OBAMA **** CANS NASA'S RETURN-TO-THE-MOON EFFORT! - Now 40 moreyears of going round and round and round!

On Feb 1, 11:41*am, "F/32 Eurydice" wrote:
On Feb 1, 12:12*pm, BradGuth wrote:



On Feb 1, 6:20*am, "F/32 Eurydice" wrote:

On Jan 28, 6:57*pm, Double-A wrote:

NASA to get more money, but must scratch moon plan
1/28/2010, 1:44 p.m. PST
The Associated Press

(AP) — WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is essentially grounding
plans to return astronauts to the moon and instead is sending NASA in
new directions with roughly $6 billion more.

A White House official confirmed Thursday that when next week's budget
is proposed, NASA will get an additional $5.9 billion over five years,
as first reported in Florida newspapers. Some of that money will be
used to extend the life of the International Space Station to 2020.
The official said it also will be used to entice companies to build
private spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the space station after the
space shuttle retires.

An aide to an elected official who was told of the plans said Obama is
basically ending the return-to-the-moon effort pushed by President
George W. Bush. So far, that effort has cost $9.1 billion.

I only hope this means that all the extra money will be put into the
robotic exploration program, which until now has been extremely
successful. *I certainly don't see NASA's future as a technology
transfer department that helps business build rockets more cheaply.
That's so lacking in vision that it's pathetic, and actually sounds
quite trivial.

There's nothing "quite trivial" about fly-by-rocket technology and
it's first hand expertise. *Only wish this country actually had some
of that right stuff, because apparently it never did, or never cared
enough to save any of what little we used to have.

Unless you compare it to building moon bases, space stations, space
shuttles and robotic satellites. *We've been lofting rockets since
Vanguard 1, over fifty years ago. *When's the last time we parked
something at a Lagrange point? *Uh, two months ago.

We've never parked anything within the zero delta V of Selene L1(earth-
moon L1).

Secondly, it seems we still do not have a viable fly-by-rocket lander
that’s human plus payload suitable, meaning de-orbit stable under all
sorts of shifting CG, a significant mass reduction variable due to its
fuel consumption, 3D torque issues, passing by local mascons and
having at least twice the final downrange fuel/kg capability of those
Apollo missions that we can only take at their words, because most of
their mission critical R&D plus prototypes are disposed of and/or
missing in action, and there really hasn’t been any other viable
prototype lander demonstration since without involving multiple life
risking complications or total failure (nothing like those 100%
reliable and perfection controllable landers that had fuel and payload
to spare, as well as nothing inside ever got the least bit radiated
nor roasted, not to mention no sign of that pesky hot sodium, as well
as not one FOV of anything the least bit UV reactive, and throughout
each and every mission there was never any other planet except Earth
in those unfiltered Kodak FOVs (usually along with that naked moon at
half again greater albedo than Earth, and in some of those unfiltered
photographs the lunar surface for as far as one could see was nearly
twice as reflective as Earth).

Apparently those laws of physics are either different or conditional
while on that moon. We also have no objective science pertaining to
ice in space.

~ BG