Great news: Nothing off the table with lunar plan

Nasa relooking new lunar plan and is nothing is off the table and they plan to land on the moon by 2024. I might just see it - woohoo!


https://spacenews.com/bridenstine-says-nothing-off-the-table-as-nasa-develops-new-lunar-plan/

It would be nice but I can't see how they can contract, build and qualify a lander in that time frame. I'll give them the possibility of the Falcon Heavy being man-rated by then to be able to do an earth orbit rendezvous style mission and maybe getting the Orion spacecraft ready by then (none of the private orbital spacecraft have lunar return capabilities). SLS MAY fly by then. Once or twice. Or not. On the current budget of NASA (and the current administrator's exceedingly weak qualifications for the position that he holds) this sounds a lot more like empty promises. If a crash program is attempted on a shoe string budget it will be a disaster most likely.

A fly by or orbital mission is much more possible.

I wonder how much of this has to do with the desire to go to the moon vs. the perceived threat of not going back now that other nations are planning on going, possibly with the intent on mining resources.

mpitfield said:

I wonder how much of this has to do with the desire to go to the moon vs. the perceived threat of not going back now that other nations are planning on going, possibly with the intent on mining resources.

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As long as we visit again, it has my support.

I'm a big supporter of the space program, with an emphasis on robotic exploration but with a gradual development of manned space capabilities. I think this 2024 deadline is capricious, but by no means arbitrary (think: election year). The resources needing to be diverted for this are huge, and the incremental risk by pushing this so far, so quickly make no sense in today's economy.

Think of the science we could do with the $$$ it would take to send a man to the moon. Fleets of small robotic explorers, development of all kinds of tech, but instead it would get funneled into keeping meat alive.

Again, I'd love to see further moon landings before I die (I'm 51), but rushing things makes no sense at all. It's a political stunt, plain and simple.

Marc_G said:

capricious, but by no means arbitrary

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I see what happened here....

We waste so much money on science that leads to zero utility. We fund research to confirm high rates of obesity in so many groups yet it is obviously why obesity exists in those groups if you understand physiology. Going to the Moon or Mars is a true accomplishment. Funneling millions into research into the associations of obesity in rural folks on welfare is not a useful piece of research and I can already answer the question without confirming it with funded research. We fund a lot of crap that is worthless.

Isn't it interesting how politicians use language? "Nothing is off the table" except the money that NASA would need to do what they've asked in the time allotted.

Peartree said:

Isn't it interesting how politicians use language? "Nothing is off the table" except the money that NASA would need to do what they've asked in the time allotted.

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Yes, interesting indeed. It is all fair game for cuts expcept the pork barrel project for their consitituents.

Think of all the products that came out of the space age and these don’t include the items that were inspired by seeing other reach such great heights.

Five years? My son will only be 13. They have to wait till he's ready.

mpitfield said:

I wonder how much of this has to do with the desire to go to the moon vs. the perceived threat of not going back now that other nations are planning on going, possibly with the intent on mining resources.

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The conspiracy theorists will say we need to get to the moon before anyone else gets there first and finds no evidence that we were there to begin with. I think it would be awesome for another country to land on the moon and send back video and photos of what we left up there just to shut them all up.

...Fudd

NASA is seriously thinking of investigating the lunar south pole. This is a "must".

https://www.space.com/nasa-moon-2024-lunar-south-pole-target.html

I believe in fixing earth first before spending time and money on man going to the moon or Mars. There will never be a mass exodus of man to any other planet, moons ,whatever or collecting resources. If it was meant to be it would be easier.

rcktnut said:

I believe in fixing earth first before spending time and money on man going to the moon or Mars. There will never be a mass exodus of man to any other planet, moons ,whatever or collecting resources. If it was meant to be it would be easier.

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This is an old worn-out argument. If people had waited for Europe to solve its problems, Columbus would never have discovered America!

Fuddrucker said:

The conspiracy theorists will say we need to get to the moon before anyone else gets there first and finds no evidence that we were there to begin with. I think it would be awesome for another country to land on the moon and send back video and photos of what we left up there just to shut them all up.

...Fudd

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But ... all the other countries are already in on it with us, including Russia.

cwbullet said:

Yes, interesting indeed. It is all fair game for cuts except the pork barrel project for their constituents.

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Pork is what happens in another Congresscritter's district. Necessary spending is what happens in yours. Sort of like how minor surgery is always on someone else.

Bat-mite said:

Five years? My son will only be 13. They have to wait till he's ready.

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That's great! At the peak of the Space Shuttle there were about 600 astronauts in the astronaut corps, many who had flown into space! Who knows how many Russian astronauts have gone into space, but there has been many.

I'll believe it when I see it.
Pence may have been pandering to the crowd he was addressing: a meeting of the National Space Council.
Bridenstine did a smart thing. He said that the necessary systems are already in the works, all that is needed is to accelerate their implementation (i.e. bigger budget). He punted the ball back to the White House. Let's see if they pick up the ball or fumble it.
Given the series of sudden reversals in policies lately, I'm not hopeful. We'll see.

kuririn said:

I'll believe it when I see it.
Pence may have been pandering to the crowd he was addressing: a meeting of the National Space Council.
Bridenstine did a smart thing. He said that the necessary systems are already in the works, all that is needed is to accelerate their implementation (i.e. bigger budget). He punted the ball back to the White House. Let's see if they pick up the ball or fumble it.
Given the series of sudden reversals in policies lately, I'm not hopeful. We'll see.

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Yes, that's true! I think both Bush's at one time or another set or proposed very large space-goals and nothing big really ever happened.

Here is some additional information/background about the idea of going back to the moon by 2024.

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...audacious-return-to-the-moon-just-might-work/

The attached article reports that NASA will have 5 test designs for the Lunar Gateway Station. This must be an expensive endeavor.

https://www.space.com/nasa-lunar-gateway-habitat-designs-testing.html

In a speech today NASA chief Bridenstine said that in order to meet the 2024 lunar goal the U.S. will need international partners. Why do find this hard to believe?

https://www.space.com/nasa-moon-2024-plan-international-effort.html

Here is an editorial by Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, advocating cancelling the Gateway project and concentrating on a moon base and lunar landers along with investigating lunar ice at the north and south poles.

https://mailchi.mp/marssociety/anou...ciety-convention-banquet-1102741?e=480d62ce58

I’m just curious and I haven’t read all the links in this thread. What does it actually cost today to send one man to the moon? Or two...

Tbmx3 said:

I’m just curious and I haven’t read all the links in this thread. What does it actually cost today to send one man to the moon? Or two...

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Depends if you're talking about the launch itself or all of the hardware to get there. If a moon landing could be launched on a Falcon Heavy, that launch cost is about $90M. By the time you get all of the costs of ground crew through the mission and recovery, round that up to $100M for the launch itself. The cost of the modern equivalents of the LEM, CM, and SM are a different matter. I would expect those costs to be at least $500M, and that may be grossly low.

There's an interesting Opinion piece over at SpaceNews. It argues for going lunar direct and forgetting the Gateway. Some of the stuff seems a bit out there (like wireless power via microwave) but some of it seems very plausible. What it does do is give some insight into cost - especially SLS/Orion versus Falcon Heavy/9/Dragon - and flight frequency.

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-lunar-gateway-or-moon-direct/

BA_Incognito said:

There's an interesting Opinion piece over at SpaceNews. It argues for going lunar direct and forgetting the Gateway. Some of the stuff seems a bit out there (like wireless power via microwave) but some of it seems very plausible. What it does do is give some insight into cost - especially SLS/Orion versus Falcon Heavy/9/Dragon - and flight frequency.

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-lunar-gateway-or-moon-direct/

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Looks like a lot of Robert Zubrin's viewpoints. The Gateway Station looks really huge. That is going to cost a lot of time, money, and effort and will not get us on the moon any faster. To do lunar landings and ascents eventually with liquid hydrogen/LOX derived from the lunar surface is going to take money, too, but some of the early technology is already there, like small nuclear reactors for generating electricity. Liquid H2/LOX engines technology is there, too. We would still need technology for liquefying hydrogen and LOX, preferably done with robotics. However, we still don't know if water/ice is there and in it what form. Again, robotic rovers could be used to do this. Perhaps, the rovers would be cheaper than humans. Early lunar landings may need to use the old hydrazine compounds/N2O4 propellants. All this could be done "directly" and quickly. Gateway will not.

A lunar "gateway" orbiting station might make sense if the virtually all of the exploring, mining, refining, etc. was all done robotically or via telepresence. That saves the fuel cost of humans going up and down the gravity well.

Peartree said:

A lunar "gateway" orbiting station might make sense if the virtually all of the exploring, mining, refining, etc. was all done robotically or via telepresence. That saves the fuel cost of humans going up and down the gravity well.

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John,
That has been mentioned as one of things that Gateway could do, but as Robert Zubrin points out with the radio time delay from the moon being so short, such a mission could be just as easily carried on from earth. My concern is that $20 billion per year is not enough funding for NASA to do all the things it does. Just look at the long delay in the US getting a manned space program back with our own launchers. Going "moon direct" is going to get more mileage for the money that we have and all the technology that will be developed will still be there, if and when the US has a capable manned space program.

I would happily delay a human moon landing by a decade, if we spent the time and money doing robotic exploration, find the water ice, and develop robotic tech to turn it into fuel. If we could do that, and loft fuel barges from the moon into lunar orbit or even into Earth orbit from the moon, solar exploration and subsequent human exploration would be so much easier and cheaper.