posted 10-11-2010 07:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Fezman92:
What about STS-135?

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posted 10-12-2010 02:25 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by SpaceAholic:
...the answer is no.

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Critical for any desired human mission to an asteroid or Mars is the development of a HLV within a reasonable timeline. That is now official NASA policy.

posted 10-12-2010 11:10 AM            

This means the HLV must deliver more, whether the destination is an asteroid or planet. Not only that, but a crew module with superior capabilities in life support and navigation as well as durability.

posted 10-15-2010 10:52 AM               

President Obama recently green-lighted a brand new mission and a new budget for NASA, including a grand long-term goal: a manned mission to Mars. But Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, says the moon is much more essential to American space efforts.

In its haste to make new policy, Aldrin and other experts say, NASA is overlooking a critical component of space travel: a permanent, manned base on the moon that would make reaching Mars a much easier task.

Establishing a lunar base could provide a safe source of water and a site for fuel depots, which would reduce the cost of transporting fuel from Earth for an eventual Mars mission, Aldrin told Fox News.com.

He said returning to the moon 38 years later should be at the heart of NASA's plans, and he said he fears domestic politics may be playing with our goals for space.

"In the bigger picture, there seems to be a lot of contention as we approach the midterm elections," Aldrin said. "Inside the administration, there are a lot of people who are focused on showing the public how much progress has been made since the election of 2008. That’s generated a lot of attention internally. And that’s resulted in a lot of horse-trading about the goals for NASA."

posted 10-15-2010 11:16 AM               

"I just won't agree that this ends the moon as a destination... Of course, we have been there with 12 humans. We will be going back with humans... And the fact that we are charting the next destination as an asteroid is nothing against the moon."

"The moon is part of any long-term sustainable presence in space."

His mention of a stepping stone approach in the Fox News article is directly from his talk delivered at the National Air and Space Museum on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.

From the article:

"For decades, we've been misdefining our transitional space programs," Aldrin said. "A vision like in the early days of the space race showing the logical progression from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo is what is needed today to show why we need to go to Mars -- and how we will get there."

"Step by step -- just as Mercury and Gemini made Apollo possible -- we move deeper into space to land on Phobos, the inner moon of Mars, all in prelude to a mission to the Red Planet itself!"

posted 10-15-2010 11:47 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
The day after Congress passed the authorization act, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told reporters that the moon as a destination for humans is not off-the-table, it just isn't the first destination being targeted by the agecy.

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Except from the same article - Obama's thoughts on the Moon as a goal:

On Monday, Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which charts the space agency's trajectory and will shape the nation’s science, aerospace and information technology development for decades to come. The moon does not factor into the new plan.

"I just have to say pretty bluntly -- we've been there before," Obama told reporters in April when critics first argued that the moon should not be sidelined. "There's a lot more space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do," he said.

posted 10-15-2010 11:57 AM               

Putting the President's comments into their context, the previous program-of-record was a moon-only program. Yes, the moon program was justified as being a learning ground for Mars, but it was not about developing the technologies needed to get us to Mars.

posted 10-15-2010 11:25 PM               

The folks in Washington with constituents who had the most to lose under this proposal made their voices heard and preserved the options for the future. The key to that future is not Dreamland-like technologies which would take decades to perfect before ever putting a manned spacecraft on the pointy end of them. For near-term progress, it is in the heavy-lift capability that we squandered away with the end of Apollo.

Congress has now mandated that we will develop a vehicle capable of carrying humans away from LEO within the next several years. The most logical place to send new manned spacecraft for developmental testing will be the moon. I suggest this for three reasons:

1. Asteroids are decades away from a resonable intercept time, and if we go there, the mission is accomplished after one flight.

2. Long, long before the opportunities to visit an asteroid, we will have the heavy lift capability to reach the moon and someone in Washington will start asking why we fast tracked this vehicle to wait years for an asteroid rendevous window.

3. We are a long way from being able to produce systems with the reliability required to reach Mars, or even perform an extended duration asteroid mission.

So we will find ourselves in a few years with a launch vehicle capable of reaching the moon, and with yet to be proven manned spacecraft systems in search of an environment to be tested in. Couple this with a change in political climate over the next election cycle and we may very well find ourselves headed for further lunar exploration.

I would hope that Aldrin was not misquoted in this article, as it makes for some confusing conclusions about his opinions. But the worst damage done in the argument over the value of lunar exploration was probably done by George W. Bush and NASA by proclaiming we were going "back to the moon."

We wouldn't be going "back" anywhere. I doubt that mission planners would want to re-visit sites we have already explored. The moon is a big place, and many more things (like water) have been discovered there since Apollo. I'm sure there are many more things down in those craters, lava tubes, mountains, and caves yet to be discovered.

We need to inspire the youth of this nation to get into the business of science, engineering, and exploration. Giving them something in the near term to shoot for will be a much greater influence than some distant target that they will have to wait many years for a chance to see.

posted 10-16-2010 02:30 AM            

If there really is ice deep inside the Moon's permanently-shadowed craters, it will require the assistance of heavy industry to reach it for it to be of any practical use. And take decades perhaps.

posted 10-18-2010 11:22 AM               

Obama's decision to sign NASA's hard-fought legislation into law alone and without Bolden by his side robbed the NASA chief of the high-profile White House signing ceremony and cherished White House photo that amount to symbolic presidential backing in the status-conscious capital.

"I don't think Charlie has been treated very well by the White House," says space historian John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "He has been faithful in his defense of the Obama strategy for space, but some seem to believe he has not been totally convincing."

Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, and other Washington veterans say talk of replacing the longtime Clear Lake resident stems in part from some White House officials' suspicions that Bolden did not fully support Obama's decision to end NASA's return to the moon in favor of developing commercial spacecraft to service the space station and deep-space technology to reach an asteroid by 2025.

"Charlie was put into a situation where he had to do what the White House wanted," says Green, first elected to Congress in 1992. "I don't blame Charlie - I blame the White House for failing to understand there was not support in Congress for what they wanted to do with NASA."

posted 10-18-2010 01:56 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by SpaceAholic:
Fox News: Aldrin Wants Moon Base First

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Fox online article misquoted me completely. Fox will run clarification. I still hold to the primacy of U.S. getting man to Mars.

posted 10-19-2010 11:25 AM               

FoxNews.com: Buzz Aldrin Dreams of Mars

Aldrin believes NASA should move in stages toward a manned mission to Mars -- and ultimately colonization on or near the Red Planet -- by building outer space fuel stations and industrializing the moon. NASA has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars researching such projects, he noted, an investment that should be utilized -- as recommended by Norm Augustine, former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board and chairman of the Review of the U.S. Space Flight Plans Committee.

"The U.S. has the most experience in the world, of any nation, in dealing with the moon," he told FoxNews.com. "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that flexibility is needed here."

posted 10-19-2010 08:24 PM               

As it is Congress doesn't reconvene until Nov. 15 and they are expected to take off again for Thanksgiving.

posted 02-10-2011 04:47 PM               

NASA, like the rest of the federal government, has been operating since October under a stopgap spending measure that expires March 4. For NASA, the stopgap measure -- known as a continuing resolution -- has meant making do with the $18.724 billion Congress appropriated for 2010.

House appropriators intend to introduce a new continuing resolution soon that would fund the government through the end of September. Among the cuts they intend to include is a $379 million reduction to NASA’s proposed $19 billion budget for 2011. If enacted, that would leave NASA funded at $18.621 billion, or $103 million below the agency’s 2010 level.

The cuts outlined by the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee could have a hard time making it through the Democrat-controlled Senate.

posted 02-12-2011 07:39 AM               

Note that while Space Operations, which includes ISS and shuttle, gets the biggest cut compared to 2010 levels ($200 million), the CR represents an increase of over $1 billion from the budget request, reflecting continued shuttle operations for most of the fiscal year (and, presumably, the shuttle flight added in the authorization act last fall.) That increase comes at the expense of exploration (-$517 million compared to the budget request), science (-$536.6 million) and aeronautics and space technology (-$650.8 million). The last is a special case, since the aeronautics line item in 2011 was expanded in the budget request to include space technology programs, but the CR includes funding only at the 2010 level, when that account was exclusively aeronautics.

The CR does not get more specific about how the funds should be allocated within these accounts, including a proviso that the NASA administrator submit to Congress a spending plan 60 days after the CR’s enactment. The CR does include a section striking the language in the FY2010 appropriations bill that prevents NASA from terminating Constellation projects, no doubt much to the relief of the agency.