What a different world we live in. My 21year old daughter says “I will never forget where I was when Michael Jackson died”, What a thing to remember I say to myself. Now understand I grew up with the guy and I have nothing against him fact I liked him. BUT What about the:
Challenger? I will never forget.
Or the Murrh federal building bombing? I will never forget.
Or September 11th 2001 as she sat crying in her desk at school. (Yep I was at Logan INTL that morning) and ended driving back to Minneapolis. I will never forget.
Or the moment her Grandma passed (yep my mom) Saddest day of my life.

Well my friend, my Furby some of will out live all the pain and sorrow.
God Bless us all.

Thanks for the great discussion.

I think we both agree opportunities were wasted. Also, I think we both agree that our political leadership and sometimes NASA leadership have let us down. I’m coming from the emotional, frustrated, impatient side. You’re coming from the logical, technical, realistic side.

I appreciate your technical knowledge of the topic, much more than my rudimentary understanding. Thanks for sharing that knowledge. If you’re still looking at this topic, can you give me your opinion on the DIRECT option (in layman’s terms please)?

I’d also be interested in your opinion of the “we never landed on the moon” conspiracy. I’m not one for such theories, but the whole “flag waving in the breeze” thing does give me pause…… ;-)

Plus, NASA TV’s space walks are great. Great view:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Check out Franklin Chang Diaz
http://www.adastrarocket.com/Franklin.html

And NASA Administrator Bolden “loves this guy”

Nope. This isn’t just some theory I’m offering, it has already happened three times. In 1986, after the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost, the government decided to restart production of the old Atlas-Centaur and Delta rockets. This turned out to be far more complicated and expensive than anyone expected. General Dynamics and McDonnell-Douglas had to redesign their rockets to use parts that were available from suppliers, because the old parts had gone out of production and the companies said things like “we can’t get you that anymore, but we have this 1987 model that’s so much better…”. That meant re-qualifying the entire system, at great cost, and that was less than 10 years after the last Atlas and Delta had been built. When they did start flying the “new builds” were so different they were called Atlas II and Delta II. By the time all was said and done, the Air Force realized it could have gotten an all-new rocket for about the same money and time investment. The same thing happened already for Constellation when NASA elected to restart production of the Apollo-era J-2 engine. It had to be completely redesigned, because the old way of building them was gone and new engine factories just don’t operate that way anymore, parts called for no longer exist, the engine controllers were hopelessly obsolete, etc. The new engine is called J-2X.

“Again, I have to say, if we had the will we would have found the way to improve the Saturn V, or even a new Saturn VI, 20 or 30 years ago. Now NASA tells us it needs two launches to perform the task that one launch did 40 years ago! Some progress!”

No, the two launches will do more than the single Saturn V launch 40 years ago. We could have done something like that 40 years ago, with the crew flying on a Saturn IB and the LM and upper stage flying on the Saturn V, but we didn’t. It’s no use crying about it now. If we want to go back to the moon, we need new rockets, or at least improved versions of existing rockets. It is enormously cheaper to start with existing hardware (Shuttle, Delta, or Atlas) than to try to go back and build Saturn V.

Yes, NASA has seriously botched the Ares project. Ares I (the rocket causing all the problems) should have been abandoned two or three years ago, but it kept moving forward and dissent kept getting shut down because it was the former NASA Administrator’s pet project. Now that Administrator is gone. Its not too late to change course. Dump Ares I and switch to Delta IV-Heavy for the crew launch. Keep developing Ares V or switch to Jupiter for the heavy lifting that we’ll need later on for the moon.
This is still the dual-launch concept that Constellation was founded upon (and looks very much like the Earth Orbit Rendezvous concept von Braun originally planned for Apollo.)

How about Moon Base Roddenberry.

You seem to be agreeing with me, that we have squandered away 40 years, and realistcally 50 years.

“Yes, we did it forty years ago. And then we threw away the capability to keep doing it.”

We agree there.

“Now, finally, we are preparing to return. And guess what? Very little of the old technology can still be built. No one builds rocket engines with slide rules anymore. Blueprints are in computers instead of on paper.”

This point I just don’t get, however. Slide rules? With todays technology you’re saying we can’t convert paper blueprints into digital blueprints, like in a day, and go from there?

“Other things have changed. Constellation will use two launches (NASA calls it 1 1/2 but fools no one) instead of one. That way we don’t need to launch a giant Saturn V-like rocket just to send a crew to the Space Station (which the early missions will do.) But Ares V will be just as big as Saturn V, so two launches (or 1 1/2) send up roughly half again as much capability as an Apollo mission. This lets the Altair lander be much, much bigger than Apollo’s Lunar Module. Altair will be big enough to delivery modules and reactors for a lunar base.”

Again, I have to say, if we had the will we would have found the way to improve the Saturn V, or even a new Saturn VI, 20 or 30 years ago. Now NASA tells us it needs two launches to perform the task that one launch did 40 years ago! Some progress!

BTW, from the article I posted:

“Now, along with reports of cost blow-outs, NASA is facing serious development problems with its new Ares rockets, which will hoist the new Orion spacecraft and Altair lunar landers towards the moon.

One NASA insider told The Orlando Sentinel that “computer simulations show the Ares would vibrate like a giant tuning fork on its climb to orbit, threatening to incapacitate or kill the crew and shake the rocket to pieces. Fixing the problem is proving to be costly and technically difficult.”

Now, the review committee and Constellation Project chiefs are considering new rocket ideas. These include a new version of Ares; using existing Delta rockets; and a shuttle-derived rocket design called Jupiter.”

Again, some progress in the las 40 years!

“And why must we wait ten years? Because NASA didn’t get any additional funding to do it. Instead, we have to wait for the Shuttle to retire and its $3 billion per year budget to become available for Constellation (assuming Congress and the President don’t take it for health care reform and bank bailouts… a very real possibility.)”

Yes, those are very real possibilities. I hate politics, and politicians, on BOTH sides. I blame them, more than NASA, for our current putrid, ineffective, backward-looking space program. But to be fair, you should also mention an unnecessary war and tax cuts for the wealthy that siphoned TRILLIONS of dollars away from NASA and other government programs. Though NASA is not blameless, it is our leadership that has failed us.