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posted by mrpg on Thursday June 21 2018, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the rosie-jetson dept.

NASA's Space Launch System: Rocketing Towards Cancellation?

The National Space Society recently held a conference in Los Angeles, and SLS was apparently a hot topic at the gathering. Over the course of four days of mingling with space industry muckety-mucks, Politico Space reports it heard multiple rumblings that bode ill for the Space Launch System money-pot.

For one thing, SLS has been marketed as key to NASA's efforts to eventually put astronauts on Mars. But as Politico reports, attendees at the conference expressed doubts as to "the wisdom or efficacy of a crewed mission to Mars in the next decade." California Republican and House space subcommittee member Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, for one, criticized the technology as too immature to support a manned Mars mission, saying "I think all this talk about going to Mars has been premature," and warning that NASA won't actually be ready to conduct a manned Mars mission before "20 years from now, maybe more."

Astronaut Chris Hadfield says the rockets from NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin won't take people to Mars

[Chris] Hadfield, who's now retired, shares his expertise about rockets, spaceships, spacewalking, and Mars exploration in a new web course on the online platform MasterClass. To follow up on those lessons, we asked Hadfield what he thinks about the future rocket ships of three major players in the new space race: NASA's Space Launch System, SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket, and Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.

[...] "Personally, I don't think any of those three rockets is taking people to Mars," Hadfield told Business Insider. " I don't think those are a practical way to send people to Mars because they're dangerous and it takes too long."

Response to Hadfield's remarks: SpaceX BFR can be used for massive space development, orbital, lunar and Mars colonization

Former astronaut criticizes lunar gateway plans

A former NASA astronaut used an appearance at a National Space Council meeting June 18 to argue that a key element of NASA's plans to return humans to the moon should be reconsidered.

Appearing on a panel during the meeting at the White House, Terry Virts said that the proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a human-tended facility in orbit around the moon, wasn't an effective next step in human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit after the International Space Station.

"It essentially calls for building another orbital space station, a skill my colleagues and I have already demonstrated on the ISS," he said. "Gateway will only slow us down, taking time and precious dollars away from the goal of returning to the lunar surface and eventually flying to Mars."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:02PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:02PM (#696182)

    The station has been in service a long time. The fed doesn't want it. The fed does want a lunar station. So, move the ISS to lunar orbit?

    How much of the maint costs in the stations budget come from service to and from the station? So if you lift the station slowly over a decade or so (with ion drives perhaps), then the to and from become redundant expenses with the lunar missions, and the whole system gets cheaper.

    Yes I'm aware that isn't what it was designed for. But it is awefully hard to complain about how the ISS is a drag on lunar funding, when the ISS is driving both the schedule and the budget of the lunar program.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:14PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:14PM (#696186) Journal

    It is an international station so there may be some trouble there. Russia had vague plans to detach some of its own modules to form a new station. But the U.S. and Russia are collaborating on the LOP-G lunar station (which was going to be a much smaller station anyway).

    China recently announced [soylentnews.org] that it would let any country participate in its space station program. Why not use BFR tankers to boost ISS towards the Moon, and then end the ban on NASA collaboration with China and send astronauts and even some new modules to their station?

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:22PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday June 21 2018, @02:22PM (#696189) Journal

    Mars space stations like Mars Base Camp [engadget.com] would probably be crap and expensive compared to SpaceX+BFR plans. If we want to go the Mars space station route, we could put astronauts on Phobos instead. In the very long term, we could convert the interior of Phobos into a station instead of hanging out on the surface, and use propulsion to keep it from breaking up or colliding with Mars.

    Boosting ISS to lunar orbit or Lagrange point takes care of the need to periodically boost it due to atmospheric decay. It could make fine adjustments in its orbit using ion engines. Sending the ISS to Mars sounds like a hassle, if not an impossibility.

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:34PM

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:34PM (#696308) Journal

    The ISS was not designed for and cannot easily be adapted to operations outside of LEO. It's the wrong tool for the job. The people that lived on it would be at dramatically increased cancer risk.

    If you did want to try it, the plane change maneuver to bring it into the moon's orbital plane would cost more fuel than the actual trip out to the moon.

    You could strap on a bunch of fuel and oxidizer tanks for the trip.
    You could add on extra radiation shielding for crew quarters.
    You could refit it with stronger radio transmitters.
    You could reinforce its structural connections.
    You could move its orbit out to Lunar Orbit.
    ... and then you'd have spent more money than it would cost to do the job properly in the first place.
    ... and have no way to get rid of your trash.
    ......including your resupply vehicles that use Earth's atmosphere to de-orbit.
    ... and have to send resupply missions to the moon every 3 months.

    It is non-trivial.