NASA To Push Human Spaceflight 84
b00le wrote to mention a New Scientist article in which NASA chief Mike Griffin says that human spaceflight should be NASA's top priority. From the article: "Griffin countered that the same loss of expertise threatened NASA's human spaceflight programme, which had served to define the US as a world 'superpower'. He said NASA lost a substantial fraction of skilled engineers during a six-year gap between the end of the Apollo programme in 1975 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981. Letting the human spaceflight programme 'atrophy' after Apollo damaged the agency for three decades, he said."
Support? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Support? (Score:1, Redundant)
Is China evil enough for you?
Re:Support? (Score:1)
Re:Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lenin said that the irresistable forces of history would garantee that Socialism would be more scientificly advanced then Capitalism - Th
Well (Score:2)
Re:Support? (Score:4, Informative)
I wasn't a big supporter of the new Administrator at NASA when he was appointed, but after this, I may have to review what I originally thought about him. I'm a big supporter of manned space flight, it should be NASA's #1 priority to get humans permanently into space and living on the moon, then Mars.
I'll even volunteer to be one of the first inhabitants of this brave "New World"
Re:Support? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Article cites a senator saying that China will be on the moon in 2017... Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?
I don't think we ever can spin China as our "evil" rival. We're just too tied to them economically. If Washington starts presenting China too strongly in this way, then China just threatens to make it harder for US companies to get to its goods/consumers. As more time passes, they will wield even more such power. The USSR was essentially isolated from us and that made it easy for the US gov't to propagansize against them. Apparently, China's cultural isolationism isn't enough.
I suppose a grassroots type of "evil-China" movement could emerge. But I don't see that happening any more than it already has when our economy is so tied to theirs. Too many people will want to avoid pissing them off.
Any space race we have with China will be "friendly".
Re:Support? (Score:2)
(They're not necessarily more or less evil than we are... they're just... "differently evil.")
Re:Support? (Score:2)
The U.S. is involved in dozens of wars every year.
And don't forget the "We own Space" and "We own the Internet" mentality which if let into space will provide for the great "American Melting pot" of space chock full of "Conservative democracy" (big c little d) protestant values and American notions on the value of life and culture.
I'd rather see China make it actually.
Re:Support? (Score:2)
Get in line, behind me preferably. I know a number of people who, if you asked them h"ow would you like to live on the moon", would say "Who do I have to kill."
curious... (Score:1)
Re:Support? (Score:1)
Re:Support? (Score:2)
Re:Support? (Score:2)
Re:Support? (Score:2)
knowledge retaining (Score:3, Insightful)
Griffin was the right choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
About this particular story, he's right about needing human spaceflight. Every time we decide to push back on human space flight, we further reduce the ability of science programs to do their work. New technologies that could have been developed to get science packages off the ground and into space faster and cheaper get lost because there's no push for more advanced vehicles and technology. I don't know about anyone else, but I pray for the day when science packages based on reconfigurable standard designs can be simply and inexpensively launched from a space station. (A la Star Trek probes.) The mass production would allow us to launch more probes for less, and the orbital launch would save tens of millions on each probe. Thus instead of spending 20 years preparing for a single mission, we'll be able to reduce each mission to as little as 5 years (or less!) preparation time.
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:1)
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
There are two things that can be done to get the materials:
1. Launch a large booster packed full of parts and materials to build a significant number of probes. If you factor the number of probes that could be built from the raw materials and parts (as opposed to using a rocket to lift a fully constructed craft, then boosting it into an orbital transfer trajectory) the price to launch eac
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets eliminate aluminum from the picture right now. First off, it eats up gobs of energy - so much that a typical aluminum production facility on Earth often has a large nuclear or hydroelectric plant nearby whose energy it gobbles up as fast as it can get it. Energy on the moon will be *expensive* as heck, because the price of getting infrastructure to the moon has to be amortized, and maintenance prices will be obscene due to labor and parts costs. But just to make it more obvious that this won't happen, aluminum refining involves cryolite. There's almost no fluorine on the moon, and the cryolite *does* get consumed (not as fast as the bauxite, but still at a reasonable clip). Yes, you could recover it, but that makes it even more expensive. Not going to happen.
Iron refining? Get rid of any notions of recovering oxides; it's only cheap on Earth because we can reduce it with coal, and have a nice convenient atmosphere on hand. There's no coal on hand, no atmosphere, nor most of the fluxing agents. Not going to happen. Now, on the moon, there are very small amounts of elemental iron which could be recovered with magnets. This could be melted and wouldn't need to be reduced. However, this is iron, not steel. There's almost no carbon to work into it. So, it manages to be both heavy *and* weak. You might as well send aluminum from Earth rather than export that, although it might be useful for lunar base construction if you have excess power (see the points for aluminum).
Other metals on the moon are just as bad (for example, I can't even imagine titanium refining on the surface). The only thing that I can think of that would potentially make metal production on the moon realistic is direct metal oxide electrolysis (for which there has been some recent progress on), but even still, you need the oodles of power (and the price problems with that have already been mentioned). Unfortunately, the surface of the moon is extremely non-diverse. If you want a limited selection of ceramics, it can't be beat, but apart from that, it's not exactly a good production facility.
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Er? What makes the idea of a ridiculously large solar array on the moon so far fetched?
Yah, okay, producing the silicon solar panels we have on Earth might be a bit farfetched, but there's a proposal in at NASA to develop in-situ thin-film solar cells [nasa.gov]. Even without that, though, it's fairly simple to make mirror surfaces out of lunar soil.
I especially don't agree with the blanket statement that energy won't be available. Electricity might require some work, but
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
As I stated previously: amortization of costs. Solar cells are expensive even here on Earth.
develop in-situ
Yes, an essentially nonexistant [google.com] company says that they can do it. Have you seen the kind of infrastructure solar cells take to produce even here on Earth?
mirror surfaces out of lunar soil
Reflective, yes -- but poorly reflective; Lunar albedo is low, and the scattering would be awful, plus as mentioned, your labor
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Which, curiously, was mentioned in the study I linked. Which is why they recommended high temperature electrolysis.
Where do you get your carbon source for reducing?
Carbon's a catalyst in the process. You just need to split it from the carbon dioxide
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
If you accept that it's unrealistic, why did you mention it?
Carbon's a catalyst
No, it's not. It's a reducing agent. You can recover the carbon, but it is not a catalyst (a component which remains unaltered and unconsumed in its entirity by the reaction)
large infrastructure for power
You're not seeming to understand the concept of amortization, so let me explain. If there was no such thing as "investment", one could ignore amortization; any money t
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Because it's currently unrealistic. But your original post made it sound as if you absolutely needed to use the Hall process, which isn't true. If someone's smart enough to find a way to avoid serious corrosion from chlorine, then the subchloride process becomes feasible.
No, it's not. It's a reducing agent. You can recover the carbon, but it is not a catalyst (a component which remains unaltered and unconsumed in its entirity by the reaction)
Carbon
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Which is why I put a star by it. I couldn't remember offhand what would be the proper name for it. If you treat the entire process as a chemical black box, it's very like a catalyst - something that's needed, but you never really see it. Is there a name for a recoverable reactant?
If you spend 20B$ to produce a 30,000kg/yr lunar aluminum production plant, with maintenance costs of 1B$/yr, you will never, ever repay it even ignoring the costs of getting your materials off th
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
$20B
What if the technologies developed with that $19B find their way elsewhere into industry (as they inevitably will) that wouldn't've originally been developed?
That's called a spinoff. All tech devel
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Well, I strongly disagree with the ISS having supplies shipped up and down - I think they should be trying to close several of the open loops on the ISS, because in the long run, it's just a waste. That's part of the problem - people are taking much too short of a view on it.
Now, that being s
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Just an example
Hydrocarbons: The most important - reactants, solutes, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, etc. CH, sometimes with other chemicals involved.
Acids: All involving H and O, and the most consumed ones involving SNFP.
Metals: Only Fe, Al, Ca, Mg, Si, Ti, Ni, Na, and Cr available in bulk, with the possibility of K, Mn, and S in small quantities. Industry requires many metals not fo
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Which is curious, because the substrate is - by weight - the largest component of the solar cells. If nothing else, the ability to create the substrate reduces the launch weight dramatically. And yes, they did demonstrate actually making the solar cell, not just the substrate. It's just that the cell was deposited on, not made in situ.
And isn't "launch weight" all that really matters? Who cares if you need to resupply a rover with 10 kg of solar cell material i
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
No, it doesn't. Here, lets look at their description. Given what they describe, they're using thin-film amorphous silicon cells. This means doing CVD with carefully balanced plasmas (both silicon and the doping element) in a cleanroom along micron-scale printing a grid into the result both beneath the p layer and abov
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
How doesn't it lower the launch costs? They've already done what they describe. They could build a rover right now which would build those cells on the Moon. It would be limited by the supply of the solar cell material, which could be replenished.
I'm missing something. Is there some reason the thin-film material couldn't be replenished?
First off, electromagnetic tether reboosting doesn't yet exist. I support research in it
Which... is what "designing" is. If you said "we
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:5, Informative)
You're right about mass production, but how do you get 'em to the space station in the first place? Still need the rocket from Earth - unless you have an asteroidal or lunar industrial facility capable of building the things from raw materials.
Mass production of standard probes might well be a good idea, though. The Mariner probes of the 70s were big successes, and ESA has been doing something similar lately - Venus Express (enroute) is the same basic design as the current Mars Express. Just swap out the experiment modules on the same basic spacecraft. Probably not as helpful with landers, which have to handle different gravities, atmospheres etc. dependent on target, but it would be well worth establishing a network of cheap Orbital Observer probes around the solar system.
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:1)
A few groups are already testing and/or holding competitions to expedite innovations:
Lift Port:
http://www.liftport.com/index.php?site=news&news_i d=3 [liftport.com]
Elevator2010.org:
http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html [elevator2010.org]
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
I don't know about anyone else, but I pray for the day when science packages based on reconfigurable standard designs can be simply and inexpensively launched from a space station.
From what we've done in the past, it doesn't sound like that would be particularly helpful. The things we want to learn are very specialized, and that takes specialized equipment. Just look at the Mars probes we've sent. Two rovers, ground penetrating radar, communications. That doesn't sound very standard to me.
Not to mention
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
But yes, in general, probes and vehicles are starting to become more standardized, which speeds up development. It's just not universal. And there are limits to how standardized a probe can become with techs advancing as quickly as they are
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Rovers are a trickier issue, but there's nothing all that odd about ground penetrating radar and communications relays. At some point NASA would like to build a packet network throughout the solar system (to improve communications), so I think you'll only see more communications instrument
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who are we trying to impress by putting a creature that's not well adapted to space, in space? The universe? I'd rather learn more about the universe, thanks.
If you want to learn more about the universe... (Score:2, Insightful)
One geologist on site with comparatively primitive tools would learn more in 1 month than all of the missions all the nations on Earth have sent to Mars so far.
What we've done so far is tantamount to trying to study Antarctica with remote probes with a huge time delay to prevent them from being used interactively. I'd like to see what kind of information you scrape out of Antarctica with nothing but Viking, Sojorner, and si
Re:If you want to learn more about the universe... (Score:3, Insightful)
This has got to be about the silliest thing I've ever heard on slashdot. By building giant telescopes and machines to capture radiation from space, we ARE looking. Your insinuation that sending a person into orbit, the moon, or even mars is somehow superior to that is nuts.
"One geologist on site with comparatively primitive tools would learn more in 1 month than all of the missions all the nations on Earth have sent to M
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Solutions looking for a problem. (Score:2)
Care to name some of those technologies? (I bet you can't - because there aren't any. Reducing the cost of spaceflight isn't about technology - it's about design and manufacturing and operations.)
Re:Griffin was the right choice. (Score:2)
Sending a box of crap into space isnt so hard. Add a person and suddenly there's all sorts of unnceessary crap you have to worry about; rad exposure, oxygen, waste management, living space and lets not forget loose heatshielding.
I'm all for people in space, but I really think it'd be more useful if we had a space infrastructure already set up. And I dont think
Missing the Point (Score:3, Insightful)
Griffin defended the agency's 2007 budget proposal, announced on 6 February, at a hearing before the US House of Representatives' science committee. The $16.8 billion budget includes $5.3 billion for science in 2007 but calls for $3.1 billion in cuts to science programmes by 2010 compared to projections made in the 2006 budget request.
Despite all the sybolism associated with sending people out into space, it's just not worth cancelling so many science programs. This related story [newscientistspace.com] details exactly what they're planning on cutting and states that from 2008 to 2011 science spending will increase by just 1% each year (is that even enough to keep up with inflation?). Is it really that important to send people back to the moon or to Mars?
Re:Missing the Point (Score:1)
Re:Missing the Point (Score:2)
What we really *need* is reduced launch prices. I don't care where they come from - nuclear thermal, scramjets, metastable fuels, cheap reusables, optimized disposables, whate
Re:Missing the Point (Score:2)
Does the U.S. government have a monopoly on research on the rainforests? Or medical research? Or any type of other research? No! We have companies, universities, non-profit groups, and plain old hobbiest doing all kinds of research. That is becau
Re:Missing the Point (Score:2)
I can't comment about all types of research, but massive amounts of research are funded by NIH. NIH decides what programs they would like conducted and funds the actual research out to various universities and other organizations. Which is actually the model that NASA does as well.
NASA does "basic research". No private company is going to fund MERs. No private company is going to f
Re:Missing the Point (Score:2)
Sort of like how no private organization would fund a solar sail [planetary.org] or experimental Martian greenhouse [wikipedia.org]? Granted, the solar sail's rocket failed and the Mars Oasis project was suspended (for the time being), but hopefully we'll see such private space research projects become more common as launch costs decrease. I'd love to see a space-based equivalent of the Howards Hughes
Re:Missing the Point (Score:2)
Cosmos 1: 4m$.
Mars Greenhouse: Cancelled almost as soon as it was started because it would cost way too much. He kept increasing the amount he would spend until it reached over 20m$ (much over), wherein he decided to cancel it.
Vs:
Gravity Probe B: >$700m
MERs: $820m thusfar
Cassini: $3.26b
Get real, please. No private company or organization is going to fund that.
Room for the Private Sector (Score:3, Insightful)
"Touché," Griffin responded. "I'm complaining now."
And this would be invaluable in a) reviving NASA's flagging image and b) allowing the private sector to take a more active role in spaceflight. The private groups are right now trying to make their living off of space tourism and the like, but I think that's the wrong tack. Science and exploration are what drives public opinion - remember when the first pictures of Jupiter came back from the Voyager probes? Small space companies would be well to consider trying to develop non-military launch vehicles to enable scientific expeditions to be launched cheaply and efficiently, with an eye toward adopting that technology toward getting people into space. After all, space toursist will have to have someplace to go, which means space stations, which won't be built by cargo hauled in space planes, but by good old-fashioned expendable boosters.
Heavy editing (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Zonk works for NASA, or the US Government - certainly he spun the story in a way that would make Scott McLellan proud. It's one thing for
Re:Heavy editing (Score:2, Insightful)
I also bristle at Dr. Friedman's quote. At NASA, spaceflight, especially manned spaceflight, has never really been about science, but has
Re:Heavy editing (Score:4, Insightful)
All this to pay for a shuttle system already slated for retirement, a Space Station with no clear mission, a return to the moon, which will be fun but little more than a stunt, and a manned mission to Mars which is not going to happen, not in the foreseeable future. How does this help to make the US a world 'superpower'? (Never mind whether that in itself is a good idea.)
Did the Mars Rovers do nothing for America's standing? Did anyone notice the enormous amount of attention that was paid (at least in Europe) to the return of the Stardust mission? Right now, nobody can be in much doubt about how powerful the US is - the doubt is all about how wise.
Superstupid (Score:2)
Thinking of a country as a "superpower" financially benefits people who have friends and family invested in the weapons and war industries, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Similarly, someone who sells electronic security alarms could tell everyone in the houses around him that he is a "superneighbor".
For
The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2, Insightful)
The living conditions are horrific.
Star Trek has really lobotomized the public about what it will be like to live in space; at least for the near future.
The MIR station had over 200 organisms growing on the crystal port window.
The smell inside was like a dirty locker room full of moldy socks.
The moon is like living in an ashtray.
No showers, no proper waste disposal.
Humans slough off 3 grams of skin per day, nev
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2)
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:1)
Agree that eventually we will overcome these obstacles.
But don't sugar coat it too much.
Space is far more hostile than the Pacific Northwest.
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2)
And we're a lot more advanced now.
Mir and the ISS are extremely uncomfortable primarily because they're A) cramped, and B) lack gravity, and C) aren't really engineered to be self-sufficient - all the ISS recovers is water from urine.
A permanent lunar base will very likely have a much more advanced recycling setup, almost definitely including atmospheric processing. Which handles all the "smell" complaints.
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:3)
Space, be it the moon, Mars, or any other part of it, is completely and u
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2)
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2)
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:2)
Re:The fantasy of human space flight. (Score:1)
Think about all the excrements that come from the human body.
Eyes, Ears, Nose, Skin, Hair, Nails, Lungs, Mouth, Anus, Urethra.
Don't forget about new materials shedding as well.
Fibers from clothing, molecules of plastics. on and on.
Now mix in water, food and heat along with bacteria and molds.
Breathe all that into your lungs for too long and your going to get very sick.
Radiation, atrophy, and psychology are yet another matter.
Wrong idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, the government could pay for it easily if they decided to shrink military spending by something like only 10 or 15%, but you know that isn't going to happen. There are way too many terrorists out there who are just be waiting to pounce at the first sign of weakness, so we'd better not give them the impression that our new fleet of F-22 Raptor's won't be ready on time! (haw).
I say NASA should concentrate on doing more with less and stick to stuff like Mars rovers and Titan landers. Hell, really great science projects like the JIMO mission and the Terrestrial Planet Finder have been scrapped, and for what? In the end, it'll turn out to be for nothing. We'll just be left with a bunch of expensive plans that are never going to fly outside of a computer.
Re:Wrong idea (Score:2)
Re:Wrong idea (Score:2)
Perhaps not, but "indefinitely deferred" is almost as bad (as stated in NASA's 2007 budget).
Hubble gets saved?? (Score:2)
I know that'll make a lot of people's desktop backgrounds happy.
Unfortunately, the relatively small amount of money they were planning on spending on the Keck Outriggers got cut. Now, I'm biased since I work at Keck occasionally, but one b
Re:Hubble gets saved?? (Score:2)
It's like telling people
"Hey, come see Ford Field, site of the Super Bowl (*)"
(*) visitation hours do not include the Super Bowl
Re:Hubble gets saved?? (Score:2)
Is it that you want to use Keck specifically, or is it that you want to spend a night on Mauna Kea? Keck's observers are pretty consistently down in Waimea, after all, but a lot of the other facilities up there allow (or require, mwahaha!) their observers to be "on the premises." And typically, the research funding you'll need if your proposal is accepted at one of them is less than the buck-a-second Keck time costs.
If the actual use of the big shiny toys isn't your priority, and you're mor
when will NASA launch humans again? (Score:2)
I would rather see... (Score:1)
I am really tired of seeing 'astronauts' throw M&Ms across at each other in free fall. And I've also seen enough somersaults, thank you very much. I'd like some real science now, please. How about, I don't know, investigate alternative, clean energy sources? Oh, that's right, National _Aeronautics_ and _Space_ Administration... Hmm, let's change it to National Advanced Sciences Administration (at l
Cost Effectiveness (Score:2)
This cheapness is great for serving people here on earth but it doesn't really start making people up in space or really dividing power any further and offering us new social systems. The rich will control space just as they do all the other resources we have.
This seems like something that wouldn't last very long but if space never becomes a better place for humans to live the people who do end up going into space will be