NASA Vision of Space Exploration

You do make a good point that simply because we haven't encountered a problem that it won't happen. However, the threat is more from a cluster of small rocks than a massive one. When you fire a nuke, the cluster breaks apart and then their gravity will bring them together again before hitting the Earth's atmosphere.

A more subtle way to prevent such an event from happening is to find what will hit the planet and gently nudge it off course months or years before impact. It would be the most boring kind of show you'd ever see.

 

Are you referring to the samples that were collected by the apollo astronauts? The 382 kg of lunar rock and the 326 g collected by unmanned spacecraft over the years? I don't know if you're aware of it, but that is a VERY limited range of rock and soil collected from nine sights.

I probably am making a biased argument mainly because of the International Space Station, but I would support diverting funds from that piece of crap and using it for something more beneficial. I would rather that the US had sent an unmanned craft with a rover that would collect a number of samples over the course of a year. Such a mission could collect a greater number of samples and not be limited by the human demands, allowing it to continue functioning after the return vessel had been launched.

As far as the national debt problem goes... I would suggest you look at the wikipedia page on the US national debt and you will realize the situation isn't as dire as you may believe. Most of the US debt is not limited to that 10.7 trillion we owe to China, but there is roughly another 50 trillion that are in medicare and medicade, household debt, and social security.

Although I would advocate that more funds be diverted to sources which return on their investment, such as nuclear energy, I would say that it would be more beneficial to the US to fund new lunar missions than not. This creates jobs and adds to the total GDP because the missions also provide opportunities in a number of corresponding fields.

If the whole moon mission objective revolves around politics as it had in the 1960's, then that would change my opinion; I am supportive of it for scientific purposes.

 

To follow onto your points, another possibility is we use unmanned missions to lay the groundwork and establish an permanent unmanned scientific presence years before we return men. You could put observatories on the far side of the moon, have sample stations with rovers out collecting rock samples, etc.

Look how far the Mars rover program carried their funding. They met with great success earlier this decade.

 

Espaldy, for the last page or so the entire crux of your argument has been "Why go to space?" or "Why improve our technology?" Do you actually have a point or are you just here to troll?

 

No, his point has been that space is high cost/low benefits as opposed to research and investment here on earth. You have done nothing to address this point.

 

Espy raises valid questions that should be asked about all government expenditures; unfortunately, billions goes to waste towards "feel good Earth-bound" programs each and every year,but linger on and on and on.

I wish these critics were as egalitarian in their criticism as their spending philosophies.

 

I am actually sympathetic to the way you guys are seeing this, because it was the exact same view I held from childhood until one day I was asked what the point of manned exploration was. And it took me several years from that point to accept the grownup answer. If you think I'm anti-technology, you haven't been reading or trying to understand the point.

I have not even called for a drop of a single penny in funding to technology. There is only so much funding for space programs and other technological developments, you need to accept that, and realize that there are better ways to achieve the legitimate end goals you seek. Meaning there are goals you have that are not legitimate or realistic. Doing something for the sake of doing something isn't an answer, and you quite literally want to stick your head in the clouds and ignore the real issues.

Yes we should have more common sense policies in other areas, but that doesn't change the fact there is only so much money we are willing to spend and it is not being spent effectively when we make grandiose plans that have no clear purpose and will never be completed anyways.

Hey, once I can get to space at the same cost it takes me to get to the top of the Space Needle, we can go nuts with the moonbases.

 

Okay I'll admit here and now that I have a fascination with space flight. But I also admit that the costs associated with space flight are enormous. I mean consider the latest rocket in planning, the Ares I only achieves about a 5% payload/rocket weight ratio. That means in order to place a load into space, you must invest a huge sum of cash for the rocket and the fuel... which is enormous. That's quite a significant sum of cash just so you could suspend an object over the Earth indefinitely.

Even if there were a generous quantity of samples that came back from the moon, it would be WAY expensive. There really are very few applications within space that I would consider worthwhile, but for those that are... hubble space telescope replacement project, Mars rovers, voyager-like spacecraft, and a cheaper launch system than the space shuttle... all these are worth investing.

Manned moon missions, Mars, Orion... benefits aren't worth the expenditures. There are plenty of better opportunities where the funding would yield much more return on the investment. If manned moon missions could convince NASA to trash the ISS, then I'll support it, but I would rather just see them trash the station and get it over with.

 

Here is an excellent article that points to the very things we're discussing here: cost/benefit, delays, budgets, manned vs. unmanned,etc.

This from MSNBC: Politicians to decide NASA's future flightpath

 

inspirational in character

This was the only justification given in the article for the reasons for doing this, as most was just assuming we had a reason for doing so.

We haven't had a program that was truely "inspirational in character" since 1969. As soon as we landed on the Moon, all the "inspiration" was gone. The only time people even pay attention is when they die. Hubble was far more exciting than any shuttle mission I can remember.

 

Well I don't entirely agree that the mercury through apollo programs were driven by anything other than politics. It cost taxpayers a huge sum of money for all the research and development that had to take place within a specified period of time... before 1970.

I have seen projections that the next moon landing will cost roughly $145 billion dollars. When I saw that number, I just couldn't support my previous argument that we go back to the moon.

Although that may seem an enormous sum of federal treasury, NASA only accounts for about .5% of federal spending. That's not that much, but consider what that .5% really generates. I could see far better prospects than the moon.

 

I realized I should correct myself about Hubble, as technically the repair of it which made it actually very useful has been done by the shuttle, so that was one instance where the shuttle served a legitimate need.

 

From an engineer/scientist's point of view, it's not a point worth addressing, because it's not "high cost/low benefits." I'll begin to address his points when he gets better points.

 

Okay, space flight is expensive. It's very expensive. In fact, the shuttle averages about a billion dollars per mission.

And although it is particularly costly to operate, the Orion replacement will still average in excess of $500 million per launch... assuming that it doesn't encounter unforeseen cost overruns. And although that may be only half of what the shuttle was, what's the benefit? Orion will be the US's next moon ship, but beyond that, it serves very little purpose.

The shuttle served a very useful purpose in repairing and maintaining the Hubble, but Orion won't even be able to do missions like that. If it had the means to carry cargo, EVA equipment, and an airlock; then it would be ideal for such tasks. Although it could perform all the required tasks to a limited degree, the biggest problem is that small hatch limiting the size of what could be carried. If it could carry a separate module, it could feasibly be able to perform all the shuttle's orbital tasks. As of now, that is not really on the horizon for NASA.

 

Vivic: lol okay, you know what people usually do when they think others are wrong around here? they prove them wrong, but if you want to deflect and ignore, I think people are smart enough to figure out what just happened for themselves,

 

What are you talking about? I think Vivic has a good point. What that point is... I'm not quite sure, but I know it's there. Otherwise he wouldn't believe as such.

Of course I'm not one to talk, as I couldn't even keep track of who I was arguing against.

Satellites have become tools we depend upon more and more as we advance into the communications age. We will always be in need of launch systems for that purpose, so any debate on cutting funding for such purposes is foolhardy. Where the greatest waste in space flight originates is mainly in manned missions. You must spend more on transportation, recovery, life support, higher safety standards, ext. Unmanned is almost always more preferable for most purposes.

 

Besides unmanned vs manned, you also have a distance issue that is rarely considered.

Low earth orbit, which is where earth observation satellites, the ISS, and the space shuttle are is only 100-1000 miles above the earth's surface. The space shuttles max orbit is 600 miles up, and the ISS is at only 190. For reference, the earth is 7926 miles in diameter--If you had a model earth one foot in diameter, the space station would only be a quarter of an inch off the surface.

The Moon, on the other hand, is ~239,000 miles away. Taking that one-foot model earth again, that would place the moon 30 feet away from the surface.

When you begin talking planets, we have Mars at its closest at 34,175,415 miles from earth. That would place it 4/5ths of a mile away from our one-foot model earth.
At Mar's furthest distance, it is 249,169,848 miles from earth or 6 miles from our basketball sized earth.

 

Your figures are... interesting, but you're missing something here.

The Saturn V rocket was an enormous rocket. The first stage alone made up over half the rocket's weight, yet it only burned for 2 and a half minutes. The following two stages burned for almost 9 minutes before the spacecraft were placed at an altitude of 116 miles above the Earth.

Wonder why the first stage burned up so much fuel in such a short span of time? Look at the wikipedia page and you'll notice that the delta V (change in velocity) of most rockets is highest for its first stage and drops significantly once the second stage takes over once it gets through most of the Earth's atmosphere. Once that happens, you can accelerate at a much more gradual rate, as you don't have as much air resistance to deal with. Once the third stage of the Saturn V (S-IVB booster) is in orbit at 116 miles, it can accelerate much more gradually to a velocity of 25,000 miles per hour for its translunar injection burn. That requires much less fuel than what it would take to launch a payload the same size into Earth orbit.

What I'm going for here is that it takes a huge quantity of fuel to reach Earth orbit; but once in orbit, you can accelerate into higher orbit with much less fuel.

 

What I'm going for here is that it takes a huge quantity of fuel to reach Earth orbit; but once in orbit, you can accelerate into higher orbit with much less fuel.

So isn't it a good idea to focus on how to not use so much fuel to get into orbit instead of using up all that fuel just so we can say we went to Mars? And if we will always require massive amounts of fuel to get there, what is the point? And how does using the fuel do ANYTIHNG to promote research on how not to use the fuel?

Yep, no good questions here, move along.

 

I'm not going for Moon/Mars missions, I'm going for finding less expensive means to get into orbit. If you wanted to launch 10 satellites, each weighing about ten tons, you would be able to launch them all much cheaper using a single large rocket than launching several smaller rockets.

Having a launch system like the Ares II would allow for such a feat to be done. Once in orbit, those ten satellites would then be able to position themselves wherever they are needed and at what altitude required.

 

But from what I have read, the private space sector can get things up there cheaper because they don't have as many safety features and plans. NASA is intent on not killing people, but if an unmanned rocket goes bust you just loose the cost of it, and if it costs an extra billon dollars to make it 99% reliable from 98% reliable, it probably is worth taking the chance if it is just the stuff and money and not the people.

 

Story here

I just saw this regarding the discovery of ice on the moon and lol'd.

 

I say its space elevator time. I hear Ecuador is lovely.

That said, I do think that missions should be prioritized according to the science they can offer, not just to keep the astronauts busy.

 

Good idea. Tell me, do you get supreme channel access on your TV with a dish? Do you have a GPS device inside your cell phone? Do you use a cell phone for that matter? What do all these depend on to function?

Right! Satellites!

Although the potential for science and exploration in space is vast, don't forget that there are applications of space that we on the ground have come to depend upon. It does make a lot of sense to develop more cost-efficient methods of lifting heavy loads into space. That's an engineering challenge.

 

To answer your questions, no, I don't have a dish. No I don't have GPS on my phone. And as for the cell phone itself, near as I can check, cell phone calls don't involve satellites to communicate between towers, which are what the phones themselves communicate through.

Though ignoring my personal usage, just how many of the satellites mentioned were put up there as part of manned missions?