54774019
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MarkWhittington writes:
The Chang'e-3 mission that landed a rover called Yutu on the Bay of Rainbows on the lunar surface proves China's space exploration program has one thing that America's does not — a clear direction. Its piloted space program has featured missions of increasing complexity, with the latest being two visits to the Tiangong-1 space module, a predecessor of a planned Chinese space station.
In the meantime America's space exploration is fraught with confusion, controversy and a conspicuous lack of funding and direction. Ever since President Obama cancelled President George W. Bush's Constellation program that would have returned Americans to the moon, NASA has been headed for an asteroid in the near term. Which asteroid and how Americans will get there are still open questions.
After China's successful series of robotic landings on the moon, many space experts agree the Chinese will probably execute a moon walk sometime in the 2020s. If and when that happens and if Americans are not on the moon to greet them, China becomes the world's space exploration leader and all that implies.
54546197
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MarkWhittington writes:
With the Chang'e 3 and its rover Jade Rabbit safely ensconced on the lunar surface, the question arises, is it time to start dividing up the moon and its resources? It may well be an issue by the middle of the current century.
With China expressing interest in exploiting lunar resources and a number of private companies, such Moon Express, working for the same goal, a mechanism for who gets what is something that needs looking into. Moon Daily quotes a Russian official as suggesting that it can all be done in a civilized manner, through international agreements. On the other hand, law professor and purveyor of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds suggests that China might spark a moon race by having a private company claim at least parts of the moon.
54482961
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MarkWhittington writes:
A new White House petition has been created on the We The People website asking that July 20, the date of the first Apollo moon landing, be designated as a non paid federal holiday called “Space Exploration Day,” according to a December 17, 2013 post on the group’s Facebook page.
The mission statement for the proposed space holiday states:
“Promote establishment of the July 20th Space Exploration Day Holiday, to commemorate the first walk of humankind, onto the surface of another celestial body. In conjunction with this, promote the continuation of manned space exploration to the Moon and beyond. Stress the benefits to humankind that can come from increased space achievement. Encourage the public to celebrate this anniversary with fun activities for families and communities. Encourage members of the general public to set personal Apollo-Like-Goals to help make life better for humanity.”
54398315
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MarkWhittington writes:
While there has been a strange dearth, thus far, of official reaction to the successful landing of the Chinese Chang’e 3 on the moon from either NASA or the Obama administration, that doesn’t mean that Americans are not following the mission and with some concern. Those concerns ranged from worries over a lack of commitment by the United States to a lunar exploration program to fears of what China's ultimate objectives are on the moon.
53911535
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MarkWhittington writes:
A Taiwan newspaper called the Want China Times ran an article on December 2, 2013 to the effect that officials in the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army would like to make the moon a military base. The article speaks of China desiring to turn the moon into a “Death Star” from which ballistic missiles could be lobbed at Earth
The article’s description of a Chinese military base on the moon sounds remarkably like an American plan hatched in the 1950s called “Project Horizon.” The plan was abandoned because of the great expense and the fact that missiles launched from the moon would take days to reach targets on Earth.
53838985
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MarkWhittington writes:
As the Chinese lunar lander Chang'e 3, carrying the Jade Rabbit rover, voyages to the moon, the question arises what should NASA's response be, aside from congratulations to a rival space power.RESOLVE might just fit the bill.
RESOLVE or Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction is designed to prospect for lunar resources mounted on a rover. "RESOLVE includes a drill, a chemical plant (with an oxygen and volatiles extraction node, gas chromatograph, and mass spectrometer), a neutron spectrometer, and a near infrared spectrometer." It has been tested on Earth as part of a joint American/Canadian project for the past couple of years.
According to Universe Today, RESOLVE could be ready for a lunar mission by 2018. However the mission has yet to receive funding.
53331991
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MarkWhittington writes:
Dennis Tito recently suggested that all it would take for his Inspiration Mars mission to get off the ground would be $700 million from NASA and use of the heavy lift Space Launch System. NASA has basically said thanks but no thanks.
There is a backup to the proposed 2018 flyby to Mars mission which envisions a 2021 launch that would feature flybys of both Venus and Mars. That would add 88 days to the just over 500 day mission and would involve more radiation hazards to the two person crew. But Tito has another backup in mind as well. He might go to Russia and/or China for help.
53102159
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MarkWhittington writes:
Space Ref, in a November 18, 2013 post has unearthed part of a Congressional Budget Office document that suggests, as an option for reducing the deficit, ending all human space flight activities at NASA.
This would mean that American participation in the International Space Station, the Commercial Crew program to develop privately operated space craft, the development of the Orion space craft and the Space Launch System heavy lift launcher, and President Obama’s asteroid exploration initiative would be terminated immediately.
The CBO argues that space exploration could be accomplished by robots alone and that ending human space flight would have significant cost savings ($73 billion over the next nine years) and would preserve the safety and lives of astronauts
52923599
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MarkWhittington writes:
According to a post in the NewSpace Journal, the upcoming report prepared by Bigelow Aerospace on behalf of NASA will call for a public/private partnership to facilitate a return to the moon. It also calls for a regime respecting private property rights on the moon as an incentive for private lunar exploration and economic development. The model is said to be the Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) program and the follow on Commercial Crew Program that developed commercially run spacecraft with government subsidies and promises of government contracts.
52820805
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MarkWhittington writes:
Project M was a proposal at NASA’s Johnson Spaceflight Center that would have put together a mission to deliver a bipedal robot to the lunar surface within a thousand days. The idea never got out of the conception stage, but two major components, a new type of lunar lander, now called Morpheus, and a robonaut continued on as separate projects.
Morpheus is getting ready to conduct a second attempt at free flight tests at the Kennedy Space Center. The first attempt resulted in the destruction of the prototype vehicle. If the second round of tests is successful, NASA will have a spacecraft that could deliver 1,100 pounds of payload to the lunar surface.
In the meantime while a copy of Robonaut 2 is still undergoing tests on board the International Space Station, ABC News reports that a cousin of the mechanical person has been built with legs. It stands eight feet tall and weighs 500 pounds.
Thus, with two major components of Project M nearing completion, could a robonaut become the next moon walker?
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MarkWhittington writes:
The recent launch of India's first mission to Mars has ignited a debate in that country that has parallels of a debate that was once raging in the United States. The question arises, why does a country with a severe poverty problem have a space program?
The Economist points out that India's space program, of which the Mars mission is a small part, costs about $1 billion a year. It claims that spending on things like public health in that country is "abysmally low."
On the other hand, most of India's space program is directed toward communications and other satellites that have a direct benefit to its people.
The BBC adds that the inspirational and national prestige aspects of the Mars mission are not to be sneezed at. India has a growing middle class, technically trained, and a good space program is part of a mix of policies that encouraged that development.
52406917
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MarkWhittington writes:
Glenn Reynolds, the purveyor of Instapundit, asked the pertinent question, "If big government can put a man on the moon, why can't it put up a simple website without messing it up?" The answer, as it turns out, is a rather simple one.
The Apollo program, that President John F. Kennedy mandated to put a man on the moon and return him to the Earth, was a simple idea well carried out for a number of reasons. The primary one was that Congress did not pass a 1,800 or so page bill backed up by a mind numbingly amount of regulations mandating how NASA would do it. The question of how to conduct the lunar voyages was left up to the engineers at NASA and the aerospace industry at the time. The government simply provided the resources necessary to do the job and a certain degree of oversight.
Imagine if President Obama had stated, "I believe the nation should commit itself to the goal of enabling all Americans to access affordable health insurance" but then left the how to do it to some of the best experts in health care and economics without partisan interference. One suspects that the results would have had little resemblance to the byzantine mess that is Obamacare backed up by a website that is the greatest disaster in IT history.
51935989
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MarkWhittington writes:
Alan Steinberg, a post doctorate fellow in political science at Sam Houston State University, conducted a study surrounding the vexing problem of how to motivate more people to support increased levels of funding for NASA. In an October 14, 2013 piece in The Space Review, Steinberg announced the results of a study conducted with a group of college students.
Steinberg’s approach was based on the findings of a study by Roger Launius conducted in the late 1990s that suggested that the American public believe that NASA spending takes up about 20 percent of the federal budget. It has in fact never exceeded four percent, which it enjoyed at the height of the Apollo program, and is currently about.5 percent. Steinberg was testing a notion advanced by Neil deGrasse Tyson that if people knew the true size of NASA’s budget they would be more likely to support increasing it.
51608903
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MarkWhittington writes:
“Gravity,” which opened wide on October 4, 2013, can best be described as a magnificent kinetic movie filled with a strange mixture of beauty and terror. Suffice to say that the astronaut characters played by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock discover that Newton’s three laws of motion can be your friend but more often than not you deadly enemy.
The story is set in a slightly altered universe than ours in which the space shuttle is still flying and the Chinese have a space station. Clooney plays a right stuff style astronaut with a certain rakishness that only Clooney can pull off without seeming annoying. Bullock plays a rookie, a medical doctor who has only six month’s training and is thrust into the peril of her life when a Russian satellite is accidentally destroyed, causing a debris field to spread throughout low Earth orbit, devouring other satellites, creating missiles shooting at orbital speed.
51110407
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MarkWhittington writes:
Writing in the September 22, 2013 issue of “Space News” Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, endorsed the efforts of Golden Spike, a company attempting to develop a low cost method to land humans on the lunar surface for the first time since December, 1972.
Lovell has already signed on as an adviser to the commercial company.Now, however, he is suggesting a kind of public/private partnership to restart efforts to return to the moon. In effect he would either like the space agency to be Golden Spike's first customer or else to form some kind of partnership, perhaps leasing the lunar lander the company is developing for its private return to the moon effort,
