US plan to return to moon 'is dead'

[James Brown]

Every firefighter bets there life on the carbon wound high pressure air tanks that is a result of the space program. there are thousands of off-shoot technologies that will suffer if we don't push the envelope and stay ahead in what the USA does best. Cutting edge forward thinking.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

Hmm...last time we gained Teflon, integrated circuits, guidance systems, ball-pens, hydrogen fuel-cells and (arguably) foundations of what would become GPS.

Even if "gain" isn't direct, I believe space exploration is good for progress.

Also, they say that moon regolith is full of special Helium-isotope which can be burned in fusion reactors much easier than stuff we have.

Magellan NAVSTAR GPS was a military project from the very start AFAIK.

[BeyGon]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

Hmm...last time we gained Teflon, integrated circuits, guidance systems, ball-pens, hydrogen fuel-cells and (arguably) foundations of what would become GPS.

Even if "gain" isn't direct, I believe space exploration is good for progress.

Also, they say that moon regolith is full of special Helium-isotope which can be burned in fusion reactors much easier than stuff we have.

Fusion,

Race to the Moon for Nuclear Fuel

[m21sniper]

Bah, what do we need fusion reactors for?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Just one more thing the NIMBYs and environmentalist wackos (and the idiot politicians who support them, like Pelosi) will never let us build. They'll wait until the Iranians have it first.

[john walker's workshop]

how the hell did we ever get there in the 60s, no computers, etc,? did we?

[beepbeep]

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

how the hell did we ever get there in the 60s, no computers, etc,? did we?

there were computers, allright. Slow but used in smart and frugal way.

I believe control used IBM 360's and lander computer had whopping 4K of RAM and 36k of ROM, both magnetic core memory. It even had "multitasking" of cooperative type (akin Windows 3.11)

More info here:

Apollo Guidance Computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Given how much current-day computer technology is wasted on stupid and meaningless crap like "social networking" and ads I doubt that citing advances in computing technology is any way to really convince people that we ought to proceed with further development right now via the space program.

Also keep in mind that most computer technology used at NASA (at least the stuff used on manned & unmanned space vessels and aircraft) is pretty primitive - they're made to be robust, redundant and reliable - and power/weight efficient. Having oodles of processing power is seldom a concern.

It's possible to do lots of stuff with 286/386 processor technology - it all comes down to how efficiently the software is written to be and let's face it - most of the stuff written today for commercial use is very bloated, dependent on ever-increasing amounts of memory and power and saddled with unnecessary crap. NASA's stuff is very minimalist and streamlined so they can "do more with less". And yes, I do know this for a fact.

[BGCarrera32]

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

how the hell did we ever get there in the 60s, no computers, etc,? did we?

You actually had to pass a standard before moving on to the next grade in school, and you couldn't get your PhD "online".

The country had national pride. The president (JFK) put a goal in front of everyone and said we we're gonna get there by the end of the decade. And we did.

[m21sniper]

Well put BG.

[legion]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

there were computers, allright. Slow but used in smart and frugal way.

I believe control used IBM 360's and lander computer had whopping 4K of RAM and 36k of ROM, both magnetic core memory. It even had "multitasking" of cooperative type (akin Windows 3.11)

I work on the direct descendants of the System 360: the zServer. I can tell you all about IMS, VSAM, VTAM, etc... Heck, I'm pretty sure we still have code running that was written in the 60's on punchcards...

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

Also keep in mind that most computer technology used at NASA (at least the stuff used on manned & unmanned space vessels and aircraft) is pretty primitive - they're made to be robust, redundant and reliable - and power/weight efficient. Having oodles of processing power is seldom a concern.

It's possible to do lots of stuff with 286/386 processor technology - it all comes down to how efficiently the software is written to be and let's face it - most of the stuff written today for commercial use is very bloated, dependent on ever-increasing amounts of memory and power and saddled with unnecessary crap. NASA's stuff is very minimalist and streamlined so they can "do more with less". And yes, I do know this for a fact.

The art hasn't been completely lost. Trust me, I've spent many years rewriting bloated, inefficient code from vendors. I had one process that was taking 45 minutes to process a single transaction when the vendor gave it to me. Given that it has to process 100,000 transactions in a 2-hour window, this was simply unacceptable. By the time I was done rewriting the process (which is a series of very complex calculations), I had it down to .5 seconds a transaction. Yes, I realize that still would take 13 hours to process 100,000 transactions in serial, but running multiple instances in parallel fixed that part. The problem was when it was taking 45 minutes per transaction, we simply couldn't afford the hardware to fix the problem that way, and it wouldn't have done much good because the data access routines caused too much contention anyway.

Originally Posted by BGCarrera32

The country had national pride. The president (JFK) put a goal in front of everyone and said we we're gonna get there by the end of the decade. And we did.

Today, it takes ten years just to do the environmental impact studies before you can start.

[jyl]

NASA's Constellation Program was started in 2004 when President Bush announced a program to put men on Mars.

Bush said going to Mars was going to be affordable. In 2004 he proposed increasing NASA's budget by $1BN/yr over 5 years - to about $16BN/yr - to pay for establishing a base on the Moon to launch a Mars mission. News story:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2004 - President Bush proposed on Wednesday to develop a new spacecraft to carry Americans back to the moon as early as 2015, and to establish a long-term base there as an eventual springboard to Mars and beyond.

"Inspired by all that has come before and guided by clear objectives, today we set a new course for America's space program," he declared during a speech at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Although the president sketched out a time line that extended to 2020, he spelled out the financial details only through 2008, and said NASA would receive just $1 billion in new money over that time. That meant the bulk of the space initiative would be in the hands of future administrations.

The Moon was not the purpose of the Constellation program. It was merely going to be a jumping-off point for a Mars mission. News story:

By PATTY REINERT Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
March 3, 2004, 1:21PM
WASHINGTON -- Forget about spending much time on the moon. President Bush's $16.2 billion NASA budget proposal envisions annual lunar missions, by humans and robots, as mere steppingstones to exploring Mars and beyond.

Since the Apollo lunar program ended in 1972, NASA has not developed any spacecraft capable of carrying humans farther than the international space station, which orbits 240 miles above the Earth. The agency also hasn't figured out how to keep humans healthy in space for a round trip to Mars.

Still, agency officials say they aren't ruling out a human expedition to the Red Planet as early as 2018.
"This is not about sending humans back to the moon," NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said, showing a computer-aided presentation with "Humans to the Moon" in a circle with a red slanted line through it.

"The reason we're going to the moon is because we don't know today how to go to Mars," he said. "We're going to be using the moon first and foremost as a test bed to prepare the way for things we know humans could do of great value on Mars."

It was obvious even in 2004 that $16BN/yr for NASA wasn't remotely close to what it would cost to establish a moonbase and from there launch an eventual mission to Mars, and it was also obvious that the Mars mission wouldn't happen for decades. NASA went ahead with Constellation despite these concerns.

Over the next 4 years, NASA's progress on Constellation didn't answer these concerns. It made them worse.

By 2008 NASA had spent or committed appx $10BN to Constellation. NASA's planned spending on Constellation had increased to $97BN by 2020. NASA's schedule by that point was for first manned flight of the Orion Earth-Moon spacecraft by 2014 and the first mission to the Moon in 2018-2020.

In other words, we were going to spend $97BN (assuming no more budget increases, right) over a decade (assuming no more delays) to get as far as actually landing a man on the Moon.

Then there were more problems. GAO report:

In December 2008, NASA determined that the current Constellation program was high risk and unachievable within the current budget and schedule. To increase its level of confidence in the Constellation program baseline NASA delayed the first crewed flight from September 2014 to March 2015 and according to officials, adopted a two-phased approach to developing the Orion vehicle. NASA’s original strategy for the Orion project was to develop one vehicle capable of supporting both ISS and lunar missions. According to the Constellation program manager, the Constellation program is currently deferring work on Orion lunar content beyond 2015 to focus its efforts on developing a vehicle that can fly the ISS mission. This phased approach, however, could require two qualification programs for the Orion vehicle— one pre-2015 Orion qualification program for ISS mission requirements and a second post-2015 Orion qualification program for lunar mission requirements. According to the program manager, the knowledge gained from flying the initial Orion to the ISS will inform the design of the lunar vehicle. The Constellation program manager also told us that NASA is unwilling to further trade schedule in order to reduce risk.

So now we were going to spend our $97BN (?) to have a first manned flight in 2015 of a spacecraft that would only get to earth orbit - e.g. to support the International Space Station. The ISS was scheduled to be retired in 2015! And then we would try to build a vehicle to get to the Moon. Getting to the Moon by 2020 wasn't sounding very likely at all.

In 2009 an expert commission (the Augustine Commission) examined Constellation's status. They reported that the program could not proceed on the current budget. August 09 Summary Report:

The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.

It also concluded that Constellation's schedule would slip even further - we wouldn't even be capable of supporting the ISS until 2017.

The original 2005 schedule showed Ares I and Orion available to support ISS in 2012, only two years after scheduled Shuttle retirement. The current schedule now shows that date as 2015. An independent assessment of the technical, budgetary and schedule risk to the Constellation Program performed for the Committee indicates that an additional delay of at least two years is likely.2 This means that Ares I and Orion will not reach ISS before the Station’s currently planned termination, and the length of the gap in U.S. ability to launch astronauts into space will be no less than seven years.

So, what started as a massively-ambitious program to reach Mars, kicked off by Bush in 2004 with clearly inadequate funding, was devolving into a struggle to get a new spacecraft to the International Space Station 2 years after the ISS was scheduled to be retired.

What about the Moon and Mars part? To many people, going back to the moon in maybe 10 years, in a capsule and lander that look just like Apollo from 40 years ago, is - well - just not that exciting. Even NASA said it, back in 2004: "This is not about sending humans back to the moon". And a mission to Mars looks so far off to most Americans - 30 years? - that it is hard to spend $200BN with only that as the goal. Maybe if one of the robots finds life there or something, the country will get more interested.

So, in the end, I'm sort of sad that the Constellation Program didn't succeed, but if you think that government programs that have run off the tracks should be terminated rather than becoming unkillable $100BN money sinks . . . then you have to consider that killing this one might have been the right thing to do.


MarsNews.com :: NewsWire Archive for Budget
NASA constellation program history - Google Search
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09844.pdf
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/384767main_SUMMARY%20REPORT%20-%20FINAL.pdf

[BeyGon]

If fusion reactors become the viable energy source we can always buy it from the Chinese just like we now buy our oil from the mid east. The Chinese have plans to go to the moon and they think it is in their best interest.