Lunar mission to get the axe...

[Highbury]

Originally Posted by Lionclaw

http://www.natural-environment.com/b...in-space-junk/

The numbers are bad but the planet/junk size ratio in those pics is more then a bit misleading.. it would obscure the sun!

And I am not a fan of this either. In the Sixties a goal was set that seemed unreachable, but it was reached. No goals have been set since and we have just been spinnin around taking pics and leaving space junk.. time to move on!

[FIREWALL]

The Sky is Falling.

[Task Force]

hmm... yep, would have been nice to see a moon landing with modern stuff... (ex modern cameras, image quality, ect.)

This new president was a bad idea... like the old one... and probably the next... (they seem to just get dumber and dumber...)

[Skybird]

Colonising space, somebody said. Wowh, that are very big words. Think again.

I love Science Fiction. I am fascinated by stellar conquest. And desoite my sympathy for that, I still know the difference between fiction, and reality.

If a nation and an economy and state finances and a society are in a condition like the American example, or the West in general, then going to the moon simply is nothing more than a feel-good project that is close to the principle of panem et circenses. Always wanting new toys to play around with, is one thing. Being able to finance them, is something different. And NASA - belongs to the biggest debtor on Earth.

To my surprise, ten days or two weeks ago I stumbled into a TV documentary on the ISS, and what stunned me is that now that it is almost ready and finished in construction - they have difficulties to get customers booking time onboard of it to conduct their experimental designs. From the perspective of ESA it is not sure that NASA even has any long-termed interest in keeping the station alive, even more so with the Shuttle approaching it's decommission date, and all solutions thought about to supply the station in prinicple are little more than provisional arrangements. There are more important things to think about than the moon. Getting a succeeding system for the shuttle, for example.

Hopping around on the moon may deliver nice pics to please the crowds at home and make them waving flags and voting for you - but it does little more than just that. And sending half a dozen people, or even a hundred people, to the moon, or Mars, hardly is "colonising space". You do not become a sailor by dipping your toe in the sand at the beach. It's religion for some people to believe we could solve our problems on Earth in space, but trying to do so would only mean to continue thinking we must not change, and would result in us bringing the same mental attitude that made us creating our problems on Earth to a small space camp out there. And then our problems sooner or later would beging again. Because we have not learned anything.

First we bring our house in order, if that is still possible. Then we start thinking about colonising space, if we are bored then. If we cannot bring our house in order, and cannot change our messy behaviours, then the questions must be asked whether we really deserve to reach the stars one day, and whether we really deserve to survive in the evolutionary process. The latter usually is taken for granted - but I reject the claimed naturalness of that assumption. And in the end the judge of that problem with our design will not be man, or man-made ethics and morals and imagined deities, but ol' mother nature who let's us live.

Or not.

[FIREWALL]

@ Skybird Very good points you made.

[Neptunus Rex]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

@ Skybird Very good points you made.

The same points have been raised since the manned space program was first announced. I'm sure there were similar views in Europe in the 15th century as well regarding sailing west across the Atlantic and the search for the Northwest Passage once the Americas were reached.

It has to be the next horizon. It's human nature to push.

[Oberon]

Well, it's officially dead but the ISS has been extended to beyond 2016 so that's one glimmer of hope in this bleak news.
This is going to haunt Obama in the southern states, particularly the launcher states, Florida and the like, they're not exactly keen on him at the moment.
However, on the other hand it's not as if the west has money to throw around at the moment. Moving a lot of the work over into the private sectors and giving them greater backing could well pay off in more designs like Spaceship One and an increase in space traffic, although sadly the costs of said endeavors measured against the current financial problems means that not many companies would be willing to take the risk unless a financial reward was guaranteed.
I can see where this is coming from, but I don't like it, no more than I like the idea of the Shuttle fleet going out of service before a replacement has been created. This is something that should have been sorted a decade ago, but I guess budget cuts and the like have always put NASA on the back burner.
I personally think that we need the ability to travel within the solar system, because I can't see things getting any better on this planet and so for the continued survival of the human race in some shape or form, we need a group of people not to be here when it eventually all goes wrong. Of course, you have the problem that if that same group of people make the same mistakes all over again then what's the blooming point, but at the very least they should have the option to make those mistakes, at the very least we should have them there. If they make the same mistakes and kill themselves off, well then, nothing ventured nothing gained. The clock is ticking but people don't seem to be listening to it!

[CaptainHaplo]

What is a bigger issue than just killing the lunar revisit - is that the budget axes the next space vehicle that is supposed to take over for the shuttle. In other words, we use the shuttle for another decade plus (when its at its end of life already) or we dont make manned space flights anymore - unless guys like Virgin Galactic actually make something that works.

This is in some ways a BRILLIANT move though on Obama's part - because it creates private sector opportunity for one of the civilian "space companies" to now have the ability to do things that have been the realm of government funded space agencies - though the timing is premature.

Private industry is still looking at doing only sub-orbital flights. It wil be another decade or 2 before commercial space flight above sub orbital is sustainable.

[Happy Times]

Skys points are offcourse valid.

But he also probably knows that when technology is ready to start mining operations for exsample, the shuttles will go like trains.

I personally think man will be do great in space, we have the natural desire to go as far as we can.
I think it will only do good for us in helping to realise the value of our home planet.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Neptunus Rex

The same points have been raised since the manned space program was first announced. I'm sure there were similar views in Europe in the 15th century as well regarding sailing west across the Atlantic and the search for the Northwest Passage once the Americas were reached.

It has to be the next horizon. It's human nature to push.

Yes its human nature to push the boundaries, but in the end you have to capitalize on that drive. After Columbus discovered the new world, he and his men didn't just go home and leave it at that.
The american space program was always politically driven, first to beat the soviets and then to keep happy the aerospace industry with a broken hardware design, the Space Shuttle.

Colonizing space has never been a target for Nasa notwithstanding what the PR say, only few people really had the vision that was necessary to achieve such a lofty goal and they understood that it was an endevour what would have taken decades.
Von Braun was one of them. He always advocated that the US space program procede by baby steps. First putting orbital space stations around earth. Then creating a moonbase. And then putting in place the infrastructure to go back and forth betwwen the earth and the moon. And in the future on to Mars and beyond. Those ideas were scrapped by POLITICIANS whose only drive was to beat the soviets. And what was gained in the long run ?

The decomissioning of the Apollo program and its hardware (at least some of it was used for the Skylab missions). The investment in a broken design of the Space Shuttle that should have been able to do the real SHUTTLE missions between earth and leo instead of 2 flights per year at astronomical costs at the best ? The impossibility of having a permanent human prescence in space. And so on.
Human colonization of space is a process, its not a goal. When you design a program around a goalpost, then once it is achieved, almost always the program will be scraped. It did what it was supposed to do and thats it. No more funding. Thats a pretty short vision to have, and it has plagued the american space program since its inception.

Everything (the manned space program) was sacrified on the altar of "beating the soviets". Great you did it, unfortunately 50 years after we are still at the same point. With hindsight this whole process was a FAILURE. Historians will see it as that. A FAILURE that cost at the time hundred billion dollars to put 12 men on the moon. And for what exactly ?

[August]

I disagree that the moon landings will someday be considered a failure. Our species went from the dawn of flight to the moon in just 67 years. That is success by any reasonable yardstick.

However I do think it's time to turn space over to private and commercial interests. We need reasons to go into space beyond just for the advancement of scientific knowledge or backing up human populations.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by August

I disagree that the moon landings will someday be considered a failure. Our species went from the dawn of flight to the moon in just 67 years. That is success by any reasonable yardstick.

I agree that from a technical perspective the moon landings were an incredibile acomplishment. One of the milestones of the twentieth century.
But look at the big picture, the manned space program. It was a failure to capitalize on that success. We are back to square one. As you note 40 years ago people were walking on the moon (albeight at great cost and for less than a week between missions). Nowadays the most we can do is go 300 km up in the soon to be decomissioned Shuttle. How's that for full filling the promise of human colonization in space ?

However I do think it's time to turn space over to private and commercial interests. We need reasons to go into space beyond just for the advancement of scientific knowledge or backing up human populations.

No, its time to make human colonization of space a long term program.
You need visionary people for this and of course long term political support.
Spending lets say 500* billion dollars to make a space station over 15 years and once complete let it rot is not the way to make headway into human space exploration. Private industry or no private industry.

You need continual economical support, and a clear long term vision of what infrastructure will be needed. Right now we are walking in the dark. The Space Shuttle was not needed. It was a failure from day one.
Spending big bucks here and there without a clear idea of what one wants to accomplish leads to NASA. This has been the manned space program, a walk in the dark, day by day. It has printed FAILURE all over.

Now real scientific exploration with space probes etc.... is another can of worms.
And one were all things considered NASA is doing pretty well.
But thats not the argument is it ?

* I don't know what the real cost of the ISS is.

[razark]

Originally Posted by August

However I do think it's time to turn space over to private and commercial interests. We need reasons to go into space beyond just for the advancement of scientific knowledge or backing up human populations.

The problem is that you'll have a hard time finding a private sector company that can turn a profit in the manned space flight business yet, or even unmanned exploration. If there was a decent chance at making money, some company would have branched out into it already.

NASA doesn't need to show a profit. Even so, we have seen a return on our investment in space programs. Various materials have been developed and marketed, various inventions designed for the space programs have been turned into useful devices here on earth. This is research that would not have been carried out without the space race. No private company would have had the funding or the motivation for such research.

The Apollo landings were nothing more than a pissing contest between the US and the Soviets. That doesn't mean that there was no benefit to it.


Don't get me wrong. I fully support private industry taking over more of the aerospace industry and research. There are some things that are just not going to be profitable for a company yet. Let NASA do the research and non-profitable work. Let the private industry have access to the research and turn it into something they can make money on.

[August]

Originally Posted by goldorak

As you note 40 years ago people were walking on the moon (albeight at great cost and for less than a week between missions). Nowadays the most we can do is go 300 km up in the soon to be decomissioned Shuttle. How's that for full filling the promise of human colonization in space ?

No, its time to make human colonization of space a long term program.
You need visionary people for this and of course long term political support.
Spending lets say 500* billion dollars to make a space station over 15 years and once complete let it rot is not the way to make headway into human space exploration. Private industry or no private industry.

Actually this illustrates my point quite nicely. The goal of the Apollo program was never about space colonization, it was to get to the moon. An effort akin to being first to climb a mountain, we did it because it was there. Once that goal was achieved support for this politically driven effort faded.

You need continual economical support, and a clear long term vision of what infrastructure will be needed. Right now we are walking in the dark.
The Space Shuttle was not needed. It was a failure from day one.
Spending big bucks here and there without a clear idea of what one wants to accomplish leads to NASA. This has been the manned space program, a walk in the dark, day by day. It has printed FAILURE all over.

How do you expect to come up with long term taxpayer support if you have no clear vision, and how can you have a clear vision if you can't even define the reason for being up there? It's like packing for a trip without knowing your destination.

Originally Posted by razark

LDon't get me wrong. I fully support private industry taking over more of the aerospace industry and research. There are some things that are just not going to be profitable for a company yet. Let NASA do the research and non-profitable work. Let the private industry have access to the research and turn it into something they can make money on..

I agree. I understand there are also rather severe regulatory restrictions on private space ventures, especially manned ones.

[razark]

Originally Posted by August

I understand there are also rather severe regulatory restrictions on private space ventures, especially manned ones.

In the US, yes. In other countries, not so much. A private company would be able to conduct operations in any country, and deal with whatever regulation is in place there. It helps keep costs down when you don't have to worry so much about the crew's safety.

As for colonization, we o always use the "Australian model" for colonization of Mars. I'm not sure how much public support we could get for turning Mars into a penal colony, though.