Out of curiosity, why isn't the gateway being planned for the Earth/Moon L1 point?
NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
141–150 of 168 posts
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Oh boy, you underestimate the power of feminism. First woman in space is a lot, especially if you go back to 60th of previous century.
That's the point - it's a propaganda win, not a technical achievement in any way. Not to belittle the symbolic importance of it, but cmon - first dog murdered by being launched in a rocket, first time running two manned missions at the same time, first nap in space - a large proportion of the Soviet "firsts" were just low-complexity stunts.
One of the last major "firsts" was "first organisms to circle the moon" - they barely squeaked this one in a few months before Apollo 8, and they accomplished it by shoving some tortoises into a Soyuz (no food or water required!).
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#143The 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…
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.
Amy "Vintage Space" Teitel's "Apollo's Legacy is Keeping Us Grounded" is a good exploration of the politics and lingering (negative) legacy of Apollo. Longish (27m) but good:
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
NASA does a lot of science.
That's the point... Private space is ramping up quickly, but they're building rockets, not doing science. If you're and American astrobiologist (for example), NASA is where you want to be. There's really no competition.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#145Earlier 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. NASA is a political football, and it's not going to get any better: it just takes too long to see a big mission (i.e., manned ones) through, so they're never going to get done with the way our government is running these days. The probes are usually OK because those can get done a lot quicker.
> 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…
Likewise, I'm a NASA contractor and I heard of exactly one person leaving after the shutdown. Granted anecdata isn't proof of anything, but it's clear that wasn't any kind of mass exodus.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since Bush every incoming president has set up a “vision” that scraps all previous work and which then in turn gets scrapped by the next guy. I wonder how the people working there can keep motivated knowing that most of their work is just for show. Seems unmanned missions are fine but manned missions are just a mess.
From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. NASA is a political football, and it's not going to get any better: it just takes too long to see a big mission (i.e., manned ones) through, so they're never going to get done with the way our government is running these days. The probes are usually OK because those can get done a lot quicker.
Heard from who? That doesn't match my observations from the inside.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#147It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress and basically the funds are deposited in an escrow. It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the f…
As a governmental entity, NASA will never be removed from politics. A million different things could completely derail any sort of 5-10 year plan, not to mention that as soon as NASA got a "guaranteed" fund-for-5-years-and-leave-us-alone budget, every other federal agency will clamor for that too. Long-term planning requires alignment of incentives. In government, the incentives of top officials are short-term in the…
Of course people (including many at NASA) have been speculating about how to generate market-driven demand for a very long time (at least for as long as NASA has existed in the case of reports coming from there). The more I learn about the (lack of) history in commercialization of space, the more I doubt I will actually see significant exo-terrestrial colonies within my lifetime.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#148It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress and basically the funds are deposited in an escrow. It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the f…
Oddly I agree with your description but not the solution. NASA doesn't need longer term goals - it needs shorter term goals. I'd say don't fund anything that takes longer then a single presidential term. That would limit what's possible but increase the likelihood that something will get finished. If the president says my goal is to land humans on Venus (with asbestos booties naturally) in 20 years then odd are in 4…
This would be nice if it was possible, but 4 years is simply too short of a timeline to do things like the moon-return project. We might as well shut down the manned space program at that point.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, earth is the best place to develop technologies to settle on another world. Planning a moon base when we can't even build and run a sealed biosphere on earth is like looking for sponsors for your F-1 team before learning how to drive a car.
Why would you need a fully sealed biosphere? It's not like we're going on a solitary one way trip. We've kept the ISS running for enough years to prove that, in terms of biosphere anyway, we have the technology to build a base on the moon or Mars.
Re: NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
#150Given the exponential nature of Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, I don't understand why its not common to perform multiple launches from the ground to LEO, and then rendezvous in orbit and go to the moon, or mars, or whereever. If I'm understanding the mechanics properly (informed mostly by kerbal space program!) the biggest "expense" in traveling most places is getting into LEO. And every doubling of payload requires…
TNSTAAFL. I think you're misunderstanding that equation? You're trying to get to orbit, so hold v and delta- v constant. Then you have the ratio of "wet" to "dry" masses constant. So the more you're launching, the more fuel it takes, and that is linear. I don't see how physics would work otherwise?
The ratio of wet and dry masses for a launch vehicle also depends on ISP, thrust, and aerodynamics. You can have an extremely high ISP and thus a lot of theoretical delta-v but you waste it all because your thrust ratio is below 1 and the vehicle can’t leave the ground.
Over a certain size you can’t build up anymore and have to make the vehicle flat. This is because a certain surface area of exhaust nozzle can only provide so much thrust. So you get to about 100m and then your rocket can’t leave the ground because the mass of propellant is higher than the available thrust.
Then there’s thrust to weight, meaning that to get off the ground and about two minutes into your launch it is far more important to have a lot of thrust than to have high efficiency. The rule of thumb for KSP players is 1.2 thrust to weight on the ground. You will fight gravity losses and end up with about 0.2g acceleration off the pad. This increases gradually as the mass of the vessel is burnt off.
Later in flight the major force to overcome is atmospheric drag. The faster you go, the worse it gets. Fat rockets will have a harder time. So you can’t go too wide, you can’t go too tall, and there are many trade offs to be made along the way.
But the short version is no, you don’t hold v and delta-v constant. There are many more variables to consider when launching a rocket from a standing start where gravity and an atmosphere are involved.
Rockets do not scale linearly.