The President Is Sending NASA Back to the Moon

BlueFireIce said:
Military high ground will not be manned and has nothing to do with sending people back to the moon.
Click to expand...

If the Chinese are serious about their Moon efforts there will be a manned US response. Beyond that, my understanding was that the Obama-era SLS program was getting funded because the DOD also wanted a heavy lift vehicle. The manned program would help justify the cost of an in-house heavy lifter instead of just waiting for SpaceX to do it.

I think you underestimate the value of having real humans available in the field. Yes, unmanned programs can generate a huge amount of data at little cost, but a single geologist could accomplish more science on Mars in a day than the rovers have done in years. Even just having humans available nearby to tele-operate the machinery would be tremendously beneficial.

nysmo said:
People watch too much star trek. Humans are not going to be traveling the universe in search of a new home or anything of the sort. Do a youtube search for "traveling at the speed of light" or something to get a feel for how slow lightspeed travel is relative to traveling to anywhere remotely useful, and of course we'll never travel at lightspeed. Barring some sci-fi fantasy discovery of safe wormhole travel Earth is our home and thats it. Absolutely no need to send humans anywhere else other than perhaps perfecting related technologies as space development tends to do.
Click to expand...

Even if taking advantage of time dilation is not possible interstellar travel should still be possible. Nuclear pulse propulsion appears to be capable of reaching speeds approaching ~10% the speed of light. At that speed you could fly to the Alpha Centauri system in 40 years. I imagine we could be building those ships in another few hundred years.
 
Last edited:
DeathFromBelow said:
I think you underestimate the value of having real humans available in the field. Yes, unmanned programs can generate a huge amount of data at little cost, but a single geologist could accomplish more science on Mars in a day than the rovers have done in years. Even just having humans available nearby to tele-operate the machinery would be tremendously beneficial.
Click to expand...

How?

Really, I hear this all the time, but have seen zero data points on it. The kind of gear and rovers we have can do just about anything a person can, and we are taking about fractions of the budget, if we were to build something of the cost, scale and size of a manned mission, not only would it do more than that single person for the day they were there, but this rover would also be capable of an extended stay along with some long term experiments.

Since Mars keeps on coming up in here, lets use Spirit and Opportunity as examples, that were planned to last 90 days, with one still working today, a total time of over 13 years, with a cost for BOTH rovers for the whole program being around $800 million. One of the main goals of the missions were actually geological in nature, and far surpassed what was expected to be gathered. They were also controllable from earth BTW, no need to be onsite. The cost of the Apollo program was in today's dollars about 220 BILLION, or about 550 Mars rover missions.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Bush and Obama directed NASA to do the same thing.
Click to expand...

I was just gonna say this, practically ever prez says it, nobody has made with the money so far.

I also don't think there's a lot of point in humans doing exploration. Robots are better at it. Send humans to make a settlement.
 
MavericK said:
Kinda wish it was other frontiers and not the Moon (which we've already been to multiple times), but I'll take it. Moon bases, maybe?
Click to expand...

A moon base makes it far easier and cheaper to reach Mars and beyond.
 
Going to the moon takes humans outside the magnetosphere of the earth (at times), and that is mostly uncharted territory. Yes the humans that went to moon went outside it, but not for any real length of time. Having a moon base opens up a TON of experiments that will be needed for any mars mission. The humans that go to the moon to live will be in danger several magnitudes greater than those that have been in low earth orbit. Going to the moon is a needed step. Sending humans straight to Mars is foolish and will get people killed from far to many unknowns. Several decades of experiments and improvements to processes lay before us on the moon, why jump a head unnecessarily? I don't expect humans on Mars in my lifetime, sending robots is cheaper and still a great return for the money spent. I would love to see a moon base and a new mars lander launched at least every 5 years.

Politics can eat a dick. NASA needs more funding!!
 
nysmo said:
People watch too much star trek. Humans are not going to be traveling the universe in search of a new home or anything of the sort. Do a youtube search for "traveling at the speed of light" or something to get a feel for how slow lightspeed travel is relative to traveling to anywhere remotely useful, and of course we'll never travel at lightspeed. Barring some sci-fi fantasy discovery of safe wormhole travel Earth is our home and thats it. Absolutely no need to send humans anywhere else other than perhaps perfecting related technologies as space development tends to do.
Click to expand...

A human being will die if they travel faster than 60mph

The speed of sound can not be exceeded

Submarines and nuclear power are only figments of the imagination

All things which Science Fiction said could be accomplished but main stream science once called impossible. Special relativity explains how things in the large scale should work but falls apart at quantum levels, plus to make what we observe sync with what physics predicts we have to come up with Dark Matter and Dark Energy which we can not explain but is necessary to make the predictions match the observations. There is so much in the universe that we still can't completely explain that it could be completely wrong to believe we can't travel faster than the speed of light.

As for the power of current rockets, the engineers have known that nuclear powered rockets would out perform current liquid fueled rockets but because of the fear of an accident they have never been seriously developed. If we build a base on the Moon, then we could work on technology like nuclear rockets there without worrying about contaminating Earth. One design that was promoted was using a nuclear reactor to heat a material such as zinc to boiling and then expelling that as the reaction mass for thrust. This is something we would never attempt on Earth, but experimenting on it from a space or Moon based research facility would be entirely possible. If generating massive electromagnetic fields is the trick to faster space travel, we would not want to experiment with that on Earth since it would interfere with everything from computers and our transportation systems to communications and even health of live on the planet, but out there we could possibly experiment with it.

If we never spent money without a clear profitable purpose where would we be in our current technology? Would we have computers, or at least computers we can sit at and post our musings so easily for everyone in the world to read? Would we have a modern society here in the Americas, or would we still be confined to Europe? Many things which were done on what at the time seemed to be a whim, turned out to advance our society and technology by leaps and bounds eventually. Going to the Moon should be our next logical step. We don't know if our current tech can support human survival for a trip to Mars, but it would be much easier to test it on the Moon than on the way to Mars, where if we found out it didn't work the explorers taking that chance would be done for. If robots are the best thing to send out into space for exploration and work, they why did we send people up to repair and service the Hubble telescope? Telepresence is still a long way from being good enough to substitute for actual human presence, we may use it for simple surgery, but I would not want someone in another city doing a heart bypass on me using robotic hands, the tech just isn't there yet, same thing with being boots on the ground on Mars, being able to make instant decisions and reactions to things versus having minutes of delay does make a difference. If you are driving a rover on Mars and you see on the monitor that it will drive over a cliff and it will get there before the command to stop will, all you can do it watch as it plunges to its destruction.

I hope we do get back to the Moon and farther out into space. Not sure how long it will take, but I hope it does happen, and if it is in my lifetime I will be even more happy :)
 
I'm super trying not to be political, so forgive me if it sounds like it. But didn't Bush the Second make some similar thing about sending people to Mars? Great thing about making these bold directives that will take longer than your time in office is that you don't have to see them through.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I'm super trying not to be political, so forgive me if it sounds like it. But didn't Bush the Second make some similar thing about sending people to Mars? Great thing about making these bold directives that will take longer than your time in office is that you don't have to see them through.
Click to expand...
Yes, but love him or hate him, Trump has been making good on his promises. Will be interesting. Im hopeful he sees this one through. His ego may demand it.
 
It’s in the realm of science fiction heavily, but how can we be sure we don’t end up bringing back some toxic bacteria or fungus or virus as we visit planets, or asteroids, and return to earth.

Think Andromeda Strain.
 
nysmo said:
People watch too much star trek. Humans are not going to be traveling the universe in search of a new home or anything of the sort. Do a youtube search for "traveling at the speed of light" or something to get a feel for how slow lightspeed travel is relative to traveling to anywhere remotely useful, and of course we'll never travel at lightspeed. Barring some sci-fi fantasy discovery of safe wormhole travel Earth is our home and thats it. Absolutely no need to send humans anywhere else other than perhaps perfecting related technologies as space development tends to do.
Click to expand...

Clearly you are one of the masses that pays more attention to either celebrities, sports, or politics than science...http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-reveals-latest-warp-drive-ship-designs/

I wouldnt say "never". Many times science has taken a never and turned it into everyday.

nysmo said:
Even if you manage to cram a few astronauts in a pod large enough not to go insane for a 9 month journey, how do you get them back? Unlike the lunar module with no atmosphere and very low grav you'd need a full blown rocket to escape Mars. SpaceX's self-landing rockets look promising but you'd need it already refueled before it landed, meaning you'd have to tow it there with an even larger rocket, presumably the one the crew lived on during their journey. The whole thing would be extremely difficult, risky, expensive, and downright uncomfortable. And for what? Once they land they can walk around and kick up orange dust and perform the same coring samples that a probe the size of a Hummer can. If you can build a rocket that big to send humans there you might as well load it up with a bunch of larger and more sophisticated robots that can traverse the entire planet instead of spend 2 weeks with a 100m radius to explore.
Click to expand...

Easily fixed. You dont need to tow a rocket there. You send an automated rocket there with fuel and land it ahead of time. We've sent probes why not send a return craft? Dont forget gravity is less on Mars.

This is why we go: https://tauzero.aero/whats-out-there/

Also humans can adapt to changing circumstances. Robots cannot. If it isn't in their programming they wont know what to do. You cant science the shit out of a problem on Mars with a robot. You just lose the robot.

jedijeb13 said:
A human being will die if they travel faster than 60mph
Click to expand...

I had a good laugh at that one having just gone about 150mph last night in the air through the snow lol.
 
kju1 said:
Clearly you are one of the masses that pays more attention to either celebrities, sports, or politics than science...http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-reveals-latest-warp-drive-ship-designs/

I wouldnt say "never". Many times science has taken a never and turned it into everyday.



Easily fixed. You dont need to tow a rocket there. You send an automated rocket there with fuel and land it ahead of time. We've sent probes why not send a return craft? Dont forget gravity is less on Mars.

This is why we go: https://tauzero.aero/whats-out-there/

Also humans can adapt to changing circumstances. Robots cannot. If it isn't in their programming they wont know what to do. You cant science the shit out of a problem on Mars with a robot. You just lose the robot.



I had a good laugh at that one having just gone about 150mph last night in the air through the snow lol.
Click to expand...

No, no, no, no.

Those are not NASA designed ships, those are 3D renderings by an artist, not even an engineer. The ships also have no engine, and they have no idea how such a drive would work, and only "in theory" would it allow faster than light travel, however those that work in the field admit they don't even have a full theory no less an idea of how to build a device that would make use of it, and they believe that the power requirements would be more than the matter in the universe. So yes, he is right, lots of talk here is from watching to much Star Trek.

As for robots, uhhh...No, again. Mars is well within communications range and we controlled and still do control one rover from Earth right now. Even Voyager probes were reprogrammed many times while on mission to deal with issues we had no idea about and everything came out just fine, and BTW they brought more science and data about our own system than ANY manned mission has and this is with sensors and cameras from the 70's.
 
Archaea said:
It’s in the realm of science fiction heavily, but how can we be sure we don’t end up bringing back some toxic bacteria or fungus or virus as we visit planets, or asteroids, and return to earth.

Think Andromeda Strain.
Click to expand...

Well, not that far off into fiction. Quite a few theories floating around now that a significant amount of life on earth may have come from microbes that survived crashing on earth from asteroids/meteorites.
 
All in all. Still happy with this. I do agree with a number of the ideas I've heard recently about getting a moon base going as a staging point for the rest of the solar system.

Other than the obvious hurtle of money, I think the other big risk is various collisions. It's also well known how the earth in particular is heavily shielded from many things by the moon and other bodies throughout the rest of the system. Sure we still get some close calls and occasional big ones but compared to the rest the numbers seem drastically less.
 
Last edited:
BlueFireIce said:
No, no, no, no.

Those are not NASA designed ships, those are 3D renderings by an artist, not even an engineer. The ships also have no engine, and they have no idea how such a drive would work, and only "in theory" would it allow faster than light travel, however those that work in the field admit they don't even have a full theory no less an idea of how to build a device that would make use of it, and they believe that the power requirements would be more than the matter in the universe. So yes, he is right, lots of talk here is from watching to much Star Trek.

As for robots, uhhh...No, again. Mars is well within communications range and we controlled and still do control one rover from Earth right now. Even Voyager probes were reprogrammed many times while on mission to deal with issues we had no idea about and everything came out just fine, and BTW they brought more science and data about our own system than ANY manned mission has and this is with sensors and cameras from the 70's.
Click to expand...

I never said the ships were a reality. Dont read into it. What I implied was that science is looking to turn the never into a maybe right now. A credible maybe in some circles. This has nothing to do with watching star trek.

Mars is a communication delay of anywhere from 4 minutes to 24 minutes. es we changed the parameters for a robot. After A LOT of work. Good luck trying to deal with a problem that requires you to make an instantaneous decision if you havent thought of it and coded for it well ahead of time.

As far as your seeming distaste for human exploration. Fine, stay home. Let us go out there and reap the benefits and enjoy seeing the rest of the universe while you stick your head in the sand.
 
This is good news to me. However, since I am afraid of heights, I will not be going but, have fun.
 
kju1 said:
I never said the ships were a reality. Dont read into it. What I implied was that science is looking to turn the never into a maybe right now. A credible maybe in some circles. This has nothing to do with watching star trek.

Mars is a communication delay of anywhere from 4 minutes to 24 minutes. es we changed the parameters for a robot. After A LOT of work. Good luck trying to deal with a problem that requires you to make an instantaneous decision if you havent thought of it and coded for it well ahead of time.

As far as your seeming distaste for human exploration. Fine, stay home. Let us go out there and reap the benefits and enjoy seeing the rest of the universe while you stick your head in the sand.
Click to expand...

No, its not turning into right now, you linked to a incomplete THEORY of a tech that even in best case and the theory is true, will require more energy than there is matter in the whole universe, by the researchers own admission. Yes, this is Star Trek dreaming.

What instantaneous decisions? All of the rover and probe missions that have made it into space have been HUGE successes. You seem to think there is something with programing holding these things back, which is just not the case, and there are MANY limiting factors for humans that do not apply to rovers or probes, including sending them into some of the most data rich areas that would be instant death for a human.

Let you go and reap the benefits? I want MORE exploration than you do. For the cost of the Apollo program we could have done 550 probes/rovers, that's enough to send dozens to every single planet and its moons. NASA has already stated that just to get back to the moon will be a projected 150 billion, and we all know how well they do at those projections, but still, thats a few hundred unmanned missions that results in real science and data. No less the cost of going to Mars, which would be worth a few thousand unmanned missions.

Manned missions are the best thing ever....For the few who get to go, but for science and data about our own system as a whole does very little in relation to unmanned programs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top