luke strawwalker
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I can see your point, but far more important and long-term in its effects on space will be the current financial mess... We're going to be looking at the "bad old days" of the 70's all over again, if we're LUCKY... Just like with Vietnam, this massive war spending, high energy costs, and shaky financial policy has led us into a financial mess that will take a LONG time to fix, if ever... and I'm fully convinced that we will see a LOT worse before it's all over with... and frankly, space is a VERY low priority... at least "civilian" space... DOD/AF has milspace covered, which is the part of space that has national security implications... NASA's manned and unmanned programs just flat aren't high priority missions, unlike the late 50's/early 60's where every manner of means for "dominating space" was being proposed and explored, and nobody really knew what was feasible and important and what wasn't, and everyone assumed that the enemy was going to "get there first" and control the planet via control of space. Therefore, NASA is MUCH more likely to see its budget continually shrink over the next decade or so, CERTAINLY not rise... If they're EXTREMELY lucky they might just manage to hold on to what they've got, simply because in the grand scheme of things it IS so small...
ISS was a tremendous mistake... it's a nearly $200 billion dollar boondoggle that is basically performing the same sort of "effects on human health of long-term space missions in zero-gee" type stuff that the Russians have been doing on Salyuts and then Mir since the early 70's. (Granted, NASA considers the Russian numbers "garbage" and thus want to conduct their own research, their own way, and get their own conclusions, but we could have done this sort of thing on a MUCH smaller and simpler station.) Most of the ISS crew's time is taken up with maintenance and keeping the station running... very little is actually left over for science, and the flood of public/corporate research that was supposed to come flocking to ISS has never materialized (just like all the promises that industry would be tripping over each other to get into "space based manufacturing", which was the mantra used to justify shuttle in the 80's and early 90's before there was an ISS.) From everything I've read, the current plan is to keep ISS flying until at least 2020, so that's 8 years away... and it's quite likely that it will continue well past that. Mir was kept aloft for nearly a decade past it's 'replacement date'. Thing is, despite his faults, Griffin was right that we cannot afford to go anywhere else so long as we're spending money on ISS. Frankly, it's a shame that Space Station Freedom (which morphed into ISS after the Soviet collapse in 1991) didn't get canceled... because the main thing we've learned from it is how NOT to build a space station (mega-structure constructed from 20 ton modules brought up by dozens and dozens of flights of an expensive manned spaceplane). We could have done a lot more with the money that was wasted on ISS... but that's water under the bridge...
Not sure what you're trying to say here. The only mission even manifested so far is a "loop round the moon" ala Apollo 8... not even sure they can drop into orbit or just loop around the moon like a Zond did in the late 60's (unmanned). I don't see that an asteroid mission would be particularly useful, honestly... an unmanned probe could land and conduct several "hops" to collect samples for return to Earth in a REAL laboratory capable of MUCH more in-depth study than possible in a spacecraft for a FRACTION of the cost of a manned mission. About the only thing of any "use" from the mission as far as "Mars precursor" operations might be long-term storage of cryogenic propellants (which IIRC isn't baselined) and experience with a deep-space hab they'd need for the trip (WAY too long to ride all the way out in Orion... it doesn't even have a toilet anymore!) Other than that, there's really NOTHING to be gained from an asteroid mission-- maybe communications and operations at long distances and deep space navigation... (but we've already got TONS of experience with that from the unmanned program). Long term life support should have to be proven out completely in LEO/L2 before any asteroid mission is contemplated... because if the ECLSS doesn't work, they're dead at those distances, period...
China is moving forward, no doubt about it... and what they've done is truly impressive, and their plans for the future (if they turn out to be more than vaporware) should be equally impressive. They've managed to do so far what it took the US and Soviet Union dozens of flights over a decade to accomplish (first manned mission, rendezvous, spacewalk, and first space station). Their long-term plans are ambitious, but what it really has to do with us is to be seen... We've had one space race, and it was a dead end. We (foolishly) abandoned nearly the entire system and the vehicles we had developed, and essentially started from scratch with the shuttle, and we got a fragile, expensive system less capable than the one we had, and we've been stuck with it for 30 years. We certainly don't need another "space race" that leads to this sort of outcome...
Yep, Mars is always at least 20-30 years away. Despite all the talk, a manned Mars mission is no closer now than it was in 1972, 82, 92, 02, 12, or will be in 2022.
Mars is an order of magnitude (or more) harder than any lunar mission. Basically we've got a LOT to learn about deep space manned operations, and frankly, the moon is the place to do it. We need experience building spacesuits that aren't falling apart after a day's work (on the moon, or at Mars), building and maintaining and repairing if needed spacecraft, systems, and equipment in deep space, on the lunar surface. If we can't repair stuff or keep it operating on the lunar surface, NO WAY will be able to keep it going at Mars. Yes, the landers used at Mars would be completely different than those used on the moon, but most of the SYSTEMS (life support, EVA, surface power, etc) would all be virtually identical to their lunar counterparts... only requiring integration in a Mars-capable lander. Plus, the moon is only 3 days away... Mars is a year away. I'm NOT saying we need a huge lunar base or even a permanent presence, but the moon is a valuable training ground that would be absolutely necessary to perfect the systems and verify their operation before sending them to Mars... Plus, we could accomplish a lot of good exploration work at the same time-- Apollo basically just scratched the surface, literally. When one is going to play in the superbowl, it's advisable to practice on their own field next door first. Besides, if we cannot afford lunar missions which will be an order of magnitude cheaper than ANY Mars mission, we cannot hope to afford a Mars mission which will doubtlessly cost many times more... In fact, the sheer COST of a Mars mission basically rules it out for the foreseeable future. NASA's "official" plans, the Design Reference Mission, which describes how NASA would conduct a Mars mission, currently would have about 8 or more SLS launches just to assemble the Mars-bound ship... This from a rocket that is projected to cost well over a billion per flight and only be launched about every other year... certainly doesn't inspire confidence... and seriously lacks reality... IMHO...
This is perhaps a valid assumption... it is an established fact that the longer you stretch out a program, the costlier it is on a per-mission basis, simply due to overhead. That's why SLS is on schedule to be the single most expensive space launch vehicle ever conceived... it won't fly often enough to justify the overhead needed to support it... (it'd be about like keeping a factory tooled up and staffed to build Corvettes, but only produce one every other year-- the cost per car would be absolutely staggering!) NASA, despite 50 years of experience and knowledge and computer tools and new materials and capabilities undreamed of during Apollo and Saturn development and operations, seems incapable of doing ANYTHING in less than a decade or more and spending many dozens of billions in the process... which is the MAIN reason that they're faltering...
On the other hand, we did a "crash" program to develop a lunar landing capability in the 60's, in less than a decade, and succeeded, but we created a system deemed "too expensive" (which turned out to be cheaper than shuttle, but that's in hindsight) to continue to operate, and we abandoned it and started over... So does it really matter that we succeeded, if it was a dead end?? (Not that it HAD to be... in fact, had Saturn flown enough to get some economies of scale, and if the improvements developed for the next series of Saturn vehicles been implemented (from among the many proposed evolutions of the Saturn vehicles, the F-1A engines and J-2S engines which were to be used on any second production run, which never happened) it's entirely possible we'd still be flying evolved versions of the basic Saturn hardware that got its start in the 60's, much as the Russians still fly evolved R-7 boosters and Soyuz capsules...
So pretty much any plan to go to Mars in the last 20-25 years, I think of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon where Bullwinkle tries to pull a rabbit out of his hat...... Again? That trick never works.
I gave up years ago expecting to live to see us land a crew on Mars, even if I have great health and live a long time.
I'd love to see that I'm wrong.....and see it happen.
- George Gassaway
I think you're right... We've tried crash programs (Apollo) and ended up abandoning it all as "too expensive"... (which was a mistake, but it can't be "undone" as it were). We've tried "cheap, routine access to space" via the shuttle (which was never cheap or routine, nor was it ever going to be... it was too compromised a design due to unrealistic demands and unrealistic expectations, combined with WILDLY optimistic self-delusional projections of operations costs, turnaround times, flight rates, and cargoes just "magically appearing" for it, which of course never materialized). Basically shuttle was known to be a dead end when Challenger was lost, but nobody could or would admit it (or allowed it to be admitted). So, instead, we "soldiered on" with a flawed and brittle and very expensive system, built around missions and presumptions and payloads that never happened. Then, to give it a reason to exist, we tried shoehorning experimentation, science, and "research" into it, despite it's very limited capability to remain on-orbit long enough to accomplish anything substantial. Then we tried to sell "research and orbital manufacturing" to the industrial world as a reason for shuttle to exist... nobody would bite and shuttle was left flying missions to see how cockroaches reacted to zero gee and taking blood samples and such trying to justify manned space missions and the shuttle itself. Finally, we created the reason to keep shuttle alive, by designing a space station to be constructed by it, basically the ONLY remaining reason that shuttle had been sold on originally that hadn't been tried... (commercial satellite launch and retrieval was a failure, because it was WAY more expensive to design satellites with the necessary safety margins for launch in a manned vehicle, and the operations costs were much higher for a manned vehicle, and therefore launch costs... and nobody really wanted their satellites back; by the time they broke down they were obsolete anyway-- the main takers for satellite retrieval/repairs were satellites stuck in useless orbits due to launch vehicle failures... but of course shuttle launch/ops costs were SO high that it was never a paying proposition... better to just launch a new satellite... heck even shuttle's "shining star", Hubble repair, was SO expensive to conduct that duplicates of Hubble could have been launched for what it cost to repair the original... nevermind the opportunity cost of Hubble being stuck in LEO so shuttle could launch/service it... which is about the worst orbit possible for astronomical observations. The DOD/AF grand plans for blue-suit spaceflight, launching spysats or flying special observation platforms into polar orbits from California over the poles and landing back in California after a single orbit, or futzing around with Russian satellites in space and all the other claptrap that the military used to justify getting their own shuttle (originally Discovery was to be the "air force shuttle" and was due to be transferred to Vandenberg and launched on the first all-Air Force shuttle mission into polar orbit not long after Challenger... which of course torpedoed all those plans-- no shuttle ever flew from California into space or into polar orbit period. Supposed research and manufacturing that industry would be knocking the doors down at NASA to get aboard shuttle or a space station to do simply never materialized... just as it hasn't for ISS). IMHO, we should have retired shuttle after Challenger and simply developed a "shuttle derived" launcher then, as the National Launch System and Advanced Launch System studies proposed doing... and replaced shuttle with a smaller, more robust space taxi (capsule or small Dreamchaser/HL-20 like spaceplane). In fact, this was proposed back when the shuttle was first being explored as a proposal-- a small reusable spaceplane on an expendable booster designed for minimum costs. But "reusability" was the "holy grail" of spaceflight at the time, and anything not fully or almost fully reusable simply was blown off... of course now we know, as shuttle manager John Shannon told the Augustine Committee, that "reusability is a myth" and cost just as much to refurbish, inspect, test and reuse the SSME's and SRB's as it would have to simply replace them with all-new parts every time (expend them).
During most of the shuttle era, we've tried SSTO and Aero-Space Plane runway-to-orbit-and-back-again type vehicles, all of which have failed miserably and been canceled long before anything actually flew... the cost to develop then were horrendous and the operations costs, if indeed they ever became operational, would have been questionable as to whether they'd ever be profitable, or indeed as cost-saving as projected.
SO what does that leave us?? The only path that been proposed that has never really been tried is the "cheap, SIMPLY launch"... developing a launch system designed not around high performance, cutting edge materials and machinery, not designed for absolute maximum performance, but designed to be as simple and cheap as possible and still deliver a cargo to orbit... IOW, systems like the Sea Dragon (or more realistically it's smaller cousins that have been proposed), Big Dumb Booster, Low Cost Launch Vehicles, and other such proposals. They've been STUDIED, but never really and truly designed and tested... Personally I think this is the way we should go.
Later! OL JR
