Science Friday: Mars Roving End + No NASA Moon Return? + Fusion Step + Orbital Dive + more January 29, 2010
by Kayla Iacovino , Filed under: Science/Technology , trackback
This week in Science Friday: What is the fate of the Spirit Rover? Is nuclear fusion becoming a reality? Does Obama want to cancel a return to the moon? Can you skydive from more than 100,000 feet? All these questions answered! Plus, check out our gadget of the week: NASA’s Puffin personal air vehicle.
Spirit Rover to Rove No More?
NASA has released a statement saying that Spirit, the Mars Exploration Rover, which has been exploring the red planet for the past six years, will be converted from rover to stationary science platform. The announcement comes after months of the rover being stuck in a particularly sandy region near the edge of a crater. If you’ve been following news on Spirit, you know that NASA has been working with engineers to try and get the rover mobile again, so what has changed now that they are declaring the rover “unextractable”? Actually, nothing. It seems that this press release could be a PR move to try and quell overly-optimistic hopes for remobilization of Spirit. In other words, rumors of her death have been grossly exaggerated. Currently, engineers are maneuvering (yes, as in moving) Spirit so that her solar cells can get enough sun to sustain her through the winter. When summer hits again, it is likely that NASA will try again to free her.
Spirit’s last tracks on Mars?
Is Fusion Becoming a Reality?
For over half a century, scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion, a reaction that could generate massive amounts of energy. Recent results from experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) suggest that creating such a reaction might be within our reach. The tests involved blasting a cylinder the size of a pencil eraser, known as “hohlraum,” with 192 laser beams and seeing whether researchers could tweak the energy to create the right kind of implosion. The research reported by NIF represents a step toward actual energy production in a controlled fusion reaction. But, there are still many steps to go before scientists reach that break-even point. Even if successful, the research will take years or decades to adapt for commercial use.
Tiny gold-plated “hohlraum” cylinder
No Moon in Obama’s Vision of Space?
With President Obama’s new budget set to be released Monday, all eyes in NASA are on the White House. The recently released Augustine Report (PDF) outlines experts’ recommendations to the president for the future of human space flight, among other things. Early reports from the White House suggest that the Obama administration may move toward relying on commercially-built spacecraft, rather than NASA’s own vehicles, to carry humans to low-Earth orbit. The plan would also involve extending the International Space Station’s lifetime and abandoning current plans to send astronauts on moon missions by 2020. This is certainly a paradigm shift in the way our country will go about its space program, and there are mixed feelings about the plan. But many believe this is a positive move for NASA. Sally K. Ride, a former astronaut who served on the blue-ribbon panel, said she was encouraged by the budget increase for NASA in light of the planned freeze on domestic spending over all. “They plan to be sending people beyond low-Earth orbit, and they have a good formulation,” Dr. Ride said. “I think the way to evaluate this plan when it’s rolled out is to ask whether the administration has given NASA the funds for what it’s asked to do.” “It appears to me the answer is yes,” Dr. Ride said, based on briefings she had received on the plans. She said the administration took options the panel presented and “came up with an innovative approach for NASA.”
We’re waiting for the details of Obama’s plan for space
Skydiver to Re-enact Trek-style Orbital Skydive
Back in 1960, then Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger set the world record for the highest-ever parachute jump from a balloon floating 102,800 feet above the ground. Ever since then, skydivers in search of glory have tried (unsuccessfully) to break that record. Now, Felix Baumgartner, who is already a professional skyjumper, is gearing up to make the attempt this year. And, he has the help of Kittinger himself, who is coaching him through the jump. Red Bull is sponsoring Felix to promote their energy drinks. Check out the video below for an interview with the orbital sky-diving duo.
Gadget of the Week: NASA’s Puffin Personal Air Vehicle
If NASA has anything to say about it, personal flight vehicles may become a reality. Researchers at NASA have developed the Puffin – a Personal Air Vehicle with enough room for one passenger that uses electric motor variable rpt to accomplish an order of magnitude reduction in noise. This vehicle could be automatically piloted for the everyday person to fly to work. Check it out in all its glory in the two videos below.
#FollowFriday
If you are on Twitter, you know there are plenty of amazing people out there tweeting away. And, many of them are scientists! Every Friday I’ll be bringing you a new list of great scientists and techies to follow on Twitter. This week…
- @whitehouseostp: Official Twitter account of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy http://www.ostp.gov
- @USGS: United States Geological Survey. (Official USGS account) Science for a changing world.
- @newscientist: New Scientist is the world’s only science and technology weekly
Science Quickies
Not enough science for you? Here’s a warp-speed look at some more science tid-bits that are worth a look.
- Neptune and Uranus may have liquid diamond
- Running barefoot better than running shoes
TrekMovie’s Science Friday is an homage the the great NPR radio show Science Friday. Science Friday® is a registered service mark of ScienceFriday Inc.
Loading ...
Comments»
regarding the moon i just had a thought the other day when i was considering buying a telescope…why dosnt someone just point a powerful telescope at the area of the moon landings and all the hoax theories will disappear?
gotta get me a decent telescope though…a friend of mine whos got one says he even gets to see nebulas and the rings of saturn etc…while he was talking i started to get jealous and realised ive never actually seen Mars, saturn etc other than images on the net, books or tv
and here was this guy getting to look at the multara nebula in his back garden
@1 We’ve done that… sort of. No Earth-based telescope would be powerful enough. But, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently orbiting the moon, has been snapping lots of photos of Apollo landing sites:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
You can even see the astronauts FOOTPRINTS!!
1. thats been done years ago. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html
@1 Also, even with a small 8” telescope (you can get one for fairly cheap) you can see Jupiter and its Galilean moons.
I think on the Skydiving there just trying to make the same jump that Kirk and Sulu and the Red shirt did. But with out the drilling platform and the beam cutting in the Earths core and forming a singlearity to destroy the Earth. Other then that pretty much the same.
We do not need to go back to the moon and waste American Tax Dollars. Washington never gets that we need the money to help it’s citizens, not to see if there is water on the moon.
Sorry #6, you are wrong, and what is even more disturbing is that we are basically giving up on the hopes of going to Mars.
This may basically be the end of the manned space flight program. We are going to use the Russians and private concerns to reach the Space Station, but that’s it. The job of Government is to do the things that couldn’t be done well by smaller branches of Government or Private Industry. Thats why the Federal Government is reponsible for the Armed Forces, and why you wouldn’t give that job to small private concerns. Space exploration is the same thing. We as a nation cannot entrust this job to buisnesses. Does anyone think that Boeing is going to design a Space Exploration Vehicle for Mars unless they KNOW that there is a return on the deal.
Many people I knew were so hopeful that when we sent Obama to the White House he was going to spend tons of money on the future of space flight. Instead we have wasted tons of money on lots of make busy work jobs and have turned our back on space exploration.
It’s a shame and a crime that this is happening.
Forget the moon or mars we need to perfect Nuclear Fuison. If we could figure that out, we would have an almost limitless source of electric power. We could build huge electrical destalination plans just imagin when we have drouts we can just take salt water and make it fresh water cheaply. Desterts could be made to grow crops. We wouldnt have to worry about coal or gas for electricity. We could even make our cars electric if we wanted. There would be an abundance of cheap electricity. IM ALL FOR FUSION!!
#6 we do need to go to the moon, and mars, and beyond to maintain our technical edge. We do not need to be handing out “free” money as “obama’s stash” to the drones who have their hands out. We need tax cuts to get the economy going again. It’s our money to begin with.
But Kayla the radio show i get beamed into my fillings, hosted by Big Foot, told me that the LRO is just part of the big conspiracy. Don’t fall for the big lie being perpetuated by the man!
There would be very positive economic benefits should the manned moon mission move forward. There is a potential for thousands of jobs related to the development and construction of new moon rockets and ships. The technology developed to make the mission possible would also have a long lasting impact on not only the economy but every day life. I fully support manned space flight.
“electrical destalination plans” – ? Right on. We don’ want no pinko commie Stalinism messin’ with our water.
#6
No, we don’t NEED to go to the moon, or Mars, or any of that.
But….if Americans don’t, other countries will. What would you think about Communist China having a permanent settlement on the Moon? Think about…Red Chinese looking down on America from the Very Heavens themselves!
Or what if the first man on another planet was French? If the USA gives up on space exploration, that doesn’t mean the ESU is giving up. Think about it….the First Human on Another Planet could be…a SOCIALIST FRENCHMAN.
No American flags on the Moon or Mars. Just pinko commie Chinese and socialst French.
If the USA quits space exploration, and an alien civilization haps across our little solar system, and the Chines have a moon base, & the Europeans are on Mars, what do you think that’s say about who is and who is not the “Greatest Country In the World”?
Look….if OTHER countries have extraterrestrial facilities throughout the solar system, and the USA does not, then America has been outperformed and is not, by definition “The Greatest Country In the World”. Then it would be the Communist Chinese, or the Cheese-Eating Socialist French.
Is that what you want? The Commies & Socialists ruling Outer Space?
Are YOU a commie or a socialist? Are you FRENCH?
Why do you hate America?
#13
Best. Post. EVER.
(I am sorta hungry for some cheese, though.)
I really hope that America can get to Moon and Mars, it would help boost the Technoglicial advances we are making and it would also give us real hope for the future. I understand that in this Econmic down turn that people get a little short sighted and think of Space Flight as a and extra rather then as something that can create Jobs and Help us to help this planet as well.
Solutions to Population overload, Global Warming and other things can be partially Solved by Maned Space Flight to other Worlds and starting to get all of our proverbial eggs called Mankind out of one Basket. the Best bet for Human Survival in the long run is to start making bases and Colonies on the Moon and Mars so if something like an Commet or Rock from or something else were to hit the population of earth we would not be wiped out as a Species!
There’s your “Change.” Enjoy it, folks…..
#6 Maned Space flight to the Moon or Mars will Create Jobs and new Technology and in the long run make us better off. Ending it now only severs Short term Problems not long term ones.
To Solve Problems on Earth, Space is the best to see from to help us conquer things like changing conditions on earth, Population Boom, Job growth and such.
America shouldn’t have to settle for Second Best for Space Flight or anything. We should try to expand out Horizons not lessen them because of problems that may have solutions just around the bend!
if a Rock from outer space hits and we are all stuck here can Humanity Survive? Sure but our Chances of Survival as a Species increase if we are not all stuck on Earth. Also America should be at the Forefront of things like this to get us out of the bad times we have now!
Sorry for the Multiple Post people, I am just a little Frustrated at the lack of foresight some people seem to have!
#16, I will gladly take that change if it means people like Burt Rutan and Richard Branson will get some of that money to develop the orbital vehicles Mr. Rutan is hinting at on his web site.
The government is notorious for being overcharged on it’s projects. What we need is something similar to the current commercial airline system with the goverment overseeing the companies to ensure that they are safely operated.
I can see private industry getting to the Moon by 2020 if they can get proper funds. And on a Star Trek note, in First Contact Cochrane was a private “contractor” and you can look at people like Burt Rutan who is the 21st century space version of the Wright brothers in real life.
I am completely saddened that Obama has come along and put a fork in pretty much the only good thing to come out of W’s 2nd term.
*sigh*
“Back in 1960, then Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger set the world record for the highest-ever parachute jump from a balloon floating 102,800 feet above the ground.”
What malarkey! We all know that Team Daedelus did it from 112, 000 feet in 1958.
Once fusion technology is harnessed, it will become as much a source of profiteering as a source of energy. I watch the way the current gas prices bounce around like a basketball, all because the oil companies are able to charge pretty much whatever they want. Some people have lost their homes, been out of jobs for over a year, but the price of gas (amongst other things) is unaffected. There is no compassion in oil, no compassion in big business, and no compassion in Washington… this is how it seems to me.
If those who “run” the country truly cared about the ordinary citizens they are supposed to represent, what would the country look like? I believe James Kirk said it best: “Absolute power, corrupting absolutely.”
Government failures:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/articles/full_list/
There are rumors and reports running rampant about President Obama’s redirection of NASA. We’ll know the real deal on Monday, when NASA’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget is unveiled.
The best guess now is that NASA will be ordered to commercialize its operations as much as possible, particularly transport of crews to the International Space Station. NASA’s own Orion spacecraft will continue at a slower rate, with its “Space Station Ferry” role eliminated (or continuing only as a backup to commercial spacecraft) and its design aimed more squarely at deep space exploration (which will remain largely unfunded for the moment.) The President is in agreement with NASA and the European, Japanese, Russian and Canadian space agencies that the Space Station should be extended until at least 2020. But we can’t both extend Space Station and develop the deep space exploration program without a substantial budget increase for NASA, which is hugely unlikely given the US’s economic condition, Exploration will wait.
Given that commercial entities generally can do things at a fraction of the cost and time of government bureaucracies, I think this overhaul of NASA might be a very good thing, but the devil is in the details, and Congressional meddling poses a huge risk.
Meanwhile, fusion energy has been “20 years away from being practical” for about the last 60 years, so I’ll believe it when I see it.
#1
Some sort of reflector was left on the moon. Someone with the right equipment can dial up the coordinates at any time and shoot off a beam and have it bounce back to them.
The guys on Mythbusters did a moon hoax episode, and that was one of the things they did to bust the myth that the landings were a hoax.
The moon landings were real. The Mars rovers life span was original a few months, and amazingly they are still going! Spirit has two broken wheels, but Opportunity is still hustling along.
I regret the possible change of course on the moon missions, as I see no point in the International Space Station. However, NASA should be collaborating with all other space programs in the world on the moon missions. However, in this economy, it’s difficult to sell such expenditures, and frankly, the problem is that NASA nor it’s corporate ever seem to keep anything on budget or on time.
“hohlraum” – love it XD
#6 – Many people don’t get that when we spend money on moon or other space missions that we actually spend that money here, on Earth. The money doesn’t go up into space. You can cry about billions being spent on space missions, but the money, jobs and technical advances all stay right here on the same planet that you are rightfully worried about.
Bottom line, money spent on NASA helps the economy just as much as money spent on highways, bridges, agriculture, etc. Plus, we advance our technical skills and inspire people to dream and do better things with their lives and their planet.
P Technobabble, gas and oil in general answer to the basic laws of supply and demand just like any other commodity.
The unique quality of oil is that OPEC controls how much oil is pumped and therefore artificially affects the price of a barrel of oil to a degree.
If the US would tell the environmental lobby to take a chill pill and start extracting their own oil domestically, then OPEC would no longer be an issue, more jobs would be created, and the price of gas and oil would drop in America quite noticeably, I would suspect.
And I hate how they’re planning on canceling the moon shot and mars shot and possibly re-directing that money to more global warming research. If I hear this president say “green jobs” one more time, I’m gonna pop a blood vessel.
If there is real money in “green jobs,” the free market will support them. Right now, it takes twice the life-span of a solar panel to generate enough electricity to break even on the cost of buying one! That has to change before a “green” economy has any chance of rivaling fossil fuels as the top energy source.
To #13. Not too worried about aliens coming to earth anyway. They’ve probably already received the “historical documents” from earth and are high tailing it back to their own planet.
Remember a year ago when the main stream press more or less implied that Obama was going to move us towards a glorious Star Trek future, and how wonderfully Spock like he was. “We are all trekkers now.” (Newsweek) Well, that future is for now…. dead.
#6: “We do not need to go back to the moon and waste American Tax Dollars [sic]. Washington never gets that we need the money to help it’s [sic] citizens, not to see if there is water on the moon.”
I think your opinion is far too limited and vastly underestimates the degree NASA has played in our lives.
Space exploration, my friend, is NEVER a waste of money. A huge segment of today’s world has benefitted from the technology developed from the space program. It is rather short-sighted if anyone thinks that money spent on the space program would have done as much for our people if spent elsewhere.
Medicines, metal alloys, plastics, communications, computer technology (which plays part in every single aspect of our lives) have all advanced immensely because of NASA and its subsidiary and contributing industries.
Science today would not be where it is without the monies pumped into the space program!
Finding water on the our lunar body was a good thing. It surely means that if we were to set up a moonbase that water as well as other elements could be extracted from the Moon, a natural source, rather than having to ship it all up there.
It seems this is a mute point for now since it seems likely the Obama Administration is not so keen on returning to the moon.
I’ve mixed emotions about this. I think a return to the moon was a step backwards for NASA, but by the same token, utilizing the moon as a launch platform to the outer planets would be far easier, and less expensive, than from Earth.
Considering that the annual NASA budget is $18 billion per annum, and the US spends on average $27 billion on pizza each year… I think it is a damn shame for Obumbler to canx the Moon (and Mars).
NASA get’s .6% of the US national budget each year and now as a second stimulus hangs int he air to create jobs–and high-tech jobs at that–one of the most technically advanced job creators in history is about to be sliced to bits. This will kill economies in NASA centered locations, including my home town… where the Space Shuttle launches from. This decision could very well mean NO astronaut corps, NO continued exploration beyond low Earth orbit (for the US), relying on Russia to get us back and forth–while we do what they say and kiss their arse.
In 10 years, my little boys are going to be looking for what they want to do in the world, and I am sad to say that they won’t be able to say “I want to be an Astronaut” because that likely won’t exist any more.
I’m all for commercial enterprise getting in to the space industry, however the US needs to maintain a national manned space program in order to further our reach into space and provide the advancements for science and technology. Were it not for the space program, we wouldn’t have cell phones, GPS, satellite TV, microprocessor technology like we have it today, even cordless drills, composite materials, not to mention medical telemetry and other medical equipment technology that helps save lives everyday. If the US wants to stay competitive in the high-tech world and be leaders, we NEED the space program and human space flight. We can’t get by just with a few video games and American-frakking-Idol!
Where I work, we have students come through and we teach them about the space program–past, present, and future–and it is so sad when in the middle of the program, students are astonished to hear we went to the Moon, or that we actually put people in space. Some are so consumed with their texting, or their Ipods, etc, they are oblivious to the world. It takes the space program and its contributions to bring science back to the forefront if we want to have any kind of future for our nation.
And lastly, NASA doesn’t need to get involved with global climate BS, that is what NOAA is for. Stupid Obumbler.
End of angered ranting.
#35: While I agree with most of your points, calling our President childish names is certainly not a mature tact for a rant, even an angry one.
35… “And lastly, NASA doesn’t need to get involved with global climate BS, that is what NOAA is for. Stupid Obumbler.”
From the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 which established NASA and tasked it with its mission…
(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
…and…
TITLE IV–UPPER ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
PURPOSE AND POLICY
Sec. 401. (a) The purpose of this title is to authorize and direct the Administration to develop and carry out a comprehensive program of research, technology, and monitoring of the phenomena of the upper atmosphere so as to provide for an understanding of and to maintain the chemical and physical integrity of the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
(b) The Congress declares that is the policy of the United States to undertake an immediate and appropriate research, technology, and monitoring program that will provide for understanding the physics and chemistry of the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Other figures: In the 2007 US federal budget, the funding for social programs (calculated here as the budgets for the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Social Security, Agriculture, and Labor) adds up to a whopping $1.581 trillion. For every $1 the federal government spends on NASA, it spends $98 on social programs. In other words, if we cut spending on social programs by a mere one percent, we could very nearly double NASA’s budget.
In contrast, NASA’s allocation during the mid-1960s when, despite the pressures of the war effort in Vietnam and President Johnson’s Great Society programs, NASA spending made up more than five percent of the federal budget, and we got to the Moon.
If the Obumblenator truly had the US’s best interests in mind and wanted to maintain our technological superiority… creating more and more high-tech jobs and spurring the economy, he would take part of that stimulus cash and put it in to NASA to keep Constellation–or some variant like the Direct Launcher–and get us to the Moon, and Mars. His unwillingness to do so after spending $180 billion on AIG alone (nearly 10x NASA’s budget), says he is a POS that needs to get a pink slip in 2012. I hope Congress fights him in this, it seems they are gearing up to do so already.
Yes We Can!
……umm…..wait….ok…..no we can’t.
37. Pont taken; I will stand corrected with those points, however I will modify my statement to reflect that NASA’s sole purpose should not be global climate change…research and science of course, along with NOAA and other agencies, but if you’re going to allocate a little more money to NASA which is what it seems, it should be set for the primary mission–spaceflight.
36. You are right, I shouldn’t allow my emotions to get the better of me, however I am seeing so much insanity coming about now… plus, when the Shuttle ends, and there is nothing to take its place… my home town, and everything here quite possibly will fade away… I am concerned for my family, my community, as well as my country.
33… ” Well, that future is for now…. dead.”
It might be, but it is far too soon to say that. The facts are that the Program of Record (Constellation, with Ares rockets and Orion spacecraft) required several billion more dollars per year between now and 2020 to be carried out (determined by the Augustine Commission), and there was virtually no chance of that funding materializing. A change was absolutely necessary. Getting NASA out of the ‘daily grind’ of sending people to and from the Space Station is not necessarily a bad idea. There are private companies that can (or so they say) and want to do that job. If commerce can provide a service, why is government doing it? Leave the job to private industry and let NASA concentrate its resources on actual exploration (as well as engineering development for life support systems, radiation protection, etc., on the Space Station.)
Well, hopefully NASA will get what it needs but the Obama Administration will have a hard time justifying a large increase in their budget in today’s economy and all the fire he’s already getting for the government’s current spending habits.
38, the whole reason the government funded NASA the way it did but in the 1960s was because of competition with the Soviet Union. We simply couldn’t allow the “godless commies” beat us in anything. Without that competition, no one really cares about NASA or space exploration. It is unfortunate, but true.
42. in a nutshell.. China
43, yes, indeed people have been saying that competition in space now comes from China. Public opinion doesn’t seem to share that opinion, nor does the government. Therefore, there is no political will to fund NASA like they did during the Cold War.
43… That’s so very 20th Century. I hope we don’t get caught up in ruinous “get their firstest with the mostest” mentality of a space race against China. The space race against Russia left us with an enormously expensive architecture built on the principle of “waste anything but time” that was unsustainable once the goal was achieved. $80 billion worth of Apollo and Saturn design and hardware was thrown away after less than eight years of service. Note that Saturn was so expensive that not even the military could afford it (they bought Titan III instead.) Part of NASA’s new plan was another Saturn V rocket (this time called Ares V) that would be so expensive there was little hope of flying it more than once or twice a year (and President Obama has evidently pulled the plug on it, although NASA had been rethinking it already.)
Wouldn’t it be smarter and a wiser investment to let commercial operators do the grunt work and leave the difficult, expensive and risky moon, Mars, asteroid, or other deep space missions to NASA? Competition for this grunt work (cargo delivery to the Space Station, then crews to the Space Station and later perhaps fuel to an orbiting propellant depot — negating the need for another Saturn V) would almost certainly drive costs down and foster improved designs and creative solutions to technical challenges, benefiting all of the space industry and not just NASA.
Government-sponsored air mail caused a revolution in aircraft development in the 1920s and 30s and largely created today’s airline industry. Something like it could well create a revolution in space. It’s worth a try. If it doesn’t pan out, we can always go back to building government manned spacecraft and large government rockets in 2020, probably based on today’s Atlas and Delta rockets. But if it does pan out, we’ll wonder why we ever messed around with bureaucratic monster rockets in the first place.
I was thinking, anyone else here at Trekmovie want to start a company whose mission is to use government money to fly it’s citizen’s to the moon?
Just curious…
Its a shame that countries choose to put billions and billions into fighting wars and destroying countries. Imagine all that money put into eliminating poverty as well as exploring space. We’d be a lot further along I bet. New space shuttles. Manned missions to the moon and Mars.
Hopefully one day corporations and governments from around the world can co-operate to achieve great things such as the elimination of poverty and the exploration of deep space.
#40: “You are right, I shouldn’t allow my emotions to get the better of me, however I am seeing so much insanity coming about now… plus, when the Shuttle ends, and there is nothing to take its place… my home town, and everything here quite possibly will fade away… I am concerned for my family, my community, as well as my country.”
The Shuttle program’s fate was sealed long before President Obama took office. Yeah, I am sad to see it go… Very sad. I am sad that NASA has not… nor has Congress, commissioned a new vehicle for which to replace her with. Let’s face it the shuttles are 20+ years old.
It was their time to go, and it is time to design a new shutte, based on 21st century technology. We need a heavy lift vehicle to go to the Space Station, or are we going to let it die too?
If blame is to be placed, let’s give it where it is due. Neither our American public or Congress has supported the space program in the same fashion since the Apollo days. Other than the Hubble telescope and our probes, NASA has not offered any big programs, and why is this? Because we the public haven’t demanded it!
Some other posts want to add fear-mongering to the equation (if we don’t do it,China will).
Have we not gotten beyond such nationalistic sensations? How about NASA work jointly with China, Japan and India (all who are working on their own space programs), just like we have done with Russia and the European Union? Is there any reason why we must do this all by ourselves?
Oh dear God. Cutting themselves out of the space race to make a totally pointless flying vehicle for one person.
<>
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good”. Well, I do NOT lack a better word, and that word is PROFIT. Sorry to sound like a Ferengi, but profit IS good. It is the primary and founding motive principle in Capitialism and it is what has brought the greatest and most beneficial products, services and technology in the history of the human race. Pure altruism, my friend does not exist.
Remove the profit motive and you would have a tightly centralized and controlled authoritarian society much like the USSR was or Nazi Germany, or to a lesser degree – Obama’s America. (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Hell, even the Red Chinese know that they had to incorporate capitalism into their ideology or end up the way of the North Koreans… stagnant and dying.
If you think there is no compassion in Capitalism you’re wrong. It is the most compassionate of all socio/economic systems.
If Obama pulls the funding for NASA deep space exploration, i.e. return to the moon, it will be huge dissapointment. I had presumed his visionary inclination would translate into a vision for America’s space program to lead the way back to the Moon, and beyond. No? Too bad. Such a vision would almost certainly create jobs–which is what everyone wants, right?
I want a personal air vehicle for my commute to work.
I would be severely disappointed if Obama’s administration gives up on the moon by 2020. Apollo was before my time. Orion should be for my generation and inspiration for my kid’s. I do agree space travel should be more commercialized, but we need NASA for the moon and Mars. The stimulus has done nothing for anyone I know of. Supporting NASA would help give the drive and vision the country needs to recover, advance technology, and our children’s future… Now I’m wondering if the next election can turn this around if this is true…
We need to send humans to Mars to learn more about the objects seen in the photos the two Viking probes sent back in 1976. The spare tire, shoe, rock with a man’s face carved in it, empty pack of Marlboros, etc.
Don’t worry #7. It’s coming. The tides are changing from our current gloom&doom “Can’t do” funk. There’s a nuclear renaissance occurring in th world right now. It’s starting in the Asia-Pacific region now (the torch of civilization is shifting to the Pacific). Google “21st century science & technology” magazine & read all about it. Big gov’t (of the Lincolnesque or FDR style) is making a comeback also… for the people. The Moon-Mars mission will be pursued (just not by the current admin/regime…have patience). These are “science driver projects” & are absolutely NECESSARY for the well-being of humanity. They are essential for the full-potential developement of nuclear power, to build other essential projects &infrastructure (ie. nuclear de-salinization/hydrogen fuel-making plants to “green” the world’s desserts & power our cars, 5-continental mag-lev trains/pipelines/powerline system thru an Alaska-Siberia tunnel, social credit/public utility movements to cure the madness of unbridled, “free-marketeering” banksterism, & others). This planet can realistically support a population of 25 or 30 billion people at a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, given the vision to make it so (the Asia-Pacific region already KNOWS this). We are CLOSE to seeing the birth of our much-beloved Star Trek civilization if we get thru these last few years of darkness without panic-ing. Sorry if this is too political for printing, but I feel better for saying it anyway.
Let’s not forget, people, that the Constellation program was in trouble almost from the get-go, long before Obama was elected.
The fact is, the US hasn’t had its feces together for a long time now with respect to its space program.
I find it ironic that the people who, out of ignorance of the very word “socialism”, accuse Obama of being socialist for abandoning a big-budget government program in favor of encouraging private development of space resources.
It’s just further proof that Republicans and right-wingers in general just change the definitions of words like “socialist” and “big government” and “privatization” to suit their rants.
Three words: Bring Back Buran!
^ (I’m kidding, sort of — it would be better to bring back Energia, but its too late.)
@13
As a member of the “socialist” United Kingdom.
I would rather have a pinko French or commie chinese ruling space than an bible-beating, knuckle-draggin Glen Beck junkie polluting space with advertisements for big oil and McDonalds.
put the money into the US health care system WITH a public option instead.
& remember
we are coming for your guns!
#58- Now THAT’S funny!
I’m sure that all space initiatives Bush set in motion will eventually be squelched by BO.
Pure politics.
He’s certainly no John Kennedy.
I just read that Obama is going to invest in a super railway public transportation criss-crossing the US. With dropping the plans to go to the moon, it appears Trek is not Obama’s favorite show from the past. Rather, he was obviously a huge fan of the 1979 NBC flop “SUPERTRAIN”. NBC’s poor attempt to clone ABC’s “The Love Boat”.
Sung to the tune of the Love Boat theme:
Trains….exciting and new.
Come aboard
Obama’s gonna save the environment for you
The Love train
Soon will making another run
The Love train
Promises some “Green” for everyone
30. Eli
I agree with you, to a degree. Yes, OPEC is a huge part of the problem. But there are a good number of American businessmen and politicians who have their hands in the OPEC cookie jar, shmoozing with oil-bearing countries, and such. There is a connection that, I’m guessing, many of these businessmen and politicians would hate to see severed.
Of course, this, I believe, is another area where, we, the general public, are not in a position to know first-handedly what the Truth is. We can only believe what we are told, which is filtered through many hands, including the media, and what we decide to believe is based mostly on what sounds the most reasonable to us, individually. This is how I see it, anyway…
51… “If Obama pulls the funding for NASA deep space exploration, i.e. return to the moon, it will be huge dissapointment.”
By most accounts, the President has selected the proposal that the Augustine Commission (which Mr. Obama appointed to figure out how to fix Constellation) called the “Flexible Path”. That is, build the infrastructure first and decide where to go later. Since most of the infrastructure will be the same whether we go to the moon, asteroids, L5, or Mars, that makes a certain amount of sense (although it leaves the program vulnerable to “mission to nowhere” criticism.) Despite media reports, President Obama has not specifically cancelled the moon goal. The moon is one option under “Flexible Path” and could end up as the immediate goal a few years from now. Remember that the moon goal was not 100% agreed upon in the space community anyway, there was considerable “been there, done that, go on to Mars already” sentiment. Could it be that Mr. Obama really wants to be the President who sends mankind to Mars, but wants to get the price low enough before annoucing it? For all we know (not much), that is the case. The gloom and doom of recent days is not justified, in my opinion.
The Constellation program hasn’t been a good program since day 1. There have been setbacks and delays. The Moon in 2020 isn’t happening, because we’re looking at 2015 at the earliest for manned launches of Constellation, and that probably would be looking at getting pushed back even later.
We need to encourage private growth in this field. Technology is catching up in the private sector, so now’s the time to do it. We need to encourage private “exploration” of low orbit space, and let NASA deal with their science programs and deeper space exploration.
If there’s so much outrage because the Moon in 2020 is out of reach, then there’s got to be people in the private sector who can do something about it. If it would take an election in 2012 to change NASA’s mind, then why don’t these politicians just encourage private companies to do it.
If George W. Bush really wants us to go back to the Moon, perhaps he should talk to business leaders in the aerospace industry.
43, 44. If you think China is our “big” competitor for space you don’t know very much about China.
It disheartens me greatly to hear opinions like those of #6, who are so myopic in their notion of “helping people on the earth” that they either are incapable of or refuse to see the monumental benefits the space program has afforded humanity.
To say nothing of the extraordinary subordinate industries and professions that emerged, employing tens of thousands over a period of decades, we have engaged in research and benefitted from discoveries abjectly impossible in Earth-confined laboratories and similarly limited minds. Pharmaceutical processes, microelectronics, and even physiological research inconceivable five decades ago owe the roots of their existence to the space program. This same kind of rhetoric was present during the Apollo program, which I recall vividly as a kid growing up fascinated by the notion of space research. Fortunately, we were wise to ignore those cries because we knew the benefit we were reaping.
Now, with all we learned, all we developed, all we gained, we are now willing (in fact, in a hurry) to throw that away in the name of populist politics. What a crime.
“But it doesn’t help anyone on earth.”
How utterly ignorant.
I think I’d enjoy flying that Puffin, but I’d have to get over being stuck in such a small space… I’m not overly claustrophobic, but that would be pushing it. I’d have to try to before I’d know how it felt.
Space will never be “conquered” again by governments, as the Moon was in 1969.
It will take a future generation of entrepreneurs, engineers, and enlightenment.
In a sense, a cross of Richard Branson with the fictional Zefrem Cochrane… all out to achieve some glory and profit… or at least some virgins and vodka.
While a nice, peaceful, inclusive, “all nations come together” ideal to explore space works well in science fiction, in the here and now there are other countries and governments that have no intention of cooperation. To think that all nations and all people share the same “enlightened” view of international cooperation is a very short-sighted and dangerous way to operate.
48. Yes the shuttle is getting old and has been on the retirement list for some time, however there was the next program on the horizon that would pick up–although after an unfortunate pause–and would offer “hope” for the future of space exploration. Now there is nothing.
Also, this decision has nothing to do with the Augustine Commission. This was Obama’s idea from January 2008 when he gave his position on NASA. He quoted then exactly what he is doing now. So the commission and its report was a waste of time when Obama had no intention of going any other route, except that it gives his idea glint of credibility.
56 & 59. NASA’s programs may not be as perfect as the UK’s but they get the job done. There has been a lot of research, science, and discovery that has come about because of the shuttle. 56-Keep your healthcare on that side of the pond, thank you.
And why should I believe Obama’s stance that capitalism can work for space, when he is adamantly against it working for healthcare–a far more expensive program than NASA?
Oh, and why would it be too hard to get to the moon by 2020 if the new vehicle wouldn’y fly until 2015? Gemini was flying in 1965, and Apollo got off the ground in 1968… with a moon landing in ‘69. It can be done… it just takes leadership. Everything rises and falls on leadership–something we are sorely lacking nowadays.
#56, I have an idea, stop labeling people and give a sound reasoned argument as to why what BHO is doing is going to be good for manned space flight? I have yet to hear anyone in the space community, be it astronauts, administrators, or scientists who think this is a good idea. It must truly hurt that the road map for the future of space flight was created by a conservative Republican and destroyed by a liberal Democrat.
JFK had courage, BHO has none. This country needs a vision. we need to go places, in person, that we have never gone before. While it’s a jolly good idea to use robots to find the path, Men have to be there to experience it for themselves. What a great world it would have been if during the era of the great explorations of this world, the courts of Europe had turned their backs on the new continents that they had discovered. It would have been a great deal for the native populations, but man expands all his boundaries when he pushes into new and challenging frontiers. Much of the technology we enjoy today exists because of the Apollo Program.
For those who think private industry will blaze a new trail into the cosmos you are wrong. It takes more money than any corporation is willing to devote. In todays dollars Apollo would have cost 100 billion dollars. What company wants to sink that much into a scientific exploration? As for the spin offs, think of the holy hell unleashed if every time you bought a microwave, or a personal computer you had to pay a surcharge to the company that invented, or augmented these technologies for the Apollo program. Anyone for the Rockwell Computer Company or Boeing Microwave.
After all the monies we have wasted in the last year on bailing out companies that deserved to die, the President cannot find 3 billion extra a year for the next several years to give to NASA to investigate and perfect technologies that might save this miserable race in the future. Oh, he will find funds to launch more satellites to investigate his pet global warming theories, but he’ll be darned if he goes back to the moon or makes the leap to Mars. We will waste billions allowing frivolous lawsuits against Doctors and Hospitals, but we won’t bother to put man in space.
Personally I don’t care who is the first human on Mars, but I want the US to play a large roll in that adventure. Right now the best were going to do is maintain the dead end Space Station for another 10 years. And lets be clear, the original intent of building the station was to use it as a waypoint in mans future explorations of the solar system. The ISS is an infrastructure with out a mission. What the Augustine Commission wants is a lot of dead end make work jobs with no clear cut direction for the future. Does that sound familiar? It should. Because since 1972 thats the path NASA has been on. From Apollo-Soyuz to the ISS, man has spent the last 38 years in Earth orbit.
Many Trek fans feel betrayal here. We shouldn’t. BO is a politician, and he said what was needed to be said to get elected. Just remember that the next time he asks for your vote. This is not the way that we should be looking at the future. If we as a nation abandon the high frontier then we will in time regret it. He who has the high ground, has the advantage in all things.
69… “Also, this decision has nothing to do with the Augustine Commission. This was Obama’s idea from January 2008 when he gave his position on NASA. He quoted then exactly what he is doing now.”
First of all, we really won’t know what President Obama is doing until Monday afternoon. Everything we’ve heard this week has come from exactly one source, the Orlando Sentinel, citing “sources inside…” and is thin on details. Everyone else has quoted the Sentinel directly or indirectly. But one detail the Sentinel does give is that President Obama will be increasing NASA’s budget by $6 billion over five years (to fund commercial alternatives and to bolster environmental satellites.) That’s not bad at all, really. (Constellation as it stands would need much larger budget increases… $3 billion more every year than what NASA gets now.)
So this is not what Senator Obama announced (in Nov 2007 actually) when he proposed delaying Constellation by five years to fund his Education Initiatives. He’s still delaying Constellation (and evidently choosing the Augustine Commission’s recommendation of the “Flexible Path” along with a major push toward commercialization) but he’s not cutting NASA.
#71, So basically what Obama will do is fund the environmental satellites that fit in with his political agenda. I can see it now, decades of school children will be excited but the thermal imaging of the new generation of Climate Change boondoggles. Not likely. Again Obama has proven that he has no vision besides his specific political agenda.
In that regard his handling of the space program is worse than Richard Nixon’s was!
72… Yes, but not exclusively. Environmental satellites don’t cost that much, not relative to manned spaceflight anyway. $1 billion will buy you two or three decent satellites like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory lost in a launch failure last year. At first, NASA had plans to launch megasatellites that did everything with one (or a few) satellites, but over the last ten years, after the loss of a big Landsat and the big Japanese ADEOS satellite, it has been moving more toward many smaller satellites working in concert (such as the current “A Train” of satellites in formation flight.)
And don’t make the mistake of thinking environmental satellites are exclusively a Democrat thing. The current big push actually began in 1991 under the first President Bush, who initiated “Mission to Planet Earth” (which eventually became today’s Earth Observing System.) We now have a fleet of satellites in orbit, but they’re starting to age and the oldest ones will need replacement in the next 5-7 years. If we want continuity of data, we’ll need to replace them. That’s one thing President Obama is evidently going to ask for in his budget.
And by the way, Nixon always gets blamed for being anti-space, but he was actually one of the more pro-space Presidents, fuding the development of the Space Shuttle and increasing NASA’s budget after three years of it being slashed by LBJ. Apollo was killed by LBJ in the summer of 1967 when continued production of Saturn V and Apollo and most post-Apollo funding (except SkyLab) was canceled. The existing stock carried NASA through 1972, at which point Nixon got the blame for killing Apollo. But he inherited an Apollo program that was already winding down, the same way Obama inherited a Shuttle program that was already winding down. Nixon can be blamed for many things, but being hostile to the space program is not one of them.
#6
You are wrong and ANYONE who doesn’t support the space program is a knuckledragger. Sorry, it has to be said.
lets not get into namecalling ok?
#1. The Apollo missions left mirrors on the moon, which earthbound scientists have been bouncing lasers off of to measure distances between us and the moon….to this day. Very well documented, and to a person the conspiracy theorists will never mention this because it exposes them for the crackpots they are.
#13
/barf
One of the problems NASA faces on a continual basis is the presidential cycle. One president wants something, one does not…
There must be a way to free NASA from such restrictions, but I’ll be damned if I know how it should be done.
The manned space program is definitely experiencing a bump. Sad to say, right now I would say politicians are looking at things more close to home. I don’t like it, but until the economy picks up I fear policy concerns are going to run much closer to Earth.
[...] Science Friday: Mars Roving End + No NASA Moon Return? + Fusion … [...]
I’m quite glad this capsule business is over.
My hint would be to unpack the Venture Star and finish it before dumping some more money into a new project.
Overall my hopes are with the chinese and russian whose decisions last a little longer than that of the US
As an Obama supporter, I thought I might speak up for the guy. First, the U.S. space program has been moribund since Nixon cancelled Apollo 18. We’d gotten to the moon, and everyone found it boring. Even the Apollo astronauts admit that our primary purpose for going there was to show up the Soviets, not pure science or exploration. As for all this scorn for Obama and his policies, blame Republican mismanagement that led us to the brink of economic disaster. He’s still cleaning up the mess, and doing a pretty good job of it. If he were to suddenly announce a big NASA spending initiative now, can you imagine the “What the — ?” reactions from the unemployed blue collar workers, the news media, and probably both parties in Congress? People would think he was off his nut. Both Bushes waited until late in their Presidencies to announce big space projects. It’s one of those legacy issues that Presidents wait till they’re on their way out the door before making lofty proposals about.
Until there is another external impetus akin to the space race motivation of the 1950s and ’60s, I suspect U.S. space spending will continue to be anemic.
Scott B. out.
It’s really a shame what has been happening to the US space program since the 70’s. Remember movies like 2001. In the 60’s it was felt that by 2001 a trip to the moon would be commonplace. Instead what are we doing, building a worthless space station whose life expectancy is close to my pet goldfish. A space shuttle that cannot even leave orbit. Apollo was not scrapped because it was worthless, it was scrapped by Nixon because his priorities were elsewhere. It was converted to SkyLab if you remember (gee, that was worth it). Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton all continued this trend. The mothballing of manned space exploration is bipartisan.
I’m sad some of my fellow Americans are willing to sacrifice their natural pride to allow someone else go to Mars, because mark my words, someone from Earth will get there. Just not us. And what is wrong with national pride. Some posters noted how 20th century the concept is. Well I guess I’m too old fashioned, but I happen to believe my country is the best in the world (if you are from another country, you are free to believe yours is the best). I’m deeply saddened that the US will be taking a backseat to the rest of the world. I’m all for getting private industry more involved, but at the end of the day, a private company is not going to spend the money necessary to go to Mars unless there is some profit in it. Someday, I have no doubt private companies would build on Mars or the Moon, but someone is going to have to establish a base to operate first.
Americans have become very shortsighted in the last 30 years. They say that is money best spent here at home. Other poster have noted all the great advances we have seen as a direct result of NASA. The Apollo program resulted in huge advances in computer technology. Do you like your cell phone, your DirectTV or Dish Network, well you can thank NASA for those as well. You want a job stimulus, high tech jobs, well here is your opportunity. Is there pork that can be cut from NASA, sure, but you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I agree with another poster that noted NASA’s budget is a bare fraction of the total US budget. Hell, the money spent on the war in Iraq could have gotten us to Mars and built a city already.
#81–People need to be made excited about the space program again. It could be sold to the American people if done the right way. You need people to build it, design it, fly it. These are all high paying jobs, and not all are high skilled jobs. Don’t focus simply on the result. How about what it takes to get there.
As a Star Trek fan, I guess it is disappointing to see that space exploration as seen in such an optimistic future is further away then ever. Maybe by the 23rd century, man will take his next steps on the moon, unless it is deemed to expensive. Space exploration as seen in Star Trek is looking more like the 33rd century.
# 83 – Damian, believe it or not, I totally agree with you. But you and I and most of the posters on this particular site are in the minority. Most people are pretty small-minded. And unfortunately, now is really not the time to announce a big space initiative, no matter how many jobs — ALL of which would ultimately be government (taxpayer)-funded — it creates. Such plans would die a-borning.
When unemployment is 7 percent or lower, the budget is closer to being balanced, our two wars are wound down, and things are generally better, THEN I hope whoever is President will announce and follow through with a bold, strategic plan for the exploration of space.
I will say I really like the X-Prize format for goosing innovation in the private sector. The government should sponsor more of that sort of thing, in space, energy, transportation, medicine, etc. It’s a cost-effective way for the government to “create” jobs and innovation without overly burdening taxpayers.
Scott B. out.
84–It is a shame that so many people out there I hear say, “Space exploration is a waste of money”, without giving it enough credit for what we have because of it. I agree, the reality of it is that right now, getting billions for space exploration has no support on either side of the aisle. I just have a feeling it will be decades before we see any manned exploration of space. China may well surpass us before then. What will that say of the US leadership in the world. Maybe I am living in the past, but I still feel we are the best nation on Earth and capable of so much. It saddens me to think so many of our nation now have the attitude, No, we can’t. I just feel like our best years may be behind, not ahead. And for that, we are all to blame, not just the D’s or the R’s (or the I’s).
It just saddens me to see movies like 2001 and see where they thought we’d be, and where we actually are. We have actually regressed in manned exploration. Remember when children used to want to grow up to be astronauts. Not anymore, what woud be the point.
#81, how do you define the word apologist?
The urge to explore (and conquer what they’ve discovered, sadly) has defined the human race throughout history.
Since the human space programme seems effectively flat-lined with the white elephant space shuttle, the public’s opinion of it has varied from disinterest to a somewhat contemptuous indifference.
Watch the average UK news broadcast. Watch the presenter vaguely snicker when they mention a space shuttle launch or a great image from Hubble.
With the manned space programme appearing to be sputtering and dying, society is turning inwards. Now, there’s little else for humans to do except eat, sleep, sh!t and fornicate in an increasingly poisoned, overpopulated world.
A manned space programme with targets such as lunar bases and Martian bases would generate an excitement as we move towards perhaps mining the asteroid belt for minerals, maybe looking below Titan’s clouds and exploring Europa, maybe even discovering life of some sort. Automated probes are all very good and efficient, but they aren’t people.
I remember my earliest inspirations as a child were Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and a peculiar little programme about a couple of explorers called Kirk and Spock (can’t imagine what happened to that one!)
I think my biggest disappointment as I’ve grown older is people’s disinterest in the what’s out there. I’m pretty sure that most people rarely look at the sky and in cities there’s little point because of light pollution.
Obama, for an alleged Trek fan, has shown a lack of foresight that may cost our planet dear in years to come.
Without the urge to explore and really go ‘out there’ the human race is doomed to shrivel and die!
Obama is a moron along with the people who don’t support scientific exploration. Yeah genius, let’s cut a program that only takes about 1/5 of 1% of the total federal budget but always puts out positive yearly numbers, and employs thousands upon thousands of people. Yeah…the guy’s doing such a great job…sadness.
#81: Scott,
I am with you. I’d truly love to see NASA receive a bigger slice of the pie and we’d all be happy with any forthcoming plans, but today’s economy dictates other directions… I am sure the President would have preferred to steer a different course for NASA; thankfully, I am sure this is just a temporary bump in the road.
Also, today I’d like to remind people and commemorate the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on its seventh anniversary.
Its loss on Sunday, February 1, 2003, and especially the loss of its crew was sad setback for both NASA and for this nation.
Clearly, today’s budget announcements will do little to make any of us be ocerly optimistic (in the short term), but as I said this is surely just a setback we can overcome once the economy improves.
To the stars!
There’s an interesting article here about the new NASA budget:
http://io9.com/5461719/its-time-to-get-serious-about-colonizing-space
The issues surrounding Aries, Orion, et al. are a lot less cut-and-dried than one might think.
At any rate it’s definately a step up from “Oh noes, Obama hates space and is a poopy-head” vs “It’s somehow Dubya’s fault”.
On the surface, today’s announcement looks disastrous. But I’m not sure that it really is. NASA is still getting a $1 billion budget increase this year and $5 billion more over the next five years. In a time of recession and under a Democratic President, that is unprecedented.
Mr. Obama made a more drastic change than even last week’s reports suggested, gone are both the Ares rockets and the Orion spacecraft. and exploration is totally off the table (for now.) But what he has proposed instead is actually very interesting. His budget funds quite a bit of new technology development. Mr. Obama also hugely increases money for research aboard the International Space Station, which has had its science budget slaughtered over the last ten years to pay for hardware overruns. That piddling amount of time and money so far spent on actual science at ISS has already led to a potential vaccine for salmonella. Imaging what it will do with a serious budget for experiments. The NASA Administrator spoke of radically changing the way we travel the solar system, using new engines. That sounds to me like the VASIMIR plasma drive engine is about to get a lot of money for full-scale development.
Lost in the noise today was the announcement of contracts to five or six “commercial space” operators to develop new manned spacecraft, among them is SpaceDev (Now “Sierra Nevada Corp”) for its DreamChaser spacecraft (based on NASA’s 1990’s HL-20.) And these are just the first small contract awards, the President’s budget allocates $6 billion more to develop commercial spacecraft and $7.8 billion over the next few years to develop US automatic docking capability, fuel-transfer on-orbit, and improved closed-loop life support systems. Sounds to me like the President still has manned deep-space exploration in mind, but instead of unaffordable new super-rockets, he wants to use the Orbital Fuel Depot concept (tended by commercial spacecraft) instead. A lot of space geeks have been saying that’s the way NASA should have been planning it all along if NASA really wanted to open the space frontier to everyone.
Okay, we’ve lost the moon goal, the big new Orion, and big new rockets for the foreseeable future, but this is still the most ambitious, and best funded space technology development effort the US has undertaken since the Shuttle in 1972. This is far from gloom-and-doom. Doom would have been President Obama cancelling Constellation and shifting that money from NASA to the Department of Education or off to more banks.
Re: 86 – How do you define the word realist?
Re: 91 – Thanks for digging down and finding the silver lining, Thorny.
Re: 89 – Like you, I’d love to have a robust manned space program; maybe it’ll happen within our lifetimes. Keep the faith.
Scott B. out.
In addition to #55:
On the other hand: if we DO give in to “gloom & doom” &panic, if we do give in to the false economies of “can’t do” & “can’t afford it”, we will slip in to another dark age like the previous ones of history. And it will be centuries before anyone will read words on a computer sceen again, like this.
As far as the money question is concerned (”where will the dough come from?” question), The old “greenback” party of the 1870’s understood the answer; the members of the social credit movement in the UK/Canada/NZ/Australia understands; Richard C. Cook with his “credit-as-a-public-utility” essays understands; Steven Zarlenga of the AMI understands; economist John Hoefle of the EIR understands; & the global private central banking cabal also understands (and is the deadly enemy to these groups previously mentioned).
You don’t need gold. WHAT is the Nat’l Treasure??? PEOPLE. It is creative minds of our scientists, engineers, technicians, tool &die techs, machinists, etc…ALONG with a gov’t of dedicated public servants around a VITAL CORE of visionary statesmen/women that brings in a GOLDEN AGE in any era (the merchant/entrepeneur occupies a necessary, but actually much more humble position in this arrangement— which has been the problem of the past 30 years & WHY we’ve been slipping so badly).
#86 – A realist is someone who sees a situation for what it is and admits it. In other words, no spin. Spin what BHO did for all you want, he has destroyed manned space flight. Very shortly we will be hearing about the retirement of scores of Astronauts. So when some future president comes into office with true vision, he/she will have to rebuild NASA from the ground up.
The ISS is a joke. Anything done there can be done cheaper by unmanned probes. Indeed at this point I am in favor of killing all fundiing to the ISS. If the current administration is so myopic as to turn tail and run from the high frontier, then we need to end this shame of a program entirely. Looks like the Europeans, the Indians, and the Chinese will all push futher out into the solar system while the US sits on it’s arse.
Can you imagine that the US after the end of this year will have no man rated rocket in it’s inventory! Private enterprise will never push out into the final frontier, they will exploit what they can nearer to home.
Lets talk in Trek terms. Starfleet was not created by private buisness, it was a government run military organization. So is that out future? No civilian space exploration, but the military will have unlimited access to the heavens?
Sorry, the more I see of BHO the more of a disaster I see in the making. We as a nation have met a challenge, the conquest of the heavens, and we have failed in meeting it. The Moon is not the issue, the rest of the solar system is. Cancel Aries fine, announce a push for Mars would de fantastic. Instead we are going to go into low Earth orbit with robots and explore via telepresence. What a freaking sad end to a noble pursuit.
94… “The ISS is a joke. Anything done there can be done cheaper by unmanned probes. ”
Nonsense. If you really want to send humans on long-duration missions into deep space, we need ISS.
How do we learn to build an ultra-reliable closed-loop life support system without having “life” on the station to support? The Russians have a simple one, but it still depends on constant resupply from their Progres freighters and water delivered by the Shuttle. The US now has one, but it is just getting started and is still not fully operational.
How can we learn to prevent severe bone calcium loss in zero-g without having astronauts in zero-g? How do we protected people from radiation?
Those are just the fundamentals. We also need to learn how to keep a spacecraft operating for years without a constant supply of spare parts being sent up from Earth. ISS will teach us what works and what doesn’t (it has already taught us an enormous amount about how to build large space vehicles, which a future manned Mars mission undoubtedly will be.
#95 Have we not done the majority of that work on the ISS already? So what are we doing there now that will further the goals of space exploration.
By the way, loved your use of the word “unprecedented” in your first post. I know someone else who likes the use that word a lot to make it look like they are doing incredible things every day in unprecedented times of turmoil. The really funny thing is that nothing they have done is unprecedented, except for creating a debt that is 75% of the GDP. Now thats unprecedented!
96… Building it is one thing. That was hard enough. The next challenge is to keep it functioning for years. A Mars mission will likely be a three-year mission, owing to planetary alignments every 26 months, plus travel time. We’re not even close to having a life support system that is that dependable.
For “unprecedented”, I was referring to a Demcratic President increasing NASA’s budget. The last one to do that was LBJ in the 1966. Carter and Clinton slashed NASA funding with wild abandon.
By the way, General Bolden (NASA Administrator) today specifically cited Propellant Depots, Ion Engines, and the VASIMIR plasma engine as things that we’ll be doing instead of Constellation. These are called “enabling technologies”. All three are exciting. A propellant depot obviates the need for a NASA megarocket while at the same time creating a very big market for new low-cost commercial rockets (if one blows up now and then, it doesn’t matter much… fuel is cheap and easily replaced.) If the market for propellant gets large enough (the depot can also support space tugs for satellites going to geosynchronous orbit) then we will soon reach the critical mass in flight rates where a true reusable launch vehicle becomes practical. And a true RLV will change EVERYTHING.
#97, I hope, I truly do, that you are right and awesome things are coming. I must tell you that I’ve heard this all before everything NASA’s budget is shredded. “Don’t worry we will do incredible things with the money we do have”. But then nothing happens. After Nixon destroyed NASA the first time, we were going to have so many awesome things from the Shuttle. And while the Shuttle did great things, it never got Man beyond Earth orbit.
I’m sorry to say I’ve been through all this before. It’s just never been this bad before. Manned Space flight is done.
James, you may be right, but there are important differences this time.
When Apollo was cancelled (it died in the summer of 1967 when LBJ ended production of Saturn V beyond the original 15 ordered, when Nixon arrived in 1969 it was cost-prohibitive to restart production.) NASA’s budget declined. There was no manned spacecraft except for Shuttle that was expected to fly in 1978, and there was absolutely no talk of travel beyond Earth orbit.
Now Project Constellation has been cancelled, but NASA’s budget is actually increasing. There is still a manned spacecraft in service, the International Space Station, which is about 75% American. The Station is an existing, ready-made destination for startup commercial spacecraft. NASA does not have to operate in a vacuum (no pun intended) as it did with Shuttle (which was designed and built with nothing to Shuttle to, thus forcing it to become an all-purpose launch vehicle… a jack of all trades, master of none.)
And the President and NASA Administrator both say exploration is not dead, it is just reorganized, a true paradigm shift in the way NASA does business.
There are already contracts with two commercial providers to supply cargo to the Space Station. One of them (SpaceX) has its first rocket at the launch site as we speak, the other (OSC) expects first flight in mid 2011. Other companies, such as Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada, have been working on designs for suborbital tourist flights and claim their technology is easily scalable to orbital service if they had the capitol to do it. The President’s budget provides that capitol.
And then there is SpaceShipTwo. Sure, it doesn’t go into orbit, but it will reach space, probably this year, and meets the strict definition of ‘manned spaceflight’. Virgin Galactic is already designing SpaceShipThree for transoceanic hops and hopes a SpaceShipFour can be orbital. Now that there is a clear market for commercial spacecraft, the ability for companies like Virgin and Blue Origin to raise capitol investment becomes much easier. Potential investors can no longer laugh it off as a space flight of fancy… there’s real money to be made now. There’s a real market, to a real Space Station.
Bigelow Aerospace has already launched two prototype space habitats into orbit (Genesis 1 and 2). Until now, there was no way to get tourists to it (although Sierra Nevada’s Dreamchaser and others were being designed with that goal in mind.). Now that private companies will be building their own manned spacecraft (to support ISS) they can leverage that business into supporting Bigelow’s space hotels. The risk to Bigelow and its partners goes down, because the same systems can support both ISS and Bigelow.
These are very interesting times.
And right on cue…
NASA just had a press conference to announc contracts with several companies, including:
– Boeing, for a 7-person capsule to be launched on a medium-class launch vehicle (likely either Atlas V or Delta IV), teaming with Bigelow Aerospace
– Sierra Nevada for 7-person DreamChaser spacecraft, based on NASA’s 1990’s HL-20 lifting body, to be launched on Atlas V
– Paragon, for a plug-and-play life support system applicable to all manned spacecraft designs
- United Launch Alliance, for advanced Emergency Detection System for both Atlas V and Delta IV, making them safer for manned spacecraft (and improving reliability for unmanned missions.)
– Blue Origin, for “pusher” type Launch Abort System (escape rocket)