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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

#61

Post by WhompingWindows »

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…

It's not about the mission, it's about the motivation. Societies only do great things with the proper motivation. Without the specter of American greatness being eclipsed by evil red Commies, what can get 2019 America to feel urgently this should be done?

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

#62

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #60
wongarsu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The country, the Democratic party and Kennedy for that matter were lucky Johnson wound up in the oval office. Johnson was very good at actually making deals and getting stuff done (e.g. ensuring the budget that gets to his desk includes NASA). If it weren't for Johnson Kennedy would only be remembered for getting us into Vietnam then getting shot.

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

#63

Post by Retric »

rtkwe wrote: post #56
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.

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 experim…

The catch 22 is any experiment that you can only do in microgravity is also only really relevant in microgravity. That’s fine if we have a larger goal, but not really useful on it’s own.

Sure simply learning this stuff is interesting, but the costs are so extreme it’s effectively a vanity project.

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

#64

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

The military should be put out of its misery.

Less dramatically, I don't like just how much the military is the primary domain of non-military objectives. They shouldn't be the leader in nation-building, establishing rule of law, running propaganda in foreign nations (all state department/CIA) or being one of the only avenues for getting free college unconditionally through the government.

NASA has been keen on the idea of shifting their R&D focus to manned deep spaceflight and deep space research, and letting "industry" work more freely i na bid process for LEO. That's basically what is happening.

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

#65

Post by Ididntdothis »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #62
Ididntdothis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The country, the Democratic party and Kennedy for that matter were lucky Johnson wound up in the oval office. Johnson was very good at actually making deals and getting stuff done (e.g. ensuring the budget that gets to his desk includes NASA). If it weren't for Johnson Kennedy would only be remembered for getting us into Vietnam then getting shot.

I guess Johnson then took the honor of being blamed for getting the country into Vietnam:). And it broke him.

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

#66

Post by MegaButts »

wefarrell wrote: post #53
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.

You have more faith in the US government than I do. I really, sincerely hope you are right about that.

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

#67

Post by mytailorisrich »

reallydude wrote: post #26
Causality1 wrote: post #11

Going back to the moon is just busy work to distract from the fact they don't have the funding or the ambition to get to Mars.

Going back the moon is the logical next step in going to Mars. You don't send off materials and bodies in the hope that years later it will work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon It took many attempts to get a successful moon mission where we landed. How many more before we could dig into the rock for a habitat? Now multiply the time by the round trip to Mars. The fantasy of being on Mar…

Indeed, the Moon is the best location to develop and perfect technologies to settle on another planet and to live there autonomously.

Because it's very near it's obviously much faster and cheaper to ship things there, and it allows near-instant communication back and forth.

Once the technologies are mature it will just be a question of longer shipping to mars or anywhere else.

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

#68

Post by ansible »

magashna wrote: post #37
justin66 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. I've got two friends there, a civil servant and a contractor, and I've heard no such thing. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but I'm curious whether there's any data to back this up. You'd have to be careful looking at that data, too: a lot of people are retiring from NASA simply because they're old. No…

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

Where are people going to go if they want to do science? OK, the ESA, Japan, India. Maybe China. But is there anywhere else to go in the USA?

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

#69

Post by toss1 »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #60
wongarsu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that he did cancel it and effectively disbanded what was at the time arguably the greatest engineering team ever assembled. Apollo 18, 19 20, never launched due to Nixon.

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

#70

Post by smaddox »

avmich wrote: post #51
goodcanadian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how it would be cheaper to send a human to the Moon to retrieve samples than it would be to send a robot.
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