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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

#181

Post by jvanderbot »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #171
mattrp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention SLS which is just nonsense at this point. As well as the numerous delays on the demo missions to the ISS. This feels to me like an ultimatum to NASA... move the ball forward or get out of the game. I get the sense there is real fear we could lose the idea of ‘space’ if we don’t start showing some progress. As it stands now there isn’t a platform for the moon and there’s not going to be a platform by 20…

NASA is going to end up being the label on the shipping crate. They don't have a funding model sufficiently detached from political actors trying to sell the sizzle and uninterested in somebody else's steak.

NASA builds, deploys, and operates the largest and most successful space exploration network in history and will hold that distinction for the forseeable future. The lunar campaign seems designed to force commercial partners to step up and become the UPS and Uber service for future NASA instruments and missions. You seem to be focused soley on SLS as a failure case and forget that when it comes to huge campaigns with fast turn arounds and zero room for error they dont have the funding model period.

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

#182

Post by TeMPOraL »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #179
ardy42 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t it odd that the most important political and military mission of a generation relied on “tribal information which wasn’t written down?” No. Figuring out how to accurately describe something in writing is hard, and then there are all the details you have to leave out to make the document readable, some of which may be more important than you realized. Every project relies on tribal knowledge, and much of that…

Technical documents don't have to be readable, they have to be comprehensible (and preferably quite comprehensive too).

They have to be readable enough for the reader to be able to recreate what's described from those documents, and you can only test for that by... trying to use the documents to recreate the work. Which is rarely attempted, especially in large, expensive projects.

(It's the same thing as the "you only have a backup if you actually restored it at least once" adage.)

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

#183

Post by TeMPOraL »

varjag wrote: post #164
101404 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russians do it for the US. The US hasn't launched any astronaut in almost a decade. SpaceX and ULA have been certified recently to launch astronauts too. But launching to the orbit of the ISS (about 500 km) is very different from launching to lunar orbit (about 400000 km iirc). My money is on SpaceX to land on the moon before 2025, not any government. Not even China.

"Even"? China has never been a space exploration powerhouse.

They are in the process of becoming one, and they have a bit more focus than the US.

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

#184

Post by GuB-42 »

mattrp wrote: post #140
Someone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, combine ”NASA says contracts to build a lunar lander could be awarded in late February or March.” with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module#History . For the LM, the contract was awarded in September 1962, and first flight (unmanned) was in January, 1968. So, even Apollo’s aggressive schedule needed more time to first flight than what NASA would have now between awarding the contract and landing hu…

Not to mention SLS which is just nonsense at this point. As well as the numerous delays on the demo missions to the ISS. This feels to me like an ultimatum to NASA... move the ball forward or get out of the game. I get the sense there is real fear we could lose the idea of ‘space’ if we don’t start showing some progress. As it stands now there isn’t a platform for the moon and there’s not going to be a platform by 20…

SpaceX might be able to throw something on the moon by 2024. But for a manned mission...

Just look at Crew Dragon. SpaceX started development in 2014, and the first manned flight is planned for april 2020. 6 years, and it not designed from scratch.

SpaceX likes to set unrealistic expectations. And while they get the job done (SLS should take note...), they are not doing magic. This is not the 50s anymore, they have to work within a budget, and with much more consideration given to safety.

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

#185

Post by saberdancer »

Joe-Z wrote: post #165
yongjik wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that most other things have a point other than having a human being in the scene. So if we're building an airport, a crane collapses, and workers die, we mourn and move on. (And hopefully find out what went wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistake.) And the final constructed airport has its uses, so in a morbid way, their deaths were not in vain. On the other hand, there's no other poi…

>almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper ... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apoll…

You are right but it's comparing apples to oranges. If you compared missions of comparable weight you would find that capability of robotic missions increased many times over current missions, reason is that any human mission would be much more massive than current unmanned missions. This is especially true for long range manned missions where crew needs food, water, shielding and space to survive long term in space, for a robotic mission distance is just time.

What robots cannot do well is be flexible in their mission. This is something that humans excel.

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

#186

Post by saberdancer »

noelsusman wrote: post #131
carlosdp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we have already been exploring the solar system with machines, for a good while. Humans are much more capable today (and for the foreseeable future) at conducting a wide range of tasks in space than the machines we can currently send up. It could be argued it would be faster to send humans up to build the infrastructure for more humans now (in the near future) than it would be to wait for robotics to get adva…

What can a human in a spacesuit accomplish on the moon that a machine can't? It's a genuine question, though I'll admit my initial answer is not much.

Climb down a cliff using rope system.

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

#187

Post by Joe-Z »

saberdancer wrote: post #185
Joe-Z wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>almost anything a human being can do, a robotic probe can do far cheaper ... and far more inefficiently. I can't find the article right now, but a while back there was a submission on here which argued that sending robots into space instead of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Because the state of robotics and their capabilities is far from what could be achieved by sending a human. There were comparisons like the Apoll…

You are right but it's comparing apples to oranges. If you compared missions of comparable weight you would find that capability of robotic missions increased many times over current missions, reason is that any human mission would be much more massive than current unmanned missions. This is especially true for long range manned missions where crew needs food, water, shielding and space to survive long term in space,…

Fair point. I guess the best solution would be to just further develop both: Manned and unmanned missions.

Also I think the psychological effects of having actual humans doing this stuff on the people staying back home should not be underestimated. Would we have an Elon Musk today[0] hadn't we landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969?

[0]Or at least SpaceX, this guy's endeavours are all over the place :D

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

#188

Post by saberdancer »

redis_mlc wrote: post #104

Can somebody explain what the benefit of sending men to the moon is? I mean science or engineering. I don't mean PR or funding visibility - you can get that by sponsoring a NASCAR ride. Both the Space Shuttle and ISS have been huge money sinks with no benefit. How will another moon visit be any different?

Astronaut Garrett Reisman on Joe Rogan show said something that resonated with me, we have plenty of experience with 1G of gravity and enough experience with 0G. They know the physical effects of both of those. What they do not know is effect of 0.2G or 0.5G in long term. Whether effect is linear or is it a curve. Etc.

That's just for exploring long term space habitation.

Another major reason to do it would be a potential mining/fueling base on the moon. Cost of any launch from Earth is quite prohibitive due to Earth gravity, Moon has gravity that is 6 times less powerful so if we managed to mine ice/hydrogen/oxygen from the surface of the moon it could be used to refuel rockets in space for missions to the rest of the solar system.

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

#189

Post by 7952 »

StillBored wrote: post #83
sandworm101 wrote: post #35

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…

Yawn, space is dangerous. We would all still be living in trees with this attitude. I don't believe that we can actually design a system that is safe like this, so yes it needs a lot of testing and iterative improvement. In the meantime, we need to use it to launch equipment and a few brave souls that understand the risks. Actually to add to that, I think putting timescales in front of something like this as a tenden…

The purpose of testing is to give you data on things you cannot prove through technical analysis. But in a risk tolerant culture you will just identify issues that you should already know about. That installing gyro's upside down is a bad idea, or that rubber o rings fail at low temperature. Having a rocket explode is a very expensive way of getting that data, and lead to program delays.

The inherent danger of space flight is the reason you have to be rigourous. It is the only way it can possibly be made to work at all. Because people will make stupid mistakes, and the rocket will explode.

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

#190

Post by monk_e_boy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #184
mattrp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention SLS which is just nonsense at this point. As well as the numerous delays on the demo missions to the ISS. This feels to me like an ultimatum to NASA... move the ball forward or get out of the game. I get the sense there is real fear we could lose the idea of ‘space’ if we don’t start showing some progress. As it stands now there isn’t a platform for the moon and there’s not going to be a platform by 20…

SpaceX might be able to throw something on the moon by 2024. But for a manned mission... Just look at Crew Dragon. SpaceX started development in 2014, and the first manned flight is planned for april 2020. 6 years, and it not designed from scratch. SpaceX likes to set unrealistic expectations. And while they get the job done (SLS should take note...), they are not doing magic. This is not the 50s anymore, they have t…

I think Blue Origin will explode into the space race. Bezos is a smart fellow and his number one passion is space. I think competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin is happening right now and is fierce. I'm sure Musk knows what Bezos is up to and that's why he's driving the development of StartShip so hard (and StarLink)

This year is going to be interesting.

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