NASA's dreams come true (RAR!)

[Zor]

A positive RAR! made to compensate for the fact that a married couple that I consider friends is getting divorced.

Lets say that a plan is announced in 2017 for the US Federal Budget which includes boosting NASA's budget from $19.3 billion to $100 billion. Said $80 billlion is taken off the US military's budget. This gets through congress and similar unmolested before being signed into effect. Along with this budget increase comes objectives...

• Manned spaceflight to the moon
• Establishing a Lunar Scientific Base
• Improving launch vehicle designs
• Research into long term habitation offworld
• Developing orbital manufacturing capacity

Lets say that for the next five years people will be willing to keep funding at this level (adjusting for inflation).

What is the best course of action for NASA to pursue?

Zor

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, first I marvel at Congress suddenly showing a rare sign of brains.

As for direction, I'd say their are three main prongs I'd like the space program to pursue (listed below in rough order of priority):

1. Manned missions to Mars, both to look for life and, long term, to colonize a new world.

2. Exploration of Near Earth Asteroids, with the twin objectives of mining them, and preparing to deflect them if they might hit Earth.

3. Searching for alien life in our Solar System and beyond, starting with Mars, and then moving out to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as continuing the search for signals and Earth-like worlds in other solar systems.

[Skywalker4eva]

Team up with SpaceX and establish a colony on Mars!

[TimothyC]

Five years is not a lot of time to get what you are asking for done. I can get the ball rolling, but I can't get it done in that time frame.

I can break down my proposals by objectives:

Manned spaceflight to the moon

This is probably the easiest to do, and could probably be done in 5 years. I'd pull from a 1993 proposal called Early Lunar Access. While I don't have a shuttle to complete on-orbit assembly of the stacks at the moment, I can get away with ROBOTS for the uncrewed launches. Presume European buy-in and get Ariane Vs as alternate launch vehicles for the transfer stage (probably DCUS not widebody Centaur).

Establishing a Lunar Scientific Base

This will require heavy lift, and development of advanced landers. Masten likely gets a big contract to make XEUS work.

Best way to help with resupply is to simply offer to buy supplies on orbit at a specified price (Say 2000 USD per kilo of Hydrogen delivered). Great way to leverage commercial development. Both ULA and SpaceX should be able to deliver.

Improving launch vehicle designs

In many ways, this is the opposite of what you want me to do. Blue-sky development might result in revolutionary development, but that's more than 5 years out. I'd probably fully fund SLS and get payloads for it, as well as Vulcan (with a Vulcan Heavy version) and ACES. Crew launch via Atlas/Vulcan via CST-100, HL-20 derived, and Dragon v2 is a must.

Research into long term habitation offworld

Build the Centrifuge Accommodations Module, and the large inflatable centrifuge for ISS. Deploy such systems on independent stations if needed.

Developing orbital manufacturing capacity

Building what? Are we talking microchips and super-pure materials, or are we talking structural beams for orbitals and solar power plants?

[Broomstick]

I'd go with

1) Long term habitations - that would include centrifugal "gravity" and the orbital "manufacturing" can be greenhouses producing food and turning CO2 back into O2 because long-term production of such essentials will be what allows human colonization of space, not factories dependent on shipment of food from inside a gravity well.

2) Near Earth asteroids, with an eye towards mining. It will be easier to supply miners/colonies working on that if you raise food/recycle air in orbit rather than in a gravity well. When we learn to mine/refine stuff from asteroids (including volatiles like water and gases) we can start working on micro-gravity manufacturing of structural components for habitats.

3) Return to Moon - Yes, it's a gravity well, but not as much a one as Earth. We can do experiments in long-term survival/self-sufficiency but still be close enough for rescue if needed, at least in theory.

The downside is that 5 years isn't really long enough for all of the above, but it could make for a good start.

[Adam Reynolds]

Throw everything at Mars. We have already been to the Moon, going back won't inspire anyone. We might go back eventually, but as a short term goal Mars would be more impressive and more likely to keep funding going into the future. A permanent settlement can wait until after we have achieved something new.

[TimothyC]

Throw everything at Mars. We have already been to the Moon, going back won't inspire anyone. We might go back eventually, but as a short term goal Mars would be more impressive and more likely to keep funding going into the future. A permanent settlement can wait until after we have achieved something new.

Yeah, but I can't get people on Mars in five years - even in a BUDGETS ARE DEATH situation. I can get people to the moon.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, right, do a one-shot to Mars, have people plant a flag, look around, leave footprints... and it's just like the Moon landing. Nothing permanent.

[TimothyC]

Re: Industry

It occurs to me that there is one industry that can be setup inside of five years, and offers significant benefits to the program long term - LUNOX. Oxygen makes up more than a quarter of lunar regolith by mass, and it is less expensive to ship lox down from the moon than it is up from the earth. Furthermore, the lunar surface to orbit stage can be an aluminum/oxygen slurry rocket, with all fuel produced in situ.

[Adam Reynolds]

Yeah, but I can't get people on Mars in five years - even in a BUDGETS ARE DEATH situation. I can get people to the moon.

It is about exploiting the sunk cost fallacy. Build enough of the program that it would be harder to cancel it. Just as was done with the space shuttle.

Yeah, right, do a one-shot to Mars, have people plant a flag, look around, leave footprints... and it's just like the Moon landing. Nothing permanent.

It would be the moon landings to a whole new generation, which is the whole point.

[Terralthra]

Yeah, right, do a one-shot to Mars, have people plant a flag, look around, leave footprints... and it's just like the Moon landing. Nothing permanent.

It would be the moon landings to a whole new generation, which is the whole point.

The moon landings to the generation that witnessed them inspired them to...cancel the last few missions and never go back.

[Zixinus]

Would focusing on building a true single-stage-to-orbit craft like the Venture Star or similar crafts? The idea is to invest in a launching system that are more economical, learning from the mistakes of the Space Shuttle and create something that it was originally meant to be: a spaceplane that you can just refuel rather than rebuild after every use.

If I am being ignorantly fanciful, I'd also look into learning more about creating closed-system living (living in a closed, artificial environment with minimal to no external input) to better allow space stations and possible lunar colonies.

[Simon_Jester]

The moon landings to the generation that witnessed them inspired them to...cancel the last few missions and never go back.

Basically everyone even tangentially involved in the space program today was positively inspired by those landings, if they were even alive at the time. If we hadn't done something like that, would we even have a program at all today?

[Terralthra]

The moon landings to the generation that witnessed them inspired them to...cancel the last few missions and never go back.

Basically everyone even tangentially involved in the space program today was positively inspired by those landings, if they were even alive at the time. If we hadn't done something like that, would we even have a program at all today?

A lot more people were "positively inspired" by those and still voted to cut NASA's budget by 90% as a function of percentage of the federal budget over the ensuing decades. So what? "Inspiring people" sounds rad, but it doesn't garner dollars or votes. If I had the capacity to get $100 billion as NASA's budget (still less, as a percentage of the federal budget, than the Apollo years), that's the time to start a project that is long-lasting and will result in tangible benefits and a positive ROI. Five years is more than enough to start an orbital foundry in geosync with a couple asteroid or comet capture missions. Once our space program isn't restricted to "what we can launch into space from the ground ourselves", that's when it will start being really self-sustaining.

Hubble's inspiring. Curiosity's inspiring. Inspiring doesn't butter the bread. Put a factory in orbit that can eat co-orbital debris and spit out space solar panels with microwave power emitters, and we're talking.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm honestly not sure we could make one of those in five years either, though. We have very limited experience with the requirements of orbital manufacturing. Moreover, manufacturing large objects in orbit will require large tooling and space facilities with large hulls, meaning we may well need new heavy lift rockets just to orbit the components. Said rockets cannot necessarily be developed in five years starting from scratch- we'll have to scramble just to get that to happen; TimothyC probably has good ideas on that front.

Honestly, limiting ourselves entirely to five year timeframes cuts out a LOT of options. Being promised 38 billion dollars a year for twenty years might actually do more for NASA in some ways than a hundred billion a year for five, even though both represent roughly the same total sum of money given to NASA over and above the current budget.

Or if we have some guarantee that the funding won't all vanish in five years' time.

[Grumman]

Yeah, but I can't get people on Mars in five years - even in a BUDGETS ARE DEATH situation. I can get people to the moon.

It is about exploiting the sunk cost fallacy. Build enough of the program that it would be harder to cancel it.

If you're getting half a trillion dollars of our money, you better have something better in mind than a white elephant scam.

Mars sucks. We shouldn't go there at massive expense just because it's a bitch to get to, and we definitely shouldn't use the idiots who go there first as hostages to demand more money be wasted on the endeavour.

[TimothyC]

Said rockets cannot necessarily be developed in five years starting from scratch- we'll have to scramble just to get that to happen; TimothyC probably has good ideas on that front.

You would make that statement today. Bezos just announced the New Glenn rocket, which, like Falcon 9 will have a reusable booster stage. Ars Technica link. While it may not offer any more payload capacity than Falcon Heavy, Blue Origin has put a single stage over the Karmen line more than SpaceX.

Given the above, there are at least four rocket designs that would offer needed heavy lift- SLS, Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, and Vulcan Heavy. ULA'S work on distributed launch also helps.

[Simon_Jester]

D'oh.

I guess the issue is that going from "design" to "rocket on pad" takes a while, and throwing more money at that problem doesn't necessarily speed things up very much. We may also have to worry about reliability concerns with some of them, especially if final detail design is rushed.