Project Orion to Bring U.S. Back to the Moon 399
ganjadude writes "Thirty-seven years ago yesterday, Project Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as part of Project Orion." From the article: "Under Project Orion, NASA would launch crews of four astronauts aboard Orion capsules, first to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and then later to the Moon. Two teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co., are currently competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in September."
inherent scientific value? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Europeans focus much more heavily on aero-sciences, and we seem to be a lot more captivated by reaching the moon (etc). The Europeans are busy doing piles and piles of research (which will ultimately find many useful things), and similar research in this country is largely the burden of private organizations. All the tangible benefits we've reaped from space travel (tang, velcro, etc) could have been discovered much more cheaply (or if you prefer, in greater abundance for the same price) if we were simply focusing on inventing and not reaching some milestone out in space.
I guess what i'm saying is that I'm not sure how to feel about this; It's science, and exploration, and both are good (imo), but if we want to prioritize, wouldn't billions of dollars be better spent focusing on fixing our own messed up planet? Assuming there is some inherent benefit to going to the moon/mars/wherever, is it really necessary to send *HUMANS*? Could we not fund 10x as many unmanned missions and learn probably close to 10x as much?
I promise this post isn't a troll, I am a filmmaker, and interested in science, but obviously I have some question as to the science-value of putting men on a rock in space.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:4, Insightful)
And after spending several billion dollars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict we will get some nice, new expensive exhibits for Space Camp and not much else.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
I question that we would necessarily have developed velcro, microcomputers, Tang, new alloys, biomedical advances, etc., by sending robotic ships to explore space. Perhaps other things might have been developed instead, perhaps some of the same things, but scientific developments and spinoffs are not predictable. JFK didn't say he believed this nation should develop microcomputers and velcro by the end of the decade, he said we should land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth. The implementation details are where the technical advances are made.
What's more, it's the manned space flights that hold the public's interest and keep the funding up. The public latched onto astronauts as national heroes early on, in an era when heroes were greatly needed, and today is no different. Dangerous exploration is a glamorous thing. Sure, the robotic craft that explore Mars are very exciting and of course we should continue such efforts, but the extra effort of accommodating humans in space is what really pushes us forward technologically and emotionally.
It's also worth considering that even if the U.S. doesn't travel back to the Moon, other countries will. Do you really want your grandkids to have to buy tickets on a Chinese spacecraft to visit the Chinese moon city fifty years hence? Or the EU moon base? Or the Russian Mars base? Not that our grandkids will be able to afford such things; we'll be the has-beens, the left-behinds who stand at night and gaze at the sky while other nation-states dominate the heavens. No way. The U.S. has got to maintain its leadership role in space or it will become an also-ran.
Re:Thanks for getting my hopes up, NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any spin offs are gravy, and historically have vastly exceeded the total budget by several orders of magnitude in untold commercial applications of even the most basic research by-products.
Spending the same amount of money on any terrestrial application OTHER THAN the development of additional energy sources would probably be a boondoggle.
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Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:3, Insightful)
With the current administration, and the general state of NASA funding, (and scientific funding in general), I doubt this project will ever work. Some "more pressing" project/war will come up and money for this project will be cut from the budget, and eventually the project will be cancelled.
I think that there would be a lot of valuable research, invention and innovation that would result from this program - if it would ever be completed. What I think we'll end up with, however, is a lot of half-finished ideas, and then the project will be scrapped due to lack of funding.
So, if the project were going to be carried through to completion, I think it would be very valuable in terms of research; but the project will be cancelled before then, so the money would be better spent on other scientific instruments that will eventually fly.
Re:Thanks for getting my hopes up, NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I agree that the Shuttle was the wrong path. It is/was an expermiental vehicle, neutered by politics. Who knows what it might have been had they stayed true to the original vision. Alas, politics is the fountain of compromise, and compromise is the enemy of engineering.
Why not build more Saturn Vs? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about just the Economy of it? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, how big and how perfect of a pure silicon crystal could you grow there? And how much energy would it require? The low gravity means that you could make one much bigger (6 times as big? or is there an exponential factor there?). The near-nothing atmosphere means that probably all the energy you would need would be available via solar panels. Energy collection could be a business in itself (you want to stop using hydrocarbons, right?). And what about transport of these goods? What would it cost? How about almost nothing to any location on planet earth? I imagine even small towns would have a designated delivery port where lunar cargo could be dropped with the accuracy of a smart-bomb... cheaper and faster than a cargo ship from China.
Sure, it's incredibly expensive to establish a presence there, but in the long term, it's more expensive not to.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:1, Insightful)
Throwing cash at the poor is NOT a solution. We've been doing it for years and years but still that wealth gap continues to grow. Do you want for us to just feed the poor money until they're rich? They already have tons of opportunity that isn't being used. It's a problem of human nature and society, not available resources. Giving more money to the poor is not going to solve this problem, motivating people to elevate themselves will.
So tell me, with the trillions we've given to the poor versus the billions spent via NASA which has had a better return? Life long welfare victims breeding more welfare victims versus Tang? I choose Tang.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need fundamentally different, harder challenges! Why? Because going to the Moon is possible with 1960's technology, so actually going to the said Moon will sink hundreds of billions into the said 1960's technology!
That sounds like "well, we've sent a couple planes with daredevils across the atlantic, so we know we can do it. let's not waste money doing it again" and then expect modern passenger jets where the passengers yawn their way over to appear out of nowhere. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. We need to evolve modern spacecraft if we're to reach Mars, if we're to populate the solar system, and if we're one day to go out among the stars. And even if we don't, we won't be sinking hundreds of billions into 1960's technology but to apply modern technology to space travel. I've no doubt we can find uses out there that we can bring back to earth. This isn't "Moon II: The remake", it's about how safe, easy and comfortable we can make going to the moon with all the luxuries of modern electronics they never had. What landed in 1969 (and beyond) was with all due respect a very primitive craft. A great achievement to be sure, but they don't prepare us to go further. These missions do.
Re:Project Orion? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the original developers behind Orion did indeed envision using it to lift very large craft. This was back in the late 1950s, atmospheric testing of nukes was common amongst them that had 'em. Talk about direct to Mars...
Ever seen film footage of the test models? Small things, using grenade-size explosive charges, but pretty impressive considering. The number of (small) nukes needed to lift the real thing beyond the atmosphere wouldn't have amounted to as much as some of the strategic weapons they were testing anyway. Indeed, as much as anything else, Projects Argus and Starfish (high atmospheric/ionospheric detonations, in the late 1950s/early 1960s) put the damper on Orion because it showed the adverse effects of ionospheric detonation. The EMP from Starfish blew out phone lines and street lights in Hawaii, and even fused car ignitions.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the reason you have to import engineers from India, China, and Russia is lack of founding to American teachers... After all, just look at all those bags of money Indian, Chinese, and Russian teachers seem to have lying around... The causes of your lack of native grown engineers are many, and teachers' salaries are probably not anywhere near the most important problem. Until you are willing to take a hard look at what your society and education system have become, instead of throwing even more money at the problem, I fear you shall continue to fail.
Great - deflect attention away from global warming (Score:1, Insightful)
All funding is being stripped from projects that look at the earth - all dissent at NASA is being muuzzled so we can explore the moon and Mars.
This administration's grand plan to benefit those (oil companies and others) who would reap dollars by denying that we in the US are part of the global warming problem and the main generator of CO2 from emissions must be stopped.
Science geeks say "Wow - yeah the moon and Mars - cool!" are having theie attention diverted as to what really is going on here.
You have to ask yourself - who stands to make the most money and get the most political long term gain here?
Its all a smoke screen to divert dissent.
Check out the latest article from the New York Times - 7/22/06 - "NASA's Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet" by Andrew Revkin - in the Science section:
"From 2002 until this year, NASA's mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers
In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" deleted. In this year's budget and planning documents, the agency's mission is "to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."
David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush's goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.
But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the "understand and protect" phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
"We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that go out for peer review, whenever we have strategy meetings," said Philip B. Russell, a 25-year NASA veteran who is an atmospheric chemist at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "As civil servants, we're paid to carry out NASA's mission. When there was that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the planet, that made it much easier to justify this kind of work."
Several NASA researchers said they were upset that the change was made at NASA headquarters without consulting the agency's 19,000 employees or informing them ahead of time.
Though the "understand and protect" phrase was deleted in February, when the Bush administration submitted budget and planning documents to Congress, its absence has only recently registered with NASA employees.
Mr. Steitz, the NASA spokesman, said the agency might have to improve internal communications, but he defended the way the change was made, saying it reflected the management style of Michael D. Griffin, the administrator at the agency.
"Strategic planning comes from headquarters down," he said, and added, "I don't think there was any mal-intent or idea of exclusion."
The line about protecting the earth was added to the mission statement in 2002 under Sean O'Keefe, the first NASA administrator appointed by President Bush, and was drafted in an open process with scientists and employees across the agency.
In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as "the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space."
And since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track changes on the earth's surface, the agency has been increasingly inv
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your point of view is a bit narrow minded. First of all it's not really about going to the moon, I think. It's about establishing a permanent human presence outside of earth. Why you may ask? Well, there are many answers to that and many will find many better ones than I can.
Stephen Hawkins would probably argue that it is good for the survival of mankind. Who knows what could befall our planet? Others would say that it may be the stepping stone in the expansion of life... humans at this stage would play a role similar to the first fish to climb out of the water and walk onland.... Some are already seeing potential mining advantages (I don't see a goal in itself, but it certainly an incentive to structure the evolution of the process).
Personally, the greatest advantage that I see, is that we will need to figure out how to survive there, on a permanent basis. Because I don't think it has a point if there is no follow up, no permanent presence that is to be established. How is it important? Becasue it will present all sorts of new propblems to be solved. Things that we won't even consider before then. Necessity is the mother of invention. Creating situations that create new needs is a key to scientific progress.
Why did our distant ancestors decide to leave the confines of their familiar valley to explore the next one? They probably could see the next valley from a high point, and the odds are good that it looked pretty much like what they knew. Maybe they could have lived better had they stayed in their old valley.... and controlled their population. But then again, the next volcanic eruption could have wiped out the entire human species. Maybe they wouldn't have needed to figure out how to tame rivers and learn agriculture. Some may argue that we would be better off it they hadn't... maybe. But very likely we wouldn't have been pondering it over the web.
It's not because we cannot foresee the need that exploration is needless. Much of the technology that we use today, particularly computer algorithms, are based on intellectual ideas dating back centuries, long before any practical use could have been perceived.
And space exploration has already provided numerous technological breakthroughs because of the new needs that had to be filled. Surviving in barren and lifeless (as far as we know) worlds may provide invaluable insight in how to increase our survival ods on earth. And many things we may not even think of, until they are discovered because of the new needs uncovered.
Re:How about just the Economy of it? (Score:3, Insightful)
And, once grown, what would you do with this crystal? In many cases it is cheaper to make 1,000 similar crystals on Earth and throw away 999 of them, rather than to fly The Precious One from the orbit. There is no immediate, obvious industrial need in pretty much anything that microgravity offers. Not to say that there may not be any; we are like a caveman who does not need a CNC lathe; the time of that technology hasn't arrived yet.
The near-nothing atmosphere means that probably all the energy you would need would be available via solar panels.
The downside to that is that solar energy is all you have. It's not enough for most industrial processes. Aluminum plants are built only where cheap hydro or nuclear energy is available, for example. You would be hard pressed to refine enough Al on ISS to make a teaspoon.
Energy collection could be a business in itself
I wonder why it isn't already? A hint: it isn't profitable. It costs too much to launch a solar energy collector; it costs 100x that much to convert the sunlight into something else; it costs 1000x that much to deliver that energy where it is needed. And I fear to think about how much it will cost to service that thing in orbit.
How about almost nothing to any location on planet Earth?
Sounds like magic; unfortunately, things are not that simple. If you don't want your microwave beam to circle the Earth (which would be quite unfortunate to great number of creatures in its path) then you need to hang your dish in the geostationary orbit. That orbit is crowded, and full of sensitive comms sats. You do not want to have a multi-gigawatt microwave transmitter anywhere near them (even assuming that you know how to make such a transmitter - nobody else on this planet does.)
There are also other interesting effects, like beam focusing and aiming. If you miss your target - which itself has to be a thousand square km zone of death - you can say goodbye to any city that the beam happens to flick across.
I imagine even small towns would have a designated delivery port where lunar cargo could be dropped with the accuracy of a smart-bomb... cheaper and faster than a cargo ship from China
Oceangoing cargo ships are the cheapest transport on the planet. Besides, what lunar cargo do you plan to drop on Earth that is worth dropping and that will survive the drop? Raw materials will do, but they are better used in orbit, not on the surface. Lunar manufacturing will need to come up with some real miracles to be worth of lugging all the way to Earth - and that presumes that the technology will never work on Earth, so it has to stay up there. As it stands, Earth does not really need anything from space; what it badly needs is smart people in right places, and you can't [easily] fetch them from the outer space. The last time one such guy showed up he was promptly crucified, and I see every reason for that to happen again.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most schools in this country have non-existant science lab programs (dissolve NaCl in water, separate these metal shavings from sand with a magnet). Most science teachers are crap (e.g. teaching PE and some science on the side). Most poor students don't have the basic fascilities to get homework help (and yes, science and math are HARD, take TIME to understand and start liking them). Those interested in science AND able to get to college are weeded out due to lack of basic knowledge/concepts (sin2 x+ cos2 x=1, V=IR, N=6.022*10^23)
Not enough science PR in our classrooms, either. The students do not get to hear about Craig Venter, Flemming, Crieg and Watson, Oppenheimer. Instead they are hearing about what Paris Hilton sucked last month, how much money a basketball player can make, how much steroids can help some, how many bitches one can slap as a rapper, etc.
What can you expect when poor kids trully believe that basketball/army can be their ticket out of a trailorpark/ghetto?
Re:Great - deflect attention away from global warm (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I want NASA to come up with good spacecraft and ways to foster getting those spacecraft up cheaper and faster. I'd prefer to let NOAA concentrate on things like global warming and CO2 impact.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you realize that the Titan rockets burned 20,000 gal. of fuel per second (!) to go to the Moon.
No, I actually didn't realize that. I always thought it was the Saturn rockets that did that, not Titan. Wow, I guess I was ignorant.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, Titan rockets never went to the moon. Apollo went to the moon. Please read your space history.
What we need is a new propulsion system, something like the ion thruster prototypes the Europeans got
You mean like the one the US developed and launched in the late 90s on Deep Space One? Yeah, too bad we don't have one of those. Please find out what is going on before you spout off on a rant.
The human race needs to go to the moon, and eventually it needs to stay. Here are some other things which were a waste of resources during their development, and without any immediate payoff:
- transoceanic ships (why go to another country, we have everything we need here!)
- cars (horses were far better in the early years)
- airplanes (think how many people spent their life savings working on one, and never made progress)
Please look at the US budget [www.icdr.us]. NASA's entire budget is 0.7% of that, compared to 17% for defense and a whopping 40% for social security and health benefits. We could pay for NASA by spending 4% less on defense, or finding a way to decrease medical costs by 2%. Several drug companies could fund NASA in its entirety with their profits alone. Space exploration is not the "low hanging fruit" for saving money on the budget.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:4, Insightful)
Odds are though, if we cut out NASA's budget, it would probably get rolled into the Pentagon's budget. Pitty, that.
Why is every space project a bad compromise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, those days are behind us.
Now it seems, every project is a bad compromise, and it seems to have started with the Shuttle Program. Originally intended as a fully reuseable system that took off like a plane and landed like a plane, it then became a boondoggle of wildly incompatible systems that culminated in a bad hack where you strap the orbiter/glider to a fuel tank and two sticks of TNT and cross your fingers.
NASA still had high hopes for a full resuable system with the VentureStar, which sadly, never got beyond computer animations and little plastic models. The DCX, which had a 1/3 scale flying prototype, was scrapped after a few tests.
And now here they are again, with a bad compromise, using existing parts from the shuttle program and haphazardly slapping them together and crossing their fingers.
It would save a ton of money to design a good system from the start, even if it's more expensive up-front, than to build a system that's awful to start with and hope you can improve upon it with time.
It's funny that sci-fi from the 60's and 70's was so hopeful about where we'd be by this time, because we were making so much progress back then. If only they could have forseen how much time we'd wasted by going backwards, and designing lousy systems that can never really fulfull their mission requirements.
It's hard to believe that even before Yuri Gagarin was launched, America was reaching the edge of space in a rocketplane called the X-15, a simple, durable design that worked stunningly well, and, had we continued along that path, we'd all probably be living in space right now.
But no, we took two steps backwards with "spam in a can", sticking a capsule on top of a missile, and we've been making the same mistakes since then. And now, here we are in 2006, talking about using essentially the same technology from the 60's, when we should have already been reaching the outer planets in long-distance exploration vessels as seen in Stanley Kubrick's "2001" film.
America no longer puts its best and its brightest on top. America no longer prizes doing the best it can do. It's embarassing, that's what it is.
Re:How about just the Economy of it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, sure, play it up that way and every government will want one.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the above were true, we'd all still be living in caves. Clearly progress is possible even in the presence of reactionaries.
Re:How about just the Economy of it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies do have long term planning. If there was a capitalist interest in immediately setting up factories on the moon (for immensely profitable "moon crystals") economic lobbies would be clamoring for the US government to do just that. Instead it's entirely people who have watched lots of "Star Trek." There's nothing capitalist about what you're saying.
Oh, anyone who disagrees with you shows pessimism, a lack of imagination, and is possibly a Communist? That's how little kids argue, give me a break. Just because people don't subscribe to your particular irrational sci-fi inspired flights of fancy doesn't make them bad people.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an European myself, I find it highly offensive that you assume that any reasonable American person should answer: no.
Not that our grandkids will be able to afford such things; we'll be the has-beens, the left-behinds who stand at night and gaze at the sky while other nation-states dominate the heavens. No way. The U.S. has got to maintain its leadership role in space or it will become an also-ran.
It doesn't really matter to me what "nation" goes to space. I want that human race goes to space. The whole going to space thing seems to be a mere a mean to protect U.S.'s status as leading superpower. And what comes to left-behinds: They won't be Chinese or Europeans. They will be Earthlings.
Re:Capsules?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't believe how often otherwise intelligent people make this argument despite its palpable absurdity.
Can you describe a physically plausible catastrophe that would leave the Earth even less hospitable to human life than the moon? Remember, the moon has virtually no atmosphere, virtually no water, a sixth of a gee of gravity, and daily temperature swings of 200+ degrees Celsius.
Even if we somehow fucked up our planet that badly, consider how much better survival facilities could be built here on Earth when you're not shelpping everything across gravity wells at tens of thousands of dollars a kilo.
Martin
Re:And after spending several billion dollars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Heading to other bodies is exactly what we should be doing. We might not learn as much about the solar system as if we'd spent that money on a new telescope or whatever, but the knowledge we gain about getting to other planets, and potentially existing there is invaluable.
What's our ultimate goal with space travel? Well right now it's probably to colonize some body other than Earth. Why bother? Well there's about a million reasons, not the least of which is the fact that right now we've got all our eggs in one basket.
I also believe that extra-planetary colonization will likely help put things into psychological perspective for our race. It's no solution to our problems, but it's a start.
At any rate, even though the money may not provide the same bang per buck as a telescope or another ISS module, it's the kind of experience that you just can't get by peering through a lens. It's like the difference between reading a book about driving, and actually driving. Real driving may be a lot more expensive, and inherently dangerous, but you'll never truly know how until you do it.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:2, Insightful)
We are not in the middle of "World War III". Politicians use language like "The War on Terror" to create a sense of "them and us", and to soften the blow of millions of dollars and thousands of lives being spent chasing after some misguided individuals in the middle East.
Both the World Wars had incalculable casualties on both sides, and it's an insult to everyone who fought in them to describe what we've got at the moment in similar language.
Re:The usual suspects (Score:1, Insightful)
How about the more obvious? Like: we gotta get the hell off of this one rock before random chance throws another "dinosaur killer" at it.
Why the assumption that we are going to destroy ourselves? There is overwhelming evidence that meteor strikes large enough to clear the ecosystem have happened multiple times in the past and that, statistically, we are probably due for another one "real soon now" (plus or minus several million years). Even if all you want to do is protect the rock we now have with superior technology it will require some form of space travel technology.
The universe is not a nice friendly place and there are dangers out there that far outclass any human endeavors!
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:2, Insightful)
Broken Window Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
By the same argument, wars are good for the economy. It is, however, a flawed argument, an example of the "broken window fallacy": "Throwing a baseball into the neighbour's window is good for the economy, because the glazier gets the money (by the insurance company), who then spends it at the baker's, or whereever."
It is a fallacy because the money that the insurance company pays has to come from somewhere. Overall, it is better for the economy if that money is invested productively.
The grandparent (poster)'s argument may well be that the same money could be spent more productively. Besides, part of the money really is burnt in space
It is a matter of discussion what percentage of the money spent at NASA could be called productive (in a similar way to "fundamental research").
Now, there may be all sorts of political reasons (and I don't mean this in a negative way, I mean it in the way "people want it") to go to the Moon and Mars (beside the fact that eventually we'll have to leave Earth, and we'll have to start some time before it's too late), but your economic reasoning is flawed.
Please let it be known that I love the idea of going back to the Moon etc., I'm just trying to be fair and not claim that there is more to it than there really is: A good idea, yes. Economically, probably not.
Re:inherent scientific value? (Score:3, Insightful)
Building something in space is indeed far more difficult, but distinct in that it's an expansion of the domain of humanity. We've been stewing for a while.
I want to either get off this rock or start colonizing the oceans, people! Preferably both. Though, in the 'sun is eventually going to blow up' timescale, getting off this rock is the #1 priority.
Hmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thanks for getting my hopes up, NASA (Score:3, Insightful)