AP-NORC poll: Asteroid watch more urgent than Mars trip
Americans prefer a space program that focuses on potential asteroid impacts, scientific research and using robots to explore the cosmos over sending humans back to the moon or on to Mars, a poll shows.
The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, lists asteroid and comet monitoring as the No. 1 desired objective for the U.S. space program. About two-thirds of Americans call that very or extremely important, and about a combined 9 in 10 say it's at least moderately important.
The poll comes as the White House pushes to get astronauts back on the moon, but only about a quarter of Americans said moon or Mars exploration by astronauts should be among the space program's highest priorities. About another third called each of those moderately important.
"More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."
Related Stories
NASA won't launch a mission to hunt deadly asteroids:
NASA says it can't afford to build a space telescope considered the fastest way to identify asteroids that might impact the Earth with terrible consequences.
A 2015 law gave the space agency five years to identify 90% of near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters in diameter, which could devastate cities, regions and even civilization itself if they were to impact the planet. NASA isn't going to meet that deadline, and scientists believe they have so far only identified about a third of the asteroids considered a threat.
Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led by principal investigator Amy Mainzer, developed a proposal for a space telescope called NEOCam that would use infrared sensors to find and measure near-Earth objects. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report this spring concluding that NEOCam was the fastest way to meet the asteroid-hunting mandate. But NASA will not approve the project to begin development. "The Planetary Defense Program at NASA does not currently have sufficient funding to approve development of a full space-based NEO survey mission as was proposed by the NEOCam project," a NASA spokesperson told Quartz this week.
The agency said it was prioritizing funding for ground-based telescopes looking for asteroids, though the NAS report concluded that they would not fulfill its mandate. The agency is also funding the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission (DART), which will pilot the technologies needed to do something about any threatening near-Earth objects. Still, the agency said the infrared telescope proposed for NEOCam "could be ready for any future flight mission development effort."
Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam).
See also: Poll: Americans Want NASA To Focus More On Asteroid Impacts, Less On Getting To Mars
Related: Nathan Myhrvold Challenges NASA's NEOWISE Asteroid Results With Peer-Reviewed Paper
SpaceX Drops Protest of "Lucy" Contract, Gets Double Asteroid Redirection Test Contract
Americans Polled on Attitudes Toward the Space Program
NASA mission to track near Earth objects takes shape
A revamped NASA mission to search for near Earth objects from space has secured funding to start development as the agency works out details about how it will be managed.
The fiscal year 2020 "minibus" spending bill signed into law by President Trump Dec. 20 that provides $22.63 billion for NASA includes $35.6 million to start development of the Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveillance Mission. That mission would fly a small space telescope with an infrared camera to discover and track NEOs, helping identify any that pose an impact risk to the Earth.
[...] NEO Surveillance Mission is the successor to NEOCam, a similar mission concept that was one of the finalists in the most recent round of the Discovery program. While NASA did not select NEOCam in early 2017 for development, it did provide funding to allow work to continue on its infrared detectors.
Zurbuchen said at the meeting that the reason for going from NEOCam to NEO Surveillance Mission was because the goals of the mission were not strictly scientific. The mission is designed to meet a congressionally mandated goal to identify all NEOs at least 140 meters in diameter, which represent those large enough to do damage on a regional or global scale in the event of an impact.
"The only reason we want every 140-meter object is not because we need it to do all the science," he said. "It's because we want to understand whether one of them is on a collision course over time to Earth."
Previously: NASA's Asteroid-Finding NEOCam Cancelled
Related: Americans Polled on Attitudes Toward the Space Program
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @02:10AM (7 children)
If Americans see ANY urgency in getting into space, that's good. IMO, it's more important to colonize other rocks, but tracking and preventing asteroid strikes is pretty important too. But, that tracking will be far more effective with more bases of operations spread around the solar system. After all, the rock coming straight at you is far harder to see, than the rock that is shooting across your sky.
I blame the misplaced priorities on Hollyweird. They present any asteroid in far more dramatic terms than exploration. Movie watchers forget all about some boring exploration narrative, but they remember vividly the desperate attempts to blow up a rock the size of Long Island.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 24 2019, @02:17AM (5 children)
They all believe the original moon landing was bullshit. But, someday, there is going to be an assteroid which threatens Earth. And when that assteroid threatens Earth, we need to have the ability to assemble a crack team to land on it, drill a hole in it, and drop a nucular bomb in that hole; ultimately destroying the assteroid.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @02:30AM (3 children)
That sounds so sexist. Gonna drill her, and nuke her, and ultimately destroy her. You're just too damned close to Gay Bay, Eth. Worse, you want a team of crackheads to do the dirty deed.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @02:39AM (2 children)
So obsessed with sex that you see it everywhere, asshole? Oh, wait...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)
Yes, please do wait. And, stop staring at my ass!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:22AM
K-k. I'll start starring it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @02:31AM
That is, unless that butteroid is set on collision course with Mar-a-Lago [vice.com] by Putin.
In which case, a single crack team is not enough, especially now that Bruce is getting old; long live the space force [theguardian.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @07:18AM
how is this a troll? I hate Runaway as much as anyone, but the comment is on topic and not even flamebait (although at least such a mod could be motivated by the second paragraph).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @02:23AM (29 children)
37% are idiots.
Not only sending astronauts is hell of a lot less expensive from a Lunar base but, strategically, whoever controls the Moon controls the gateway to space of other nations.
Of course, the strategical consideration assume planetary political squabbles will still take precedence over the "humanity spread in space". But, do you have any signs or reasons to believe otherwise? Look, this very TFA is about polling about "American space program", not "humanity's space program".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @02:37AM (22 children)
See, we're opposed in our attitude toward space, right there. I don't want space for Americans. I want ALL of the earth to GTFO. We've got too many people on earth, we gotta boot them all. Afghans & Indians, Moroccons, Chinese, Venezuelans, damned near everybody. Give the land back to the aborigines here in the US, Oz, Canada, etc.
If half the population of the world could be shot into space next year, earth's environment would begin to heal itself immediately.
Promise everyone 40 million acres and a mule, two chickens in every pot, and free healthcare. Whatever it takes to get people moving *out there*
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @03:17AM
Need a more precise definition for "we".
'Cause for different values of the "we" parameter, the value of "attitude" function varies wildly.
For the moment, the humanity can't afford to "Promise everyone ... get people moving *out there*"
You see, it's a matter of controllable energy available in enough amount (to get the hell out from the gravitational well) and high enough density (to limit the dead-payload for the transport).
In other words, we need more powerful but still controllable bombs. Which, you see, is The problem: looking into the human history, one can bet the moment those become available, their first use will be as weapons or in building weapon platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @03:20AM (20 children)
With population growth of ~220,000/day [worldometers.info], we'd need to launch significantly more than that *every* *single* *day* to make that work.
And that assumes we can find ~300,000-400,000 people to send off-planet (and where, exactly, do we send them?) *every* *single* *day*.
Current launch capabilities could never accommodate 100 people a day, much less 3-4 thousand times that.
If we had multiple space elevators [wikipedia.org] spread out around the world, even then we couldn't even approach lifting that much mass on a daily basis.
Assuming an average mass of 70kg (~154lbs), that's raising a mass of (300,000/day) 21 million kg or (400,000/day) 28 million kg into at least earth orbit.
Let's say we did have four space elevators at various points along the equator. Each elevator would need to lift 100,000 people per day. But even if we could fit, say, 10,000 people in each elevator "car" (or 500,000kg per car), that would require ten launches per elevator per day.
And if we could accelerate such cars to 1000km/hour, it would still take a day and a half to reach geostationary orbit. Since a round trip would require three days, we'd need at least 40 cars at each elevator to maintain the flow of people.
If that weren't ridiculous enough, what are we going to do with all those people? Do they just hang out in earth orbit? There are no resources there, so that would obviate any advantage in getting them off the earth.
Should we just space them? If not, where do they go? How do we get them there? How do they survive to get wherever they're going? How do they survive once they get there?
tl;dr: sending people off planet is not and never will be a mechanism to reduce the population of the earth.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @03:51AM (13 children)
Think longer term. No, we don't have anyplace to put a hundred people per day, or per year, right now. That's why we need to get out there, and try to figure out where to put them, then figure out how to get them there.
Long term, we need to cut this planet's population by about 75%, IMO, without just slaughtering people. Space is a potential solution, if we are smart enough to figure out how to do it.
Of course, there is our fall-back solution to population pressures. War, poverty, and disease.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @04:23AM (11 children)
What are you talking about? Drive or train across the US, the country is practically empty... The main problem with the world is corrupt governments making their domains relatively uninhabitable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:09AM (10 children)
No, it isn't "practically empty". Much of the southwest was populated near the capacity of the land to support people "comfortably" when the white man arrived here. Look at that land today - it supports ten to a hundred times as many people, and we've ravaged the land. Arizona, the Colorado river, and so much more. All across this nation, we've destroyed habitats, and altered those that we haven't outright destroyed. My adopted state of Arkansas is an example. Today, it's mostly evergreen forest. It wasn't like that 150 years ago - it was mostly hardwood forest, and almost as varied as my home state of Pennsylvania. Hell, look further east, at the devastation of the landscape. When was the last time you saw a chestnut tree, dropping tons of almost free food on the ground for you to pick up?
Look at the skies during the spring and autumn migration seasons. In my own lifetime, flocks of birds made a bright, sunshiny day turn dark, like storm clouds were passing overhead. Not any more!
When you take a serious look at the state of the land around us BEFORE the white man arrived, and compare that with what we have today, THEN you realize that there really is cause for concern. We poison out environment, because there are so damned many of us.
I'll repeat - the earth's population should be reduced by about 75%, so that the world can begin to heal itself.
Let me add in mental health and psychological problems. Mankind wasn't actually meant to live in termite hills like NYC, Chicago, LA, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and a couple dozen other huge-ass megalopolis. There are reasons why country folk are generally more stable than city people.
To summarize, we've pretty well fucked the world over. I'm not part of the global warming hysteria crowd, but holy shit, just look at what we've done to the world!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @05:27AM (8 children)
All you mention is just change, destruction would be if it was like a contaminated wasteland.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:33AM (7 children)
*rolleyes*
Maybe you should do an internet search, and start tallying up all the plant and animal species that have been extincted in the past 100 years. Maybe you should also search for EPA superfund sites. Start with Love canal, maybe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @05:50AM (6 children)
As if anyone knows the extinction rate from before 100 years ago... I looked into one of those papers once and came away very unimpressed: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=8090&cid=200461#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
You're buying into a lot of BS from known fearmongerers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @06:20AM (5 children)
Fair enough - I've often objected that climate researchers and others make presumptions which they can't verify.
Even so, a species that can only be found in one place on earth, disappears after extensive mining operations in the area. Or another disappears after clear cut logging. And, yet another can't be found after years of raw sewerage being dumped into the water. I feel a loss, each and every time I read of something like that. And, yet, slash and burn farming continues in the Amazon. Poison continues to be dumped into the Congo river. Our own "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't gone away. Or, imported rats devastate a local animal population on some remote island, or Australia or NZ. And, back to those American chestnut trees. They're all but gone, with only a few small populations in far northern regions left.
I've come to dislike the word "diversity" because it is so over used in strange contexts - but I seriously believe that diversity is important to the health of this world. There isn't a single organism that can fill niches all around the world, unless it is humans, roaches, and rats.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday June 24 2019, @09:42AM (3 children)
> Even so, a species that can only be found in one place on earth, disappears after extensive mining operations in the area.
I would be interested to know what is the rate at which new species arise? I never saw that, only stuff about the rate at which old species are dying.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @11:08AM (2 children)
If you ignore microbiota, the rate is zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)
So you're a Bible nut believing in devolution this whole time?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @11:41PM
Evolution happens all the time. However, new species of polycellular organisms take longer to evolve than the capacity of humans to extinguish existing ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday June 24 2019, @05:12PM
On very flaky mobile, so I'll keep it short: te decline of insects is terrifying. Yet farmers continue massive, indiscriminate use of pesticides.
We don't need to reduce human population by 75%. More like 90%. We also need to end the current uncontrolled experiment in dysgenics, where the most successful individuals have the fewest children.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:08AM
If you concentrate humans into these places, it should lower environmental impact per capita (less need for personal transportation) and keep the hurt away from the countryside (farming excluded). If they are less stable than country folk, then that would cause them to kill each other, which slightly contributes to your population goal.
As for psychological problems, they can strap on a VR headset and be instantly transferred to a pristine, hardwood forest-filled Arkansas.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @10:28AM
Okay. Let's say it's 50 years from now. And the population is now growing at 500,000 per day. Now we need to transport nearer a million people a day, along with supplies (you know air, water, food, etc.) for a trip to where, exactly?
Could colonies on the moon or Mars (or even in space) handle 200,000,000 people a year? Every year? That would means that in 20 years we'd need to support approximately the current population of earth in hostile environments with raw resources and not much else. And that doesn't count any children born to those people over that time.
It's not like the Puritans landing at Plymouth rock, or even the Polynesians colonizing the Pacific islands. There was already air, food, building materials, fertile soil and on and on. You'd start with none of that on the moon, Mars or in space.
But even if we could come up with the raft of technologies to move and keep alive 200,000,000+ people in space every year, who's going to pay to develop it? Where are you going to site the *massive* infrastructure to lift that many people out of the gravity well?
Who has the resources, political will and political/economic/military clout to make this happen without bankrupting at least half the planet and forcibly moving hundreds of millions of people off-world *every year*?
Think through what would need to happen, the costs, the upheavals, the environmental damage, the political and military risks, the economic impacts. It's never gonna happen.
Because even if we solve all the problems with getting folks off the planet (fat chance), we still need to find a way to clothe, house, feed and provide atmosphere to the current population of the Earth *every* twenty years or we won't be reducing the population of Earth anyway.
And don't forget that we'll certainly need to implement *forced migrations* for hundreds of millions every year.
You really haven't thought this through. I invite you to do so.
To recap:
From a technological standpoint, it is *theoretically* possible to move that many people into earth orbit every day. However, even if we could, we have no place to send them that can support that many people on an ongoing basis. We don't have the science, let alone the technology or engineering know-how, and we aren't anywhere close, nor will we be anytime in the foreseeable future.
And if that's the case, it will no longer be 200,000,000 per year we'd need to move, but 500,000,000-1,000,000,00 every year.
What's more, the economic costs of such a project would likely bankrupt the planet.
But that's not even the worst part. There's no way you're getting 200,000,000 people to *volunteeer* to leave the friendly confines of planet Earth *every* year. I'd be amazed if you could get 2,000,000. Which means forced relocations. Which means internment. Which means using violence to 'convince' folks to 'volunteer'.
Anyone who even attempted to do something like this would make Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler and Attila *combined* look like amateurs.
Space colonization is not, and never will be, a workable mechanism for population reduction on planet earth. Fuil stop.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday June 24 2019, @12:16PM (5 children)
The numbers add up better if you put the people you want to survive on the ships, go out into orbit, and bomb everything back to the stone age.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @12:50PM (4 children)
You should write that up in a paper. I smell Nobel Prize! :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 25 2019, @06:38AM (3 children)
Hmm, a Modest Spaceflight Program by RamiK does have a certain ring to it... But what if it turns up to be a Nobel Peace Prize? I doubt it's worth the risk.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by NotSanguine on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
I'm sure if you include a Bitcoin wallet address in a footnote, with the implication that donations to the charity, RLEF (The Ramik Lifestyle Enhancement Fund) might get folks priority access to the launches, you'd win the Economics prize.
But when you nuke the planet, make sure to use neutron bombs [wikipedia.org] instead of the standard stuff. Just sayin'.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:03PM (1 child)
The problem with neutron bombs is the vegetation and sea life as well as active nuclear plants and wild fires. Now, couple the closing of nuclear plants, the building of space ships that can't reach anywhere useful and the development of AI robots and now you got yourself a quality conspiracy theory! Not sure how to work-in blockchains though... WIP
compiling...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 26 2019, @12:57AM
An excellent point. Better to go with mass drivers [wikipedia.org] then.
Wow! This plan is really coming together. Let's do this thing!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:26AM (5 children)
The Moon has gravity. The supply situation there is completely dire. It's a horrible place to do anything.
Going from the Moon to Mars just ignores all the physics. You're not going to manufacture spacecraft on the Moon, so why land them there only to then launch them off to Mars? Skip the Moon landing to save energy, time, non-Mars engineering tradeoffs, and wear.
Not that I much value humans on Mars, but if we're going to do it we should just go direct. Launching right from Earth's surface is the obvious workable plan. There is a possibility that we might benefit from a separate launch of supplies, to be collected either in Earth orbit or in Mars orbit. Screwing around on the Moon is political nonsense, much as the hydrogen economy was.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday June 24 2019, @03:58AM
Ridiculous.
If you're going to go to Mars, you have to maintain a presence on a different world for an extended period unless it's just a "plant the flag" mission. Even then, it entails longer missions in bad radiation environments than we've ever done.
There are going to be problems we haven't anticipated. It's a lot easier to get crew members back alive when you are 3 days away from full hospitals and safety than when you have a minimum of six months of travel (and that's if you get lucky and the problem happens at Mars and at just the right planetary alignment, else double that or so).
Even disallowing the time factor, with the problems of radiation en route, it's still easier to do the testing and learning of how to protect against it someplace outside the earth's magnetosphere but still close. The moon is fine for that, and if you have a massive solar flare and find your shielding isn't up to it you can retreat to someplace under a few feet of lunar soil and still be safe while you refigure your plans.
Going direct to Mars is IMHO a good recipe for needless astronaut deaths and too high a risk for failure. The moon's an easier first step.
If you just want to stay home or in LEO, then don't go to the moon, but if you're serious about learning to run remote manned installations in the Solar system, the moon is a good place to learn how.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @04:06AM (1 child)
There is a lot of evidence that humans need gravity to stay healthy in the long term. So, you put support facilities near a shallow gravity well, which is cheaper to dive into, then jump out of. The moon is a whole lot better than earth, if you're comparing costs of health benefits vs costs of launch.
Besides, no one is saying that the mars craft ever have to land on the moon. They can be in a high lunar orbit, or at a LaGrange point. The cost of launching toward mars will be considerably less than launching from earth, and also less than launching from the moon. Something like a Saturn 5 or Musk's heavy lifter, sitting at one of the LaGrange points, fully fueled and loaded, would make child's play of a transit to Mars orbit. And, back again, for that matter.
The whole point is, to expand our horizons, we have to stop diving deep into THIS gravity well, on earth. It is extremely expensive to climb back up out of earth's well.
Listening to the BBC's '13 minutes to the moon' today, there was a comment about, "wherever people explore, medicine follows", or words to that effect. We most definitely have to get "out there" for the medical people to figure out what is possible, what is necessary, and what is desirable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csz4dp [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:28AM
It sounds like you're supporting the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) and the like as an essential part of the "Journey to Mars". It just isn't.
BFR would refuel with multiple BFR fuel tankers coming from Earth and landing back on Earth until it has enough delta-v and fuel to reach Mars with the full payload. It would reach that point long before it reached the Moon or a Lagrange point, AFAIK.
You could produce methane from water and carbon from the lunar regolith, in order to ship fuel into trans-lunar space. This would be less straightforward than doing it on Earth or even Mars where there is abundant carbon dioxide, and would be more expensive. It would be useful for refueling spaceships that landed on the Moon (for the purpose of being there, not Mars) and need to return to Earth.
If there is any sense to going to the Moon before Mars, it's just that it should always be a cheaper and easier target to send humans to and study. It's relatively easy to reach, resupply, and return from. Mars may be a more attractive colonization target in the long term, but you could have a small base on the Moon for scientists. In any case, robots/rovers should be sent frequently. It will become cheaper to do this with BFR. No rocket crane needed for Mars, orders of magnitude more payload mass and fairing volume, and low launch costs. It could be tricky to lower all of the payloads to the surface from the upright rocket, but if they manage that, you could send out 100 rovers in one mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 24 2019, @05:03AM
The supply situation on the moon is phenomenally better than in LEO. The moon has metal and water, so you can build hulls and tanks, and fill them with fuel, oxygen, and water. Only the high tech parts of a ship would need to come from Earth.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @07:53AM
And why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ken_g6 on Monday June 24 2019, @03:17AM (4 children)
I'd like to send Americans back to the Moon. What I don't want is America spending billions on pork-barrel projects that Congress wants but NASA doesn't need.
The plan right now is to use the SLS rocket (>$2B/year) to send an Orion ($15B development, $1.1B+/year!) with ICPS (a nominal modification of existing hardware, no more than $150M), and separately a moon lander (TBD), to the Lunar Gateway (TBD). Then the lander needs a booster of some kind to get to low lunar orbit, land, take off, and use the booster to get back to the Lunar Gateway, where they take the Orion home.
I'd like to see the lunar lander and two ICPSes launched into LEO with Falcon Heavy (or less), maximum $150M/launch. Then the lunar lander docks itself with an ICPS and takes a low-energy route to low lunar orbit. A Falcon 9 ($62M/launch) (or Boeing equivalent) takes a Dragon (total launch cost $160M) (or Boeing equivalent) up to dock with the other ICPS, which boosts them to LLO to dock with the lander. Lander lands and returns, Dragon undocks from the lander, docks with the ICPS again, and boosts home.
That's a lunar landing for $910M, plus whatever a lander costs. The whole thing could cost less than what one SLS costs!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @03:22AM
Exactly. Going with the the just SLS doesn't make economic sense [youtube.com].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @04:00AM
Everything will look like fat pork when compared to BFR launches. 100+ tons to the surface with refueling.
We are watching a slow motion train wreck with SLS and LOP-G. Public interest and knowledge of the situation is low, so space Congressmen can throw money into whatever they want (note that the AP survey asks about going to the Moon, but doesn't ask anything about a lunar "gateway").
Any manned exploration done in the early-mid 2020s is just an attempt to grab funding for the pork rocket before BFR is flying regularly. It's no wonder that SLS has gotten extra money [soylentnews.org] and scope changes [soylentnews.org] to reduce delays. They have to get it flying ASAP before the gravy train crashes. Pence's 2024 Moon target similarly compresses the work and throws more money into the fire. The BFR is tentatively scheduled to send artists around the Moon in 2023. It will be ignored less and less as it hits new milestones like hover tests (Starhopper is mostly a test of the Raptor engines), reaching orbit, delivering payloads, refueling with a BFR tanker, and launching people.
There is Falcon Heavy, which could certainly be used to send Crew Dragon to the Moon, although it might be a convoluted plan [teslarati.com]. And it looks like Heavy will be used to launch several [soylentnews.org], if not all, LOP-G segments. But it will take a full BFR to put SLS in the ground for good.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday June 24 2019, @06:04PM (1 child)
I would like to send some Americans to the moon, too, with a one way ticket, if I get to pick the Americans.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday June 24 2019, @10:46PM
Careful. That idea could backfire! [wikipedia.org]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:30AM (4 children)
Good idea: Ask the clueless masses about what directions science and space exploration should take. As if their "opinion" had any value whatsoever.
And don't give me that "Hey, they are the ones paying for it with their taxes" bullshit. First, if it was for them, none of them would pay any taxes if they could get away with it. And second, most of them already mismanage their money so much it's depressing.
And if it sounds like I'm elitist, that's because I am. People are nice; they are welcoming and helpful; they are good mothers and fathers that love their children; all they want to do is to live their lives in peace and give the best to their families. But let's be realistic: Most of them are dummer than dirt. Give them a rope, and there's an almost 100% chance that they'll hang themselves with it.
Science is precisely the kind of thing that should NOT be decided by popular vote, and left strictly to those who actually have a clue. Heck, even democracy is a miserable failure. Give people a vote, and you get things like Hitler, Morsi, Erdogan, or Trump.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday June 24 2019, @03:34AM
Don't say things like that. It'd likely to get you lynched -- literally and/or figuratively.
cf.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise [wikipedia.org]
https://www.c-span.org/video/?426290-1/tom-nichols-discusses-the-death-expertise [c-span.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @04:31AM
> most of them already mismanage their money so much it's depressing.
You seem to be implying that the US government is good at managing its money. It is far, far worse. We don't even know what it's being spent on because by law they now falsify their budgets by hiding projects and padding the difference to something else, in $20 trillion of debt, in four years are expected to use 100% of what they borrow to pay the interest on the existing debt...
You live in a fantasy world. And having worked for the gov, is guess that at least half of the what they spend is pissed away on the government equivalent of booze and weed, possibly 90%.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @05:28AM
The entire comment adds no new knowledge but states the obvious. Then at the end, adds some propaganda. The entire purpose of the comment is the propaganda. The comment changes nothing and no information is added not previously known to all and no practical steps can be taken using the knowledge in the comment.
An obvious propaganda agent.
Like the sponger jews, who install themselves at positions of power where they can decide what is science and what is not?
Thank goodness, Mr. Hitler was a Fascist leader and openly talked of the ills of democracy. Fascism works.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday June 24 2019, @04:32PM
Nah. That's what happened because they took the vote away from the people, and gave it to the electors.
The people elected Clinton. Unfortunately, that didn't matter.
--
I may be apathetic, but I don't care.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday June 24 2019, @10:15AM (2 children)
> "More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."
I wonder how this perception arises. Hubble, WMAP, SpaceX (US owned and largely NASA funded), various Mars and other planetary probes... I don't know who else is "leading" if not the US and in particular NASA.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:54AM
The only group that can even come close is the ESA, and a lot of their most ambitious missions [wikipedia.org] haven't launched yet. You may have heard of XMM-Newton, Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Gaia, and BepiColombo. Gaia might be the biggest deal out of that pack, providing a lot of useful data about our galaxy. They have CHEOPS [wikipedia.org] launching this year, providing a nice and small (€50 million) exoplanet measurement mission.
Russia's program is not doing well, especially on the science side. India is launching its own rockets and doing science missions, but is still a small program. China has a lot of ambition, but their program won't blossom for at least several years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 24 2019, @03:51PM
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday June 24 2019, @03:53PM
Space program or universal health care system? Let's see how people vote then...