NASA Will Put Humans on the Moon Again

Megalith

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We’ll return to the moon before flights to Mars: Vice President Mike Pence, chairing a revived National Space Council, said Thursday the United States will once again send astronauts to the moon, using Earth's satellite as a critical stepping stone for eventual flights to Mars, and vowing to beef up national security space assets to counter rapidly escalating threats from adversaries.

In the human spaceflight arena, Pence said the Trump administration's space policy calls for sending missions to the moon to test new technologies, to establish infrastructure far beyond low-Earth orbit and to serve as a staging base on the surface, or a gateway in lunar orbit, for robotic and human flights to Mars. Experts told the panel NASA could return astronauts to the moon within five years using the agency's huge Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule -- and possibly a Saturn 5-class rocket envisioned by SpaceX -- to lay the groundwork for landings on the lunar surface or developing an orbital outpost.
 
Sad that a private company is pushing exploration more than the government...

If only a fraction of what's gone to Iraq/Afghanistan had gone to NASA instead :(

Addictions (oil in this case) seem to always win when priorities are decided on.
 
Going to the moon just for the sake of going there was awesome when we had not gone there yet.

If we are actually going to build a permanent base this time, then great! What we don't need is a brief vacation to the moon that costs tens of billions of dollars and accomplishes nothing noteworthy.
 
As long as they create a base and call it Moon Base Alpha...

Of course, we've missed the 1999 target date by a long way.
 
Sad that a private company is pushing exploration more than the government...

If only a fraction of what's gone to Iraq/Afghanistan had gone to NASA instead :(

Addictions (oil in this case) seem to always win when priorities are decided on.

Last time I checked most people have vehicles and don't like paying $10/gal for gas. These same people still have a need to get from point A to point B. Therefore, money gets spent in other places. It's not rocket science (pun intended).
 
As long as they create a base and call it Moon Base Alpha...

Of course, we've missed the 1999 target date by a long way.

..but that doesn't mean we can't still ship all our nuclear waste there and accidentally blow the moon out of orbit!

DREAM BIG AMERICA!
 
Sad that a private company is pushing exploration more than the government...

If only a fraction of what's gone to Iraq/Afghanistan had gone to NASA instead :(

Addictions (oil in this case) seem to always win when priorities are decided on.

Private Enterprises seems to be the only ones able to focus on a project for more than 4 years.

Makes ya wonder what those private colonies will be, corpo-nations?
 
Private Enterprises seems to be the only ones able to focus on a project for more than 4 years.

Makes ya wonder what those private colonies will be, corpo-nations?

Optimistic outlook: Colonies created for true human advancement and not purely for profit with continually-growing/ambitious goals of populating our solar system, nearby systems, the galaxy.
Pessimistic outlook: The creations of true plutocracy/corporatocracy governments
 
Last time I checked most people have vehicles and don't like paying $10/gal for gas. These same people still have a need to get from point A to point B. Therefore, money gets spent in other places. It's not rocket science (pun intended).

Doesn't take rocket science to know that this is an addiction. There are other options. They may not work for everyone at this point but investing in alternatives other than perpetual occupation of other countries risking the lives of other human beings seems like a much more rational approach. Again rationality does not usually go well with addiction.

Exploration and innovation are the harder path to take as they can lead to/are unknowns. Not every path leads to advancement. Those paths that do lead to new paths make the investments and failures worth it. Oil will not last forever, no matter how much people want to imagine it will. Earth will not last forever either. If we want to survive and progress as a species we need to move away from oil. We need to settle other planets.

To always take the easy path - occupy other counties to get cheap oil / say it's too expensive to go to other planets - will lead to Our (humanities) end.
 
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SpaceX will make it to Mars before NASA gets to the Moon again.

And SpaceX could end up killing more people than NASA did also. IMHO, they're moving too fast to be safe with such an ambitious goal - before the end of the next decade... ???
 
My understanding is that a Moon base makes a lot of sense. Gravity is lower - if you can refine fuel for rockets launching them from the Moon instead of Earth saves a lot on fuel economy for reaching out to Mars and beyond.
 
SpaceX lives off NASA funded missions. Notion SpaceX will "reach the moon" before NASA is dumb, it's all taxpayer money anyway.

Anyway, talk is useless. Show me the next budget resolution, we'll see if we land on the moon anytime soon.
 
Fund it with cryptocurrrency and create a nano carbon tube elevator to mars where we can dump our nuclear wast to create free energy and pornhub.
 
Doesn't take rocket science to know that this is an addiction. There are other options. They may not work for everyone at this point but investing in alternatives other than perpetual occupation of other countries risking the lives of other human beings seems like a much more rational approach. Again rationality does not usually go well with addiction.

Exploration and innovation are the harder path to take as they can lead to/are unknowns. Not every path leads to advancement. Those paths that do lead to new paths make the investments and failures worth it. Oil will not last forever, no matter how much people want to imagine it will. Earth will not last forever either. If we want to survive and progress as a species we need to move away from oil. We need to settle other planets.

To always take the easy path - occupy other counties to get cheap oil / say it's too expensive to go to other planets - will lead to Our (humanities) end.
If you think the whole point of perpetual war in the middle east is cheap oil you're being incredibly naive, but this isnt even on topic anyway and I don't want to get into it any further.

I'd love to see the species advance and do great things like have off-world colonies. Hopefully this time we actually do it. And yes these things cost tons of money, I've seen it first hand being part of the industry. But the pressure on man-rated missions is immense. You start blowing up astronauts and funding disappears quick.
 
And SpaceX could end up killing more people than NASA did also. IMHO, they're moving too fast to be safe with such an ambitious goal - before the end of the next decade... ???

SpaceX is going a lot slower then NASA did during the great moon race. They have been in existence about 15 years and have yet to make a manned launch. NASA was almost 11 when Armstrong stepped on the moon. The first manned flight of the Saturn V did the orbit the moon thing as Apollo 8. That was a risk taking decision.
 
why are they putting hummus on the moon? Are not enough people eating it?
 
We went to the moon because it was a war thing... at least sometimes it feels that way, since the minute it was not at least in some sense a war thing, cuts and cuts.
One thing is for certain, can't go to the moon on tax cuts, and budget cuts.
 
And SpaceX could end up killing more people than NASA did also. IMHO, they're moving too fast to be safe with such an ambitious goal - before the end of the next decade... ???


they're moving at what ever pace NASA allows them to move at.. remember they still have to pass NASA's certification process, they still have to do non human test flights with the capsule.. if you want to consider moving to fast just look at the 50's and 60's, they went from unmanned rockets to putting people in orbit in less than 5 years while spaceX has been working on their capsule for 6 and it hasn't even gone to space yet.. we already know the process and the requirements thanks to all the people that risk their lives in the 50's and 60's. SpaceX isn't re-inventing the wheel, they're using an already tested and proven design that's been modernized.

either way back on topic, going back to the moons probably going to be the most important thing to happen because quite frankly it's been almost 50 years since humans have gone more than 300 miles above the earths surface let alone to the moon. so both NASA and SpaceX will benefit from this.

We went to the moon because it was a war thing... at least sometimes it feels that way, since the minute it was not at least in some sense a war thing, cuts and cuts.
One thing is for certain, can't go to the moon on tax cuts, and budget cuts.

the governments fear of communism was literally the reason we went to the moon.. even the Soviets had no plans on going to the moon but the government was so scared that they might be lying that we still went anyways. once we hit our goal and knew for sure the Soviets weren't going to the moon no one cared anymore.
 
Haha. He said "again"...


2:06


How about 2:28 where some sort of bag falls off the astronaut at normal gravity speed?

;)
 
SpaceX is going a lot slower then NASA did during the great moon race. They have been in existence about 15 years and have yet to make a manned launch. NASA was almost 11 when Armstrong stepped on the moon. The first manned flight of the Saturn V did the orbit the moon thing as Apollo 8. That was a risk taking decision.

SpaceX also doesn't have the funding that NASA had during that period. In the 5 years leading up to the moon landing, NASA spent 212 Billion in 2014 adjusted dollars. SpaceX is lucky if it has had 1/10th that in funding.
 
Space efforts should be focused on physics research aimed at developing non-relativistic propulsion and LFTR reactors for ships and outposts. Rocket "exploration" does nothing but stagnate space tech. We already know rockets, and what we know tells us that rockets are NOT viable for a space faring civilization. Rockets are obscenely inefficient, obscenely massive, obscenely unreliable, and obscenely unsafe. By going back to the moon we are wasting time and money, valuable new tech will not arise from doing what has already been done using tech that already exists.
 
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This would be cool. A moon base. I hope we find the same purple-haired moon babes they had here: http://ufoseries.com/

Ahhh...found the vid:

How to finance this? Let Coca-Cola underwrite it. They can then paint their logo across the surface.
 
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SpaceX lives off NASA funded missions. Notion SpaceX will "reach the moon" before NASA is dumb, it's all taxpayer money anyway.
Sure, it's taxpayer money. Do you know why SpaceX is getting that money? Because they can do it cheaper than the alternatives. NASA doing it themselves has proven to be insanely expensive. ULA is more expensive as well. So SpaceX is actually saving the gov't money, AND doing tons of R&D that will drive future space exploration.
 
Sure, it's taxpayer money. Do you know why SpaceX is getting that money? Because they can do it cheaper than the alternatives. NASA doing it themselves has proven to be insanely expensive. ULA is more expensive as well. So SpaceX is actually saving the gov't money, AND doing tons of R&D that will drive future space exploration.

...it still surprises me that people don't get this.
 
Addictions (oil in this case) seem to always win when priorities are decided on.
The invasion of Iraq was not about the oil. It's just a fringe benefit.
Invading Iraq was about fantasies of re-shaping the Middle Eastern countries into pro-US democracies.
 
As opposed to the doubling the national debt under the Obama administration?

Google Modern Monetary Theory. We have a SOVEREIGN currency...which means that "debt" is nothing more than an illusion. One designed to keep certain people rich and the rest of us voting against our own best interest.
 
Haha. He said "again"...


2:06


How about 2:28 where some sort of bag falls off the astronaut at normal gravity speed?

;)


Except they put reflectors up there. There's literally moon rock samples. Even if it was staged, it would have been for your own good comrade.
 
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