule design, or designs for lunar base modules- those projects were terminated under Obama.

Design work on Apollo was already underway in 1961, by comparison. It wasn't that far along, but it was underway.

If Gingrich were willing to raise taxes (hah!) to keep the government afloat, and spend 150-200 billion dollars over an eight year period, we could be close to a moon base by the time he left office. But you can only force the learning curve so far by throwing money at it.

The issue is not money. The issue is leadership. NASA's average Apollo-era (1961-73) budget, adjusted for inflation, was about $19 billion a year in today's dollars, just 5 percent more than the agency's current budget. Yet the NASA of the '60s accomplished 100 times more because it had a mission with a deadline and was forced to develop an efficient plan to achieve that mission

[url=ttp://www.marssociety.org/home/press/tms-in-t ... ntheblock/]link[/url]

As PeZook notes, NASA did practically nothing but the Apollo program during the 1960s. Planetary science probes, satellite comm networks, so much of that had to wait until the 1970s because the budget and science teams weren't there to do it during the '60s.

[dragon]

Well lets see. At the start of the race we had no heavy lift rockets either. They had to design and build the rocket with a close deadline. We more about rockets mow adays, we have more research labs devoted to space, we have large pool of available asrtonauts. Several companies including NASA are already working on heavy lift vehicles, since they have time crunch they are taking their time.
And you actually don't need heavy lift. You need to get it leo in parts and assemble there. Granted that a bit clumbersome but is something we will have to eventual if we want deep space vehicle because they can't be made on earth if to large.

Oh and don't forget the Falcon Heavy. While it's not as strong as the Saturn series it still has enormous potential. Especially since it's a civilian designed and owned rocket.

[MKSheppard]

We couldn't do it by the end of his second term.

Bullshit.

From 4 October 1957 to 12 April 1961, it was only 3.5 years; despite us not knowing a lot of things, like would prolonged zero gravity experience kill astronauts or drive them insane?

From there, it was only 8.2 years from Vostok 1 to Armstrong and Aldrin stepping out onto the lunar surface.

Yes, we can return to the moon, and begin assembling our MARS MISSION in orbit in about six years; because you know, we still have all that BIG GUBMINT infrastructure left over from the Space Race, like tracking ships, engine test stands; the Vehicle Assembly Building, LC39, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep, I suppose I took it too far.

It's at least remotely possible that say we could have a moon base by the end of someone's second term, given a day-one commitment to start the program, the enthusiastic support of Congress, and popular support for plunking down ten-figure budgets every year.

But I maintain that Gingrich is a goddamn liar if he says we could do it by the end of Newt Gingrich's second term. Because the sheer chaos he'll create in the federal budget makes it totally unbelievable that there'd be enough money to keep funding the Something Program to build a moon base.

We could maybe do it under Zombie Eisenhower (if he cared), or Zombie Kennedy, or Zombie Johnson.

But we couldn't do it under Newt Gingrich.

[MKSheppard]

politicians' demands that it use 40-year-old Saturn V engines or other questionable technology, etc...

You're a idiot.

The entire reason our program is such a mess is that politicans keep demanding we use "proven" shuttle technology like the SSME and SRBs; both of which conspire to enormously inflate costs.

Let's take only the most advanced cryogenic engine ever made, with a lifetime of around 50~ flights, and then throw it away after each flight.

Also, because the SSME can only produce 390 klbf of thrust at sea level at an ISP of around 364 seconds and uses cryogenics as a propellant....

It totally necessitates a very large, heavy, and expensive core stage to hold all the cryogenic propellant; and also makes some sort of strap on booster necessary to get the thrust to weight ratio required for liftoff.

So we now need a pair of ATK SRBs, which produce the remaining 5.6 mlbf of force needed for liftoff; and because they're solid rocket boosters; they impose enormous infrastructural costs.

For one, whole areas of the VAB are now unuseable as office/test space, because the SRBs themselves are considered explosives.

Originally, when they thought about SRBing up the Saturn V, the SRBs would have been assembled and mated to the Saturn V stack at a special Solid Booster Building about halfway from the VAB and LC39. This was never built.

Secondly, because they're solid rockets, they have to be 'loaded' all the time; and so this means very expensive crawler and crawlerway upgrades; because a pair of 4 segment RSRMs weigh 1,180 tonnes -- if we go to five segment RSRMs, that weight goes up to 1,500~ tonnes.

To put this mass in contrast, Apollo 17's dry mass (the entire assembled stack too), was only 230~ tonnes; because it had the other 2,732 tonnes of fuel loaded when it was safe and secure on the pad at LC39.

[MKSheppard]

If you want your moon base to be a net boon to humanity, you need to wait until we've got the technology to do it better.

Incorrect. We already have the technology. It's orbiting overhead, and called the ISS. Simply repurpose the modules as moon base modules and shove dirt over them, like North American Rockwell proposed in 1972:

Code: Select all

The lunar surface base (LSB) will probably be an adaptation of the space stations
employed earlier in the program. If the space stations previously in use are modular, the
lunar surface base may be modular. An integral design for the space stations may dictate
similar design constraints for the LSB.

[MKSheppard]

Hell, right now, we could go to mars in an 80-100 day trip RIGHT NOW for only 500 to 600 tonnes in orbit, using the power of NUCLEAR THERMAL ROCKETS and using AEROBRAKING to brake at Mars and Earth.

[Simon_Jester]

MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST agrees, but warns Shep that one must be CAREFUL with such things, lest one master the techniques of LITHOBRAKING.

(Sorry, just a joke)

Anyway, yes all this stuff is basically feasible. It would take grim determination to override the customary development cycle to get it done as fast as Shep's talking about- really it is more reasonable to allocate ten years to a moon base, maybe more. We design things slower than we did in the '60s, as a rule.

But it's doable, and not in an unreasonably small amount of time. My contention is just that Gingrich can't, and doesn't seriously intend to, do it.

[PeZook]

I think a MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST is exactly what the US government needs in a position of power right now

[Simon_Jester]

Aw, shucks.

As long as there's no lithobraking involved...

[Skgoa]

They are? Honestly, I thought of Project Orion when it was first mentioned. It wasn't until I wiki-ed "Constellation" that I found that "Orion" was part of that program.

Yeah, I guess it's the same situation we have with "von Neumann machine": in contemporary science the term is used differently from what it means in PopSci/SciFi.

We know what works.

That depends how you define "works". If all you want is a sinkhole into which you can shovel the hard work of thousands of people, sure, we can return to the moon. If you want your moon base to be a net boon to humanity, you need to wait until we've got the technology to do it better.

We can't get the technology if we don't spend the money on R&D and go on missions that push the envelope.

[dragon]

Hell, right now, we could go to mars in an 80-100 day trip RIGHT NOW for only 500 to 600 tonnes in orbit, using the power of NUCLEAR THERMAL ROCKETS and using AEROBRAKING to brake at Mars and Earth.

We cold also send unmanned cargo pods or so to Mars ahead of time. Gives the crew more supplies and resources.
Various experiments conducted by NASA and others showed that it would relatively to create solar panels and rocket fuel out of chemicals obtained from martian atmosphere. As well as a type of adobe brick for construction.

The easiest resource to make propellant from on Mars is the Martian atmosphere, which has the advantage of being available everywhere on Mars (no scouting or mining missions needed!). Another possible resource is the polar ice. In the book, both of these strategies are used.

The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, and composed mostly of carbon dioxide. There are several technologies that have been demonstrated (on Earth only, so far) to start with carbon dioxide and make rocket fuel.

link

So a few simple robots hey got fuel for a return journey.

[MKSheppard]

We cold also send unmanned cargo pods or so to Mars ahead of time. Gives the crew more supplies and resources.

This is something that could be done by other nations, like say Japan or the ESA -- to place in orbit around mars payloads containing food and other useful stuff. It could also be used to test the aerobrake/aerocapture technology ahead of time.

[Lost Soal]

If Gingrich were willing to raise taxes (hah!) to keep the government afloat, and spend 150-200 billion dollars over an eight year period, we could be close to a moon base by the time he left office. But you can only force the learning curve so far by throwing money at it.

He doesn't need to raise taxes or even the NASA budget because he expects 90% of the costs to be funded privately. Didn't you get the memo that government is bad and shouldn't do anything except wage war.
And just to make things even more fun, he expects six or seven launches per day.

[MKSheppard]

If they can build a simple taxi to the moon and back in the 1960s with a slide rule, we should be able to do the same with a few more capabilities in the 2010’s with all the tools at our disposal. Material science alone makes it dramatically easier.

This is what I find so infuriating about present day projects. We have dramatically better modelling capabilities today than we did in the 1960ies or 1970ies, when a lot of big stuff was done.

The average computer sitting on an engineer's desktop is capable of doing some pretty powerful computational analyses, which can then be checked out on a larger cloud network at higher fidelity when that solution is picked for further development.

Likewise, when we test; it's now a lot easier to get masses of data, and then to try and do data reduction on that pile of data than it was back then.

We also have CAD programs which eliminate one of the major stumbling blocks during Apollo -- Grumman was changing things so fast so often with the LEM during development that they actually created a drawing gap; in which people needed drawings of the latest configuration, but there were only so many draftsmen at Grumman who could turn out only so many sheets of blueprints a cycle...

So what the hell has happened lately to make so many huge projects bloat up and die?

[PeZook]

I think it's because, CAD or no CAD, they still require a certain momentum to actually go anywhere: CAD ain't magic, and in order to start doing designs and gathering data etc. you still need a project to actually go beyond the concept/wooden mock-up stage, and that requires funding since CAD is still done by an engineer who wants to get paid.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The thing is, we wouldn't even need that long to design the base and systems. NASA has been designing this stuff for over 40 years, I'm betting the plans and blueprints we need are already on a shelf somewhere in Houston.

[Pelranius]

I wonder if a concrete Chinese plan to set up a moon base by 2025-30 (with bonus Russian participation) would panic Washington into a crash course lunar program? Xenophobia and paranoia do have positive effects, once in a blue moon.

[Simon_Jester]

The thing is, we wouldn't even need that long to design the base and systems. NASA has been designing this stuff for over 40 years, I'm betting the plans and blueprints we need are already on a shelf somewhere in Houston.

Plans, yes, NASA has reams of plans for moon projects.

What they don't have are detail blueprints you could build, say, a next-generation LEM from. Because that takes large teams of highly paid aerospace engineers to put in the man-years to specify every bolt, weld, and electrical connection; you can't get them to do it without paying them, you can't get the budget to pay them easily, and there's usually something better to do than do detail design on things that aren't going to get build in their working lifetime.

[ComradeClaus]

The thing is, we wouldn't even need that long to design the base and systems. NASA has been designing this stuff for over 40 years, I'm betting the plans and blueprints we need are already on a shelf somewhere in Houston.

Exactly!

How well could the OTRAG design be scaled up to be a moon booster?

Or at least something that could lift a part of the lunar mission. Theoretically, one booster to put a command/service module into orbit & another for the lunar decent/ascent module On the one hand, you don't need as powerful a rocket AND by having to build/ launch more, decreases the unit price via mass production. There was a time when cars, refrigerators, TVs & computers were only affordable by the super-rich.

Just look at the R-7 booster series, the "Soyuz-U" in particular:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-U

745 launched w/ 724 successes from 1973 to 2011.

An incredible launch rate for a fairly large rocket.

But then, the Russians were always very productive & driven, even on a shoestring budget.

..."blue moon", heh

[Simon_Jester]

OTRAG? Probably badly- it's heavy with poor specific impulse. For a rocket intended to take payloads to trans-lunar injection, that matters a lot.