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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

#231

Post by mattrp »

jvanderbot wrote: post #181
JulianMorrison wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m reading the reddit thread below and I’m inclined to say maybe as a permitting organization, there’s not just a place but a critical need for an org like NASA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/f2a1yx/eric_berger_...

But at the same time, how can it accomplish its mission without going on boondoggles like SLS? I just saw an article yesterday about a project they funded for Lockheed Martin for them to explore an SST that doesn’t create loud shockwaves... I guess you could say this falls under the Aeronautics mandate but really? Is this an area of research that needs government funding? Or can they say anything that furthers the understanding of safe flight and NASA’s regulatory mission of private space flight, then its justifiable?

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

#232

Post by netman21 »

WalterBright wrote: post #228
netman21 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, establishing any self sustaining space colony would do. No need to build it at the bottom of a gravity well.

Look at the difference in the size of rocket needed to lift two men to lunar orbit vs earth orbit. It's really not a big deal to blast off from the moon. Gravity has lots of advantages. For one thing, toilets work.

Gravity is easy to simulate with spin.

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

#233

Post by rdlw »

LargeWu wrote: post #109
rdlw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viability due to public opinion is a reason. I think that NASA has been successful enough in popularizing the ideals of not interfering with the potential biospheres (or lacks of biosphere) of other planets, 'Planetary Protection', that any plan for 'aggressive remote terraforming' would be met with public outcry, for the sake of preserving areological history.

"the ideals of not interfering with the potential biospheres (or lacks of biosphere) of other planets" I think their ideal is to protect planets from interfering with their ecosystems unintentionally . Microbial contamination, for example. Especially Mars, since we don't know what kind of life, if any, existed or currently exists there. Also some of Saturn's and maybe Jupiter's moons. But I think if there were ever a…

NASA states that the first goal of Planetary Protection is to "Carefully control forward contamination of other worlds by terrestrial organisms and organic materials carried by spacecraft in order to guarantee the integrity of the search and study of extraterrestrial life, if it exists." [0]

It does seem that unintentional interference is the main concern, but intentional interference almost certainly won't be considered on the relevant timescale, which is now until the first Mars landing, since aggressive terraforming was posed as an alternative to unsustainable Martian colonies.

[0] https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection

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

#234

Post by ChuckMcM »

harryh wrote: post #86
ChuckMcM wrote: post #79

I agree with most people that it would be nearly impossible without a Manhattan Project style commitment from the Government and I don't see that happening. That said, an interesting thought experiment would be to put a Falcon 9 second stage to 'sleep' on an up coming mission for a couple of weeks and then have it wake up and relight. If that works push it to a month. With a system like that you could Falcon Heavy to…

a Manhattan Project style commitment The Manhattan Project spent about 2 billion over a 5 year period. That's around 23 billion in today's dollars. The 5 year budget for NASA exceeds 100 billion dollars.

Interestingly enough, Ars Technica is reporting today that NASA pegged the cost of meeting this timeline at $35B (https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/nasa-puts-a-price-on...) so your estimate of the cost of a Manhattan Project and my suggestion that it was that order of magnitude seem to both be correct!

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

#235

Post by WalterBright »

netman21 wrote: post #232
WalterBright wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the difference in the size of rocket needed to lift two men to lunar orbit vs earth orbit. It's really not a big deal to blast off from the moon. Gravity has lots of advantages. For one thing, toilets work.

Gravity is easy to simulate with spin.

That's not so easy - the station has to be very large to do that, otherwise people get dizzy with coriolis effects. With a large station comes the problem of dropping something sharp/heavy and having it crash through the hull.

A large station means every gram of material has to be boosted up out of some gravity well to it.

Whereas on the moon, the idea is to use the material already there.

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

#236

Post by JulianMorrison »

jvanderbot wrote: post #181
JulianMorrison wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They have consistently been successful at what you could call JFK-less varieties of exploration, where nobody gets to be the JFK and make a big speech about Mars human landings and decree a project that will get their name in the history books.

Every JFK-project they have been saddled with, after the original, fizzled. This is because each incoming administration (without regard to party) wants to be the JFK. They don't want to deliver what the previous man hyped. Tear it up, back to the drawing board.

Where it's an unassuming team of scientists plugging away making lander robots or what have you, they can do that.

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

#237

Post by netman21 »

WalterBright wrote: post #235
netman21 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity is easy to simulate with spin.

That's not so easy - the station has to be very large to do that, otherwise people get dizzy with coriolis effects. With a large station comes the problem of dropping something sharp/heavy and having it crash through the hull. A large station means every gram of material has to be boosted up out of some gravity well to it. Whereas on the moon, the idea is to use the material already there.

I get all that. But keep in mind that nothing has ever been manufactured on the Moon. Nothing. I love the idea of using Lunar regolith to make stuff. But the first Moon bases will be shipped there. Just like the first space bases. Baby steps.
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