Now we get Bush's big space agenda...

Does that mean that you will be the featured entertainer, on-stage and in the VIP blowjob area, at Treasures the day after the election????

I just might have to pay some money to see me some o'dat fine shisizzlenizzleofizzilization!!!!!

 

What is your profession that allows you to make this statement? Also, please show me an example of an exploration that wasn't foolhardy. I feel that this effort will produce more than just a human being on Mars, but advances in science in technology that will only be able to calculated when the feat is accomplished. In my humble opinion this more about man pushing himself than politics.

 

Hi, P.E.F. I'm a physicist, and I used to work for NASA. My pa worked on the apollo missions, so I've been thinking about this stuff for a while. That said, I am *not* an astrophysicist; it's not my subfield of expertise, so I'm not an expert at all.

We have invited talks here at the university all the time, and I've been very struck by the work of astronomers who study the sun. The radiation coming from solar flares is truly intimidating, and all of these people in the know mention that a space mission would be toast if it encountered a flare. We were very fortunate with the moon missions, in this respect, but those missions were so, so short compared to what a Mars mission would entail, where you've got astronauts floating around up there for *years* in which time we'll definitely have a couple of flares.

*But* what I love about your post, and what I really agree with, is that goals like this one really push technology. When we planned the moon missions, NASA literally had to sit down and say "okay, to get from point F to point G, we're going to need a total breakthrough in technology." That's what was so wonderful about the old NASA when compared with the more modern NASA, an institution that primary takes everything off the shelf and does not challenge itself enough.

So, my take needs a lot of criticism. If I'm saying "people were made to exist in space!" then you can point to fuddy-duddies from other eras who said "people don't belong in the air!" or "people can't breathe if a train moves at 40 mph!" et cetera.

I don't criticize Bush for this move at all, actually. I don't think the space industry is a powerful enough lobby to argue the corporate pork angle, but I could be very wrong about that, and I'm sentimentally attached to NASA anyway.

 

The technology transfer from NASA has been prodigious, but is doing something that might generate some widespread technological uses the most efficient way to develop new technologies?

 

As B-Bob states, the flare problem is one of the big obstacles. We'll have to create a lead lined panic room which the astronauts will have to use periodically.

I think it's funny that folks are complaining about pointing out the track record and the facts. If one wishes to dispute my recollection of history or any of the facts quoted above, please do so, whining about it really isn't a debate.

 

The main obstacles pointed as, as Woofer originally said, are limits set by current technology. There is no reason to believe an actual manned mission to Mars would have such limitations. Further, how can we expect to overcome those limitations without mounting the effort to do so.

 

I suppose, for me, it comes down to the following simple bit.

We can learn just as much (literally) with unmanned missions, so the justification for manned missions is ultimately emotional. It has a deep, irrational meaning to people, and maybe that's justification enough. It doesn't hold a lot of romance for me, but I'm one cold nerd freak for sure.

As for the technological challenges, here's a couple to ponder.

1) From what I understand of the flare problem, the lead-lined room would only be adequate if the lead was ridiculously thick. The idea of a "panic room" is pretty good, because they'd have plenty of advance warning (one to three days I think). Maybe we can develop some new radiation shielding technologies. However, that's tough. You can only stop some of these critters by having them run into something. Lead is handy because it's so dense, and we will be hard pressed to make something a whole lot more dense. I've been wondering if the best bet would be to surround the Mars mission craft with a decent magnetic field (that's what the earth has that protects us here, in large part).

2) Bone density of astronauts apparently decreases quickly when they stay in zero-G environments. I've heard estimates that the astronauts legs would be pretty brittle (dangerously so) when they arrived on Mars, even with its lesser gravity. Nevermind what happens to the astronauts by the time they get back to Earth. They'd be ready for the Warriors roster, they'd be so injury prone. So what to do? Can we address this medically, or do we have to build an enormous rotating hub (a la 2001, the movie) that could create at least a little simulated gravity.

 

I'd love to believe space travel would be attainable and common in my lifetime, but we need a couple of generations of new tech advances to get past some of these hurdles. I'm putting my bet on the space elevator happening first.

 

I, for one, applaud this vision, even though it comes from a man I suspect couldn't find his a$$ with both hands, a flashlight, and a roadmap. Missions to the moon could have some immediate impacts (the article metions mining helium-3 for an energy source) and could also prepare us to go to Mars by creating a staging area at L-1 (a point directly between the gravitational forces of the Earth and moon) and forcing us to come up with technologies to defeat such problems as solar flares and the physical challenges of spaceflight.

My mother and stepfather both work for NASA and we have had extensive conversations about this and we DO have the technology to begin this project, though as with the moon landings in the '70s, we would have to have a few breakthroughs to complete it.

As has been mentioned before, now we just have to fund it.

 

They must be able to grow some pretty good herb on Mars.

 

Gregg Easterbrook, who I don't always agree with by any means, puts the hammer down on this idea...
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1/09/04

OVER THE MOON PART III: Are there senior citizens who need prescription drugs on the Moon? Does the religious right favor a Moon base? How about illegal immigrants, would they be willing to take Moon jobs that Americans don't want?

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what possible reason--other than science illiteracy at the White House--there could be for George W. Bush to announce a plan to build a Moon base. Manned exploration of Mars is even crazier.

As this space pointed out last month, minimum weight at departure from low-Earth orbit for a stripped-down, austere Moon base might be 600 tons, and at current NASA launch prices, it costs $15 billion to place 600 tons into low-Earth orbit. Fifteen billion is NASA's entire budget--and that's just the cost to launch the Moon thing, not to build it, staff it, and support it.

An Apollo spacecraft at departure from low-Earth orbit for the Moon weighed about 45 tons, and the manned part was tiny--astronauts could not stand up or move inside--as most of the weight was fuel. Considering that Moon-base weight would also be mostly fuel, numerous launches firing 600 tons toward the Moon for the purpose of making a base would actually result in little more than a couple of metal huts, some supplies and some antennas. Program cost for the International Space Station, currently losing air pressure, is about $100 billion, and it does not leave orbit. A rough guess would be that to build something about the size of the International Space Station (ISS) on the Moon would cost at least twice as much, $200 billion. And the ISS itself is mainly cramped modules, supplies, and antennas.

What would astronauts at a Moon base do? I haven't the foggiest notion. Note that NASA has not so much as sent a robot probe to the Moon in 30 years, because as far as space-exploration advocates can tell, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, of value to do on the Moon. Geologists are interested in the Moon's formation. If there is ever a fusion reactor to meet the world's energy needs, the "helium three" on the Moon might prove useful, but fusion reactors are decades away from practicality, assuming they ever work. Spending $200 billion on a Moon base that does nothing would be pure, undiluted government waste.

And a Moon base would not only not be useful to support a Mars mission--it would be an obstacle to a Mars mission. Any weight bound for Mars can far more efficiently depart directly from low-Earth orbit than a first stop at the Moon; a stop at the Moon would require huge expenditures of fuel to land and take off again. The landing, in turn, would accomplish absolutely nothing--any mission components on the Moon would have been sent there from Earth, which means they could have departed directly for Mars from low-Earth orbit at a far lower cost.

In the days to come, any administration official who says that a Moon base could support a Mars mission is revealing himself or herself to be a total science illiterate. When you hear, "A Moon base could support a Mars mission," substitute the words, "I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about." Hint to reporters: If any administration official says "a Moon base could support a Mars mission," quickly ask, "What was the fuel fraction of the Lunar Excursion Module?" The answer is two-thirds. The LEM was what landed on the Moon during Apollo, and rocket propulsion has not changed much since, meaning that any future Mars spacecraft that stops at the Moon will expend two-thirds of its weight merely to land there and take off again. This renders the idea of stopping at the Moon on the way to Mars patent drivel. (Actually only about 15 percent of the descent weight of the LEM returned to lunar orbit, so the fuel-fraction calculation for a Moon stopover is even worse.)

Now, about this business of going to Mars. The Red Planet is plenty interesting, and men and women are sure to go there someday. For the moment, talk of a Mars mission is complete bunkum.

The Apollo spacecraft weighed 45 tons at departure from low-Earth orbit: it was gone for about ten days, carried three people and traveled about 800,000 miles total. A Mars mission would be gone for a minimum of a year (probably longer), carry at least six people (a geologist, a biologist, two physicians, and two career astronauts would be a skeleton crew), and travel 100 million miles or more total (the distance to Mars varies significantly depending on the launch year). So let's make a conservative guess and say an austere Mars-bound mission would weigh 25 times what an Apollo mission weighed, at departure from low-Earth orbit.

Now we're up to an 1,125-ton spacecraft and a $28 billion launch cost. (Probably a Mars mission would operate in segments, with several robot supply ships departing long before the manned craft; but for the cost calculation, the driving factor is total weight.) Twenty-eight billion is twice NASA's budget and, again, that is just the cost to launch the thing, not to build the ship, staff it and support it. When Bush's father asked NASA in 1989 about a Mars mission, the agency shot back a total program cost of $400 billion. That's $600 billion in today's money, and sounds about right as a Mars mission estimate. This is assuming no pointless stopover at the Moon; add a Moon base and the price zooms toward $1 trillion! We're getting into the range here of the national debt.

Some lunatics--I use that word in its astronomical context--have suggested a Mars mission could be done with a total spacecraft weight of only a couple hundred tons. Not if we want the people back! The manned part of a Mars ship would need incredible redundancy, perhaps two complete operating sections each capable of return to Earth, in case some failure occurs on the long transit. Radiation exposure will be far more of a factor in Mars travel than it was going to the Moon, which orbits within Earth's magnetic field, so many tons of shielding will be needed. The Mars ship will require a full operating theater and at least two surgeons on the crew, since what if the doctor is the one who gets injured? Probably an entire Mars ship would have to be assembled and sent there and back unmanned, just to ensure that the hardware works: meaning dozens of billions of dollars to fly an empty ship to Mars, and imagine how voters will like that. And even if the mission involves a very well-made spaceship with incredibly redundant system--and no president will authorize anything less, who would risk having to sit watching CNN show images of stranded astronauts dying on Mars?--there is risk a tragedy or fiasco.

One parting thought on the practicality of Mars. Spirit, the rover that just landed there, weighs half a ton. Spirit cost $410 million to build and place on Mars--and it's about the size of a refrigerator, and does not come back. Mars-mission proponents want to send something to the Red Planet the size of an office building, and bring it back.

What NASA needs right now is not an absurd, bank-breaking grand mission: It needs to spend a decade researching a safer lower-cost alternative to the space shuttle.

And why might George W. Bush endorse a Moon base or Mars mission? Either he's a science illiterate surrounded by advisors who are science illiterates, or it's a blank check for aerospace contractors.

 

The WaPo story... I'm glad they're facing up to the real costs and that the decision is purely scientific and not based on politics.
_________
Bush Plans To Call for Settlement On Moon
Manned Mars Mission Is Longer-Term Goal

By Mike Allen and Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A01


President Bush will announce plans next week to establish a permanent human settlement on the moon and to set a goal of eventually sending Americans to Mars, administration sources said last night.

The sources said Bush will announce a new "human exploration" agenda in Washington on Wednesday, six days ahead of the final State of the Union address of his term and just as his reelection campaign moves from the planning stage to its public phase.

The plans grew out of a White House group that was assigned to examine the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1, throwing the future of the space program into doubt.

Officials were unwilling to provide cost figures or details and would say only that Bush will direct the government to immediately begin research and development to establish a human presence or base on the moon, with the goal of having that lead to a manned mission to Mars. That endeavor could be a decade or more away, the officials said.

The last humans on the moon, the crew of Apollo 17, landed in 1972.

Even advocates within the administration said the new project is sure to be a difficult sell on Capitol Hill because of the huge costs at a time when the administration is projecting mammoth deficits for years to come, and had promised to cut the shortfall in half over the next five years.

Another objection is likely to be that the existing human space flight program is still struggling to recover from the shuttle accident. The shuttle fleet is grounded until at least September and is unable to resupply the U.S.-led international space station, which is currently relying on Russian vehicles and operating with a caretaker crew of two instead of the usual three. However, some space analysts have suggested that the very extent of the program's troubles may have helped generate a consensus around the notion that only a dramatic remedy would save it.

NASA's budget this year is about $15 billion, and officials there have been told to expect an increase in the budget the president will send to Congress in February.

Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, proposed a sustained commitment to human exploration of the solar system -- with a return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars -- in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. NASA came up with a budget-busting cost estimate of $400 billion, which sank the project.

The United States currently lacks the scientific and technical foundation required to send humans to Mars, and scientists still find it daunting just to land a robot there safely, as the events of the past week have shown.

Any new moon or Mars mission would take years to develop, scientists said.

Advocates of a return to the moon, already successfully conquered, have argued that a lunar initiative would be useful scientifically and envision the moon as a base for developing technologies and rehearsing the dispatch of humans to a much more distant and isolated landing zone on Mars.

With the Saturn 5 moon rockets, now spread across the land as museum pieces, astronauts could reach the moon in about three days, while a trip to Mars could take six months or more. Any worthwhile lunar initiative would require the development of a substantial rocket, some analysts have suggested.

Sources involved in the discussions said Bush and his advisers view the new plans for human space travel as a way to unify the country behind a gigantic common purpose at a time when relations between the parties are strained and polls show that Americans are closely divided on many issues.

"It's going back to being a uniter, not a divider," a presidential adviser said, echoing language from Bush's previous campaign, "and trying to rally people emotionally around a great national purpose."

Another official involved in the discussions used similar language, saying that some of Bush's aides want him to have a "Kennedy moment" -- a reference to President John F. Kennedy's call in 1961 for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

"It's a national unifying thing, it's a world unifying thing," this official said.

The sources said Bush aides also view the initiative as a huge jobs program, and one that will stimulate business in the many parts of the country where space and military contractors are located.

"This is a boon for business and a boon for Texas," one official said, referring to the state where Bush was governor and the location of the Johnson Space Center, which is the home of mission control and the nerve center for human space flight.

The decision was controversial within the White House, with some aides arguing that it would make more sense to focus immediately on Mars, since humans have already landed on the moon and a Mars mission would build cleanly on the success of Spirit, the U.S. rover that landed safely on Mars last weekend. Bush himself settled the divisions, according to the sources, working from options that had been narrowed down by his senior adviser, Karl Rove.

One presidential adviser, who asked not to be identified, said, after discussing the initiative with administration officials, that the idea is "crazy" and mocked it as the "mission to Pluto."

"It costs a lot of money and we don't have money," the official said. "This is destructive of any sort of budget restraint." The official added that the initiative makes any rhetoric by Bush about fiscal restraint "look like a feint."

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who was a key participant in the White House policy review, said in an interview recently that one goal of any new policy would be to provide much needed clarity to a program that has been drifting.

 

I'll take Raping America for the Favor of Lobby Interests for $600 Alex

 

It's been over 30 years since our last trip to the moon, and it will be many more years. Who would have thought that it would take us so long to return?

 

Rimrocker, great article, the only problem with the facts is it takes more than a sound bite to explain why the Bushies are taking us for a bunch of tools. So the Bushies get a win with the nice space and tech and looking forward soundbite in fifteen seconds. Debunking crap generally takes much more time, energy and thought than most people are willing to put up with. It's like the no child left behind fed education plan (with ridiculous mandates for schools with special circumstances and no funding ), or lower arsenic in water plan( which actually backpedaled after requesting more science and finding the science backs much less arsenic than initially thought).

 

Pay close attention to the last paragraph in this story. Is it a coincidence that NASA is one of the leaders in collecting info that supports the global warming thesis?
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UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International
Published 1/8/2004 7:30 PM
View printer-friendly version


WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- American astronauts will return to the moon early in the next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore Mars and nearby asteroids, President Bush is expected to propose next week as part of a sweeping reform of the U.S. space program.

To pay for the new effort -- which would require a new generation of spacecraft but use Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules in the interim -- NASA's space shuttle fleet would be retired as soon as construction of the International Space Station is completed, senior administration sources told United Press International.

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago. It commits the United States to an aggressive and far-reaching mission that holds interplanetary space as the human race's new frontier.

Sources said Bush's impending announcement climaxes an unprecedented review of NASA and of America's civilian space goals -- manned and robotic. The review has been proceeding for nearly a year, involving closed-door meetings under the supervision of Vice President Dick Cheney, sources said. The administration examined a wide range of ideas, including new, reusable space shuttles and even exotic concepts such as space elevators.

To begin the initiative, the president will ask Congress for a down payment of $800 million for fiscal year 2005, most of which will go to develop new robotic space vehicles and begin work on advanced human exploration systems. Bush also plans to ask Congress to boost NASA's budget by 5 percent annually over at least the next five years, with all of the increase supporting space exploration. With the exception of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, no other agency is expected to receive a budget increase above inflation in FY 2005.

Along with retiring the shuttle fleet, the new plan calls for NASA to convert a planned follow-on spacecraft -- called the orbital space plane -- into versions of a new spaceship called the crew exploration vehicle. NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station project about the same time the moon landings would begin -- beginning in 2013, according to an administration timetable shown to UPI.

The first test flights of unmanned prototypes of the CEV could occur as soon as 2007. An orbital version would replace the shuttle to transport astronauts to and from the space station. However, sources said, the current timetable leaves a period several years when NASA would lack manned space capability -- hence the need to use Soyuz vehicles for flights to the station. Ariane rockets also might be used to launch lunar missions.

During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.

The various models of the CEV would be 21st century versions of the 1960s Apollo spacecraft. When they become operational, they would be able to conduct various missions in Earth orbit, travel to and land on the moon, send astronauts to rendezvous with nearby asteroids, and eventually serve as part of a series of manned missions to Mars.

Under the current plan, sources said, the first lunar landings would carry only enough resources to test advanced equipment that would be employed on voyages beyond the moon. Because the early moon missions would use existing rockets, they could deliver only small equipment packages. So the initial, return-to-the-moon missions essentially would begin where the Apollo landings left off -- a few days at a time, growing gradually longer. The human landings could be both preceded and accompanied by robotic vehicles.

The first manned Mars expeditions would attempt to orbit the red planet in advance of landings -- much as Apollo 8 and 10 orbited the moon but did not land. The orbital flights would conduct photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface before sending landing craft, said sources familiar with the plan's details.

Along with new spacecraft, NASA would develop other equipment needed to allow humans to explore other worlds, including advanced spacesuits, roving vehicles and life support equipment.

As part of its new space package, sources said, the administration will convene an unusual presidential commission to review NASA's plans as they unfold. The group would consider such factors as the design of the spacecraft; the procedure for assembly, either in Earth orbit or lunar orbit; the individual elements the new craft should contain, such as capsules, supply modules, landing vehicles and propellant stages, and the duration and number of missions and size of crews.

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort. Further details about the plan and the space agency's revised budget will be announced in NASA briefings next week and when the president delivers his FY 2005 budget to Congress.

 

follow ups:

You know, I just don't buy the special interest angle. I think this is much, much more political. It makes for a nice story, and heck, how can you oppose a trip to Mars, right? I think there is a bit of sincerity in the "uniting" message, and we do have deep and troubling divisions within the country. Sure, it's mainly a uniting until we move past November 2004 sort of thing, but I still think you can take of it at face value.

Just called my old man on this one. He was a NASA guy for thirty years, including like I said all the moon missions, blah blah. He's absolutely dead set against it. Most of all, he said the moon idea was the most ludicrous. Maybe it's genetic: we have the same settings perhaps. That being said, this is an old man who still gets very excited about each little discovery. He's geeked on the current unmanned mission. (The early data are very encouraging, by the way).

His bottom line point, which I found very interesting: think of taking all the money it will cost to build a moon base and/or get a human (living) to Mars. Take that money and spend every dollar on unmanned missions, and just think of what we'd learn about the universe. It blows me away. For the trillions (and I mean trillions) of dollars the Bush proposal would take, we may well be able to push for an unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri, or a whole new generations of space telescopes and observation platforms that could lead us to finding life-bearing planets around other stars.

Okay, peace out. Lord knows I've been posting more than enough.