In article om,
says...

On 2017-04-30 04:00, Fred J. McCall wrote:

Also the whole "we have no space suits" thing.

Go back to watch "From the Earth to the Moon". Where there is a will,
there is a budget to get it doen quickly enough.

Apollo/Saturn funding was a was a proxy war with the Soviet Union during
the Cold War. There is *nothing* like that today. China's manned space
program is repeating feats that the US and Soviet Union performed in the
1960s and 1970s, so they're still half a century behind.

What is wrong with ACER and Shuttle/station suits that couldn't be used
for first manned flight?

ACES is only a launch/entry suit. The problem is lack of EVA suits.
And there are precious few functioning shuttle EMUs.

If NASA is just spending Pork money on R&D for totally new suits,
perhaps it needs to stop and just use existing suits, unless something
terribly wrong/incompatible has been identified.

The problem is for the money spent, they don't have actual suits. They
have some technology demonstrators, not actual EVA suits.

Also the "we don't
have the required Deep Space communications or support networks in
place.

Since the flights are just a spin around the block which doesn't even
include a weekend camping stop on the moon, do we even need a deep space
communication network?

I know that the origianl deep space dishes in westernm Australia
(Carnarvon) have been decommissioned, one destroyed, the other a
museum), but surely there are others that can be used ?





Also the whole "the ground facilities aren't set up to launch
people right now" thing.

And why aren't they ready? Nasa began to "convert" the shuttle pad right
after the last flight. How come it woudn't be ready by now. It isn't as
if NASA never built such structures, they built them for the Apollo
programme. And they might even be able to re-use the rotating arm/white
room frm Shuttle era if re-installed at the right elevation.

More and more, it looks to me like PORL boondogle where even NASA has
known this was just a "make work" project to keep politicians and ATK
happy without any expectations of it ever doing anything useful, so no
urgency in getting things done.

Now that they are afrraid the project might get cut because it is so
ludicrous, they are waking up to years of working without a purpose and
wondering hwo to get something deliverable.

Bitching and moaning isn't going to solve the problem that NASA ****ed
away a crap ton of money since the shuttle program ended with little to
show for it (little flying anyway). Pad 39-B isn't ready for manned
SLS/Orion flights, end of story. There are no replacements for the
EMUs. There are no landers, HAB modules, fuel depots, and etc.

But, we've still got ISS.

Jeff
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