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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-small-orbit-for-man dept.

Buzz Aldrin has said that NASA should stop spending $3.5 billion per year on the International Space Station and relinquish low Earth orbit activities to private companies, such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace, and Axiom Space. This would allow for the funding of "cyclers" to enable a base on the moon and eventually a permanent presence on Mars:

http://www.space.com/36787-buzz-aldrin-retire-international-space-station-for-mars.html

Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" — spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth. "The foundation of human transportation is the cycler," the 87-year-old former astronaut said. "Very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so; no external moving parts."

Step two involves the international spaceflight community coming together to build cyclers that ply cislunar space, taking people on trips to the moon and back. Such spacecraft, and the activities they enable, would allow the construction of a crewed lunar base, where humanity could learn and test the techniques required for Mars colonization, such as how to manufacture propellant from local resources, Aldrin said. Then would come Earth-Mars cyclers, which Aldrin described as "an evolutionary development" of the prior cyclers.

[...] NASA officials have repeatedly said that the ISS is a key part of the agency's "Journey to Mars" vision, which aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.

Is the ISS a key part of the "Journey to Mars" or a key roadblock?


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:20PM (25 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:20PM (#508295)

    Fuck Space! Gimme Basic Income! Eat the Rich!

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by melikamp on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:48PM (21 children)

    by melikamp (1886) on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:48PM (#508316) Journal

    I wonder if ISS can simply be refactored and raised higher, or stuck in the Earth-Moon L1 point [wikipedia.org]. I believe we absolutely need to maintain both an open space habitat and an international collaboration, and ISS is a shining example of both. I would go as far as to say that our long-term survival as species depends almost entirely on our ability to colonize open space and mid-size asteroids, since that would make us essentially invincible to the last big scare: rogue object(s) crashing into planets and/or disturbing the celestial dynamics of our star system. It is not too hard to imagine a flock of asteroids visiting us for another episode of massive bombardment, and turning every rocky planet into a lava ocean. A wondering stellar-mass black hole could also sneak up on us rather effectively, I believe. But neither scenario is a total disaster as long as we have a sustainable civilization hanging around the asteroid belt, around Jupiter and its satellites, and so on. Over the period of millions of years, putting all our eggs into 2 or 3 baskets (Earth, Mars, Moon) is a losing strategy, and besides, in space we can create an absolutely amazing habitat designed from ground up for humans and humans alone, just think about that.

    I'd like to think that 1000 years from now these will be the ultimate luxury condos and lofts, thousands of km above the surface of the Earth :) Giant, sustainable halos with rotational gravity, possibly carved on the inside of ~ 10 km rocks; zero-g habitats with human subspecies adapted to space; nomadic space stations gliding along the interplanetary superhighway [wikipedia.org]... Not being able to see all of that is perhaps the only reason I sometimes think my lifespan is too short :)

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:55PM (5 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:55PM (#508319) Journal

      Is the ISS really useful? If we develop inflatable module technology some more, it might be possible to get an ISS-sized station in orbit for much cheaper than the ISS construction cost. Launch costs have also fallen.

      What is it that we are doing or could do with ISS that is so great? A dark matter detector? A gas station for reaching other destinations? A sustainable Moon or Mars base on the other hand could expand and feed itself using raw materials collected on site. If it is sustainable and does not require periodic resupply, it can be expanded to any desired size.

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      • (Score: 3, Informative) by melikamp on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:28PM (1 child)

        by melikamp (1886) on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:28PM (#508332) Journal
        I am all for Moon base, I think it would be waaaaay more useful and fun than a Mars base.
        • (Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:08PM

          by arslan (3462) on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:08PM (#508385)

          As long as we don't accidentally blow it up... otherwise the dolphins won't be too happy

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:31PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:31PM (#508368) Journal

        Is the ISS really useful? If we develop inflatable module technology some more, it might be possible to get an ISS-sized station in orbit for much cheaper than the ISS construction cost. Launch costs have also fallen.

        My view is that for what was spent on the ISS, we could have launched two or three ISS into space any point in the past few decades just by not using the Space Shuttle (and retiring the Shuttle back in 1990) and eliminating the international aspect of the ISS, but otherwise keeping its capabilities.

        Not using the Shuttle and instead discontinuing the Shuttle in 1990 would have resulted in a modest hit to the volume of individual station components, but an enormous reduction in launch costs. I estimate around 30 billion USD.

        One would see somewhat similar savings from cutting out the meandering path that the ISS took from beefy national prestige project to enormous international money sink which among other things required numerous redesigns of the station to incorporate projects from all the ISS partners. I think at least 20 billion USD.

        Then there would be some modest economies of scale from building multiple copies of the ISS structure resulting in the final estimates of 2-3 structures for 100 billion USD. That's not even discussing the enormous savings possible from taking NASA out of the loop or the significant improvement from putting SpaceX in the loop, particularly, its Falcon Heavy.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 12 2017, @04:12AM (1 child)

        by frojack (1554) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:12AM (#508463) Journal

        We've done all the science that we need to do at the ISS.

        It now serves as nothing more than a mountain survival hut.
        A great place to seek shelter if you happen to need it - if you can get there.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 12 2017, @12:28PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Friday May 12 2017, @12:28PM (#508579) Journal

          A underground facility on the Moon or Mars would be a shelter. The ISS would be roadkill if things get really bad.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:06PM (10 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:06PM (#508325)

      I think Aldrin is missing the point, politically. It's not that the Space Station is "sucking up all the resources," it's that nobody is excited to allocate resources to a Mars mission.

      WMD was enough to excite W to spend over $700B in Iraq, 1% of GDP for some years - if we could shake loose 0.1% of GDP for a Mars mission, 10 years wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:33PM (9 children)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:33PM (#508334)

        His argument sounds like it's based on the shaky premise that cutting the ISS line on the budget would divert the money to Mars missions, yes.

        From that article about how long and over-budget the big lifter rocket thingamajig is, people don't seem overly motivated. I guess since we're not racing the Russians this time, it'll take twice as long? But if it's good, we should still be able to pick one of fast or cheap, right? Right??

        Would be nice to just cut military spending by like 5% and quadruple NASA's budget :P

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:42PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:42PM (#508342)

          In FY 2015, Pentagon and related spending totaled $598 billion, about 54% of the fiscal year 2015 U.S. discretionary budget. For FY 2017, President Obama proposed the base budget of $523.9 billion, which includes an increase of $2.2 billion over the FY 2016 enacted budget of $521.7 billion. By 20 January 2017, when President Trump took office, annual military spending had reached its highest peak ever—$596 billion—representing three times the military spending of all other NATO countries combined.[1]

          FY2017 19,508 Nominal Dollars (Millions) % of Fed Budget 0.47%

          Seen in the year-by-year breakdown listed below, the total amounts (in nominal dollars) that NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2011 amounts to $526.178 billion—an average of $9.928 billion per year.

          So the amount of money spent on NASA for its entire existence since 1958 just barely edged past what we spent on the military in a single year under Obama. After 59 years. Marvelous.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA [wikipedia.org]

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:46PM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:46PM (#508347) Journal

          The NASA budget doubled would be about 1% of the federal budget. That's a good minimum. I have also said that it should be quadrupled at the expense of the military (which does some space stuff anyway like satellites and the X-37B), but the only one in the room who may have been in the position to cut defense spending and reallocate it to NASA chose to increase defense spending.

          The good news is that NASA bureaucrats have wisely chosen to incubate SpaceX and other private companies, allowing them to grow into launch competitors that will be able to undermine and destroy overpriced pork projects like the Space Launch System [wikipedia.org]. If expenses like the ISS and SLS are eliminated, NASA will be able to focus on building satellites to launch on the $90 million Falcon Heavy, the future SpaceX ITS launch vehicle [wikipedia.org], or smaller rockets [soylentnews.org].

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        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:46PM (5 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:46PM (#508376) Journal

          His argument sounds like it's based on the shaky premise that cutting the ISS line on the budget would divert the money to Mars missions, yes.

          The funding for NASA has, adjusted for inflation, had modest variation since around 1971. All these distributed pork projects (current examples, ISS maintenance, SLS, JWST) haven't improved the budget one bit. Nor is there an indication that Congress would have gutted NASA's budget without those projects, if instead NASA had exchanged these projects for considerably more activity in space.

          My view is that a lot of NASA's current troubles come from the decision makers in the 1970s gambling on a second version Saturn V, the Space Shuttle, instead of adjusting their ambitions to the lower budgets of the post-Saturn decades. This resulted in a culture with perverted interest in creating huge projects with remarkably little payback.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @02:24AM (4 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @02:24AM (#508434)

            NASA pork = jobs, so, no, pork doesn't get cut, it just ages on the budget.

            --
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            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 12 2017, @05:37AM (3 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 12 2017, @05:37AM (#508499) Journal
              I don't buy here that a NASA with balls could be forced to take on so much pork. Pork isn't irresistible. Instead, the bureaucracies, including NASA, are packed with people who don't care and don't have an interest in keeping out pork spending.
              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @11:41AM (2 children)

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @11:41AM (#508564)

                If pork is all that's on the table, that's what you eat.

                The "core" NASA people, the ones who care about the mission, who know the rocket science, who make real things happen, also happen to be less politically inclined and less politically capable than your average agency. They've got some people who can "do politics," but they're not well integrated into the program.

                So, you could say they don't care - I say that the people who care aren't good at making a difference.

                --
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                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 12 2017, @05:53PM (1 child)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 12 2017, @05:53PM (#508755) Journal

                  If pork is all that's on the table, that's what you eat.

                  There have been way too many times when NASA has gone out of its way to enforce the status quo.

                  For example, SpaceX probably couldn't be founded much sooner than it was and still have a market to sell to. Before 1984, the Space Shuttle had a monopoly on all US-based launches. And in the late 1980s, a launch cartel had sprung up with a series of launch vehicles (the Pegasus rocket, Delta II, Atlas II, Titan III, and Space Shuttle, each with their own identifiable monopoly on a niche of launch market, segregated mostly by payload size and mass, but in the case of the Atlas II and Titan III, by non-military/military payload. NASA was the key element of control for this cartel because outside of US military and intelligence, they were the largest consumer of launch services in the world, and exclusively shopped US.

                  It was only when the US military deliberately created competition with the Evolutionary Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program in the late 1990s that the conditions for SpaceX came about. The company was founded a few years later in 2002.

                  Another example of this is what happened to E'Prime Aerospace in the mid 1990s. They were refurbishing MX missiles for use as launch vehicles. There were hundreds of these missiles being decommissioned. But the US signed a nuclear treaty which conveniently forbade use of these missiles for commercial payloads, destroying E'Prime's business model completely and this latest threat to the cartel system. Orbital Sciences, one of the cartel members, later picked up this business model, using these MX missiles for launching military payloads. Quite the peculiar oversight of this treaty, isn't it?

                  The "core" NASA people, the ones who care about the mission, who know the rocket science, who make real things happen, also happen to be less politically inclined and less politically capable than your average agency.

                  Good use of scare quotes. They aren't core, but rather a necessary evil. NASA does have to maintain appearances, so they do need someone who can actually do the jobs NASA is tasked with. No different than many marketing-oriented businesses.

                  So, you could say they don't care - I say that the people who care aren't good at making a difference.

                  My view is that people who care and are competent are kept out of NASA. It upsets the feeding trough to have these people present.

                  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 13 2017, @02:16AM

                    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday May 13 2017, @02:16AM (#508956)

                    > It upsets the feeding trough to have these people present.

                    Oh so very true, and the people who are at the head of the bread line know how to keep it coming and work hard to do just that.

                    --
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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @02:22AM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @02:22AM (#508432)

          Without the "Red Menace" looming, between fast and cheap, we get cheap. So cheap that fast has become multi-generational.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Friday May 12 2017, @12:30AM

      by art guerrilla (3082) on Friday May 12 2017, @12:30AM (#508414)

      been done already : ringworld and its variants...
      pretty sure it is easily doable with a million repraps...
      well, you start with one...

    • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday May 12 2017, @04:06AM (2 children)

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:06AM (#508461)

      I think you don't understand how unbelievably expensive it would be to boost ISS to that high of an orbit.

      Not only that, it would become prohibitively expensive to send manned and resupply missions to it.

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54PM

        by melikamp (1886) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54PM (#508715) Journal
        I bet it's still orders of magnitude cheaper than a Mars base.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by captain_nifty on Friday May 12 2017, @04:58PM

        by captain_nifty (4252) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:58PM (#508719)

        Not to mention everyone on board the ISS would die from radiation during the transit of the Van Allen belts, and anyone inhabiting it after would get a huge dose as above the Van Allen belts you are not protected by the Earth's magnetic field, the ISS would need shielding retrofitted for higher orbits.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:06PM (#508383)

    You'll get your basic income soon as you pick up the shovel and dig the martian red dirt!

  • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday May 12 2017, @03:26AM (1 child)

    by Hartree (195) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:26AM (#508450)

    "Gimme Basic Income! Eat the Rich!"

    Since you're posting anonymously, how are we going to know who to write the checks to, or where to mail the frozen 1 percenter flesh to?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @06:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @06:31AM (#508517)

      It's meant to be universal basic income, everyone gets it. If indexed it shouldn't just disappear as an inflationary effect. If we can't get past the zero-sum game mentality we don't deserve to leave the troposphere let alone colonize other planets.