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from the One-of-these-days,-Alice...-to-the-Moon! dept.
Trump adds $1.6 billion to NASA budget request to kick start 'Artemis' moon mission
The Trump administration is adding an additional $1.6 billion to NASA's $21 billion 2020 budget request to kick start plans to return American astronauts to the moon in 2024, four years earlier than previously planned, NASA announced Monday. In a surprise announcement, agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the revitalized moon program will be named Artemis after the Greek goddess of the moon.
[...] According to a NASA fact sheet, the new budget request includes $1 billion "to enable NASA to being supporting the development of commercial human lunar landing systems three years earlier than previously envisioned. This acquisition strategy will allow NASA to purchase an integrated commercial lunar lander that will transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back."
Gateway development will be limited to what is needed to make the station a viable staging base for trips to the surface. That will free up $321 million for other moon spending. An additional $651 million is earmarked for the Space Launch System — SLS — heavy lift rocket and Orion spacecraft. Lunar surface technologies and propulsion systems would receive an additional $132 million with $90 million going to robotic exploration and research near the moon's south pole.
[...] The same day Bridenstine talked of the challenge of landing on the moon, Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos unveiled a lunar lander called Blue Moon that could put 6.5 metric tons on the surface of the moon. He said Blue Moon, carrying an ascent stage, could meet NASA's schedule for landing astronauts on the surface by 2024.
Previously: NASA Chief Says a Falcon Heavy Rocket Could Fly Humans to the Moon
Here's Why NASA's Audacious Return to the Moon Just Might Work
Lockheed Martin Proposes Streamlined Lunar Gateway for 2024 Manned Lunar Landing
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:39PM (7 children)
Except when it does things for an order of magnitude less like SpaceX did. That sort of thing.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 15 2019, @01:15AM (6 children)
SpaceX hasn't been to the Moon yet. SpaceX hasn't even been out of low-Earth orbit yet.
But yes. SpaceX is doing some really cool stuff for a lot less money than United Launch. Who are Boeing and Lockheed Martin, but that's not NASA's fault, that's because of corruption.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 15 2019, @01:42AM (1 child)
SpaceX did send a payload to the Moon. Unfortunately, it was an Israeli missile.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:25AM
Oh yes. I forgot about that.
To be fair to SpaceX, it wasn't their fault that mission failed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:37AM (2 children)
And when they do go to the Moon, you can be sure they're not going to dump a couple hundred billion dollars to do so (roughly the cost of the Apollo program in current dollars).
It's not SpaceX that's paying big money for that corruption.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 15 2019, @03:02AM (1 child)
The point I was making is that private enterprise is not some magic efficiency fairy.
Yes, I agree, SpaceX seems to be good at putting things into LEO cheaply.
Yes, the US government is corrupt. My point still stands.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 15 2019, @11:14AM
And yet, here we are discussing private enterprise that is vastly more efficient than any government agency worldwide in the field. That includes not just NASA, but government space programs of Russia, the ESA, China, India, etc (with the "etc" here being rather large, there are dozens of countries with various sorts of space activities).
You may have worked for 35 years in the private sector, but you haven't worked for SpaceX else you wouldn't have made your original claim, methinks.
Moving on, SpaceX isn't a fluke. There's a large number of companies throughout the world that demonstrate such efficiency gains over government, such as Amazon, Maersk, Coca Cola and Pepsi, any large restaurant chain, the entire private sector oil industry, etc. Even private partners in government corruption are pretty efficient at exploiting that corruption.
Then there's the other side of the coin. Sure, there are grossly inefficient businesses out there. But they'll only be out there as long as they can turn enough of a profit to stay in business. Government can stay in business till there's mass revolution. Will the US government become less corrupt and more efficient in a human lifetime? It's possible, but not likely. But those highly inefficient places you apparently have worked at for the past 35 years are likely to be replaced over that time span, even if they have government connections.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:58AM
Haven't been out of LEO? How about that car in Mars transfer orbit?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek