wrote:
what is the meaning for Russia an Europe to continue to circle
endlessly in LEO while NASA is building the CEV with the goal to fly
twice a year to the Moon

Because going to the moon doesn't yield much in terms of experience in
designing and testing systems and lifestyles that help humans travel to
other planets for long duration trips.

Because going to the moon is no big deal. Attach a service module that
gives you ability to boost from LEO to moon and back and voila.

So while the americans will be busy re-enacting a trip they did back in
1969, europeans and russians will be busy really learning about how to
build/test stuff that works in 0g.

So when the time comes to go to mars, who do you think will have the
expertise and reliable systems needed to go there ? It won't be the USA.

Going to the moon is just a diversion. Good political ploy with little
in terms of advancing space travel.

And CEV itself will be useless to go to mars. You'll need something the
size of the space station abnd even bigger to get to mars and back (just
think about storage for supplies).


It isn't enough to say you have an O2 generator. You need to quantify
how much O2 it can really produce from the water you have on-board, and
how many spare parts you'll need for a trip lasting possibly 18 months.
(6 months to, 6 months from, and possibly 6 months around amrs while
most of crew are on surface).

Apply same to water, especially if you start having water recycling
systems to attempt to have a closed loop. If you rely on this to fly to
mars because you can't afford to carry enough water for the whole
journey, then you better make damned sure the stuff will work reliably
for the whole mission. And the only way to test it for long time is on
the ISS.

Also, once CEV has gone to moon and back a few times, you can bet that
moon trips will no longer be funded. From then on, CEV will be used to
get to the space station.

Politician's exentricities generally get weeded out over time and
government bodies return to normal reality.

The great think baout that CEV announcement is the lifting of the ban
imposed on NASA which prevented NASA from thinking about going to
Mars. Now, it should be able to plan station experiements
intelligently, instead of asking cremembers to watch crystals grow in a
test tube.