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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

cnn.com

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

#751

Post by dash2 »

greenavocado wrote: post #672
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…

[flagged]

Absolutely super to meet my first bona fide moon conspiracy theorist, but on Hacker News of all places?

Do you have any others? I guess not flat earth - I mean, those guys are crazy, right?

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

#752

Post by karmakurtisaani »

harrall wrote: post #715
Yeul wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also ignores the fact that empires can decline. (Although I think the moon landing is ridiculous there is no scientific reason for it).

The space race was not a scientific endeavor either. It was driven by a political need. It was to prove that your economic system could muster the correct machinery to get to the moon. Once we got to the moon, nothing significantly changed scientifically, but politically it was a bombshell. The act of getting the moon now is, once again, not a scientific endeavor. It is once again a holistic test of whether the count…

Just to take your point further, imagine if China establishes a base on the moon while the US is unable to do so. How is that (world wide) discussion going to look like?

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

#753

Post by karmakurtisaani »

kurisufag wrote: post #698
fastball wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even clear the USA "won" the space race. America was first (and last) to land men on the moon, but arguably the USSR had far more space-related "firsts" than the US. Landing on the moon only become the end-all-be-all when the US achieved it and the USSR could not (for various reasons).

the reds did space much, much worse. first satellite? all sputnik could do was beep, and it ran out of batteries in three weeks. first animal? laika died. first station? there were two attempts to crew it -- the first failed to dock and everyone on the second mission fucking died. the soyuz 11 crew remain the only human deaths in space. first *naut? yuri gagarin didn't even have manual controls. the n1 was catastroph…

The real reason for the space race initially was to show you have rockets that can reach anywhere.

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

#754

Post by oreally »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #743
oreally wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In world history, it's a common case that the number 1 is always inclined to stay at number 1 while beating down would-be contenders. China has always been insular, and they don't think about space glories that much at the moment. It would take a couple more generations for them to care about something like that.

I just think it's about framing. "Glory" can exist without comparing yourself to others. When they built the three-gorges dam they probably weren't thinking "our dam is better than those American dams". It's just impressive in its own right They can be working on going to space without constantly bringing out the proverbial measuring tape to compare themselves to the US. I'm not totally in the loop with the Chinese z…

Well if anything the general chinese working culture is to keep your head down and work diligently. If they do have to compare it's because of how connected everything is nowadays.

The US comparatively does boast a lot more that it's a bit of a meme on chinese social media.

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

#755

Post by anigbrowl »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #653
bdangubic wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first to get there has already happened. Motorola was the first to create a handheld mobile phone, Apple just did not get that memo... :)

But Apple didn't recreate the same mobile handset as Motorola or anybody else. There is very little value or scientific benefit in going back to the moon within the parameters of this mission; it's literally "do the same thing again".

Incredible lack of imagination. If we went back to the moon on the regular we could by now have high resolution cameras permanently installed there pointing back at Earth, sending video in real time.

but we have satellites for that

High resolution photographs of the entire earth (as opposed to tiny pieces of it) would have a massive positive emotional effect on people. The Earthrise photo's enduring popularity is proof of this. There's water on the Moon; we could have bases there by now, even if they were limited in functionality and size, like the ISS. We could have remote-control or autonomous moon rovers and bipedal robots exploring there 24-7.

Instead we have Moon landing denialists one one hand and jaded 'it's just a rock, who cares' nay-sayers on the other.

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

#756

Post by chrisco255 »

caconym_ wrote: post #320
chrisco255 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to consider anytime frame beyond what NASA did it in in the 60s "unreasonable". They were still using slide rules for goodness sake. We've got now 50+ years of space flight experience under our belt. Bean counters make excuses. Put the right people in the right places and shit gets done.

Apollo was funded at a much higher fraction of the national budget, and I believe in inflation-adjusted dollars the cost is comparable but generally higher depending on how you measure it. Funding makes it happen. Fund it, it will happen. Don't fund it, it won't happen. American space exploration has been chronically underfunded relative to its ambitions, which is why all we have to show for our manned exploration pr…

> Apollo was funded at a much higher fraction of the national budget, and I believe in inflation-adjusted dollars the cost is comparable but generally higher depending on how you measure it.

The Apollo mission had to invent technology from scratch that did not exist in the 60s. We have all of that knowledge today and then some, plus computers that are millions of times more powerful.

There is no reason to believe that the 8th mission to the moon in the 2020s should cost just as much relative to the national budget as the original did in 1969. We don't expect each new nuclear warhead to cost as much as the Manhattan Project did relative to the national budget.

Funding doesn't make things happen. In some ways funding can be a curse, and bureaucracies will grow to waste whatever funds are allocated. People make things happen. Competent people make things happen. Strong leadership makes things happen. The current NASA has leadership and talent gaps galore. It is also saddled with bureaucratic cruft that has caked onto its gears in the last 5 decades. It is not the same ambitious upstart that it once was. Could it be reformed? Yes, but not without cleaning house.

For what its worth, I don't think we should exclude SpaceX, obviously, as they are clearly iterating at such a rapid rate relative to everyone else that it seems hard to believe anyone will catch up (and at the most efficient cost basis).

I'm not sure why you think the Chinese will win, as even their smaller rockets are regularly crashing back to earth, one just yesterday: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/chinese-rocket-crash...

But sure, at least they are deploying, at least they're in the running, which is more than most nations can say.

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

#757

Post by chrisco255 »

AshleyGrant wrote: post #311
chrisco255 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to consider anytime frame beyond what NASA did it in in the 60s "unreasonable". They were still using slide rules for goodness sake. We've got now 50+ years of space flight experience under our belt. Bean counters make excuses. Put the right people in the right places and shit gets done.

Unless we're willing to expend resources on the level we did in the 60s then it is absolutely unreasonable. Computers instead of slide rules doesn't matter at all.

I'll repeat what I said above because this is an oft-repeated fallacy:

We don't expect each new nuclear warhead to cost as much as the Manhattan Project did relative to the national budget. Likewise, after 60 years of technological development beyond what we had in the 60s, there is no reason to expect a modern day lunar mission to cost the same relatively.

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

#758

Post by anigbrowl »

heavyset_go wrote: post #561
harimau777 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point! I'd add that it also serves to inspire regular people and get them interested in science. Unfortunately, I think that's the problem with some of the rhetoric like "the green revolution will be the next space race!" For better or worse, solar panels aren't as inspiring to most people as space is.

A lot of money and time were behind the space race propaganda arm that got people excited about advancements in space technology. If the same resources were put into popularizing advancements in energy, you'd see more excitement. As it is, there are kids growing up excited about environmentalism like there were kids growing up excited about space.

No. Kids are not stupid. You can appreciate environmental innovation while also recognizing that it is fundamentally, qualitatively different from doing difficult things in space. Do you look at the Mars Rover and say to yourself 'big deal, we have cars right here on Earth'?

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

#759

Post by vincenthwt »

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…

Hopefully, your view is in the minority. If this mindset becomes prevalent in the US, nothing new will ever be invented, and no new regions of space will be explored.

Modern moon exploration isn’t about repeating Apollo but progressing toward resource extraction and establishing humanity’s long-term presence in space. These missions are designed to achieve goals that were previously impossible and lay the foundation for humanity’s future beyond Earth.

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

#760

Post by cryptonector »

testing22321 wrote: post #679
georgeecollins wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is already too bad that the US's plan to get to the moon was so flawed that it has been delayed again and again and money was wasted. Let's imagine that China puts people on the moon next year in a method similar to the way the US did it in 1969 (but probably better in some ways). They still are mostly doing something that has been done before by the USA. In that same year, the USA will probably continue to launch…

China’s plan looks nothing like what was done in 69. They’re going to build a base there, just like the US wants to.

What a tremendous waste of resources.
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