Back to the Moon sez Prez: Yeh, maybe

Great Debates
1

The great thing about proposals is that they cost nothing and sound great, especially in an election year. Congress can vote later to turn it down.

Let’s face it: the chance of voting tens or hundreds of billions of dollars for a vanity project, during desperate budget shortfalls, is zero.

With the failure of the Shuttle program, we are effectively back to where we were in 1973: manned space exploration costs too much for too little benefit, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. You might just as well talk about establishing a manned outpost of the summit of Everest supplied by hot-air balloons.

2

I’ll believe it when I see it, too.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/09/bush.reax.ap/index.html

3

More lies foisted on the public by a president who has never shown a trace of interest in space exploration. Cynical, manipulative, hollow. Signature Bush.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a nearly half trillion dollar deficit, record national debt, record trade imbalance, record weak dollar, jobless recovery, teetering pension funds, structurally unsound social security and Medicare systems, and an OHS that is clueless on defending this nation.

Yeah, let’s go to the Moon.

4

There’s a big, big difference between Bush Sr and Bush Jr’s programs.

First, Bush Sr. basically just threw the notion out there without doing any planning. So NASA came back with a pie-in-the-sky plan worth 450 billion dollars, that had everything but the kitchen sink in it.

Second, Bush Sr tried this 14 years ago. Space technology has advanced quite significantly since then. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the shuttle program, but advanced in computing, AI, propulsion, materials, and other critical technologies are quite substantial. We’ve actually flown advanced engines on working missions - successfully.

Finally, Bush’s Dad was a waffler who was pushed around a lot. Bush Jr. does what he says.

As for budget concerns, one of the beauties of this new plan is that it doesn’t require a lot of new funds, because it gets the money by scrapping existing programs. Specifically, the Shuttle and ISS. Bush plans to kill the Shuttle completely once ISS is finished, and he plans to get the U.S. government out of the ISS by 2013. Those two programs consume about 6.5 billion a year. Another 1.8 billion in other spaceflight initiatives will be rolled into the new program, which means that, without NASA getting another nickel in funding it could put over 8 billion a year into this program. Since the program is over 15 years long, that alone gets you over 100 billion, which should be enough to get you a base on the moon.

But Bush wants to kick in an additional 800 million next year to set up the program, and give NASA 5% increases per year. Over 15 years, that’s what, another 20 billion or so?

I think it’s doable. And I also think it’s something Congress might go for, because they don’t have to sign off on massive new funding, it gets them to look like they’re doing something new and bold while actually lowering risk (if they do nothing and another Shuttle fails, it’ll look very bad. If they vote for this and another Shuttle fails, it’ll just look like they were right to vote for cancellation of the program).

This isn’t something that was just cooked up for the election, by the way. The wind has been blowing towards this since Bush took office. He started off right away boosting NASA’s budget, and directing them to start work on advanced power supplies and propulsion methods (project Prometheus), which obviously has direct application to the new program. If you notice, Dick Cheney has been conspicuously absent of late - it turns out he was spearheading a secret commission that has been working on this plan for quite a few months now. It’s not a throwaway line for the State of the Union or to give Bush the “Vision Thing” - it’s a major part of his administration’s planning.

The major wrench that could be thrown into the works here is NASA and its culture. I’m not convinced that NASA still has the ability to do something this audacious. NASA has failed at almost every major new manned system they’ve tried to build.

I also expect Bush to involve a lot of private industry - perhaps to take over the LEO role - running the ISS, building LEO rockets, etc.

5

This is simply not true. Under Clinton, NASA’s budget was slashed. Under Bush, NASA’s budget has grown every year. Substantially. For FY2004, NASA gets 469 million more over 2003, and it goes up 5% per year after that (almost a billion a year increase in the first years, more later). Bush has been promoting space since he became president.

6

I agree completely. Our first priority should be to launch Bush himself into space. Hopefully the Democrats can write up a plan that gets him to the launch pad by November and in space by mid-January.

7

I’m trying to formulate a good post about this, but until I do, lemme just say that I think this is a good long-term goal to have, regardless of whether or not it gets Bush Jr. more votes.

After the ISS, a moon base is a logical next step for mankind. And as of today, the US is the only country in a position to do it. However, if it were me doing the planning, I’d get more of the world community into such a mission right from day one, rather than go at it alone. Spreading the costs and the benefits around will help, not hurt.

Which, unfortunately, is where I fear GWB’s and my opinion taking differing paths. More later…

8

The clock is ticking and in a decade from now - when the economic excesses of decades have come home to roost, as surely they must - the $US won’t be able to buy a ticket to Staten Island, imho. You’re going to have a lot of other priorities over there.

9

Why is it that $400 billion prescription drug benefits can pass with nary a blink, or the Department of Education can get an 18 billion dollar a YEAR boost in funding, but when you talk about 800 million for NASA with an additional 500million to 1 billion a year after that, all of a sudden the U.S. is going to be bankrupted?

This moon thing is cheap. If you’re worried about the budget you can cut the Department of Education’s budget in half, double NASA’s budget, and save yourself 20 billion a year in the process.

And test scores would probably go up.

10

Because everybody takes prescription meds or knows somebody who does, and everybody has kids in school or knows somebody who does–but nobody except a few people at NASA and Justin Timberlake know people who get to go to the Moon. :smiley:

So that $800 mil looms larger in Joe Taxpayer’s mind if he hasn’t got a hope in Heck of utilizing any of it himself…If they ever implement large-scale commercial shuttle flights, watch for Joe Taxpayer to quit whining about the uselessness of the ISS and start clamoring for tickets.

11

I’m not sure that it really makes sense, however to cancel all current projects just to focus on getting to the moon and building a vacation house there for squishy humanoids. All those “other” programs involve quite a lot of important science, while getting humans to the moon teaches us mostly about… getting humans to the moon. Things like the rover projects are far far cheaper, we can do more of them, and we can consequently learn more from them. Sending humans into space doesn’t seem all that important at this juncture. Currently, there’s no real purpose to it. And, wait a hundred years, and we’ll have much better life-support technology that will make human vanity journeys into space much easier and cheaper anyway. Robotics is cheap right now, is a much more promising area of study and innovation, and is much better for research. A telescope on the moon would be nice, but again it’s not clear that we’d need to send humans out there to set it up.

12

But according to London_Calling, America will be completely bankrupt in a decade…maybe we should do this while we still have a few dollars in to old piggy bank. I’m sure its not just wishful thinking by good ole London_Calling…

To be honest, I’ll believe this when I see it about going back to the moon. I actually think its something that COULD be worth while…if the US actually does it, and does it right. If we go back with another foot prints and flags mission, it will be a complete waste. If we go with the idea that we are going to stay, to actually build something perminent there (sort of like the science stations in Antartica), then the this could really be something. But I’ll believe it when I see them actually planning and building the mission and all the things that go with it.

In the mean time, I have to start looking for a new country to move too, as this one won’t be able to afford even a ticket to Staten Island soon…

-XT

13

It’s wonderful for Bush to propose this, and he’ll get acolades for vision and boldness. But the truth of the matter is that this project will more than likely span at least 2 additional adminisrtations (besides his own) and will be subject to all sorts of political and scientific pressures. Give GWB credit for laying out the vision, but I’d bet serious money that there isn’t the political will in this country to follow thru. I don’t enjoy being cynical, but when the reality of a situation is staring you dead in the face… that’s a hard thing to ignore.

At the very least, I’ll save my praise for the guy who executes on this vision, making it a reality.

14

Having read Sam Stone’s response, I have to moderate my initial cynicism. As some critics of the Shuttle system have pointed out, if we had never built the Shuttle or ISS at all and had simply spent the money on continuing Apollo/Skylab, we’d be ahead of the game. Granted that’s a hindsight judgement Now it sounds as if thirty years late, that that’s what the adminstration is planning to do. If it’s true we’re going to reallocate the manned space budget, then it sounds much more realistic.

I still don’t know about a “manned base”, but if you have the capacity to send a manned mission to the moon round trip, then you could presumably land a modest habitat module on the moon’s surface, and send unmanned resupply vessels as well. For the cost of sending three one-time manned missions, you could send one manned mission that could stay on the moon for weeks instead of days.

15

NASA made a really big wrong turn with the shuttle. The problem with the shuttle is that it encounters such massive forces getting up and getting down, that it was never really practical. A rocket capsule is designed with an ablative coating that burns off in reentry.

Indeed, scrap the shuttle, start building more rockets. GWB doesn’t have the vision to get this stuff done, but man should definitely go back to the moon and onward to Mars.

16

I’ll second nearly all of this.

The purpose of including humans is to gain public sympathy. The general public can’t relate to robots. They get much more excited about the idea of humans in space. This probably applies to President Bush as well.

Read the book
Space
by James Michener. One of the subplots involves the decision-making process of the original moon-landing program and how NASA withered afterward.

17

I think there’s a point to have people go into space. A person in a space suit can do a heck of a lot more than a roly-poly thing on the ground.

There’s the risk of death and the sacrifice (time and years in space), but man will go to Mars, and he will return. And will this have been a great accomplishment? You bet.

18

This sounds hardly convincing. “Massive forces” do not necessarily mean reusable launchers are impractical. Ablative coatings are not necessarily the only practical solution, and not always the best.

I think we have the necessary technology to build a practical reusable spacecraft that is cheaper and more reliable than expendable launchers. Apparently we didn’t 30 years ago, but there have been considerable advances in insulator and composite structure technology since then. NASA’s X-33 and X-34 programs were shut down not because they were too difficult, but because NASA could not afford to fly the Shuttles and develop a new launcher at the same time.

19

I guess I’m of the general public then (is that bad? What are you of?), because I think humans in space is the most important element of the space program. Learning how to survive space travel and how to live in space. Knowledge gained from robot missions is splendid, but I believe ultimately that knowledge should be used for something more directly involving man.

20

The problem with a shuttle-type craft is that you have to lug a whole bunch of stuff into orbit that is useless in space. Wings, landing gear, control surfaces, etc.

Efficient space travel is all about optimization, because you need so much fuel to move a pound into orbit. The all-up weight of a shuttle on the pad is over 4 million pounds. Of that, the Shuttle itself with a full payload is about 260,000 pounds. And the vehicle makes up something like 2/3 of that final weight.

So instead of being able to lift 35 tons into orbit in the Shuttle, if you scrapped it and put a big dumb container on the shuttle launch system, you could put maybe 100 tons or more into orbit, or you could take the same size payload as the shuttle has and launch it to Mars. That’s what the ‘Mars Direct’ proposal does.

When it costs you tens of thousands of dollars per kilo to get mass into space, it’s always going to be pretty inefficient to put an entire aircraft up there just so you have wings and landing gear for coming down.

The original Shuttle design was supposed to be much lighter, much less expensive to turn around on the ground, and was supposed to fly many more missions, amortizing its cost more. All of those would have pushed the cost per kg to orbit much lower, which would then have tipped the scales in favor of a reusable spacecraft. But the way the shuttle turned out, everyone knew that it was a very, very expensive way to get to orbit. But by then, NASA was locked into the program.

Aeschines said:

Vision is exactly what GWB has. This is a president that makes bold, sweeping plans. After all, he’s the one proposing this. Why can’t you give him credit? Clinton spent 8 years cutting NASA at every opportunity. Bush has already given NASA a mandate to build nuclear rockets, power plants, and other advanced technologies. And now he wants to totally transform the agency. I’d call that vision.