NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

"John Doe" wrote in message ...
Ray wrote:
Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks!


You are naive if you think that. Nothing in the announced plan will
develop technology to land "space station" elements on the moon. Nothing
in the announced plan will have technology to sohoot mining equipment to
get some water.

All that is announced is a glorified 4 person LEM capable of staying 1
week instead of 2 days with 2 crewmembers.

Hopefully that glorified LEM will have room for a dune buggy line the
later Apollo missions.

And once they've made the flight to the moon to pickup rock samples, how
much do you bet that the program will be cancelled ?
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.
Ray

The shuttle has been to the station far more times than Apollo went to
the moon. And the CEV , if it is ever completed, will have gone more
times to the station than to the moon.

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Ray wrote:

What else should NASA do?

It could cease to exist. Government agencies don't have a right to life.

Paul

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

Ray

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?

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
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www.angryherb.net

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

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

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

OSC did that back in the eighties. So have Boeing and Lockmart, if
you consider them "private industry."

Quite so, but in the context of alt.space us-vs.-them discussions,
it's routinely used to mean "the up-and-comers who are going to do it
Real Soon Now, quicker and cheaper and altogether cuddlier than Big
Aerospace."

I don't endorse (or much believe in) that POV, and it requires
frequent mental gymnastics as when OSC makes the grade, but there it
is.

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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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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"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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"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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