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Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 5th 16, 01:53 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jonathan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 15
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years



$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.

The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.
At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.

Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.




Russia is squeezing NASA for more than $3.3 billion — and there's little
anyone can do about it

Dave Mosher

Sep. 2, 2016, 12:28 PM 13,868 19

NASA is in quite a financial pickle with the Russians.

When the agency retired its space shuttle program in 2011, it was
banking on commercial carriers — ultimately SpaceX and Boeing — to
design, build, and test proven systems to launch its astronauts into
space by 2015.

But those plans have been waylaid by 3 years, according to a
buck-stopping audit by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) on
Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016.

This leaves the agency with one option for sending astronauts to and
from the International Space Station (ISS) 220 miles above Earth: a
Russian spacecraft called the Soyuz.

And Russia is taking full advantage of its temporary monopoly.

Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, used to charge NASA as little as $21.8
million per seat in 2008 (when the space shuttle was still around).

By 2018, however, it intends to charge NASA $81 million per seat by 2018
— a cost increase of 372% over 10 years:

Chart showing how much Russia is charging NASA per seat for launching US
astronauts.

How much NASA is paying Russia for each US astronaut seat aboard a Soyuz
spacecraft from 2006 through 2018. Skye Gould/Business Insider

The latest NASA OIG audit — coincidentally released the morning that
SpaceX's uncrewed Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a launch pad during a
routine test (no one was harmed, but Facebook's first satellite was
destroyed) — follows up on a report it released in November 2013.

The new audit finds that the delays by SpaceX and Boeing is going to
cost NASA dearly in payments to Roscosmos.

"Had the Agency met its original goal of securing commercial crew
transportation by calendar year 2015, NASA could have avoided paying
Russia close to $1 billion for Soyuz seats in 2017 and 2018, even
factoring in the purchase of some seats in 2016 to cover the expected
transition period," the OIG report states.

The chart below factors in the price of a seat and the number of
astronauts that NASA plans to launch (about six per year), to show how
much NASA has paid Russia and could end up paying. The total cost over
12 years is more than $3.36 billion.

Assuming NASA's budget remains roughly $18.5 billion a year, that means
about 3% of the agency's funding could be diverted to Russia in 2018:

Chart showing how much Russia is charging NASA for launching US astronauts.

How much NASA will pay Russia to send US astronauts into space from 2006
through 2018. Skye Gould/Business Insider

A presentation given by a NASA official in May 2016 estimates the cost
of each seat aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and Boeing's CST-100
Starliner spacecraft will be $58 million.

The audit makes clear that any other hiccups in the NASA's commercial
crew program, which could earn Boeing and SpaceX up to $4.2 billion and
$2.6 billion (respectively) for their services, will be costly.


"Given the delays in initiating a U.S. capacity to transport crew to the
ISS, NASA has extended its contract with the Russian Space Agency for
astronaut transportation through 2018 at an additional cost of $490
million," the report stated. "If the Commercial Crew Program experiences
additional delays, NASA may need to buy additional seats from Russia to
ensure a continued U.S. presence on the ISS."

A response to the OIG findings in the report, penned by William
Gerstenmaier — NASA's associate administrator for human exploration —
agreed with the report's overall findings. Yet Gerstenmaier emphasized
the importance of making sure commercial spacecraft are safe to fly.

"Excessive focus on timeliness and schedule can result in reducing the
overall safety of the system," Gerstenmaier wrote. "Timeliness must not
be over stressed[.]"

Business Insider contacted Boeing and SpaceX about the new OIG report.
Although SpaceX did not immediately respond, Boeing issued the following
statement to Business Insider:

"We continue to work toward achieving certification and providing safe
crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station
with the first launch (orbital flight test) expected in 2017. As in any
development program, issues can stress the schedule and we are working
shoulder-to-shoulder with NASA to overcome them. Boeing has been a
partner with NASA on the Starliner system since 2010 and we’ve made
significant progress on the maturity of our design."

We also asked representatives at SpaceX if the company's Sept. 1 Falcon
9 explosion could affect the company's rocket launch schedule and human
spaceflight plans, and they told us by email:

"[O]ur number one priority is to safely and reliably return to flight
for our customers, as well as to take all the necessary steps to ensure
the highest possible levels of safety for future crewed missions with
the Falcon 9. We will carefully and thoroughly investigate and address
this issue."

A NASA spokesperson told Business Insider by email (our emphasis added
in bold):

"NASA remains confident in our commercial partners and in the goals of
the Commercial Crew Program to take astronauts to and from low-Earth
orbit. It is too early to know whether Thursday's incident will impact
their development schedules. Spacecraft and launch vehicles designed for
the Commercial Crew Program must meet NASA's stringent safety criteria
before being certified to launch crews into space. Successfully meeting
those requirements has always taken precedence over schedule."

SEE ALSO: Here's how much money it actually costs to launch stuff into space


http://www.businessinsider.com/astro...uz-seat-2016-9
  #2  
Old September 5th 16, 02:30 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.


Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.


Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.

The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.


Waiting for "artificial gravity" stupid since it's something we could do
today given the motivation. NASA isn't doing anything meaningful
towards sending people to Mars. Just look at where the money is being
spent. There are no Mars landers being designed and built. There is no
habitat being built big enough for a Mars trip. There are no in-situ
propellant production experiments being run on Mars (could be used to
fuel an unmanned sample return mission). SLS/Orion is the only big
thing NASA is spending money on and neither, by themselves, will take
people to Mars. Orion doesn't even have a good enough heat shield for a
direct reentry of a returning Mars mission.

The biggest problem with going to Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO, is the
high cost to launch anything into LEO. LEO is "half way to anywhere" in
terms of delta-V. Low launch costs will open up spaceflight like we've
never seen before.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.


Toasters are fine, but can't do 1/100th what a person in an EVA suit
plus a pressurized laboratory module can do. Add a rover to that and
people can do amazing things in a very short time.

At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.


Cost is high because launch costs are high. Again, solve the launch
cost problem and everything else becomes easier and cheaper.

Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.


ISS makes sense in that NASA is learning how to build and maintain a
large-ish habitat that needs to operate for years at a time. They need
to know how to do that in order to send people beyond LEO. ISS is very
expensive, but at least now it's "fully assembled" from the US point of
view. Plus it gives a purpose for commercial cargo and commercial crew,
which are lowering the cost of access to space for US astronauts.

SLS/Orion is certainly not going to lower costs. If you want to cancel
something at NASA that's expensive and completely useless, cancel
SLS/Orion.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #3  
Old September 5th 16, 03:15 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jonathan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 15
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

On 9/5/2016 9:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.


Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.


Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.




Not that difficult? Don't be ridiculous, your cable
solution is another pipe-dream. A spacecraft large
enough to supply artificial gravity AND go to Mars
AND carry enough gear to support more than a few
days stay would make the $150 billion dollar
/several decade long/ ISS project look like
....chump-change.

ISS started in 1985. If we started now that
space craft to Mars might be done by 2050.
Rovers could have mapped half the planet
of Mars by then.

You could double NASA's budget, spend every dime
of it on the manned Mars mission and it would still
take twenty or thirty years and only give astronauts
....HOURS on the surface.

A useless mission scientifically speaking.



The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.


Waiting for "artificial gravity" stupid since it's something we could do
today given the motivation. NASA isn't doing anything meaningful
towards sending people to Mars. Just look at where the money is being
spent. There are no Mars landers being designed and built. There is no
habitat being built big enough for a Mars trip. There are no in-situ
propellant production experiments being run on Mars (could be used to
fuel an unmanned sample return mission). SLS/Orion is the only big
thing NASA is spending money on and neither, by themselves, will take
people to Mars. Orion doesn't even have a good enough heat shield for a
direct reentry of a returning Mars mission.

The biggest problem with going to Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO, is the
high cost to launch anything into LEO.





Thanks for agreeing with me.




LEO is "half way to anywhere" in
terms of delta-V. Low launch costs will open up spaceflight like we've
never seen before.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.


Toasters are fine, but can't do 1/100th what a person in an EVA suit
plus a pressurized laboratory module can do.




I'm sorry to but to think a few days, or week or two
on the surface of Mars is going to return useful
science is absurd. They'd be spending most of their
time on the habitat and surviving just like
with the ISS. Where some science is shoe-horned
in when they can.

To discover life on Mars drilling below the
surface is required, that's where life will be.
A rover can do that and do nothing /but/ science
for months and years at a time.

It's manned space flight that drives costs
so high, unmanned can shave costs by orders
of magnitude, and more importantly shave
time by decades. In the couple decades it
would take to launch a scientifically useful
mission to Mars, more ambitious rovers could
have scoured Mars for the data we want for
pennies on the dollar, and MORE importantly
in a few years, not a few...decades.



Add a rover to that and
people can do amazing things in a very short time.

At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.


Cost is high because launch costs are high. Again, solve the launch
cost problem and everything else becomes easier and cheaper.

Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.


ISS makes sense in that NASA is learning how to build and maintain a
large-ish habitat that needs to operate for years at a time.





To go to Mars, asteroids are make-work, not a
credible science goal.




They need
to know how to do that in order to send people beyond LEO.




To Mars, there's nowhere else beyond LEO worth going
in our lifetimes if not the next generation too.



ISS is very
expensive, but at least now it's "fully assembled" from the US point of
view. Plus it gives a purpose for commercial cargo and commercial crew,
which are lowering the cost of access to space for US astronauts.




Yep, that's called tossing good money after bad.
Or building a 'bridge to nowhere' for the jobs
it would create.



SLS/Orion is certainly not going to lower costs. If you want to cancel
something at NASA that's expensive and completely useless, cancel
SLS/Orion.



We need to cancel...manned space flight except for military
uses until launch costs come way down. There's very little
humans can do in space that can't /now/ be done by
unmanned missions.




Jeff


  #4  
Old September 5th 16, 03:35 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

In article ,
says...

On 9/5/2016 9:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.


Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.


Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.




Not that difficult? Don't be ridiculous, your cable
solution is another pipe-dream.


The first experiment related to this was done 50 years ago.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...tch-the-first-
artificial-gravity-experiment/

It's not a pipe-dream, it's an engineering problem that is relatively
straight forward to solve. It requires zero tech beyond what was
available 50 years ago.

A spacecraft large
enough to supply artificial gravity AND go to Mars
AND carry enough gear to support more than a few
days stay would make the $150 billion dollar
/several decade long/ ISS project look like
...chump-change.


You don't need a big spinning wheel, you just need a big old cable.
Those aren't hard to make. This is a problem solved by throwing mass at
it. Again, reduce launch costs, and problems like this are far easier
to solve.

I'm sorry to but to think a few days, or week or two
on the surface of Mars is going to return useful
science is absurd. They'd be spending most of their
time on the habitat and surviving just like
with the ISS. Where some science is shoe-horned
in when they can.

To discover life on Mars drilling below the
surface is required, that's where life will be.
A rover can do that and do nothing /but/ science
for months and years at a time.

It's manned space flight that drives costs
so high, unmanned can shave costs by orders
of magnitude, and more importantly shave
time by decades. In the couple decades it
would take to launch a scientifically useful
mission to Mars, more ambitious rovers could
have scoured Mars for the data we want for
pennies on the dollar, and MORE importantly
in a few years, not a few...decades.


I'd expect operations in the first few days to be very Apollo-like, just
in case something important failed and they had to leave right away.
Look at how many EVAs were done by all of the Apollo landing missions
put together and note that their surface stays were measured in just a
few short days.

ISS is very
expensive, but at least now it's "fully assembled" from the US point of
view. Plus it gives a purpose for commercial cargo and commercial crew,
which are lowering the cost of access to space for US astronauts.


Yep, that's called tossing good money after bad.
Or building a 'bridge to nowhere' for the jobs
it would create.


I get your point, but without ISS, NASA would learn nothing about long
term missions because they have no existing hardware to get them beyond
LEO.


SLS/Orion is certainly not going to lower costs. If you want to

cancel
something at NASA that's expensive and completely useless, cancel
SLS/Orion.



We need to cancel...manned space flight except for military
uses until launch costs come way down. There's very little
humans can do in space that can't /now/ be done by
unmanned missions.


To solve your expensive chicken and egg problem, you would smash your
eggs along with killing the chickens?

I don't agree. Canceling manned spaceflight completely to wait for
costs to go down kills commercial cargo and commercial crew which *are*
making huge strides in lowering costs of both launch vehicles and
spacecraft.

Kill SLS/Orion. The data on projected costs and projected flight rates
dooms it to failure before it's first test flight. There is your
"bridge to nowhere".

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #5  
Old September 5th 16, 08:00 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

Jonathan wrote:


$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.


It's done other things and it has in no way shown "the whole
colonizing Mars dream isn't practical".


Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.


'Artificial gravity' isn't that difficult and doesn't require a large
spacecraft. It also doesn't appear to be necessary.


The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.


We don't need a 'space station' to go to Mars.


Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.
At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.


Ah, another fan of 'toasters to the stars'. If people aren't going,
why waste the money on toasters?


Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.


The biggest current barrier to putting people on Mars is proving we
can land big things there. Getting down to the surface is the single
hardest thing about a Mars mission.


Russia is squeezing NASA for more than $3.3 billion — and there's little
anyone can do about it


Excuse me? Unless you're talking about over the total life of ISS
that remark makes no sense. It may make no sense even then, since
most of that money is already spent and thus not 'squeezing'. Look at
the figures in what you quoted below. For the Russians to be
"squeezing NASA for more than $3.3 billion" we would have to be
sending 42 people up on Russian Soyuz. We typically send up 5-6
people per year, so that's around 7 years of flights.

We won't be using Soyuz for another 7 years (and in fact in 7 years
we'll be getting out of the ISS business). In fact, we'll stop using
Soyuz in 2018.

Dave Mosher

Sep. 2, 2016, 12:28 PM 13,868 19

snip


Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, used to charge NASA as little as $21.8
million per seat in 2008 (when the space shuttle was still around).

By 2018, however, it intends to charge NASA $81 million per seat by 2018
— a cost increase of 372% over 10 years:


snip


The chart below factors in the price of a seat and the number of
astronauts that NASA plans to launch (about six per year), to show how
much NASA has paid Russia and could end up paying. The total cost over
12 years is more than $3.36 billion.

Assuming NASA's budget remains roughly $18.5 billion a year, that means
about 3% of the agency's funding could be diverted to Russia in 2018:


So around $560 million, then, or around 9 seats.

snip


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw
  #6  
Old September 5th 16, 08:07 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.


Cost is high because launch costs are high. Again, solve the launch
cost problem and everything else becomes easier and cheaper.


He also seems to miss the fact that no one is talking about a Mars
mission that short. The plan is that if we land people they'll stay
for 18 months or so.


SLS/Orion is certainly not going to lower costs. If you want to cancel
something at NASA that's expensive and completely useless, cancel
SLS/Orion.


Yep. Even when you look at 'friendly' estimates for the cost of an
SLS launch it's over $600 million. Real estimates put it closer to $1
billion. You could launch 4-5 Falcon Heavy for that and get more than
3x the payload.


--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney
  #7  
Old September 5th 16, 08:30 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

Jonathan wrote:

On 9/5/2016 9:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.


Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.


Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.


Not that difficult? Don't be ridiculous, your cable
solution is another pipe-dream.


Physics, Jonathan. Get some.


A spacecraft large
enough to supply artificial gravity AND go to Mars
AND carry enough gear to support more than a few
days stay would make the $150 billion dollar
/several decade long/ ISS project look like
...chump-change.


That's why you don't use A spacecraft. You use a bunch of them. Like
most problems, things are much easier if you break it down into
bite-sized chunks.


ISS started in 1985. If we started now that
space craft to Mars might be done by 2050.


Hogwash. Musk is talking a private manned mission launching in 2024
that would have an 18 month stay time. I expect that will slide by 18
months or so (which would be the next launch opportunity).


Rovers could have mapped half the planet
of Mars by then.


Beyond hogwash. How many rovers are you going to send? In 4 years
Curiosity has gone about 6 miles.


You could double NASA's budget, spend every dime
of it on the manned Mars mission and it would still
take twenty or thirty years and only give astronauts
...HOURS on the surface.

A useless mission scientifically speaking.


Which is why that's never been the plan. Have you even bothered to
look at ANY of the NASA Reference Missions? How many hours in 18
months, Jonathan?



The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.


Waiting for "artificial gravity" stupid since it's something we could do
today given the motivation. NASA isn't doing anything meaningful
towards sending people to Mars. Just look at where the money is being
spent. There are no Mars landers being designed and built. There is no
habitat being built big enough for a Mars trip. There are no in-situ
propellant production experiments being run on Mars (could be used to
fuel an unmanned sample return mission). SLS/Orion is the only big
thing NASA is spending money on and neither, by themselves, will take
people to Mars. Orion doesn't even have a good enough heat shield for a
direct reentry of a returning Mars mission.

The biggest problem with going to Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO, is the
high cost to launch anything into LEO.


Thanks for agreeing with me.


He didn't. No thanks for acting like a moron. Are you going to stalk
out of here in high dudgeon after throwing a hissy fit AGAIN when
people point out you're just talking ignorant ****e?


LEO is "half way to anywhere" in
terms of delta-V. Low launch costs will open up spaceflight like we've
never seen before.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.


Toasters are fine, but can't do 1/100th what a person in an EVA suit
plus a pressurized laboratory module can do.


I'm sorry to but to think a few days, or week or two
on the surface of Mars is going to return useful
science is absurd. They'd be spending most of their
time on the habitat and surviving just like
with the ISS. Where some science is shoe-horned
in when they can.


18 months...


To discover life on Mars drilling below the
surface is required, that's where life will be.
A rover can do that and do nothing /but/ science
for months and years at a time.


But it can only do pretty simple science, which is always the problem.
That's why sending people is still about 3 orders of magnitude more
productive.


It's manned space flight that drives costs
so high, unmanned can shave costs by orders
of magnitude, and more importantly shave
time by decades. In the couple decades it
would take to launch a scientifically useful
mission to Mars, more ambitious rovers could
have scoured Mars for the data we want for
pennies on the dollar, and MORE importantly
in a few years, not a few...decades.


Remember, Curiosity has traveled around 6 miles in FOUR YEARS. A
manned mission would do that in an hour. There are 8,760 hours in a
year...


Add a rover to that and
people can do amazing things in a very short time.

At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.


Cost is high because launch costs are high. Again, solve the launch
cost problem and everything else becomes easier and cheaper.

Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.


ISS makes sense in that NASA is learning how to build and maintain a
large-ish habitat that needs to operate for years at a time.


To go to Mars, asteroids are make-work, not a
credible science goal.


I agree. But then who here said anything about asteroids?


We need to cancel...manned space flight except for military
uses until launch costs come way down. There's very little
humans can do in space that can't /now/ be done by
unmanned missions.


Then we CERTAINLY need to defund planetary science and shut all that
down, since if people aren't going there's no point to it.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw
  #8  
Old September 5th 16, 09:54 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Alain Fournier[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 548
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

On Sep/5/2016 at 3:30 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :

Hogwash. Musk is talking a private manned mission launching in 2024
that would have an 18 month stay time. I expect that will slide by 18
months or so (which would be the next launch opportunity).



Launch windows for Mars are spaced about 26 months, not 18.


Alain Fournier

  #9  
Old September 5th 16, 11:34 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Jonathan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 15
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

On 9/5/2016 3:30 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:

On 9/5/2016 9:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.

Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.

Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.


Not that difficult? Don't be ridiculous, your cable
solution is another pipe-dream.


Physics, Jonathan. Get some.




Engineering, Fred. You really think NASA is
going to build a ship like that? Show me
the plans?






A spacecraft large
enough to supply artificial gravity AND go to Mars
AND carry enough gear to support more than a few
days stay would make the $150 billion dollar
/several decade long/ ISS project look like
...chump-change.


That's why you don't use A spacecraft. You use a bunch of them. Like
most problems, things are much easier if you break it down into
bite-sized chunks.


ISS started in 1985. If we started now that
space craft to Mars might be done by 2050.




Hogwash. Musk is talking a private manned mission launching in 2024
that would have an 18 month stay time.




Thank you for falling into my logical trap, then
why should NASA spend all it's dough on it's
OWN MISSION? If Musk will have already done it
long before.

Got a cite for that 18 month stay claim?


I expect that will slide by 18
months or so (which would be the next launch opportunity).



Here's what Musk said about that absurd schedule
and I quote.


"I may be delusional. That is entirely possible,..."

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/0...-mars-in-2024/



Rovers could have mapped half the planet
of Mars by then.


Beyond hogwash. How many rovers are you going to send? In 4 years
Curiosity has gone about 6 miles.


You could double NASA's budget, spend every dime
of it on the manned Mars mission and it would still
take twenty or thirty years and only give astronauts
...HOURS on the surface.

A useless mission scientifically speaking.


Which is why that's never been the plan. Have you even bothered to
look at ANY of the NASA Reference Missions? How many hours in 18
months, Jonathan?



NASA's plan last I read involved 4 people on the surface
for 2 weeks, how much of that time will be about the
habitat? Virtually all of it, sure they could collect
some samples for return, but so could a far cheaper
and FAR sooner unmanned mission.





The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.

Waiting for "artificial gravity" stupid since it's something we could do
today given the motivation. NASA isn't doing anything meaningful
towards sending people to Mars. Just look at where the money is being
spent. There are no Mars landers being designed and built. There is no
habitat being built big enough for a Mars trip. There are no in-situ
propellant production experiments being run on Mars (could be used to
fuel an unmanned sample return mission). SLS/Orion is the only big
thing NASA is spending money on and neither, by themselves, will take
people to Mars. Orion doesn't even have a good enough heat shield for a
direct reentry of a returning Mars mission.

The biggest problem with going to Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO, is the
high cost to launch anything into LEO.


Thanks for agreeing with me.


He didn't. No thanks for acting like a moron. Are you going to stalk
out of here in high dudgeon after throwing a hissy fit AGAIN when
people point out you're just talking ignorant ****e?


LEO is "half way to anywhere" in
terms of delta-V. Low launch costs will open up spaceflight like we've
never seen before.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.

Toasters are fine, but can't do 1/100th what a person in an EVA suit
plus a pressurized laboratory module can do.


I'm sorry to but to think a few days, or week or two
on the surface of Mars is going to return useful
science is absurd. They'd be spending most of their
time on the habitat and surviving just like
with the ISS. Where some science is shoe-horned
in when they can.


18 months...



Where's you cite? And have you considered all
that has to happen to accomplish that?

Falcon Heavy, manned capsules, numerous cargo flights
etc etc? Who is going to pay for it? Have you
considered that? Show me the links that give
any reality to such a claim.




To discover life on Mars drilling below the
surface is required, that's where life will be.
A rover can do that and do nothing /but/ science
for months and years at a time.


But it can only do pretty simple science, which is always the problem.
That's why sending people is still about 3 orders of magnitude more
productive.


It's manned space flight that drives costs
so high, unmanned can shave costs by orders
of magnitude, and more importantly shave
time by decades. In the couple decades it
would take to launch a scientifically useful
mission to Mars, more ambitious rovers could
have scoured Mars for the data we want for
pennies on the dollar, and MORE importantly
in a few years, not a few...decades.


Remember, Curiosity has traveled around 6 miles in FOUR YEARS. A
manned mission would do that in an hour. There are 8,760 hours in a
year...


Add a rover to that and
people can do amazing things in a very short time.

At best we'd put a couple people on Mars
for a couple weeks, a symbolic event not
scientific, but at enormous costs and
more importantly enormous time, that
starves the budget for all else.

Cost is high because launch costs are high. Again, solve the launch
cost problem and everything else becomes easier and cheaper.

Let Musk have his 'fifteen minutes' on
Mars, the US space program should make
sense, and the ISS, current or future
versions, doesn't make sense.

ISS makes sense in that NASA is learning how to build and maintain a
large-ish habitat that needs to operate for years at a time.


To go to Mars, asteroids are make-work, not a
credible science goal.


I agree. But then who here said anything about asteroids?


We need to cancel...manned space flight except for military
uses until launch costs come way down. There's very little
humans can do in space that can't /now/ be done by
unmanned missions.


Then we CERTAINLY need to defund planetary science and shut all that
down, since if people aren't going there's no point to it.



  #10  
Old September 6th 16, 12:34 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default Russia has Increased Fees to IS... 372% over the last 10 Years

Jonathan wrote:

On 9/5/2016 3:30 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jonathan wrote:

On 9/5/2016 9:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

$3 to $5 billion per year to keep two (2) American
astronauts in space all year long is just too
expensive. What the ISS has primarily returned
is evidence bone loss for long duration space flight
shows the whole colonizing Mars dream isn't practical.

Bull****. This is an engineering problem, not a medical problem. Why
NASA continues to treat it as a medical problem baffles me.

Not until we can build spacecraft large enough to
supply artificial gravity and that means a sea-change
in cost to orbit.

Not that hard. All you need to do is attach your transfer stage to your
habitat module by a long cable and spin it up. Again, this is an
engineering problem that is not very difficult to solve.


Not that difficult? Don't be ridiculous, your cable
solution is another pipe-dream.


Physics, Jonathan. Get some.


Engineering, Fred. You really think NASA is
going to build a ship like that? Show me
the plans?


"Is going to" means you don't have a complete design yet, Jonathan.
Applying your 'logic' to everything in history and we'd still be
waiting to cross the Atlantic because nobody had plans for the Queen
Mary back when people were paddling canoes.




A spacecraft large
enough to supply artificial gravity AND go to Mars
AND carry enough gear to support more than a few
days stay would make the $150 billion dollar
/several decade long/ ISS project look like
...chump-change.


That's why you don't use A spacecraft. You use a bunch of them. Like
most problems, things are much easier if you break it down into
bite-sized chunks.


ISS started in 1985. If we started now that
space craft to Mars might be done by 2050.


Hogwash. Musk is talking a private manned mission launching in 2024
that would have an 18 month stay time.


Thank you for falling into my logical trap, then
why should NASA spend all it's dough on it's
OWN MISSION? If Musk will have already done it
long before.


By that thinking, why NASA? Because they want to be a player and
they'll probably throw some money in the kitty.


Got a cite for that 18 month stay claim?


See any of the FIVE Reference Mission plans.


I expect that will slide by 18
months or so (which would be the next launch opportunity).


Here's what Musk said about that absurd schedule
and I quote.

"I may be delusional. That is entirely possible,..."

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/0...-mars-in-2024/


Look up "self-deprecating humor". Not everyone is the humourless
stupid **** that you are.



Rovers could have mapped half the planet
of Mars by then.


Beyond hogwash. How many rovers are you going to send? In 4 years
Curiosity has gone about 6 miles.


You could double NASA's budget, spend every dime
of it on the manned Mars mission and it would still
take twenty or thirty years and only give astronauts
...HOURS on the surface.

A useless mission scientifically speaking.


Which is why that's never been the plan. Have you even bothered to
look at ANY of the NASA Reference Missions? How many hours in 18
months, Jonathan?


NASA's plan last I read involved 4 people on the surface
for 2 weeks, how much of that time will be about the
habitat? Virtually all of it, sure they could collect
some samples for return, but so could a far cheaper
and FAR sooner unmanned mission.


Where did you read that? The plan has been 18 months on surface since
at least 1997.





The next space station, manned space flight
in general, should wait until that day
arrives. We're not even close yet.

Waiting for "artificial gravity" stupid since it's something we could do
today given the motivation. NASA isn't doing anything meaningful
towards sending people to Mars. Just look at where the money is being
spent. There are no Mars landers being designed and built. There is no
habitat being built big enough for a Mars trip. There are no in-situ
propellant production experiments being run on Mars (could be used to
fuel an unmanned sample return mission). SLS/Orion is the only big
thing NASA is spending money on and neither, by themselves, will take
people to Mars. Orion doesn't even have a good enough heat shield for a
direct reentry of a returning Mars mission.

The biggest problem with going to Mars, or anywhere beyond LEO, is the
high cost to launch anything into LEO.


Thanks for agreeing with me.


He didn't. No thanks for acting like a moron. Are you going to stalk
out of here in high dudgeon after throwing a hissy fit AGAIN when
people point out you're just talking ignorant ****e?


LEO is "half way to anywhere" in
terms of delta-V. Low launch costs will open up spaceflight like we've
never seen before.

Until then we should spend our space budget
on more ambitious unmanned missions to Mars
not this pipe-dream of sending people there.

Toasters are fine, but can't do 1/100th what a person in an EVA suit
plus a pressurized laboratory module can do.

I'm sorry to but to think a few days, or week or two
on the surface of Mars is going to return useful
science is absurd. They'd be spending most of their
time on the habitat and surviving just like
with the ISS. Where some science is shoe-horned
in when they can.


18 months...


Where's you cite? And have you considered all
that has to happen to accomplish that?


See *ANY* of the *FIVE* Reference Missions published since 1997.
Jonathan, if you want to enter into a discussion you should do at
least minimal research on the topic before you make yourself look like
an ass.


Falcon Heavy, manned capsules, numerous cargo flights
etc etc? Who is going to pay for it? Have you
considered that? Show me the links that give
any reality to such a claim.


Musk is going to pay for at least the first two (2018 and 2020)

snip


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson
 




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