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from the a-billion-here-a-billion-there dept.
Going Back to the Moon Won't Break the Bank, NASA Chief Says
Sending humans back to the moon won't require a big Apollo-style budget boost, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. During the height of the Apollo program in the mid-1960s, NASA gobbled up about 4.5 percent of the federal budget. This massive influx of resources helped the space agency make good on President John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 promise to get astronauts to the moon, and safely home to Earth again, before the end of the decade. NASA's budget share now hovers around just 0.5 percent. But something in that range should be enough to mount crewed lunar missions in the next 10 years or so, as President Donald Trump has instructed NASA to do with his Space Policy Directive 1, Bridenstine told reporters yesterday (Aug. 30) here at NASA's Ames Research Center.
The key lies in not going it alone and continuing to get relatively modest but important financial bumps, he added. (Congress allocated over $20.7 billion to NASA in the 2018 omnibus spending bill — about $1.1 billion more than the agency got in the previous year's omnibus bill.)
"We now have more space agencies on the surface of the planet than we've ever had before. And even countries that don't have a space agency — they have space activities, and they want to partner with us on our return to the moon," Bridenstine said in response to a question from Space.com. "And, at the same time, we have a robust commercial marketplace of people that can provide us access that historically didn't exist," the NASA chief added. "So, between our international and commercial partners and our increased budget, I think we're going to be in good shape to accomplish the objectives of Space Policy Directive 1."
We're talking about the surface of the Moon, right? Not the mini-ISS in lunar orbit that would give the Space Launch System somewhere to go?
Previously: President Trump Signs Space Policy Directive 1
2020s to Become the Decade of Lunar Re-Exploration
NASA Cancels Lunar Rover
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Serious About Returning to the Moon
Related: Should We Skip Mars for Now and Go to the Moon Again?
How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
NASA Administrator Ponders the Fate of SLS in Interview
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:23PM (1 child)
What we need, in no particular order, not exhaustive:
1. Modern exploration of Uranus and Neptune, the major Uranian moons, and Triton.
2. Drones on Titan. Flying drones, boats, and submarines are all possible.
3. Landers capable of drilling into the ice on both Europa and Enceladus.
4. Lander capable of drilling into the subsurface lake on Mars.
5. Absolutely gigantic space telescopes.
6. Gravitational lens telescope at 550+ AU.
7. Flybys/orbiters for major dwarf planets, such as Eris and Sedna.
8. Orbiter around Pallas.
9. Fast flyby/orbiter for Planet Nine, if it exists.
Jupiter is a much easier target than Saturn with a lot of exploration already planned. Juno is there now. ESA's JUICE [wikipedia.org] will orbit Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, focusing on Ganymede. Europa Clipper will fly by Europa repeatedly and may drop a lander there.
What we could use is a small, cheap, mass-produced planetary science orbiter. Something that costs closer to $25 million than $1 billion, is not built for any particular mission, takes advantage of ion engines to reach its target*, and can be sent on a cheap launcher, possibly with multiple units sent in a single launch. Solar power is preferred, but radioisotope thermoelectric generators may be needed. It would be nice to have every major moon, planet, and eventually asteroid and dwarf planet, orbited at the same time. And without constant imagery of all solar system objects, you would miss events like the Shoemaker–Levy 9 collision with Jupiter.
*Ion engines are still pretty new. Dawn was the first spacecraft to orbit two different objects (Vesta and Ceres), which would have been nearly impossible without ion engines.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @10:12PM
Technically, that honor would have to go to something from the '60s (Luna 10?) for orbiting both the Earth and Moon. There's a reason NASA is careful to specify it's the first to orbit two "targets".