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NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture



 
 
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  #71  
Old September 20th 05, 01:59 PM
Herb Schaltegger
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On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:21:41 -0500, Ray wrote
(in article p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01):

That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No. It
was not designed for that.


It's not designed at all. So far, all you or anyone else has seen are
a bunch of pretty pictures. NASA and its contractors are very fond of
pretty pictures. Do you really believe these are the only pretty
pictures NASA has produced to drum up support for a project? Do you
not realize how few actually come to fruition?

I dont think any future American President,
Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with one
exception.


Flash back to the late 1960's/early 1970's and consider what was done
with Apollo, then consider what you just wrote.

The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think the
congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.


Based on what? Why do you believe that Congress cares one whit about
this program aside from jobs at the NASA centers and contractors?

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"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
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  #72  
Old September 20th 05, 02:22 PM
Paul F. Dietz
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Ray wrote:

If moon, mars and beyond cannot be justified and its too expensive
then why did the Congress (94%), Senate and President overwhelmingly approve
it?


Because it buys votes?

I do hope you are not proposing that if the government approves something,
that implies the thing is a good idea.

Why couldn't they just stay with the shuttle or developed an orbital
space plane to get to orbit only when we need to or just cancel manned space
exploration? I think we got moon, mars and beyond because the US government
overwhelmingly supports it and a lot of major aerospace corporations support
it.


Well, *of course* the pigs feeding at this trough support it.
They support things that send money their way.

They couldn't stay with the shuttle because it's become an embarrassment,
and because the day when they can't fly any more of them is closer
than they thought (at which point the pork stops flowing).

Paul
  #73  
Old September 20th 05, 02:25 PM
Will McLean
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Ed Kyle wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
plan?

I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
to the space shuttle era NASA framework.

This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
smaller, more focused NASA.


More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
smaller?

It is a plan that produces
something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
concert with commercial launch services and international
space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
term human space program.


For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.

http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...29.html#005729


I haven't seen the CEV costs you cite in this article.
I've seen the recent charts put up by nasawatch, but
I don't see how it is possible to sort out development
costs from operating costs in these projections.



You can make a stab at by looking at the costs after specific systems
are supposed to become operational. Note, however, that though the
charts were posted recently, they date back to June, and at least some
of the assumptions are obsolete.

It
still seems likely to me that a Stick-based program
would cost less annually than a Shuttle-based program
over the long term.

The bottom line is that NASA's budget is not projected
to increase much on an annual basis (adjusted for
inflation) even while it develops two new launch
vehicles and two new human crewed spaceflight vehicles
that will be bound for the moon. This sounds better to
me than the status quo that has NASA spending close to
$4 billion per year trying to keep shuttle flying in
low earth orbit only.

- Ed Kyle


Over $4 billion a year now.

Will McLean

  #74  
Old September 20th 05, 03:07 PM
Jeff Findley
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wrote in message
ups.com...
The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
it had in 1972.


And cost more money and time to do it. :-(

Jeff
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  #75  
Old September 20th 05, 03:12 PM
Jeff Findley
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wrote in message
oups.com...
Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?

Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class
commercial station.. ?

No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the
consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design
margins and simple construction techniques.

Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt
builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ?


Sorry, but with NASA controlling both Satay (The Stick) and the SDHLV, I'd
say that the chances are zero that it will ever be used commercially.

Jeff
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  #76  
Old September 20th 05, 03:16 PM
Jeff Findley
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"dasun" wrote in message
oups.com...
Science is not the reason for going up - that is philosophical -
science is what you do when you are there, along with all the house
keeping chores. Colonisation, if it happens at all, is generally not
what you do when you first arrive on a new world, as the history of
earth exploration will attest, first you look around and then you
decide where to stay and why and that may take decades or centuries.
In short science is a very useful activity to perform if you have
decided to go to new worlds in the first place. Besides, find a
politician that understands science!


None of that will happen with the high cost that NASA is building into the
program. I agree with Rand's blog that NASA is likely to have four or less
flights per year to the Moon. This is nowhere near a colony, and at a cost
of $7 billion per year, you're not going to find anyone who would want to
pay to scale that up to colony size.

What's holding us back is high launch costs. NASA's exploration plan does
nothing to address this issue.

Jeff
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  #77  
Old September 20th 05, 03:18 PM
Jeff Findley
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"John Doe" wrote in message ...
In this announcement, has NASA announced automated docking development ?
Without a shuttle or automated docking, NASA will not be able to build
any structures in space anymore. And to build anything meaningful, they
will want docking ports as big as CBMs. So either automated bertthing
with existing CBMs or develop a docakble CBM size port.


Actually, I think they did, but they did so in an indirect way. The
articles I read said the CEV would be able to fly unmanned cargo missions to
ISS. That implies automated rendezvous and docking (or berthing).

Jeff
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  #78  
Old September 20th 05, 03:19 PM
Jeff Findley
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"Ray" wrote in message
news:GlKXe.6343$N35.5605@trndny09...
Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks! Just like we have
learned to live in a space station in orbit for 6 months, we will learn to
live on the moon, another planet, and then we will transfer that knowledge
to living on Mars. We will learn to live off the land, and we will become
better humans. What is so wrong with this. We humans are explorers.

This
is normal for us. This is well worth the cost.


Then you're not understanding NASA's announcement very well. From the looks
of the plan, about all they could sustain is about four lunar missions per
year. In other words, this is only a bit bigger than Apollo. It's nowhere
near the capability to build a sustainable lunar base of the size you seem
to be thinking of.

Jeff
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  #79  
Old September 20th 05, 03:23 PM
Jeff Findley
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"Ray" wrote in message
news9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01...
That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.

It
was not designed for that. I dont think any future American President,
Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with

one
exception. The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think

the
congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.


Yet that's exactly what's happening to ISS. NASA needs to severely cut back
on the number of planned shuttle flights to ISS in order to end the shuttle
program by 2010. Furthermore, NASA has yet to develop the crew return
vehicle that it agreed to develop and deploy in order to increase the ISS
crew size beyond three. Maybe we'll see CEV flying to ISS by 2012, but
that's many years beyond the initial plan and many years beyond the date
that Russia agreed to fly US astronauts to and from ISS on Soyuz.

What makes you think that this next program will be any different than how
NASA has run ISS? What will they cut from the lunar exploration program
when they run into cost overruns like they did on ISS and congress and the
administration tell them to redesign the program? Have you learned nothing
from the shuttle/ISS programs?

Jeff
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  #80  
Old September 20th 05, 03:29 PM
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Alex Terrell wrote:
In short, it's not as disastrous as the previuos (Shuttle) strategy.


Even the CEV is gross overkill in the near term, if it's just going to
fly to ISS. So as well as recreating Apollo, NASA's going to recreate
Soyuz.



CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
Russian equivalent to Apollo. Also understand that back in the early
60's Apollo was to be more than just a moon vehicle. It was meant to be
the standard taxi to take astronauts to work. Think of AAP,
unfortunately it morphed into the single program Skylab, but NASA had
alot of plans for the CSM back in the mid 60's. In a sense the Apollo
CSM was also meant to be a shuttle too, albeit a non reusable one with
no cargo capability. Like Big Gemini, however, I'm sure there were
designs for later generation Apollo based spacecraft that had cargo
capability.

As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.

Hey man the new Mustang looks like it should, Pontiac makes a GTO again
and Chrysler makes Hemis once more, why shouldn't NASA join the retro
trend!

Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore, Md.

 




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