We can ask Coca-Cola or Miscrosoft if they want their logos plastered all over the ships and on flags that can be planted on the moon.
That sort of advertising ought to be worth some consideration…
Well, the BBC are saying 2020 and $104billion ( link ) but what’s 2 years and $4billion between friends.
Anyway, I really do hope this is a test mission for a way of getting to Mars; people have already mentioned the modular design of the new craft which makes perfect sense compared to a one use craft. If this is just a mission to the moon I’m deeply worreid by the cost given Odyssey only cost $300million (I don’t know if that takes launch cost into account though).
The bit that worries me is this ‘lunar base to launch missions beyond from’. This just sounds wrong to me since we’ll have to launch the module from Earth, land it on the Moon then launch it from the moon again. Now, a station in Moon orbit would make more sense to me - ship a load of engines to the lunar orbitting station, then launch the module from Earth to lunar orbit, strap an engine to it and launch it into the cosmos from there. Is that such a bad idea?
If the current $7 billion per year expended on the shuttle and ISS continued to be paid out year over year until 2018 you’d have expended $91 billion dollars anyway.
Let us look at the 2006 budgets for various departments and their total spending if held constant over the next 12 years (i.e. until 2018). Everything is in billions by the way.
Dept. 2006 Budget Total by 2018
Agriculture 19 228
Commerce 9 108
Defense 419 5028
Energy 23 276
Health/HS 67 804
Homeland 34 408
Housing 28 336
Interior 11 132
Justice 20 240
Labour 11 132
State 13 156
Transport 57 684
Veterans 33 396
Engineers 4 48
EPA 7 84
NASA 16 192
NSF 6 72
Small Bus. 0.5 6
Social Sec 10 120
787.5 9450
Even if you removed NASA completely the total amount to be spent by the US government over the next 12 budget years would be about $9300 billion dollars. $100 Billion would be just over 1%.
The actual lagnuage is (paraphrased) by 2020 with the* target * 2018
QUOTE=Tuco]
The bit that worries me is this ‘lunar base to launch missions beyond from’. This just sounds wrong to me since we’ll have to launch the module from Earth, land it on the Moon then launch it from the moon again. Now, a station in Moon orbit would make more sense to me - ship a load of engines to the lunar orbitting station, then launch the module from Earth to lunar orbit, strap an engine to it and launch it into the cosmos from there. Is that such a bad idea?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work – since I will seem to be nitpick you if I don’t try let me say: I know part of the Lunar Base stuff is to test equiptment and learn how to survive off the land for a Mars Mission. Whether actual assembly and lift off is expected from the Moon am not sure - I would be surprised. Maybe the hope is that some Fuel and or Water production for the Mission could take place on the moon
Maybe the hope is post 2018
Hamsters. :mad:
Maybe the hope is post 2018 Water or Fuel production for the MArs Mission could take place on the Moon where it could be much cheaper to get it in orbit?
If we wait much longer, we might have a moon rock gap.
On a more serious note, to answer the OP (though it has already been addressed by other posters) the idea is to reuse the mature and cost-effective technology of the STS (Space Transportation System, which includes the Orbiter, the Shuttle Main Engines (SME), the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB), the External Tank (ET), and existing launch facilities) without hauling the complex, heavy, and troublesome Orbiter with its obsolescent technology and failure-prone thermal protection system along for the ride. See http://www.safesimplesoon.com/ for ATK’s proposal for the system. A large consideration in this is that the existing EELV (heavy lift vehicles) by American manufacturers (the Atlas V and Delta IV) are not man-rated and would require extensive and expensive testing and modification to satisfy NASA’s requirements, whereas the redesigned SRB is man-rated (however questionable the testing process) and has survived 88 consecutive Shuttle launches of two boosters each, for a total of 176 boosters, without a single critical failure.
I question the goal, though. Someone suggested a station in orbit of the Moon, rather than on the Moon itself, which ends up being the worst of both worlds. At least being based on the Moon, you could burrow underneath the regolith for protection against radiation and other space hazards; in orbit you have no protection, as the Moon has no significant magnetic field to deflect particles. But he makes the point that landing on the Moon and dragging supplies back up is largely counterproductive, going from one gravity well to another. A more reasonable proposal for a bridgehead to interplanetary space would have a construction/docking station in Low or Mid Earth Orbit, using this as an RV point for supplies or multiple component spacecraft assembly (as well as continuing research in the interim of dealing with the problems of long-term habitation), and then launching in a slingshot in a trans-Lunar orbit to gain additional momentum.
Someone will now point out that we already have a space station in Low Earth Orbit. Lamentedly, the ISS is not designed nor can it be readily equipped to act as a construction point or refueling station. Although the proported purpose of Space Station Alpha (the conceptual predecessor to the ISS) was as a staging area for a Mars or transJovian exploration, the current ISS is a figurative Bridge to Nowhere that is incapble of sustaining a crew of more than four people for any extended period of time, even after final upgrades. We could continue to tack more modules on, but at this point it would be more cost effective to just build a whole new station, especially since the ISS is in the wrong orbital inclination for efficient launches from Canaveral. (I’m assuming that Lunar and Mars missions are going to be a US, or North American effort rather than an international one.)
As for going to the Moon to practice habitation; I don’t see much use in it. Conditions on the Moon aren’t likely to be that similar to those on Mars. Unless we are able to extract resources to make such an effort somewhat self-sufficient, it is a large drain on our resources. And while there is certainly a lot of unexplored territory on the Moon, it just isn’t either scientifically or exploratorially worth the return for dollars, while a Moon effort would detract from money spent on a direct mission to Mars.
I think we’d be better off avoiding planets entirely for manned missions (for the time being) and snagging a nearby asteroid for resource extraction, thereby being able to put a space program on a profitable, or at least cost mitigatable basis. Certainly it would require a lot of technological development, but the returns would be far more than Moon (or Mars) rocks.
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