From NewScientist:
NASA will probably not build an outpost on the moon as originally planned, the agency’s acting administrator, Chris Scolese, told lawmakers on Wednesday. His comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.
NASA has been working towards returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 and building a permanent base there. But some space analysts and advocacy groups like the Planetary Society have urged the agency to cancel plans for a permanent moon base, carry out shorter moon missions instead, and focus on getting astronauts to Mars.
Annnnnnd… here we go.
Manned missions to Mars will be vastly more expensive than Lunar missions… and thus, in the Barney Frank/Nancy Pelosi economy, much harder to sell. So by essentially giving up on the Moon and focussing on Mars, completely cancelling all American manned space exploration will become quite easy for the 0bama administration: “Gosh, we’d sure love to, but you know, a program of manned exploration of Mars would, over ten years, cost almost a tenth as much as my first hundred days in office. And America just can’t afford that right now.”
The sad, the truly tragic thing, is that the Moon, unlike Mars, could in principle pay for itself in relatively short order. Everything from oxygen cooked out of the lunar regolith to aluminum to helium 3 to, eventually, manufacturing solar cells from the lunar dirts and beaming microwave energy to Earth… these are all realistic, doable prospects. But apparently not anymore. Once again, the US government is abandoning the future to the Chinese.
9 Responses to “NASA begins to end the dream. Again.”
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Damn.
We knew it was coming though, didn’t we?
I’m thinking I should get busy getting a passport.
hell i knew some thing like this would come under Obama
but get more badly
Orion get weight decrease from 6 to 4 astronauts
means ligher for Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets ?
if yes then gona kill ARES I and ARES V program
oh boy i wana see the face at ESA and there science Minister bosses on that news
“Wat only 4 U.S. ? but you promise 2 ESA astronauts each Orion flight to ISS ! ”
and the Moon ?
it gona be in hand of China and India (and mabey space “Vapoware” program Russia)
Actually this might not be so bad. Downsizing the capsule to fit on COTS launchers might increase the flight rate and lower costs through competition
Rand Simberg points out some encouraging points here…
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=18444
…namely that Scolse is a proponent of developing in space construction capability which will be necessary for…
….oh crap…
I used competition…a free market concept…in my assessment. Given that this is Obama I might as well have used unstable proto-matter. My optimism is invalidated by poor experimental methods.
I apologize to everyone.
….and I’ll beat my drum….
Looks even more like it will be up to the Commercial companies to get the job done. Lets just hope some of them can get decent funding outside of NASA channels.
If not we’re doomed.
“In the universe, space travel may be the normal birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail.” Robert A. Heinlein
> Orion get weight decrease from 6 to 4 astronauts
means ligher for Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets ?
No. The reason why Orion went from 6 to 4 seats was because the capsule is too *heavy.* The realization was that if one of the capsule’s chutes fails to open, if the capsule was loaded with six astronauts and their seats and suits, it would strike the water faster than current safety limits. But if two astronauts are removed, then the capsule is light enough for a safe landing in case one chute fouls.
> Looks even more like it will be up to the Commercial companies to get the job done.
Look to the Frank/Pelosi/Obama economy to do it’s best to kill them outright.
> Downsizing the capsule to fit on COTS launchers might increase the flight rate and lower costs through competition
The main problem here is that Orion is a capsule designed to withstand re-entry at interplanetary speeds, while a capsule deisgned just to visit a space station needs to be designed to lesser requirements. The SpaceX “Dragon” capsule, for instance, might (and, I hope, will) survive a normal re-entry from an orbiting Bigelow space hotel just fine. But drop it all the way from the Moon… shrug.
I am very disappointed by this news, but it isn’t like I wasn’t skeptical that any Congress, Republican or Democrat, would actually fund new manned missions to the moon, a permanent moonbase, and manned missions to Mars.
Michel Van wrote:
>>Orion get weight decrease from 6 to 4 astronauts
>>means ligher for Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets ?
Brickmuppet wrote:
>>Actually this might not be so bad. Downsizing the capsule
>>to fit on COTS launchers might increase the flight rate and
>>lower costs through competition
Scott replied to each:
>No. The reason why Orion went from 6 to 4 seats was because
>the capsule is too *heavy.*
and:
>The main problem here is that Orion is a capsule designed to
>withstand re-entry at interplanetary speeds, while a capsule
>deisgned just to visit a space station needs to be designed to
>lesser requirements. The SpaceX “Dragon” capsule, for
>instance, might (and, I hope, will) survive a normal re-entry
>from an orbiting Bigelow space hotel just fine. But drop it all
>the way from the Moon… shrug.
As a note, according to people I know working on the program (and despite what NASA keeps insisting :o) the systems intergration folks are being required to work under the “original” requirements of there being three different “block” models of Orion: LEO, Lunar, Planetary.
Meanwhile the folks doing the systems design and fabrication are being required to build SINGLE systems with long (6-month+) durations and work time between failure modes YET having to cut mass whereever they can to get the mass down on the ONLY (single) capsule specifications they have been given which was the Planetary model.
As far as anyone can tell me the Planetary Orion can’t be “slimmed” down to fit the existing EELVs, the Lunar Orion is a definate “maybe” though it and the LEO Orion are only ‘over-weight’ for the EELVs BECAUSE of the systems needed for it survive launch on the Aries-1!
Seems many folks working on the Orion program are just as confused as the rest of us :o)
Randy