Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

President Trump Signs Space Policy Directive 1

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 12 2017, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the To-the-Moon,-Alice!-To-the-Moon! dept.

takyon writes:

No more sending humans to an asteroid. We're going back to the Moon:

The policy calls for the NASA administrator to "lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities." The effort will more effectively organize government, private industry, and international efforts toward returning humans on the Moon, and will lay the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars.

"The directive I am signing today will refocus America's space program on human exploration and discovery," said President Trump. "It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints -- we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond."

The policy grew from a unanimous recommendation by the new National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, after its first meeting Oct. 5. In addition to the direction to plan for human return to the Moon, the policy also ends NASA's existing effort to send humans to an asteroid. The president revived the National Space Council in July to advise and help implement his space policy with exploration as a national priority.

President's remarks and White House release.

Presidential Memorandum on Reinvigorating America's Human Space Exploration Program

Also at Reuters and New Scientist.

Previously: Should We Skip Mars for Now and Go to the Moon Again?
How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
NASA Eyeing Mini Space Station in Lunar Orbit as Stepping Stone to Mars
NASA and Roscosmos Sign Joint Statement on the Development of a Lunar Space Station
Bigelow and ULA to Put Inflatable Module in Orbit Around the Moon by 2022

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
President Trump Signs Space Policy Directive 1 | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 100 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:40AM (#609159)

    ... and diverting funds (somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion) to SpaceX is a much smarter move.

    It is NEVER a good idea to push more money where no additional money is useful. Money is not time (except on a small subset of well-defined endeavors) , and I don't care that you've been told differently. There is equivalent of Amdahl's Law in research activities and it is also one of the causes for diminishing returns. If some research effort cannot be parallelized further, additional funding will get wasted or even hamper the progress by incurring new unnecessary problems. If state at any time happens to have a toxic amount of money surplus, it should just lower its debt thus preventing it from doing damage.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @12:41PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday December 13 2017, @12:41PM (#609195) Journal

    I didn't pull the $10 billion number out of thin air:

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/30/16384096/elon-musk-spacex-bfr-mars-rocket-development-business-demand [theverge.com]

    Musk made one thing very clear: SpaceX’s future is the BFR. The company is no longer going to put resources into improving its current line of Falcon 9 vehicles or its bigger, next-generation Falcon Heavy. Instead, all of the company’s research and development resources will go into creating the new monster rocket. “He can now use those same now-proven people who have built flight hardware to now redesign the spacecraft,” Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC, a space consulting firm, and a former member of the Trump administration’s NASA transition team, tells The Verge.

    The revenue SpaceX currently receives from launching satellites and servicing the International Space Station will also go toward funding the development of the rocket, Musk said. Right now, business does seem to be good: SpaceX has a full manifest of customers, and the company significantly increased its launch frequency to 13 so far this year (up from eight last year). NASA is also paying SpaceX to send cargo, and soon astronauts, to the ISS.

    Whether this is enough to fund the $10 billion development of a new rocket is unclear, though. And we’ll likely never know for sure. “The launch business is notoriously secretive in terms of prices,” Brian Weeden, a space expert at the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit that specializes in space security, tells The Verge. “Plus, the price of launching a satellite depends on how much you’re willing to pay, where you want to go — it depends on a lot of stuff.”

    It’s possible that SpaceX’s satellite business and NASA contracts are enough to fund the BFR’s development. But it’s likelier that the company will need additional funds — especially if Musk hopes to meet his “aspirational” deadline of sending the vehicle to the Red Planet by 2022. Private investment seems like an option. And another good source of money? The government.

    BFR is a scaled down version of the previous Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) plan. If NASA wanted ITS instead of BFR, we could come up with a different, presumably larger, number for that.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]