Several times in the past people have stated to me (without proof) that if humanity wanted to return to the moon now it would take at least thirty years (I always assumed they were just playing off the fact that it was thirty years ago that we first went), I was content to brush this off in the past.
However, with the news that Bush may be planning to return to the moon (that’s where he’s from after all, don’tcha know?), my curiosity has been piqued,
so here’s my question:
What do informed people in the field predict is the time required for a manned return to the moon to successfuly occur, assuming that in 2004 Bush makes this a stated goal and no following presidents deviate from this goal?
Kennedy made his initial announcement on May 22, 1961, and on July 20, 1969, man first landed on the Moon. I see no reason, given a similar expentiture of money and effort, why we couldn’t do it again in a similar time scale. Certainly we’ve learned a great deal since then, so we could probably do it even faster, if we had to.
It shouldn’t take more than a couple years, with serious effort, to build a Project Orion style craft that could not only land men on the moon, but goto Mars & Jupiter in a reasonable amount of time as well. Granted, there are some enviromental concerns with an Orion style launch from Earth.
Using more conventional methods, as ** Q.E.D. ** stated, it shouldn’t take any longer than it did before. One could get a bunch of engineers and researchers to go over the Saturn V blueprints, determine which parts are still available and which need to be replaced/subsitituded for, and use that for a moon vehicle.
Kennedy was operating under the assumption that whoever ruled space would also rule the earth (sort of). The entire world situation has changed dramatically since then, and the US isn’t going to devote that much of its resources towards the project. NASA’s number one priority back then was to get to the moon by the end of the decade at all costs. Without that kind of pressure on the project it’s definately going to take longer, which will offset a lot of the gains of newer technology and more experience. NASA also isn’t going to take the same risks that it did back then (one would hope), which will further slow things down.
NASA isn’t the only player here. Stratcom and Spacecom merged last year. Sec. Rumsfeld has shown considerable interest in securing the high frontier, perhaps to the point of backing out of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty barring weapons from space.