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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

#121

Post by TomMckenny »

magduf wrote: post #52
WillPostForFood wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#122

Post by mopsi »

avmich wrote: post #99
smaddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some arguments are here: https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.h... Retrieving a sample is cheaper with a robot - Luna-24 costed a fraction of Apollo. Knowing what to retrieve while having flexibility of choosing surface regolith, separate rock, samples dug out from a better place or else - that's where humans win.

Indeed. Apollo 17 even flew an actual geologist to the surface of the Moon and gave him 20 hours to explore it.

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

#123

Post by idlewords »

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 thing about the moon landing is that there was a rival superpower at rough technological parity, and the technology in question could be used to lob nuclear weapons at one another with great accuracy.

No nukes, no ICBMs, no Apollo.

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

#124

Post by aeternus »

cheeko1234 wrote: post #59
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:/…

There are multiple launch systems that will have the payload capacity to go straight to the moon within the next few years. Why not just use those?

No one will care about a Lunar space station, it's not enough of a step forward to capture the public's attention. It's sad that NASA's 'futuristic' new proposal is to do half of what we were able to do 50 years ago. People will quickly vote to cut funding for it, and maybe they should.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #100
Retric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This generalization isn't true. One modern example is manufacturing optical fibers like ZBLAN[1] -- they work great when you bring them back to Earth. Another new example is 3d printing organs in microgravity[2] to take them back to Earth. The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity. These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's…

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

avmich wrote: post #99
smaddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some arguments are here: https://phys.org/news/2005-11-unmanned-space-exploration_1.h... Retrieving a sample is cheaper with a robot - Luna-24 costed a fraction of Apollo. Knowing what to retrieve while having flexibility of choosing surface regolith, separate rock, samples dug out from a better place or else - that's where humans win.

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by Retric »

greglindahl wrote: post #100
Retric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This generalization isn't true. One modern example is manufacturing optical fibers like ZBLAN[1] -- they work great when you bring them back to Earth. Another new example is 3d printing organs in microgravity[2] to take them back to Earth. The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity. These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's…

The need for microgravity to manufacture these things is demonstrating my point.

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

#129

Post by dTal »

wongarsu wrote: post #47
BurningFrog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other cynical view is that the moon program was really military. As in, if the Soviets got to control the ultimate "higher ground", they could rule the world from it. Apollo made sure no one could control space, and we now have peace in space. I kinda believe in this, though I don't know how historically verified it is. It's of course not what you ever say in your rousing speeches to the nation and the world!

There was fear that if the Russians got to the moon first they might set up a base, and having a base they could shoot down any other landing attempt (literally, with guns mounted in their moon base). Thus the moon could become Russian domain, which would not just grant them great research opportunities but also a virtually unreachable weapons platform. (Remember that the first crewed space station was 2 years after…

>Also the Soviet Union was winning most of the relevant milestones in space (first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human, first woman, first space walk, etc), and this was a great source of national pride. Beating them had great propaganda value.

I would rather say that the Soviet Union was winning the irrelevant milestones, precisely for the propaganda value. First woman in space means nothing, really - you put a woman on your spaceship, wham, easy win. The moon landings forced the USA to tackle real engineering challenges - rendezvous and docking, piloted spacecraft and piloted orbit changes, functionally useful EVAs, keeping humans alive in space for long periods, etc.

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

#130

Post by greglindahl »

Retric wrote: post #128
greglindahl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This generalization isn't true. One modern example is manufacturing optical fibers like ZBLAN[1] -- they work great when you bring them back to Earth. Another new example is 3d printing organs in microgravity[2] to take them back to Earth. The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity. These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's…

The need for microgravity to manufacture these things is demonstrating my point.

Then I totally didn't get your point. These are things that you manufacture in microgravity that are then usable in gravity. Isn't that what you said did not exist?
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