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NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

nytimes.com

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Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#31

Post by lorenzhs »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18
lorenzhs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can make propellant on the moon, that’s going to be less economical than going directly. There’s nothing to be gained by going down another (albeit not very deep) gravity well. The base camp analogy doesn’t really apply.

You could make propellant on the Moon (from water). The Moon is also a good place to test Mars-related procedures (couple dozen hours of travel beats couple dozen months in case of an emergency). Finally, I imagine building a telescope on the "dark side" is astronomers' wet dream.

Hm, hydrolox could indeed be possible. Didn’t think of that.

But you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. It’s probably going to be a while before a moon base makes sense for economical reasons.

Also, the moon does not have a dark side. It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines there just like it does on the other side.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#32

Post by lorenzhs »

gnarbarian wrote: post #29
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that feels a little like England setting up a base in Greenland as a supply depot to stop at before crossing the Atlantic to the new world. There’s way more stuff at their home base so it’s hard to see how adding a far off stop in a desolate place will help.

I'm thinking more long term. Things I'd like to see: * Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people. * Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy. * Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically. * Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant. * Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to e…

The moon’s inclination is 5 degrees to the ecliptic, you’d have to try really hard to find a worse place to put solar panels.

Self-sufficiency would require manufacturing complex organical compounds and is total science fiction stuff, and will likely remain that way for a looong time.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#33

Post by blackmagevivi9 »

This is just embarrassing, especially for the United States as a whole. The Trump administration should be ashamed for cutting important research and nominating a climate change denier as the head honcho.

Although building a moon base would be cool. It could increase our reach for manned missions. Sort of a first/last pit stop before a long journey.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

lorenzhs wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make propellant on the Moon (from water). The Moon is also a good place to test Mars-related procedures (couple dozen hours of travel beats couple dozen months in case of an emergency). Finally, I imagine building a telescope on the "dark side" is astronomers' wet dream.

Hm, hydrolox could indeed be possible. Didn’t think of that. But you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. It’s probably going to be a while before a moon base makes sense for economical reasons. Also, the moon does not have a dark side. It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines t…

> you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go.

We can't forever just launch point-to-point missions from Earth's surface. The Moon meshes up well with industrial space activities around Earth, which we'll need anyway, and which'll create plenty of demand around itself for missions and resources.

> It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines there just like it does on the other side.

Sure, but a) lack of atmosphere while still having stable ground underneath helps, plus b) lack of RF noise from Earth would really help radiotelescopes, which was what I was thinking about when writing my previous comment.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#35

Post by craftyguy »

unethical_ban wrote: post #21
craftyguy wrote: post #2

> The Trump administration is also looking to trim the budget of NASA’s earth science directorate > The nearly $1.8 billion budget for that part of NASA would be about 6.5 percent lower than what was enacted for fiscal year 2017 Donald seems to be stuck in the Cold War. I've not heard of one good reason for him wanting to send Americans back to the Moon other than "prestige." There are much more valuable scientific t…

1) It is closer and more feasible to practice landing and returning from a planet than Mars 2) The ISS is going to de-orbit in the 2020s, so for low-gravity and habitat research, we can spend billions on another LEO station (which private industry is already tackling) or we can do something a bit more daring: set up shop on another rock. I think NASA should be allowed, broadly, to choose its own missions and goals, a…

> The ISS is going to de-orbit in the 2020s,

Only because we are going to allow it. We could, you know, keep it in orbit and continue to use it.

> I think NASA should be allowed, broadly, to choose its own missions and goals, and stick with it for longer than one administration. Their work takes more than 3 year election cycles.

I could not agree with this more. Having every administration fuck up their agenda every 4-8 years is not productive.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#36

Post by TeMPOraL »

tobltobs wrote: post #25
coolso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've not heard of one good reason for him wanting to send Americans back to the Moon other than "prestige." Not even for the inspiration? I mean look at how everyone reacted to SpaceX's recent launching of a Tesla into space. Everyone thought it was super cool and inspiring - and it was. Now imagine how much cooler it would be to send people to the moon again in the modern age. Yeah it happened before but that was…

How is repeating something, which has been done already 50 years ago, inspirational? That sounds more like admission of defeat.

It's not defeat to fall down, it's only defeat when you stay down.

Getting to the Moon, especially with something more serious than samples pickup mission, would signal that we're back on our feet again.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

Mars vs. Moon debates are getting ridiculous these days. Why not both?

Thanks to NewSpace, getting out there is only going to become cheaper; we can, as civilization, afford both. Let ESA and NASA and China race to the Moon. SpaceX wants to go to Mars. If either succeeds in the next decade, we all win. The knowledge and experience gained is reusable for either, it goes into the same pool. And if we keep fighting over which destination is better, we won't get to any.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#38

Post by jcranmer »

gnarbarian wrote: post #29
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that feels a little like England setting up a base in Greenland as a supply depot to stop at before crossing the Atlantic to the new world. There’s way more stuff at their home base so it’s hard to see how adding a far off stop in a desolate place will help.

I'm thinking more long term. Things I'd like to see: * Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people. * Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy. * Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically. * Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant. * Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to e…

Pretty much everything on your list is not possible with our current technology. More importantly, it's feasible to develop this technology on Earth.

The problem with going to the moon (or anywhere else in the solar system) is that the only thing we can do right now is science experiments. And there's a lot more impactful science that can be done for far cheaper than sending people outside of our gravity well. If you want to do anything else, then you have to develop a lot of technology to get to the point. But the space bugs want to see humans go to space, and they generally don't want to see effort being expended on the research to let humans do anything useful because it's not space research.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#39

Post by gnarbarian »

jcranmer wrote: post #38
gnarbarian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking more long term. Things I'd like to see: * Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people. * Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy. * Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically. * Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant. * Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to e…

Pretty much everything on your list is not possible with our current technology. More importantly, it's feasible to develop this technology on Earth. The problem with going to the moon (or anywhere else in the solar system) is that the only thing we can do right now is science experiments. And there's a lot more impactful science that can be done for far cheaper than sending people outside of our gravity well. If you…

Aside from H3 I'd argue everything on that list is within our grasp if we tried to do so.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#40

Post by gnarbarian »

lorenzhs wrote: post #32
gnarbarian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking more long term. Things I'd like to see: * Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people. * Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy. * Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically. * Mining of ice which could get split into H and O for propellant. * Mining of other materials to be used on site or sent back to e…

The moon’s inclination is 5 degrees to the ecliptic, you’d have to try really hard to find a worse place to put solar panels. Self-sufficiency would require manufacturing complex organical compounds and is total science fiction stuff, and will likely remain that way for a looong time.

How else would you power a moon base without getting stuck sending up material forever?
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