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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

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Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#681

Post by jcgrillo »

tcmart14 wrote: post #481
alistairSH wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. So let’s do something useful and new. We know how to go to the moon - it’s just a matter of money (and political will). If there’s something else to do on the moon, let’s be clear that is the objective.

I do agree with this. If we are returning to the moon just to say we did, as a space lover, I do have an issue with this and can't really get on board. I am hoping we have some other larger goal in mind, like maybe are back to the idea of a permanent moon base and a potential jump off point for other projects or we have a list of long term moon experiments to do. But yea, it just isn't exciting if we are going there…

The goal could be simply to learn how to do it again, since almost everyone who actually has done it--on any level, be it engineering, management, manufacturing, flight crew, ground crew, etc--is dead. That's a totally worthwhile exercise if it's actually a serious goal to explore further.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#682

Post by testing22321 »

UltraSane wrote: post #466
Spooky23 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t get elected if you don’t count the votes. That requires a joint session of congress. If due to an unprecedented emergency the congress cannot come into session there’s no clear rule what happens. Any number of emergent events may create an emergency preventing the congress from gathering. The congress are collaborators and the Supreme Court is compromised.

That would trigger a real civil war.

Which would further delay any chance of a transition of power.

More and more it looks like that is what he wants.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#683

Post by WalterBright »

hypeatei wrote: post #262
bahmboo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a political deadline with no grounding in reality.

Precisely. Trump wants to put his name on things for the history books.

https://www.obama.org/presidential-center/

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#684

Post by gorgoiler »

allenrb wrote: post #373

There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive: 1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting. 2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the secon…

If Luna is a textbook then we’ve read the section headings for chapter 15 of 43 and stolen half a page by ripping it out and taking it home. Oh and that’s just Volume I. There’s a whole Volume II (The Far Side) for which we’ve barely even read the sleeve notes.

In terms of field geology alone, we deserve permanent human presence on The Moon. Apollo was an impressive first shot but it is completely unrealistic to act like we know anything more than one percent of one percent about Moon’s geology. They nailed the flat bits on the marine side, but you’d laugh at someone who claimed they knew Earth’s geology after a few weeks in Buenos Aires, Houston, and Miami:

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/see-apollo-...

Who will be woken up by the first moonquake? Who will visit the first mooncaves? Who will find the first water-based anomaly — some kind of periodic waterfall maybe, in a heat trap that warms up one day a year? Who will see the first solar eclipse?

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#685

Post by bigyabai »

elzbardico wrote: post #660
zm262 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters more to US politically than scientifically. It's totally about the US mojo in the eyes of politicians and thus funding.

American mojo have real world economic consequences. The value of the dollar depends a lot on how the rest of the world sees America.

You know what else has real world economic consequences? Dead astronauts.

I'm all for reinvigorating the global economy with a resurgence in scientific investment, but it only works if we do it patiently. China understands that, the CCP is quite capable of national planning that transcends administrations. You can't force a moon landing like it's a political OKR, if you do then you better have a pretty solid Plan B considering the amount of risk it represents.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#686

Post by vkou »

tw04 wrote: post #559
harimau777 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. That's especially the case when the private company is so closely tied to someone who hates and alienates so much of society. I don't think that I could view a win for Musk as a win for anything that looks like my chunk of the US. There's also the fact that part of NASA's mission is to share their knowledge with the public.

>Personally, I think it matters whether its achieved by a private company versus by society. How exactly are you making the distinction? Space-X wouldn't exist without governemnt funding. CATL sells launches to commercial entities as well as servicing the government. Official ownership? Because China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startup…

> China seems to think a lot of what Space-X is doing can only be accomplished by the commercial sector and is funding startups in China to do the same thing.

That's how China's been running their economy for decades. Every few years, the government sets a direction everyone should row in, and generally lets private firms figure out which one of them will get there fastest.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#687

Post by [deleted] »

oytis wrote: post #308
bahmboo wrote: post #227

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.

America is becoming a silly place. Lumberjack appointed as a head of NASA for his loyalty.

[deleted]

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#688

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ramblenode wrote: post #675
elzbardico wrote: post #639

Lots of people complaining that we have already won the "moon race" and that this makes no sense. This is a completely wrong reading of the situation. Let's say we forgot how to do heart transplants. Once we did them a few times perfectly, got all surgical techniques right, but patients died shortly after the surgery due to rejection. We quit the whole transplants stuff for years, the techniques and the equipments we…

Your example does not support your argument. Unlike heart surgery, there hasn't been a major shift in what we could do if we went back, and more exploration probably won't change the commercial or military prospects of the moon.

> more exploration probably won't change the commercial or military prospects of the moon

What are you basing this on?

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#689

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Buttons840 wrote: post #656
arnaudsm wrote: post #137

I highly recommend this talk at the American Astronomical Society from last year, which talks about the engineering culture at NASA and why Artemis has been slower than Apollo so far. https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?t=1112

This is Destin of SmarterEveryDay. This is a very good speech, very courageous and has implications for all of society. American society seems to be more and more controlled by people in positions where they cannot fail. The example that originally put this idea in my head was the Mozilla CEO who, oversaw a year during which Firefox usership fell, and Mozilla workers were fired, and then the CEO received a pay raise.…

> is a very good speech, very courageous

Really? It’s eye opening. But Destin seems to miss the point.

We’re not trying to go back to the Moon, one and done. That was Apollo. We’re trying to build a system that reduces the repeat cost of Moon access, with medium-term plans for permanent settlement. (Like in Antarctica. Not The Expanse.)

His criticism of Artemis is on point. But his anchoring to Apollo is bewilderingly blind. If we’re just redoing Apollo, the programme should be defunded. (If a NASA administrator set that as a goal, I’d argue the NASA manned spaceflight programme might need to be overhauled.)

> everyone in the room is hesitant to say yes

This is like Trump complaining his generals won’t laugh at his jokes.

These are senior NASA scientists. They’re listening to a talk, not a rally.

Re: NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

#690

Post by Xss3 »

viraptor wrote: post #549
Xss3 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a Venusian colony would be significantly more viable than mars. Mars sucks. The moon sucks too. We need rotating space habitats. With gravity and hookers.

I'm not sure 500⁰C and 100x earth pressure is in any range of viable...

No, the surface sucks. The clouds are where its at.
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