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A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

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Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#31

Post by aschobel »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #13

NASA wants to go to moon in about 4 years (!) but today they can't even lift a human into earth orbit since they discontinued their last spacecraft capable of such a task. Dream on.

That will change this spring which isn’t too far away.

> Elon Musk’s SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing on Sunday in a dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, a big step its mission to fly NASA astronauts for the first time as soon as this spring.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-spacex/...

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#32

Post by nine_k »

redahs wrote: post #14
Causality1 wrote: post #2

We/our government is completely unwilling to invest the multi-trillion dollar expense of creating a permanent moon colony. In light of that, I believe arguments to the effect of "a moon base would make Mars easier" are baseless since creating that type of installation on the moon would dwarf the cost of a single shot to Mars and back. In light of that, our current moon efforts are nothing but make-work doing things w…

Which is rational. The annual product of lunar soil is zero. Extending the margin of production to the moon will lower wages and increase poverty. The only way to get the general public behind the idea of settling other planets is through remote terraforming. If there were robots, domes, mirrors, and synthetic organisms put there first to provide free soil, air, and water to settlers, then the annual product of lunar…

The value of having massive amounts of aluminum made from the lunar crust and sun power can be quite above zero.

Same with water mined from some lunar craters.

With more technology advancement, the oxygen trapped in oxides of lunar soil could also be extracted and put into useful orbits away from Earth surface, hopefully cheaper than brought from Earth.

Well, maybe also some dome-grown fruit and vegetables, but not very soon.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#33

Post by melling »

njarboe wrote: post #7

'"I am more interested in maximizing the odds of success for this bold undertaking and making it as safe as any human journey into the deep space can be, than I am in having NASA meet arbitrary deadlines," Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson — a Democrat from Texas and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology — said at a recent hearing.' Waiting to make a journey until it is "as safe as can be"…

Here we go again...

Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279

Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back.

I’ll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It’ll probably be repeated in some form today.

“ Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly. In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.“

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#34

Post by HuShifang »

btilly wrote: post #29

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. T…

There's a reason SLS is nicknamed the Senate Launch System -- Sen. Shelby of Alabama rains fire down on any NASA official who comes anywhere near observing that SpaceX could fulfill any objectives allocated to the SLS. It's as much a pork barrel, to use the political lingo, as it is a rocket -- a steady source of jobs for Alabama and a couple other Southern states for as long as it's in development / production. And no one cares enough to take on Shelby and his allies.

So, rational proposals like using SpaceX are sadly political non-starters at the moment.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#35

Post by sandworm101 »

No chance.

This isn't the 1950s. We don't just throw people atop rockets anymore. These are vehicles, aircraft. There is absolutely no way any of the current crop of space vehicles could be made ready for a trip to the moon anytime before 2024.

Going beyond low orbit, away from the sub-45min return time, is something we haven't done in generations. The craft need to be tested, repeatedly. Each test flight then has to be analyzed before the next test flight. The turnaround for a single test will be many months, even a year. Getting all the bits and pieces together would then take many more years of integration work.

Look at the JWST. Look at the F-35. Look at the 737-max. These are complicated systems with layers of dependencies. Our society today simply does not accept the cowboy approach to safety that was the original moon race. The next moon landing will only happen after a decade-long deliberative, iterative, campaign requiring the support of many subsequent governments.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#36

Post by johnchristopher »

mattigames wrote: post #30
johnchristopher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As safe as can be" doesn't mean "It's guaranteed nothing will go wrong". Best efforts vs. guaranteed delivery service.

"Safe as can be" is completely subjective, maybe in 1000 years it will be 100% safe due new technological advances and improvements in simulations, so "as safe as can be" is likely to be way after we are no longer alive.

"Safe as can be" is objective, it means that considering what we know, our tech and what may go wrong we can say "we are not going to be able to make it safer before a long time, we have eliminated random threats we can foresee but we can't prevent what we don't know that could happen from ever happening". That's what `as safe as can be` mean. `As safe as can be` doesn't mean 100% safe.

You are conflating the unknown with subjective.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#37

Post by NikolaeVarius »

nine_k wrote: post #27
redahs wrote: post #9

There's not much reason to settle the moon and mars prior to the remote establishment of an independent food supply. Aggressive remote terraforming through domes, mirrors, foreign microorganisms, explosives, and robots should come first. Establishing automated synthetic systems on these rocks to mimic what nature provides for free on Earth is the hard problem to be solving. Without such systems already place, wages w…

It may be easier to undertake a massive industrial operation on an unfamiliar celestial body when there is a human around to oversee things first-hand and troubleshoot issues when (not if) they arise. First Lunar habitats are going to be mostly underground anyway, and nuclear-powered. Not much is needed to terraform.

I'm constantly "impressed" (not in a good way) at how good some people are at saying completely unfounded statements as fact. There is literally no reason to believe either premise of most bases being underground, nor is there to believe nuclear power will be the dominant power source. We have a hard time getting RTGs inside steel boxes capable of surviving disasters into orbit.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#38

Post by nordsieck »

btilly wrote: post #29

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. T…

> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet?

Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't.

But as a person who has done big deals before, he almost certainly understands that congress needs its cut.

Congress needs to shovel enough pork to defense contractors so they get campaign contributions to get re-elected. They just won't support a budget that cuts that out.

IMO, the only real hope is that congress + the next president can carve out enough money (ideally at least 10% of the SLS budget) to actually do something useful.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#39

Post by Tuna-Fish »

btilly wrote: post #29

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. T…

> So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet?

Because what NASA does is not a decision where Trump has much say.

Trump nominally appoints NASA top leadership and sets the agenda, but the budget is entirely decided by the Congress. It doesn't matter what Trump would want NASA to do if the only things that get funded are the SLS contracts.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#40

Post by foobarbecue »

btilly wrote: post #29

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. T…

Remeber this? https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-leaving-trump-ad...
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