Nasa’s budget peaked at 5.5% of the federal budget in 1966. It’s budget for 2009 is 0.55%. If you were put in charge of a 1966 style budget, it would mean an increase from around $17 Billion to $148 Billion based on a 2009 federal budget of 2.7 trillion.
What sort of space projects would you fund with that kind of budget?
I would be interested in funding some very ambitious robotic probes. My number one would be a probe to Europa, to melt through the ice and see what’s in the ocean under the ice. Also, a balloon type probe to study the atmosphere of Jupiter.
Also, in this scenario, your planning can be based on maintaining that budget for at least 10 years, not just a one time big check.
Funny, I was actually going to mention drilling in Europa.
Otherwise, I would sink a lot of money into a project that would research the mass production of antimatter. Matter/antimatter reactions are almost 100% energy efficient and would solve a lot of our planet’s energy needs in addition to providing much more suitable spacecraft engines. Much difficulty would be had in trying to prevent the government from developing it into a weapon, though.
That’s nice But i’m really trying to explore ideas of what interesting space projects could be done with today’s tech with a big budget. I can think of lots of other fascinating scientific projects as well, but in this scenario im talking Space.
One big-ass space station. Properly done this time. Plus a whole new booster program to get the men and materiel into orbit in the first place. In fact, I’d go for both LEO and HEO stations. From there, we can start a Moon Base.
You’d probably want to have an orbiter to most of the store-and-forward duties. The part of the drilling package that remained on the surface would be responsible for receiving telemetry from the exploring vehicle and then uploading it to the orbiter. I would think the probe would be tethered.
I’d give it to JPL and astronomers, and tell them all to advance science.
The Space Shuttle was for taking things to the Space Station, which was for giving the Space Shuttle a purpose. I have a great idea how to save some money on those.
Several replacement Hubbles, with one in a stationary orbit on the far side of the moon (plus relay satellite. Two probes to Titan - a dirigible and an orbiter each, I think.
Given the presumed depth of ice, Europa’s oceans might not be doable. Still, a probe to orbit Europa and analyse both it and Jupiter would be cool. And landers a la Spirit and Endeavour to explore the surface.
I’d go with heavy “nobody gets in big trouble if it doesnt work” research into “big dumb boosters”. Lots of tests lobbing concrete blocks into space as cheaply as possible.
ANYTHING that gets the cost of getting mass into orbit down a good bit will pay dividends for a very long time after that.
Rocket launching now suffers from a serious case of its very expensive because it cant fail and it cant fail because its very expensive chicken and egg problem right now IMO.
Put (at the very least) a black guy, a woman, and a gay person on the moon as soon as possible (probably space them out over a couple of missions, sos as not to look so suspicious). Then when congress tries to cut my budget again, I can get the pundits to accuse them of being jealous bigots. Then I’m set.
Seriously, though—back on the moon ASAP. Probably the near-earth asteroid landing mission, too, like they’ve got in the Orion outline. Not to mention Mars.
Probably put at least some study into a SSTO replacement for the shuttle. I don’t want to blow my money and luck on a vanity project, but going from a reusable spaceplane back to Big Gemini is humiliating.
Really, I guess my whole approach will have two aims: prestige, and profit*. Prestige, to raise the profile of the agency, the country, and space exploration to the public and the world at large, earning us awe and support; and profit, to justify the program’s existence on a concrete level, through technology and scientific spinoffs, and direct earnings from space services—and also to guarantee my sources of funding in the future.
I trust enough in modern science that they’ll be able to get some legitimate research done in the process, if I give them a decent amount of support.
So…we can recreate The Moon is a Harsh Mistress without having to simulate lunar gravity?
I would spend it on developing reliable heavy launch capability combined with high impulse, low thrust propulsion, and the infrastructure to capture, process, and refine materials in Near Earth Objects and send the resultant material or products back to Earth. This would give experience in both robotic and manned missions beyond Earth’s orbit sufficient to start exploring and exploiting the vast resources of the asteroid belt, and give impetus to developing a fully self-sustainable human presence in space. Once you’ve done that, interplanetary travel and exploration is a given, rather than a line item to be argued over for academic purposes.
Space stations for the sake of having a big can in space are so 1960s. Bob McNamara shot that one down when he eviscerated (with good reason) the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
The Moon, Mars, and an NEA mission are all very different ventures that will require completely different hardware. Spreading yourself this thin will guarantee that you won’t accomplish anything.
This is misguided, albeit popular, thinking; that reverting to the tried-and-true capsule system (and Orion is closer to an Apollo Plus concept from the Apollo Extension Series) is “a step backward”. In fact, the desire to built a heavy lift cargo truck spaceplane was a step away from common sense. Previous spaceplane efforts assumed that it would be a personnel-only shuttlecraft with just enough cargo capability to carry instrumentation. All other larger cargo was to be lifted by an unmanned (and therefore much more simple, in terms of qualification) heavy lift vehicle like Titan or Atlas.
The desire to integrate both functions into the Space Transportation System was a short-sighted effort to reduce the amount of launch support equipment that needed to be serviced. The vast size of the Shuttle wings–which are much larger than would be needed for a pure lifting body–were in response to a design criteria allow for the quick launch to position surveillance satellites and sufficient cross-range upon return on a “once around polar orbit” trajectory from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The “Slick-Six” debacle was one of the greatest wastages of AF budget and effort in the 'Eightes with absolutely nothing to show for it. A much smaller shuttle using lifting body principles would have much less sensitive leading edge area and could be more readily protected, perhaps even using active cooling methods that would further reduce maintenance costs and minimize turn-around time.
However, the conical or biconic capsule with a large and robust heat shield makes more sense for a mission that doesn’t require substantial crossrange. In fact, one of the more interesting STS proposals, the Chrysler SERV (along with the MURP personnel shuttle), was basically in the form of a giant Apollo capsule, with a segmented, movable heat shield and air-breathing engines that would let it come in to a soft, controlled landing. Although the proposal required some propulsion technologies that are still not in production (specifically linear aerospike engines) the idea had a lot of potential, albeit not as graceful looking as a spaceplane.
Actually, when you put profit first, the funding for research inevitably follows. Once there is an infrastructure to support exploration and a permanent human presence in space, the research aspect is no longer an expensive abstraction; it is a valuable tool to advance the ability to extract more resources. For good or bad, having industry lead into space is the most viable path to a permanent and effective space program. And NASA, rather than being the principal organization to direct and regulate space access, should be a clearinghouse and research and development support arm to provide needed technologies and support to cooperative public-private ventures for space exploration.
I’m being given eight times my normal budget for at least ten years. I think the last report I saw said NASA’d need to increase it’s budget by at almost one-sixth just to get to the moon.
If I don’t try to do everything all at once, I think I might just be able to get by.
I’d at least resume research into that. See what they can figure out with modern computing and whatnot, whether it might be feasible. Also throw money into nanotube research, in hope of making a space elevator possible. Until we find a better way to move things, we can’t do anything but send more unmanned probes around the solar system, and maybe send a few people in a tin can to Mars.
In general, I am dubious of NASA’s “spend it all on very expensive, very showy, all-eggs-in-one-basket” projects. Why does it take 15 years to decide to send a single probe to Saturn, and it costs more than some small countries? And they still get the math wrong on the occasional Mars probe, at which point it’s a big embarrassing loss.
I’d develop cheap expendable launchers, buy them in bulk to get economy of scale, and spam the vastness of space with inexpensive probes. Who cares if a lot of them fail? They’re cheap and plentiful. Some shielding, a power source, a pentium chip, a radio, an antenna. Little to no budget to maintain staff scientists and big-name administrators on the project for its 20-year flight through space; no shoulder patches.
Instead, dump the returning data into a public wiki and let scientists (as well as the general public) sift through and interpret it on a volunteer basis, with eternal fame being their incentive instead of 3.6 billion dollars of tax money.
Launch, say, 15 probes a day, to all sorts of places, until the money runs out.
Space is all but infinitely vast. Our lives are short. Why will I only see the results of a few enormously expensive probes to a few places during my life? Why will we limit ourselves to so few efforts?
Take a lesson from the spawning sea animals and the hatching cicadas – strength in numbers of expendable individuals.
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But i’m really trying to explore ideas of what interesting space projects could be done with today’s tech with a big budget. I can think of lots of other fascinating scientific projects as well, but in this scenario im talking Space.