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Obama cancels Moon return project

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Obama cancels Moon return project
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
Article Link

President Barack Obama has cancelled the American project designed to take humans back to the Moon.

The Constellation programme envisaged new rockets and a new crewship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020.

But in his 2011 budget request issued on Monday, Mr Obama said the project was too costly, "behind schedule, and lacking in innovation".

US space agency Nasa has already spent $9bn (£5.6bn) on the programme.

The president said Constellation was draining resources from other US space agency activities. He plans instead to turn to the private sector for launch services.

"While we're cancelling Constellation, we're not cancelling our ambitions," said Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
More on link
 
While I am a big fan of space missions (having watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon as a young boy), this actually makes sense, although probably not for the reasons President Obama listed.

By removing a lot of funding and sole sourcing from NASA and implicitly allowing the private sector to eneter the field, private industry can now take multiple paths to reach the goal, and set multiple alternative goals that will not be crowded out by NASA's huge spending clout and influence on aerospace contractors. While Americans might not get back to the moon in 2020, I suspect that seeing China and India making attempts to go to the moon in that time frame will spur many efforts by US companies and visionaries to make the attempt.

As well, the US has lots of potential cards in play, given the remarkable amount of R&D funded over the years then put on the shelf for various reasons. There are all kinds of technologies that can be revived, and I'm sure we will be hearing a lot about them in the coming years.
 
Thucydides said:
While I am a big fan of space missions (having watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon as a young boy), this actually makes sense, although probably not for the reasons President Obama listed.

By removing a lot of funding and sole sourcing from NASA and implicitly allowing the private sector to eneter the field, private industry can now take multiple paths to reach the goal, and set multiple alternative goals that will not be crowded out by NASA's huge spending clout and influence on aerospace contractors. While Americans might not get back to the moon in 2020, I suspect that seeing China and India making attempts to go to the moon in that time frame will spur many efforts by US companies and visionaries to make the attempt.

As well, the US has lots of potential cards in play, given the remarkable amount of R&D funded over the years then put on the shelf for various reasons. There are all kinds of technologies that can be revived, and I'm sure we will be hearing a lot about them in the coming years.

I'm curious what corporate interest there would be in lunar missions, let alone manned lunar missions. Jack Schmidt's helium-3 mining lobby? Some sort of extravagant demonstration system for innovative space launch systems (eg. "We put a 5lb payload on the moon for $20 million with our launch system. We can put your payloads in GEO cheaper and more reliably than anyone else")?

I see space tourism as a viable corporate venture, but you seem to explicitly reference "China and India making attempts to go to the moon in that time frame will spur many efforts by US companies and visionaries to make the attempt."
 
Pride is a huge spur, and the ability to land a substancial payload on the moon implies the ability to launch very large payloads into LEO and the ability to operate throughout cis-lunar space. This is a very flexible capability which can be used for virtually any mission (including deep space launches throughout the solar system).

Continuing the discussion:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4344512.html

Human Space Flight Needn't Rely on NASA: Analysis
By Michael Belfiore
Published on: February 1, 2010

Is Obama's just-released NASA budget the "death march for the future of U.S. human space flight," as Senator Richard Shelby proclaims on his website today? Or is it in fact a new beginning for the space agency?

Obama's proposed 2011 budget actually increases NASA's budget by $6 billion. What has Shelby and others up in arms is Obama's plan to axe the big-ticket return-to-the-moon program, launched without adequate funding by his predecessor. Nine billion dollars in the hole and counting, the Constellation program has been busy trying to reclaim NASA's glory days with an inherently flawed design.

The design relies on an elongated version of the solid rocket booster that doomed Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Solid rocket boosters cannot be shut down in an emergency and this segmented version relies on what amounts to giant washers to keep hot gases in, adding multiple points of failure compared with a liquid-fuel design. As shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane said in his book Riding Rockets, "At the most fundamental level, modern solid rocket boosters are no different from the first rockets launched by the Chinese thousands of years ago—after ignition they have to work because nothing can be done if they don't. And, typically, when they do not work, the failure mode is catastrophic."

The new budget calls for a course correction—for putting money back into the kind of basic research NASA does best, keeping the space station going through at least 2020, and hiring private contractors for crew and cargo flights. It's a boon to private space flight companies such as SpaceX but an anathema to politicians who want to keep riding a very lucrative gravy train building paper spaceships. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said today during a commercial space telecon organized in response to the budget request, "There are certain members of congress who cannot be swayed by any rational argument. They simply want the answer to be that funding continues in their district independent of any sound basis for it."

I would argue that the new direction is not just the best option for NASA, but the only one. NASA already has no choice but to rely on the Russians for rides to the International Space Station after the shuttle retires this year. It's an embarrassment. Obama's budget will open the door to homegrown solutions for crew and cargo delivery to the space station, while providing much needed research funding for the development of next-gen technologies such as heavy-lift rockets and on-orbit refueling depots.

It's a step that's long overdue, though not one without peril. The private sector will have some very big shoes to fill, without the track record to prove that it's up to the job. And can it succeed without succumbing to the kind of bloat that has eaten our defense budget alive? Working with the government tends to increase the amount of paperwork and oversight, along with the bureaucracy required to handle that extra workload, so it's a legitimate concern. But, after all, the goal is to reduce the cost of reaching space. It has become clear to the right people, including many engineers and managers at NASA, that the traditional way of doing things hasn't been working. NASA and the White House have every incentive to keep out of the way of the private contracts as much as possible.

A bigger danger is that NASA could become the only customer for the fledgling spaceflight companies, making them de facto arms of the government, with all the attendant problems, and keeping them at the mercy of changing political winds. That's one reason Robert Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing commercial space stations, shuns government financing. "We don't have NASA currently on our radar screen as a client," he said during today's telecon.

These bold moves are sure to touch off a battle in Congress. Constellation won't die an easy death. But in its place, NASA will have the kind of clear direction along with the budget and a reasonable timeline for getting there that it has lacked for 40 years. NASA will maintain the space station—finally to be completed this year and ready for use as a fully-functional research outpost—with the help of the private sector, and conduct the research, robotic and otherwise, for pushing beyond low Earth orbit. JFK's let's-go-to-the-moon-in-this-decade battle cry it isn't. But in some ways it's even more exciting, because it points the way to truly sustainable development in space.

Michael Belfiore is the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space.
 
Private space:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059350409331536.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks

Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?
A debate on the pros and cons of commercializing the cosmos; valuing asteroids at $20 trillion each. Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space.

By PETER DIAMANDIS

Government agencies have dominated space exploration for three decades. But in a new plan unveiled in President Barack Obama's 2011 budget earlier this month, a new player has taken center stage: American capitalism and entrepreneurship. The plan lays the foundation for the future Google, Cisco and Apple of space to be born, drive job creation and open the cosmos for the rest of us

Two fundamental realities now exist that will drive space exploration forward. First, private capital is seeing space as a good investment, willing to fund individuals who are passionate about exploring space, for adventure as well as profit. What was once affordable only by nations can now be lucrative, public-private partnerships.

Second, companies and investors are realizing that everything we hold of value—metals, minerals, energy and real estate—are in near-infinite quantities in space. As space transportation and operations become more affordable, what was once seen as a wasteland will become the next gold rush. Alaska serves as an excellent analogy. Once thought of as "Seward's Folly" (Secretary of State William Seward was criticized for overpaying the sum of $7.2 million to the Russians for the territory in 1867), Alaska has since become a billion-dollar economy.

The same will hold true for space. For example, there are millions of asteroids of different sizes and composition flying throughout space. One category, known as S-type, is composed of iron, magnesium silicates and a variety of other metals, including cobalt and platinum. An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion.

Technology is reaching a critical point. Moore's Law has given us exponential growth in computing technology, which has led to exponential growth in nearly every other technological industry. Breakthroughs in rocket propulsion will allow us to go farther, faster and more safely into space.

Perhaps the most important factor is the empowerment of youth over the graybeards now running the show. The average age of the engineers who built Apollo was 28; the average age in the aerospace workforce is now over 50. Young doers have less to risk when proposing bold solutions.

This is not to say that the government will have no role in the next 50 years in space. Governments will retain the critical work of pure science, and of answering some of the biggest unknowns: Is there life on Mars, or around other stars? Governments will play the important role of big customer as they get out of the operations business. Private industry routinely takes technologies pioneered by the government—like air mail, computers and the Internet—and turns them into affordable, reliable and robust industries.

The challenge faced by all space-related ventures is the high cost of launching into orbit. When the U.S. space shuttle stands down later this year, NASA will need to send American astronauts to launch aboard the Russian Soyuz at a price of more than $50 million per person. The space shuttle, on the other hand, costs between $750 million to $2 billion per flight (for up to seven astronauts) depending on the number of launches each year. Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. The annual expense NASA bears for the shuttle is roughly $4 billion, whatever the number of launches.

The government's new vision will mean the development of multiple operators, providing the U.S. redundancy as well as a competitive market that will drive down the cost of getting you and me to orbit. One of the companies I co-founded, Space Adventures, has already brokered the flight of eight private citizens to orbit, at a cost of roughly $50 million per person. In the next five years we hope to drive the price below $20 million, and eventually below $5 million.

Within the next several decades, privately financed research outposts will be a common sight in the night sky. The first one-way missions to Mars will be launched. Mining operations will spring up on the moon. More opportunities we have yet to even comprehend will come out of the frontier. One thing is certain: The next 50 years will be the period when we establish ourselves as a space-faring civilization.

As the generation that has never known a world without "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" matures, it will not be content to watch only government astronauts walk and work on the moon. A "let's just go do it" mentality is emerging, and it is that attitude that will bring the human race off this planet and open the final frontier.

—Peter Diamandis is chief executive of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that conducts incentivized competitions. He is also CEO of Zero Gravity, which offers weightless flights; and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, an interactive entertainment company.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W3
 
While the space program is directionless at the moment, this commenter has some ideas of why and how to reconnect with the public:

http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/2010/02/24/to-the-moon-i-think-not-alice/

To the Moon? I think not, Alice….
By MILES O'BRIEN

(ed. note: these remarks are part of my testimony to the Senate Committee on Science and Transportation hearing “Challenges and Opportunities in the NASA FY 2011 Budget Proposal” on February 24, 2010)

Washington – we have a problem – there is an uproar across the land over NASA’s course change – and it says a lot about how the public is no longer in the loop with the space agency.

The headlines read “NASA cancels its Moon mission”. Now I would submit to you most people reading those stories had no idea were were heading back to the moon in the first place. And guess what? We really weren’t! The program – packaged as the “Vision for Space Exploration” – never got the promised funding – and its “vision” was clearly focused on the rear view mirror.

Constellation was touted as “Apollo on Steroids” but really it was a ninety-pound weakling – an uninspired attempt to bring back the magic. NASA was acting like the middle aged high school football hero who spends too much time in the local saloon telling tales of the glory days when he led his team to the state championships.

But the country has grown up and moved on – and it is time for NASA to get off the bar stool and do the same.

And that is exactly what I see in this budget. This is a grown up approach to space exploration – one that synchs the goals with national needs and budgetary realities. The space agency is getting a slap in the face. “Thanks, I needed that!” is what it should be saying. But that is not what we are hearing. Change is never easy.

But wait a minute – isn’t NASA supposed to be all about change? In fact, if it can’t embrace – no actually invent – change – we should close the whole place down.

But wait there is more – because as much as anything else – what we have here is a failure to communicate.

While I give the Administration plan high marks for its steely-eyed reassessment of priorities – it did a horrible job telling this story. The headlines should have read: “Space is now open for business”. Or – “Space travel now for the rest of us”. Or “Space Station science gets a big reprieve”. Or “NASA to work on fixing air traffic delays”. Or “NASA to focus more on our favorite planet: Earth”.

You get the idea. Instead we got a bunch of blue moon stories…

Why? Well for one thing my understanding is this decision was made in the White House office of Science and Technology Policy office – and it was very closely held until the weekend before the budget rollout. They were reluctant to tell the kids I guess.

Even so, everyone in the Space Cadet Nation knew Constellation was a dead man walking. But denial is a powerful thing and so NASA was caught flatfooted – with no strategic plan on how to explain the nuance of this story.

And let’s face it: the mainstream media doesn’t have a clue either. Reporters who know some things about this beat have been unceremoniously dumped by the big papers and networks right and left – and many of them are now…well…webcasting.

So it is the perfect storm: the agency is not sold on the change…the communications plan is non existent…the reporters are not well informed…and the public is disengaged.

But the people like me who care about this have such a deep passion for it. In advance of this testimony, I sought their opinions via Twitter and Facebook – and I conducted an unscientific poll. I would like to have those comments and those results submitted as part of the record.

Like so many of the people I have heard from, many of whom who have worked long and hard on Constellation, I wish that NASA had not been painted into this corner. I wish that we could have been thinking about – and investing in the next great adventure for humans in space decades ago so that we would not face this huge gap in US human spaceflight capability – which could easily morph into an abyss if we are not careful.

But that is the hand we have been dealt. And trying to recreate the past – on yesterday’s technology – is not something the public can or should support.

Now I am a child of the Space Race and I consider myself pretty darn lucky to be able to say that. I, like most of you in this room, bore witness to a stunning moment in history – a towering accomplishment that defied the odds that made us feel good about what humanity can accomplish collectively when we combine big goals with hard work, ingenuity and bold action.

It is a lesson that my generation took to the bank. We (well not me) – but we collectively embraced the disciplines we now call STEM – science, technology engineering and mathematics. This planted the seeds of success in Silicon Valley – and insured US economic dominance for many decades.

I sure wish my teenage son and daughter had been as lucky as I. They have no first hand experience with those amazing, exciting days. And so, even in my household, where my interest and passion in the subject is well understood (perhaps tolerated is a better term)  there is little evidence NASA is connecting well with the children of the post space race generation.

And truth be told, NASA lost many members of my generation over the past thirty years. How many people even know when a space shuttle is in on the launch pad? Or that the US has had astronauts in orbit continuously on a space station for nearly a decade now?  Or that we have a space station at all? A shocking number of otherwise smart people don’t have a clue.

Many of those same people did not know the shuttle program was near its end – and that, until recently, the plan was to return to the Moon in a suite of rockets and vehicles collectively called “Constellation”.

The truth is the public in general long ago stopped paying much attention to what NASA is doing in the manned space realm. There have been some spikes of interest here and there – for Hubble repair missions, to see John Glenn fly or, sadly, for the returns to flight after the accidents – but in general, it’s been a long, steady decline that really began on July 24th, 1969 – when the Columbia capsule carrying Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins splashed down in the Pacific. Let’s not forget Apollo was never built to be a sustainable program. It was all about the sprint. Is it any surprise it did not sustain public interest?

Now a natural reaction for those of us who lived through the triumph of Apollo is to harken back to the good old days. Bring back those “One small step…Failure is not an option” moments and surely our kids will get space bug and thus, we hope, they will be stirred toward STEM as well….Hey, it worked like a charm then? Why not do it again for old time’s sake…

There are a lot of good reasons the recipe for Apollo moment cannot be replicated: there’s the Cold War context, the desire to meet a seemingly unattainable goal set by a martyred president and, of course, there was the NASA budget that would equate to more than 200 billion dollars this year. Now that’s some launching around money!

None of those elements are in the cards today. And let’s not forget we have been there, done that and those footprints are forever etched in the regolith. While the mission planners and engineers will point out the proposal to build a more permanent moon base is an entirely different and new challenge, I am afraid this detail is lost on a jaded public that wants to hear about something entirely new and different.

So what do people care about when it comes to space? What are the stories that leak out from under my little tent of space lovers? Well – speaking of leaks – a new image from the  Cassini spacecraft which rolled out yesterday is a great example. It shows huge water plumes spurting out from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Very cool stuff. Stories about extrasolar planets get a lot of pickup…so do interesting images from the spacecraft that orbit and rove Mars…anything form Hubble…and anything about the former planet Pluto.

And when it comes to human beings in space, there is insatiable interest in the effort to open space up to the rest of us. I will never forget the thrill I had covering SpaceShipOne as it captured the X-Prize in Mojave in October of 2004. The excitement in the air was palpable – for a flight that went about as high as Alan Shepard went on May of 1961.

But this time it was one of us. The candle was lit beneath a rank civilian. No Right Stuff required. Suddenly, it all seemed within our grasp – in our lifetimes. Nearly fifty years after Gagarin and Shepard flew – only 500 humans have made it to space. I had hoped to be on the list by now myself.

People want to go there themselves – simply sending a GS-13 civil servant does not thrill them anymore.

It is high time the government helped open up the space frontier to the private sector – just as it helped the railroads span the continent…or as it built the interstates…or created our aviation infrastructure. And I applaud the White House for placing this bet on what amounts to nascent spacelines that may one day carry hundreds of people to space every month…or every week. Arthur C. Clarke would be proud. And while this exciting aspect of the plan got lost in badly bungled public rollout of the news, I think it will generate a lot of excitement as time goes on.

I applaud extra money spent on aeronautics and earth sciences. Theses efforts will go a long way in helping the agency answer those every day relevancy questions that always come up. These will be good stories to tell the public.

I applaud the money that will be spent on participatory exploration. The public that wants to go to space also demands to be looking over the shoulders of NASA scientists as they download the latest Hubbble, Cassini or Opportunity images.

I am glad NASA will make education programs aimed at K-12 students a priority. NASA can play a key role in inspiring young people to study science, technology, engineering and math courses. As a member of the board of the Challenger Center for Space Science and Education, I would like to submit for the record a statement of support from  that organization.

And I am glad the station won’t be deep-sixed before it even has a chance to prove its scientific value. It turns out the absence of gravity can make germs more virulent. By turning up the volume on This might make it easier to learn how to make vaccines. There might be some real news that comes out of this unique national laboratory in the next decade.

Which bring us to the mission. What is the next great human mission in space? Frankly it isn’t clear. And that is a big worry. It is important to have goals. We children of the Space Race love a destination and a deadline. But goals that simply lead to uninspired jobs programs are not what we need.

NASA was not getting anywhere doing business the way it had been. Over the years, the money required to keep flying the shuttle safely left little room to push the envelope – as they say. With this budget, the money will be there to pursue some new propulsion technologies that might get us to Mars in a reasonable period of time; or find some better ways to arrive in orbit and on the surface of another planet; or work on closed loop life support systems; or come up with ways for future explorers to use the resources that exist on Mars.

In one sense, we won’t going anywhere I suppose. But we will be exploring – taking the necessary first steps on the journey we have dreamed of for years. I only wish we had started sooner.

It is time for our space agency to reboot  and rethink its mission. I look forward to telling the story of NASA 2.0.
 
We'll see if the Americans get there before the Chinese and the Russians (or perhaps even the Indians who seem to be joining the space race).

Canadian Press link

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - President Barack Obama predicted Thursday his new space exploration plans would lead American astronauts to Mars and back in his lifetime, a bold forecast relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built.


Obama spoke near the historic Kennedy Space Center launch pads that sent the first men to the moon, a blunt rejoinder to critics, including several former astronauts, who contend his planned changes will instead deal a staggering blow to the nation's manned space program.





He said he expected the U.S. to pioneer trips to an asteroid and then on to Mars: "I expect to be around to see it," he said.


Obama said as he sought to reassure NASA workers that America's space adventures would soar on despite the impending termination of space shuttle flights.


"We want to leap into the future," not continue on the same path as before, he said.


Obama's prediction was reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1961, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." That goal was fulfilled in 1969.


Obama did not predict a Mars landing soon. But he said that by 2025, the nation would have a new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow the U.S. to begin the "first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space."



"We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history," he said. "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow."

(...)

 
 
Going to the moon seems to me like an absolute "nice to have" if your country is over-flowing with money, but it is extremely difficult to justify when you're so extremely in debt.

Unless all of your other issues like jobs, security, infrastructure, health care, and other services are taken care of why would you spend it?

It's like being in huge debt and buying a new plasma TV when you can't afford food or your mortgage.

You could probably make the entire city of LA run on free solar and wind energy for the same price of going to the moon and have an infinitely better impact on everyone's life.
 
While "grandstanding" missions like a return to the Moon are probably as Petamonco says, the R&D from the broader program has the potential to spur new industry and provide economic payback for the initial investment (so long as it doesn't devolve into a porkfest of special interest projects that never actually deliver results [the US government's nuiclear fusion program falls heavily into this trap]). On the other hand, don't expect a single "transformative" technology or idea to come from the space program, rather hundreds or even thousand of incrimental improvements and small things will filter into the general economy. (Probably the greatest single advance from the manned space program was improvements in quality control, which have moved into the general economy from aerospace).

I also have a bit of a laugh at people who are selling the return to the Moon as a potential bonanza due to the presence of 3He (Helium 3) in the lunar soil, a potential nuclear fuel. This is a bit like the investors, colonists and workers who signed on to the "Virginia Company" and the "Company of Adventurers" being sold on the promise of gold and the North West Passage to China and Japan. The ones who stayed and started really looking at their environment got rich due to Tobacco and Furs...Once we get there, all kinds of unexpected problems and opportunities will present themselves.
 
True (reference second-order development).

I think expenditures in war can be justified because you can make an argument that your survival was at risk, where as the moon is just maxing out the credit card just to have the biggest phallic symbol.

WW2 had all sorts of side benefits to those who lived like jet travel and medical technology, but you can justify spending money on those things when the Germans and Japanese are trying to kill you the average citizen every day.

Now though, the only threat is losing your job and house, so money should be spent on those things before moon missions.
 
I hope that one of the second or third order effects involves moon maidens:

270186_f520.jpg
 
Petamocto said:
Now though, the only threat is losing your job and house, so money should be spent on those things before moon missions.

"No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Loved the book, and the movie.
 
Petamocto, I am referring to the "new" program as outlined by the President; more R&D, more reliance on private industry providing services and launch capability directly rather than as government contractors and an end or at least hiatus on "spectacles" like a Moon shot, mission to Mars etc. I have to admit a large part of me is actually dissapointed, having been a witness to Niel Armstrong's stepping on the Moon, but maybe the spectacle of Chinese and Indian astronauts racing towards a Moon landing will spur some American company to try to beat them on their own (Virgin Galactic is building thier own private fleet of sub orbital craft, and Space-X has a launcher capable of lifting 32,000 kg  Kg to LEO (comparable to Titan IIIc, Ariane V, Delta IV or Proton rockets, so the technology exists in private hands).

Technoviking, I have been waiting for that and my flying car for decades! ;) ;) ;)


(edit to correct performance comparison; I had mistakenly listed the Falcon 9 [10,450kg to LEO] rather than the Falcon 9 heavy, which is capable of matching other HLV's and potentially launching part of a Moon shot)
 
As I understand things (Al Gore notwithstanding), but the launch of Sputnik was the direct catalyst to the development of the Internet.  So, that being said, I find it ironic to complain on an internet forum the uselessness of space travel and the knock on effects. 


Sputnik ->Advanced Research Projects Agency ->Information Processing Technology Office ->Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program
-> Packet Networks ->ARPANET ->etc ->to today's Information Superhighway.
 
Space is the new ocean and private companies are the new countries.

It's no longer Spain, Portugal, England and France trying to find new worlds, but Virgin, etc.

As long as it stays relatively peaceful we should be okay, but as soon as it turns into Blackwater (Xe) and Tundra fighting for space on the moon, we're in a new kind of hurt locker.
 
You are in a photo posting frenzy, my friend!  First the Stones, then hot moon women, now Star Wars...

Edit - And now zombies...

Edit again - And now grizzly bears doing the face palm...

Edit thrice - Now a monk looking at a bunch of weapons...
 
Perhaps a better way of looking at what is happening:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-translation-guide-to-the-obama-space-program/?singlepage=true

A Translation Guide to the Obama Space Program

Noted space blogger Rand Simberg translates the current controversy over Obama's revised space program.
May 15, 2010
- by Rand Simberg

I find much of the current debate on the new policy direction quite infuriating, not least because many of the debaters don’t even understand it, nor does the media who report it. Here’s a recent bipartisan example, in an editorial by Congressmen Pete Olsen (R-TX) and Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), in which they equate NASA’s Constellation program with human spaceflight:

    The administration’s decision to kill NASA’s Constellation program isn’t just the death knell for U.S. human space exploration, it is a decision to place America’s space program in the category of second, or even third, in the world.

But it isn’t the “death knell for U.S. human space exploration.” It’s simply the death knell for a egregiously unaffordable NASA program.

The upper house has been engaging in similar bipartisan foolishness. From Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Richard Shelby (R-AL):

    President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion federal budget request strips funding for a return to the moon. It also would effectively outsource the transportation of astronauts to and from the International Space Station to private contractors.

    Shelby characterized such contractors as “hobbyists” that lack a track record when it comes to successfully and safely launching space vehicles carrying humans. …

    “Based on initial reports about the administration’s plan for NASA, they are replacing lost shuttle jobs in Florida too slowly, risking U.S. leadership in space to China and Russia, and relying too heavily on unproven commercial companies,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla).

But the most likely near-term commercial providers are either United Launch Alliance, which builds and operates the Atlas and Delta launch systems, both of which have a very solid track record in delivering satellites worth hundreds of billions of dollars (Atlas has a unbroken string of many dozens of successful flights), or Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a new rocket and cargo/crew capsule sitting on the pad in Florida right now awaiting its first launch in the next few weeks. Some “unproven.” Some “hobby.”

The media is worse. One excellent example I roundly filleted at my blog. The reporter cheerfully interchanges the phrases “Constellation,” “space shuttle,” the “Vision for Space Exploration,” generic plans to return to the moon, space station resupply, etc. And even veteran space reporters, such as the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Pasztor, get it wrong and confused:

    A National Aeronautics and Space Administration study warns that budget and technical hurdles will likely delay development of the replacement program for the space shuttle fleet beyond the agency’s internal 2014 timetable.

    The report is the agency’s most pessimistic public assessment yet of its ability to meet its own deadline for delivering the new system of rockets and exploration vehicles, called Constellation. …

    NASA officials project the total cost for Constellation at around $30 billion.

First of all, Constellation is not a replacement for the shuttle. It is both more and less than that. It replaces only the shuttle’s capability to get crew to and from orbit, and the lofting of large payloads, not its other features, such as payload return and orbital research and operations. And it is an entire architecture to get humans all the way to the lunar surface and back, something that the shuttle has never been able to do. And the total cost for Constellation is projected to be much greater than thirty billion. That price tag is for the Ares I rocket alone.

All of this mischaracterization and flawed reporting fuels hysterical and nonsensical cries of “the end of the U.S. human spaceflight program.”

To try to remedy it, I decided that it would be useful to put together a little glossary, so that people could understand what the old plan was, versus the new one, and have a better basis for deciding whether or not it is an improvement. Unfortunately, I’m sure those who take it to heart will continue to find themselves confused by the awful reporting and pontificating, or (as I am) frustrated.

Here it is:

Space Shuttle (also known as the “National Space Transportation System” NSTS)

What it is: It is the means by which NASA has been getting its astronauts and cargo to and from (though many cargoes stayed) low earth orbit for the past three decades or so. It is a specific vehicle design with a payload bay that can carry tens of tons to space (and somewhat less back) and up to seven astronauts, with the ability to stay in orbit for up to two weeks and even act as a short-term space station, with an arm to deploy and retrieve payloads as necessary and an airlock to allow astronauts to perform spacewalks for satellite repairs and other operations. The orbiter part is reusable, the first-stage solid-rocket motors are retrieved and rebuilt, and the large fuel tank is expended on each flight. Originally designed to perform all space transportation services for the nation, after the Challenger disaster in 1986, it was recognized that this was an unrealistic and dangerous goal.

What it is not: It is not a generic term, like “kleenex, or xerox, or google,” to describe any vehicle that takes NASA astronauts to space and back. There will never be a “replacement space shuttle,” because NASA will never again build a single vehicle with these kinds of capabilities. Numerous vehicles and orbital facilities will replace all of its functions, redundantly, in the future.

Vision for Space Exploration (VSE)

What it is: This is the new policy that was declared by President George W. Bush on January 14th, 2004, not quite a year after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, and it was a consequence of that disaster. Prior to that date, the official policy of the NASA human spaceflight program was to complete the International Space Station, and then to utilize it until a decision was made to change that policy. There were no plans to send humans beyond low earth orbit, and in fact, through much of the 1990s, NASA had been expressly forbidden by Congress to even contemplate such things, because Congress didn’t want to be committed to such an expensive project.

With the announcement of the VSE, that changed dramatically. NASA was authorized to go beyond LEO, first to the moon, where they would learn how to live on another world and utilize its resources, and then on to places beyond the earth-moon system, including Mars and other places. The space shuttle would be retired in 2010 (i.e., this year) and NASA would use the funds thus freed up (as well as the launch pads) to develop a new system, called the “Crew Exploration Vehicle,” to get its astronauts into orbit and on to the moon and other places. It was to be operational in 2014, implying that there would be a “gap” of three years during which we would rely on the Russians for access to the International Space Station (as we did from 2003-2005, during the stand down of the shuttle fleet caused by the Columbia disaster). By 2020, we would once again have NASA astronauts on the moon, this time to stay.

What it is not: It is not Constellation (see below). It is not any particular implementation of the goals expressed — the CEV operational date of 2014 and return to the moon by 2020.

Constellation

What it is: This is the transportation architecture chosen by NASA administrator Michael Griffin in late 2005 to implement the goals of the VSE. It consists (or consisted) of the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), based on a shuttle solid first stage and a liquid upper stage; the Orion spacecraft (the new name for the CEV proposed from the VSE) that would go on top of it, and then on to the moon; the heavy-lift Ares V (also known as the Cargo Launch Vehicle or CaLV), which was based on elements of the Ares I; an Earth Departure Stage (EDS) necessary to get the Orion from LEO to the moon; and a lander named Altair to get to and from the lunar surface. As of this year, only the Ares I and Orion were under active development, because funds wouldn’t be available for the other elements until the shuttle retirement. Orion was furthest along in development, but Ares was having schedule and technical issues, and it wasn’t expected realistically to be ready prior to 2017, which added at least three years to “the gap.”

What it is not: Many associate and even equate Constellation with the VSE, and even human spaceflight itself, but it is simply a particular and hyperexpensive means of implementing it. Others could have (and I think should have) done as well or better, including the new approach proposed in the Obama budget. It is also not a “space shuttle replacement.” It is also not just the Ares launch system and Orion spacecraft, but those are what people are fighting to preserve, because there are many jobs at stake in several states. It is what it is, and the Obama administration is canceling all of it, but the only practical effect is to cancel Ares I/Orion, because everything else is fairy dust right now. Other more cost-effective means of getting beyond earth orbit are planned in the new budget. Once they are developed, it will make sense to further define the architectural elements beyond LEO.

Commercial Space

What it is: It is orbital launch providers who offer vehicles that weren’t developed and aren’t operated by NASA, and can offer their services to other customers. Examples are United Launch Alliance (which offer the Atlas V family, developed by Lockheed Martin, and the Delta IV family, developed by Boeing) and Space Exploration Technologies. As already noted, ULA has many successful launches of multi-hundred-million satellites under its belt, and Boeing (which has a heritage of manned systems going back to Apollo) is reportedly developing an “Orion-lite” capsule with private space facility developer Bigelow Aerospace. SpaceX has completed its development and test program of Falcon 1 with the last two launches completely successful. It had a successful static-firing of its crew/cargo vehicle Falcon 9 on the launch pad in Florida this past weekend and its maiden flight will occur in the next few weeks, with following test flights throughout the rest of the year. It has also developed a crew module called “Dragon,” which will be tested in the same time frame. It only awaits the development of a launch abort system to carry passengers. Having this multiplicity of providers gives us a much more robust system, in which the loss of a single vehicle type (e.g., Ares I) will not result in a stand down of the NASA human spaceflight program, as has happened twice with the shuttle over the years.

What it is not: It is not simply SpaceX, so people who want to equate it with that to declare the industry “unproven” don’t know what they’re talking about. And actually, all of the companies in the commercial space community comprise most of NASA’s expertise in human spaceflight. Including SpaceX, because they’ve been hiring NASA vets, including astronauts, like crazy.

Here’s the bottom line for me, as an analyst who has observed and been steeped in this industry for years.

Has the Obama administration abandoned either “American human spaceflight” or the “Vision for Space Exploration”?

With regard to the first, people who argue that an official policy that has extended the ISS for at least five years beyond its previously scheduled splashdown date (2015 to 2020) has “abandoned American human spaceflight” look out of touch with reality.

More fundamentally, has the administration turned its back on the VSE?

That depends on what level you look at it. When I heard the president’s speech six years ago, this was the phrase that stuck out to me in the context of history:

    We do not know where this journey will end. Yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos.

This was a message that was implied by Kennedy’s Apollo speeches, and it resulted in a generation (mine) fed a false promise when the Apollo program ended, it having achieved its objective of winning a crucial (or at least so it seemed at the time) Cold War battle against the Soviets, and not really being about space exploration at all. But it was never explicit, and after Apollo, NASA was reined in to earth orbit, at least as far as humans were concerned, by the shuttle and station. The first president Bush tried to change this in 1989 with the announcement of the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), but it was still-born, never having won the support of Congress (or for that matter, NASA itself). In fact, as previously noted, Congress expressly forbade NASA throughout the nineties from any serious planning for human missions beyond earth orbit.

So when George W. Bush spoke those words and Congress accepted them as policy in 2004, it was a sea change for U.S. space policy. To me, they are at the core of the VSE, and the rest — 2010 Shuttle retirement, CEV, moon first, by 2020 — are details. Mike Griffin’s NASA got the details wrong, and we lost half a decade, but with the new policy, the fundamental new goal — that we humans are heading into the cosmos — remains. Laurie Leshin, new head of the NASA Exploration Directorate, agrees. She gave a speech a few weeks ago in which she declared that “the goal remains the same.” In my opinion, the administration’s new approach, while far from perfect, has a much better chance of making that happen and is much more in keeping with the original criteria of the VSE set out by the Aldridge Commission (of which Dr. Leshin was a member): that it be affordable and sustainable, and support commercial and international participation — criteria that Constellation clearly never met.

The policy road ahead remains uncertain, as always, but with acceptance by first a Republican and now a Democrat administration and Congress, the big issue of space policy, that it is the goal of this nation to settle space, seems politically settled. In that respect, we are in a better position than ever in our nation’s history to finally get serious about that goal.

Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his weblog, Transterrestrial Musings.
 
Sometimes i tend to believe that the previous journey to the moon was not true at all.
 
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