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NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#51

Post by avmich »

goodcanadian wrote: post #36
smaddox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of manned space missions is to redirecting taxes to congressional districts and defense contractors. The secondary purpose might be to inspire interest in STEM, but it seems much less successful at achieving that objective.

I almost down voted you in a knee jerk reaction. I believe that manned space exploration serves a very important purpose in advancing humanity . . . however, from the typical Congress critter's point of view, I suspect you're right.

I suspect GP underestimates the scientific value of Apollo missions. It's so much difference to e.g. study samples brought from the Moon (and taken with reasonable care) in Earth labs than to send robots to do the same.

There is a POV that robots are good for scientific missions up to certain price point. After that manned missions become more cost effective.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#52

Post by magduf »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #40
magashna wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total conjecture, but seeing as how the private space industry has ramped up, it would make sense to leave during such a hostile administration

Is the current administration hostile to NASA? Today, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, which funds the U.S. government for the remainder of the fiscal year. NASA received $19.65 billion—its best budget since 2010—and the Planetary Science Division saw its budget increase to $1.846 billion—its best budget in more than ten years. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-p…

They also are pushing NASA to send men to the Moon before Trump leaves office, without also giving them the budget necessary to do such a task (which honestly, with any budget, is still a ridiculously short schedule). They already had one main guy at NASA just quit because he knew this plan was unrealistic.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#53

Post by wefarrell »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #13

The thing about the original moon landing programme was that it had a great clarity of outcome and timeline. What: Land a man on the moon and return him safely When: Before the decade is out That meant NASA could really focus and throw out everything that wasn't directly on that path. Reusability - take too long, we'll build each craft from scratch. Permanent mission - Too complicated, keep the missions very short. M…

The lunar mission had one clear objective: don't let the soviets embarrass us again.

If the Chinese managed to put a human on Mars the US would get its shit together quickly.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#54

Post by dear »

hackeraccount wrote: post #32
lettergram wrote: post #3

It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress and basically the funds are deposited in an escrow. It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the f…

Oddly I agree with your description but not the solution. NASA doesn't need longer term goals - it needs shorter term goals. I'd say don't fund anything that takes longer then a single presidential term. That would limit what's possible but increase the likelihood that something will get finished. If the president says my goal is to land humans on Venus (with asbestos booties naturally) in 20 years then odd are in 4…

Or set up a large enough endowment fund that can only be used for that particular mission.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#55

Post by stcredzero »

quanticle wrote: post #48

This might be a radical idea, but after reading that article, my thought was, "At this point, the most merciful thing to do might be to put NASA out of its misery." Specifically, this would entail: - The US government getting out of the business of designing launchers: We'd acquire launchers the same way the Air Force gets airplanes: define requirements and solicit bids. This isn't perfect (see: F-35), but it's a dar…

define requirements and solicit bids. This isn't perfect (see: F-35)

Isn't the F-35 program criticized for short-circuiting a major part of the traditional procurement process? I'm not so sure you can completely compare the traditional procurement process and what happened with the F-35.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#56

Post by rtkwe »

smaddox wrote: post #31
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #13

The thing about the original moon landing programme was that it had a great clarity of outcome and timeline. What: Land a man on the moon and return him safely When: Before the decade is out That meant NASA could really focus and throw out everything that wasn't directly on that path. Reusability - take too long, we'll build each craft from scratch. Permanent mission - Too complicated, keep the missions very short. M…

As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of manned space missions is to redirecting taxes to congressional districts and defense contractors. The secondary purpose might be to inspire interest in STEM, but it seems much less successful at achieving that objective.

There's also a lot of value in the research NASA/JAXA/ESA/Roscosmos does in space. Some experiments are only really doable under long term microgravity The US runs it as a national lab and many companies use it for experiments. Maintaining it that way makes it way easier for companies to run experiments in space, with out the ISS each company would have to design, build and launch their own satellite for each experiment they wanted to do. That could be done but it would be very complex and quite fragile compared to having an established station where humans can do the work.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#57

Post by cheeko1234 »

quanticle wrote: post #48

This might be a radical idea, but after reading that article, my thought was, "At this point, the most merciful thing to do might be to put NASA out of its misery." Specifically, this would entail: - The US government getting out of the business of designing launchers: We'd acquire launchers the same way the Air Force gets airplanes: define requirements and solicit bids. This isn't perfect (see: F-35), but it's a dar…

This is a terrible idea. NASA is still the best agency in the world for moving humanity forward, even with bureaucratic inefficiencies. No other agency will have the funds to do what NASA does for non-military reasons.

For every tax dollar spent, the U.S. still gets about 7 times the return.

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#58

Post by johnchristopher »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #4
lettergram wrote: post #3

It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress and basically the funds are deposited in an escrow. It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the f…

Since Bush every incoming president has set up a “vision” that scraps all previous work and which then in turn gets scrapped by the next guy. I wonder how the people working there can keep motivated knowing that most of their work is just for show. Seems unmanned missions are fine but manned missions are just a mess.

I am working in a different industry (which calls itself an industry but is a joke and a god sent heaven for marketing consulting gig) but with the same kind of political minefield.

Public servants get demotivated and set to mediocrity. Hired cattle gets demotivated and try to get out.

Only managers and middle managers are driven by the ego boost coming from "changing things".

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#59

Post by cheeko1234 »

avmich wrote: post #50

For long time NASA announced a space program after space program only to be canceled at an unfortunate moment. We have to understand that our problems with advancing manned spaceflight are mainly organizational. And because of that, it's beneficial to focus efforts not on a grand goal, which may not survive the next budgetary fight in Congress, but instead on capabilities which can mostly be used for whatever goal we…

Finally, a sensical comment. You're exactly right.

Given the constraints of politics/funding, NASA can't pull off long-term & ambitious goals like they used to in the 60s-70s, and the administrator of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, knows that.

Using your term: ISS on steroids, the next stepping stone would be the Gateway on steroids: an orbiting station around Mars.

Here's a cool pdf from NASA that goes into details:

https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Why-...

Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea

#60

Post by Ididntdothis »

wongarsu wrote: post #45
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #13

The thing about the original moon landing programme was that it had a great clarity of outcome and timeline. What: Land a man on the moon and return him safely When: Before the decade is out That meant NASA could really focus and throw out everything that wasn't directly on that path. Reusability - take too long, we'll build each craft from scratch. Permanent mission - Too complicated, keep the missions very short. M…

That won't happen again for political reasons. The moon landing is seen as Kennedy's achievement. He died six years before it happened, but that doesn't seem to matter. It's his legacy. No president (or congress) would let that happen again. When a president of party 1 sets such a goal the next president of party 2 will shift the goal to make it his achievement instead. Repeat ad infinitum.

I think Apollo was lucky that Johnson came in after Kennedy. I think if a republican had won in 1964 probably there wouldn’t have been a moon landing. By the time Nixon came in there was already too much momentum to cancel it.
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