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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, @10:53AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @10:53AM (#696130)

    Let us add Space Force [soylentnews.org] to that list. If the Space Force's creation is managed the way everything else in this administration then it will be another Capricorn One [imdb.com].

  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:22AM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:22AM (#696138) Homepage Journal

    Trust me, the managing is going PERFECTO on that one. We're managing the hell out of it. General Mattis is going to talk it over with John Bolton on Friday. Then we go to Congress, we tell them to amend Title 10. And budget the money. Then we order the ships, the guns and the uniforms. We already have the motto, Separate but Equal!!!!

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 21 2018, @03:36PM (5 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 21 2018, @03:36PM (#696225) Journal

    I think you might misunderstand both the need and utility of the space force. Currently Space command tracks orbital collision risks and sends out warnings that these could occur. Take a wild guess as to how many of these there are per day. Got a number? Remember these are per day. 2? 10? 600? It's the last one. Just shy of 400,000 intercepts last year. The majority of space command is going to be made up of these guys. The net new part be guys working on is offensive and defensive capabilities.

    "Why on Earth would we need offensive capabilities in space?"

    Because other countries have them, and we can't trust them not to use them without a deterrent.

    Lets use just one example, GPS. Think about what doesn't work for you, personally, if GPS goes kaput. Maps on your cell phone go from turn-by-turn to within a few blocks in the city to within a few miles in rural areas if at all. You can live without that, right? It's okay if your Lyft driver is within a few blocks to pick you up? You probably won't think about precision agriculture, machine guided earthmoving, autonomous vehicles, surveying, sea and air navigation, and fleet vehicle operations. The combined economic impact estimate is about 50$ Billion per year, excluding military uses, and that is probably low.

    24 Satellites provide that capability, and several countries have the ability to knock them out from earth-based, space-based, or cyber attacks. These satellites are practically hand-made. It would be incredibly difficult to replace all of them in a year.

    When you hear "space force" you think "Space Marines in EVA suits". That's wrong. Think "Keyboard warriors" instead. The motivation for splitting them out is because the Air Force brass can't seem to prioritize these capabilities properly (even after congress asked nicely several times) and they continue to let us fall farther and farther behind.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 21 2018, @04:44PM (4 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday June 21 2018, @04:44PM (#696280) Journal

      24 Satellites provide that capability, and several countries have the ability to knock them out from earth-based, space-based, or cyber attacks.

      I don't doubt that it exists, but does anyone have a known and proven "space-based" way to do that currently in-orbit? Assuming some kind of satellite that can kill or disable other sats, rather than an X-37B which could capture a satellite and bring it down softly on a landing strip.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:37PM (3 children)

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:37PM (#696311) Journal

        If that capability exists, it is classified. The public data talks about aircraft based laser weapons with adaptive optics and kinetic (missile) interceptors.

        It wouldn't be trivial to intentionally crash one satellite into another, but that's certainly an option too.

        • (Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday June 22 2018, @12:16AM (2 children)

          by toddestan (4982) on Friday June 22 2018, @12:16AM (#696486)

          It wouldn't be trivial to intentionally crash one satellite into another, but that's certainly an option too.

          If you could do that, it would be much easier to just de-orbit the satellite. Or use up all its fuel putting it into a useless orbit or perhaps making it spin so fast it flies apart.

          Though I suppose if the satellite you gained control over wasn't the one you wanted to take out, then you would have to try the collision thing.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 22 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @03:01AM (#696570) Journal

            If you could do that, it would be much easier to just de-orbit the satellite.

            The problem is that usually the satellite one would wish to destroy is not the satellite one would control.

            • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 22 2018, @04:08AM

              by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @04:08AM (#696584) Journal

              Spot on. Compromising the command and control system is the easiest approach. Failing that things get much harder, more expensive, and more attributable. Trying to take out a satellite with another satellite is non-trivial. Space is really big, and they aren't designed with radar for finding their neighbors.

              The bigger worry is a state or non-state actor launching a malicious payload that is equipped to intercept and destroy or worse intercept and compromise. The latter is particularly troubling, as satellite design does not usually incorporate physical security.