Going to the moon

[vinny002]

Hi, guys!

I'm not 100% sure, astronauts are going back to the moon in 2018, right? I can't wait until I see the astronauts going back to the moon on nasa Channel since I wasn't around to see the astronauts going to the moon in July of 1969! Thanks!

              Cheers,
           Vincent

[Cras]

No.


NASA has said it is not going to the Moon just a few days ago.    NASA is going to an Asteroid, first manned SLS/Orion is for 2021.

[vinny002]

Hi, Cras!

Holy mackerel! 2021 is only 8 years from now!

          Cheers,
       Vincent

[bjbeard]

Don't count on it, the Obama Administration has hacked generously at NASA's budget. Orion MPCV has beens stripped down so much, I doubt it can do more than go back and forth to the space station. I know there are two versions, one for LEO, and one for BEO, however teh likelihood of a manned mission prior to q4 2017 is very remote. Some estimates dont have manned missions till 2020.

Lockheed has spent north of $9bn taken more than a decade, and still has not finished one single vehicle. By comparison North American (now Boeing) spent less than $3bn and delivered a complete Apollo spacecraft in less than 5 years.

This is not NASA's fault, it is the last two presidential administrations not supporting spaceflight. Bush fired Dan Golden, and replaced him with a penny pinching moron in Sean O'Keffe. That guy gutted NASA's long term research, killed 7 astronauts and destroyed Columbia, and then sliced into the aerodynamics research. When Mike Griffin took over he was reportedly outraged at the research that had been eliminated.

Obama killed NASA. I really dont think the agency can recover. So we ride into space on vehicles built by the guys that brought you Chernobyl. Vehicles that were designed in the early 1960's, so poorly they have to have a separate module for re-entry!

I will lay odds that Boeing's CST or even Sierra Nevada's (SpaceDev) Dream Chaser will fly before Orion. SpaceX Dragon is scheduled for the first manned flight in 2015.

It is a bad time to be a Space Cadet...

[Moonwalker]

Obama killed NASA.

Yes and no. Let's say "the president" did. I.e. any other person in the office would have done so as well, as the economic situation and the situation of NASA does not offer other choices.

NASA already was a dead horse for decades, spending a lot of money for a bloated national job program which prevented further progress. The responsible persons are senators as well as decision makers inside NASA above all. NASA lacks of efficiency due to the fact that it is being used as a national job keeping program for decades, which produces rockets and blue prints that never fly, just for the sake to create and keep lots of jobs. Constellation was the most insane program for now, and would have never produced any real flying hardware without getting out of control in terms of budget. Almost any expert said it was nonsense, and Obama just had not other choice. He was just in the office at that time. A different president would have done the same thing.

Without restructuring, NASA won't ever fly to the moon again. NASA hasn't got anything, except work in progress of a LEO capsule. There is no further hardware. Not even a launch vehicle. And even if Obama didn't kill Constellation, NASA still wouldn't have the required hardware, because the required budget would have exploded beyond anything which any president or government would be willing to pay. Less than ever during the economic situation these days.

SpaceX as well as other companies will do job for NASA of carrying astronauts to an from the ISS in the future. There won't be manned missions to the moon. Not to mention asteroids. SLS just is another rocket which won't fly.

[bjbeard]

Apparently the first test flight of the Orion MPCV will be launched on a Delta IV...

I guess the SLS is just window dressing.

[Cras]

The SLS is not window dressing.   SLS is a BEO launch vehicle, and its purpose will be to launch any thing of large weight that needs to leave Earth orbit.   That includes deep space Orion flights, potential sample return robotic missions to Mars, other robotic flights to the various planets/moons in the Solar System that will be able to travel to their destinations faster and with larger payloads due to the massive upmass SLS provides.  That means larger payloads, and larger upper and trans stages.

If anything, it is manned Orion flights that you need to worry about.  SLS will fly.  How many times it will fly with a manned Orion capsule on top....that is what I worry about.

[Moonwalker]

I guess the SLS is just window dressing.

Yes. These days NASA does not produce rockets which fly manned. It's just for creating and maintaining as much jobs as possible.

No moon. No asteroid. Less than ever mars. They don't even reach low earth orbit currently. And if they do: what's next? They don't have any existing additional hardware to go any further. They work on the Orion MPCV for nearly 10 years. Imagine that half a century ago they managed to reach the moon from virtually zero within only 7 years.

Today the USA prefers funding things like PRISM and more than 700 US military bases globally. No need to be present in space anymore.

[Moonwalker]

The SLS is not window dressing.   SLS is a BEO launch vehicle, and its purpose will be to launch any thing of large weight that needs to leave Earth orbit.   That includes deep space Orion flights, potential sample return robotic missions to Mars, other robotic flights to the various planets/moons in the Solar System that will be able to travel to their destinations faster and with larger payloads due to the massive upmass SLS provides.  That means larger payloads, and larger upper and trans stages.

If anything, it is manned Orion flights that you need to worry about.  SLS will fly.  How many times it will fly with a manned Orion capsule on top....that is what I worry about.

Yeah. The plans are big, as usual. But there is no hardware to do all this beyond earth orbit proposals stuff manned.

[Cras]

Let alone any sort of movement for the 'Block II' SLS that is required for the manned Mars flight.  The initial SLS has no capability for sending humans to Mars and back. 

SLS will fly, that much I have faith in.     Orion may fly, I believe that to be more probable than some.   But an Orion ontop of an SLS.....I fear that we wont.    Especially if you start to hear NASA talk about the Moon again.   If NASA starts to talk about sending people back to the surface of the Moon, then kiss Mars goodbye.

[bjbeard]

Here is what is the issue, in my eyes. For some reason EVERYONE has gone back to what amounts to a DIRECT mission. Whatever happened to EOR profiles? Mars missions will not be a DIRECT launch. The SLS is designed to throw what 100-110,000lbs in LEO? Why not use the station as a rendezvous point to bring parts together and leave from LEO? That was one of the big reasons for putting the thing up there in the first place! Setup a fuel dump there, assemble a mission vehicle from different launches, and go out there!

I grew up with space exploration. I believed I actually had a chance to leave the planet forever. Now I am just a cynical, cheesed-off, and ashamed American. Ashamed that my country sees the most important activity we have ever done as a useless and expensive hole.

I really wish I could get these yahoo's to understand, but space exploration is one of those things that you get or you don't. There is no middle of the road.

[Cras]

I have no clue what NASA thinks a Mars flight profile is going to look like....it is really.....odd.     Their time table for SLS is so painfully slow.  SLS-1 being unmanned....yeah ok, I get that.   Sort of.

SLS-2 then is manned.....but two years later.

Two freaking years later until SLS flies again.    Maybe.   THere is some rumblings about SLS being used to throw a sample return robotic mission to Mars, but nothing certain there.

SLS-2 nobody seems to know what it will be.   NASA seems ready to deorbit ISS already, I see less and less likely it will go beyond 2020.  And if it is extended, by a very short amount, maybe 5 years.

NASA, if it gets its way, will construct a new small station at an L-point, that is where the off world staging will happen.   I am not sure exactly how much, but also keep in mind, SLS is not going to Mars first.   Its first destination will be the near-earth Asteroid that NASA wants to capture and place near the moon.    The initial SLS block will be unable to support a manned flight to Mars, the whole design is to wait for the block II for that, a variant of the SLS that we may never see.

I hope we do, I hope the US will stop being pathetic, stop funding so much war and give NASA a nice budget infusion.....I hope

[bjbeard]

Good luck with that. The guy that pointed us to the moon was assassinated remember?

Why do they kill the ones that actually make sense, and want to go out there?

[Cras]

You make it sound like the moon shot was the reason why he was killed.

[bjbeard]

You make it sound like the moon shot was the reason why he was killed.

HOLY THREAD RESURRECTION!!!

With EFT-1 trying to launch and the "Hold Hold Hold" pissing me off, I decided to revisit this thread.

No Kennedy was not killed for the Lunar program, new evidence is pointing to an accidental shooting by a USSS agent after this first shot the hit Kennedy and Connolly. Oops TMI!

I am surprised that there has been little mentioned about SLS during this coverage. 2 holds for wind, one for fill/drain valves and you know ULA is sweating bullets. Some 50,000 are lining the coast down there to see this damn launch, and all we are getting are holds...

They must be doing things really differently for this D4H launch. I dont remember this amy rules for a regular D4H launch.