UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions

In article , John Cody wrote:

[Hey, John... how's life?]

I'm not wholly against the idea of a crewed Mars orbital mission
(particularly if it includes flybys/landings on Phobos and/or Deimos as a
bonus). It was the mention of 'photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface'
as the primary aim (as opposed to Phobos science or the real-time
teleoperation of Martian robots) that confused me. Is there *really*
anything useful we could learn about Mars that could be obtained by the
early 21st century equivalent of an astronaut pointing a Hasselblad at one
of the LM windows?

Dedicated high-res photograhpy has one major problem - data transfer -
that can be partially avoided by actually storing the data on the ship
rather than signalling it back. I'm not sure how useful this would be,
but being able to get MRO-level coverage of larger areas certainly
couldn't hurt.

--
-Andrew Gray

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Dr. O wrote:

No more Galileos or Cassinis or Pluto probes or Space Telescopes?


That will certainly get the scientific community in a frenzy. OTOH, the
cost
of these missions is likely to be such that there isn't any other way to
do
it, unless the U.S. wants to spend 5% of GDP on space exploration.

So those kinds of missions are cancelled, and the program only costs (say)
4.95% of GDP?

5% of U.S. GDP would be $150 billion a year but NASA's annual budget is only
a tenth of that (so 0.5% of GDP). For that kind of money NASA will very hard
pressed to get anyone on the moon alive and back let alone Mars. So yes, I
believe very few new missions will be funded, if at all. NASA's annual
budget for space exploration these days is, what?, $2 billion a year or so?
Maybe more. That money will be sorely needed to fund the manned Mars
program.

But OTOH NASA needs to take a convervative stand on accomplishing these
feats. That means it shouldn't try to invent wholly new technologies, but
merely adapting existing technology to fit the need. For example: for the
Apollo program, NASA (in conjuction with IBM) developed a state-of-the-art
miniaturized IC based computer (what we would call an embedded PC these
days). Today, NASA can just use modified off-the-shelf parts and build a
computer for the Mars ship. It doesn't have to cost $50 million. If NASA
can't restrain itself in this regard, we will quickly see the costs
spiraling out off control and the cancelation of the program. Same thing
with gravity research. Don't try to spend billions trying to develop some
'miracle' drug to alleviate the affects of muscle atrophication. Just use an
artificial spinning wheel or a daily exercise program used on Mir and
SkyLab. Engines: keep it simple and safe, use hybrids or hydrogen peroxide.
Reentry: develop emergency reentry systems
(http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/rescue.htm). Don't try to develop a
nuclear-powered do-it-all unobtanium engine for this mission, just make do
with existing technology. Our current technology level is more than
sufficient to accomplish a Mars mission. Heck, I bet that if NASA had tried
a Mars landing in the '70's (assuming similar spending as on Apollo) I think
there would have been a fair chance that it had succeeded.

That's my $0.02 worth of advice

In article u.org,
Fafnir wrote:

Anybody remember that Richard Nixon ordered two US aircraft
carriers to steam halfway around the world so that the carrier
that picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts would NOT be the John F.
Kennedy?

Or possibly not.

You may like to note that the John F. Kennedy was a large, new (less
than a year old!) fleet carrier; the recovery operations for Apollo were
invariably carried out by small carriers (eg/ USS Hornet, which picked
up A-11) or helicopter carriers (eg/ USS Princeton).

There were quite pressing commitments for carriers with modern attack
wings, back in 1969... even had an order come from on high to use it,
the Navy would have been reluctant to send it to the Atlantic. They
certainly wouldn't have made it available to NASA as standard
practice...

--
-Andrew Gray

"Fafnir" wrote in message
ll.eu.org...

Anybody remember that Richard Nixon ordered two US aircraft
carriers to steam halfway around the world so that the carrier
that picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts would NOT be the John F.
Kennedy?

Nope, since there's no evidence that he did that.


And that he then cancelled the last (3?) moon landings, which
had already been paid for?

Nope, since that's not the way it happened.



I want to see the details...

Fafnir wrote in
ll.eu.org:

Anybody remember that Richard Nixon ordered two US aircraft
carriers to steam halfway around the world so that the carrier
that picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts would NOT be the John F.
Kennedy?

Incorrect. Apollo 11 was to land in the Pacific; JFK was stationed in the
Mediterranean. Nixon rejected a suggestion to sail the JFK (and her battle
group) halfway around the world to recover Apollo 11, when there were
already ships in the Pacific available.

And that he then cancelled the last (3?) moon landings,

Partially correct. Congress capped the Saturn V production line at 15 back
in 1967 (LBJ's administration), so when NASA decided in 1969 to use a "dry"
Skylab, NASA had to cancel Apollo 20 to free up a Saturn V for Skylab.
Later, Nixon's OMB made budget cuts that forced NASA to cancel Apollos 15
and 19; 16-18 were subsequently renumbered 15-17.

which
had already been paid for?

Partially correct; the Saturn rockets had been built and paid for; the
Apollo spacecraft were partially built and paid for. But the missions had
not been paid for; that was the primary savings from the cancellation.

I want to see the details...

Google these topics in sci.space.history; they've been discussed to death
over there.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Jochem Huhmann" wrote in message
...
"John Cody" writes:

I'm not wholly against the idea of a crewed Mars orbital mission
(particularly if it includes flybys/landings on Phobos and/or Deimos as
a
bonus). It was the mention of 'photo reconnaissance of the Martian
surface'
as the primary aim (as opposed to Phobos science or the real-time
teleoperation of Martian robots) that confused me. Is there *really*
anything useful we could learn about Mars that could be obtained by the
early 21st century equivalent of an astronaut pointing a Hasselblad at
one
of the LM windows?

When you're flying back anyway you can avoid sending all data back via
the DSN bottleneck (and just take along a rack of harddisks). If you
look at the earth surface mapping missions (using STS) you will easily
see that the sheer amount of data gathered with some instruments are a
real showstopper otherwise.


Yesterday in an IRC conversation with Doug Ellison I jokingly suggested
sending 'a car load of IDE hard-disks'* on a roundtrip as a solution to the
bandwidth issue. I'm astonished to learn that just such a mission is
actually being taken seriously! Yet it occurs to me that in order to
generate such a vast amount of data that transmission to Earth at MRO (or
even JIMO) style rates becomes unfeasible the idea of selective targeting
would probably go out the window- surely such a mission would consist of
continual observation. In which case, why have a crew at all? IIRC (I could
be wrong) the SRTM crew did not have much input into the data-collection
(other than the changing of recording tapes) during the flight of Endeavour.
SRTM made sense because the shuttle provided a pretty much OTS method of
getting an unwieldy 13 tonne radar deployed in Earth orbit without having to
develop things like an unmanned earth re-entry vehicle for the tapes or
spend years dribbling back the data from orbit.

Had such a system (inc. BDB with large payload fairing?) existed the radar
could have been in polar orbit and provided a far more comprehensive
dataset. When it comes to crewed Mars missions there is no 'OTS'- and an
uncrewed mission with some kind of physical data recovery (heritage from an
automated sample-return?)makes a lot more sense.


John Cody

*What's the bandwidth of a carrier pigeon fed on flash-RAM sticks?

In sci.space.policy John Cody wrote:

wrote in message
m...
UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

The first manned Mars expeditions would attempt to orbit the red
planet in advance of landings -- much as Apollo 8 and 10 orbited the
moon but did not land. The orbital flights would conduct photo
reconnaissance of the Martian surface before sending landing craft,
said sources familiar with the plan's details.

What exactly would be the point of this? Anyone?


Getting more votes for re-election.


John Cody


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

"Hagar" wrote in message
...
In article
Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

January 8, 2004

wrote:

UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- American astronauts will return
to ...

congress.

Wow, more footprints. Real Cool.

Note the fine print:

retiring the shuttle fleet

NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station

Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing
programs that do not support the new effort.

No more Galileos or Cassinis or Pluto probes or Space Telescopes?
What if this means "No more galileos, cassinis and space telescopes UNTIL"
those can be launched from lunar surface ?

-kert

In article ,
"Brian Gaff" wrote:

Hmm, it ain't gonna happen I suspect when Bushykins is hopefully going to be
booted out of the Whitehouse soon. But that is just a personal observation.

Well, one could hope that this would be a relatively non-partisan issue,
and one the Other Guy could get behind as well. (I'll certainly be
voting for the Other Guy -- whoever that may be -- regardless, but I can
hope!)

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In article ,
John Doe wrote:

The journey to the Moon's surface is totally pointless in my opinion. The ISS
is a far better platform to test a year long mission, hardware performance,
reliability and servicability in space.

The rumors aren't about a "journey to the Moon's surface." It's about
building a permanent lunar base. This is very sensible and is in fact
the only sensible next step in space development.

Manned mission to mars, yes. But I am not sure that this can or should be
achieved with the priorities outlined in the document.

The priorities rumored are right on. Permanent crewed lunar base,
possible crewed expeditions to NEAs, maybe a Mars mission someday.
That's the sensible order of things. The Moon is right here, rich in
important resources, within reach but only if we stretch ourselves a bit.

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| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
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