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NASA executive quits weeks after appointment to lead 2024 moon landing plan

176 points by Rooster61 7y ago

ryder9 7y ago
NASA requested $1.4B in increase for comparison, Military budget increased from $586B in 2015 to $713B in 2019
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Maybe they can hitch a ride on that ridiculous new "Space Force"?
  - hsnewman 7y ago
    Even better, we need to build a wall on the moon.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      What I'm hearing is if Mexico could land a man on the moon the US would be there tomorrow.
  - misterprime 7y ago
    Space Force may have a funny name, but with the new threat of predator satellites it seems that orbit may be a legit theater of battle.
    - craftyguy 7y ago
      If anything, creating a 'space force' will ratchet up the number of 'predatory' satelites. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy..
      - misterprime 7y ago
        How do you suggest avoiding it? Let other countries take that space while the US holds their head high with the moral high ground? That's not a winning strat IMO.
        kazagistar 7y ago
        Who cares? Any country that has space war abilities is a country that fighting a war against would nearly end humanity regardless.
        gmueckl 7y ago
        The problem is the aggressive language implied in terms like "space force" rather than the capabilities involved. Develop them in secret, store/shelve them until they are truly needed (hopefully never) and never talk about them because that would give others bad ideas.
        phil248 7y ago
        By negotiating arms control treaties.
        craftyguy 7y ago
        And making it very difficult for incompetent heads of state to arbitrarily pull out of them.
        jryle70 7y ago
        I'm all for this, but says if Burkina Faso today demands the US to enter agreement not to weaponize the space, do you think the US would feel the need to respond? how about after Burkina Faso has successfully demonstrated its satellite shoot-down capability?
        craftyguy 7y ago
        Why must a country possess the capability to shoot down satellites in order to demand that other countries stop doing it? If Burkina Faso pays ESA to put something in space for them, they probably don't want some hot-shot US commander in chief waking up on the wrong side of twitter and deciding to blast it out of orbit. That seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse to demand others not use any capabilities they possess for shooting down satellites, even if Burkina Faso does not possess the ability.
  - booleandilemma 7y ago
    And why is it ridiculous exactly? Where do you think the next frontier is? Do you think that humanity, which has warred with itself for its entire existence, is going to stop warring with itself when it’s living in space? If so, I have a wall to sell you. Do you not want the US to have a military presence up there? Do you want the US to take a backseat while China and Russia build out their own military capabilities in space? You’re like a person in the 1400s laughing at a country for building a navy.
    - blackguardx 7y ago
      The Air Force already does the job that the Space Force is supposed to do. Creating another military branch would duplicate a lot of administrative functions and not be very cost effective, IMHO.
      - taftster 7y ago
        > "If established, it would be organized as a military service branch within the Department of the Air Force, one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense." [1] So yes, any new military service branch is going to have overhead. But the Air Force already provides the structure and overhead for the space initiatives The Space Force is more about formalizing (and potentially funding) this branch of the AF separately from the main budget of the AF. There will still be a little additional overhead, but not really like you're implying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
        Rebelgecko 7y ago
        Another perspective— that "little bit of overhead" for starting up the Space Force is almost as large as NASA's annual budget. At least that's if you believe the budget numbers from Heather Wilson (outgoing secretary of the Air Force). Unfortunately, I doubt that standing up a new military service is something that the government would actually be able to accomplish without going over budget.
    - 7y ago
- georgeecollins 7y ago
  Or they just asked for (and presumably will get) an additional $15 B of subsidies for farmers to compensate for the trade war. Nothing against farmers, but if it is so easy to do that, why not fund NASA a bit?
  - ianai 7y ago
    They could fund nasa at DOD levels and not risk hyper inflation nor any other ills. They could probably be coaxed into helping employ more rural communities too. (Ref: modern monetary theory)
  - 2Ccltvcm 7y ago
    America should reduce corn subsidies. Corn works its way into the American food ecosystem in many ways to the detriment of the Americans' health. It is highly inflammatory by itself and it is processed into compounds which also modulate inflammation in other ways. See high fructose corn syrup and its inflammatory pathways. Processed corn products are a multi pronged attack on Americans' health. End corn subsidies.
    - sathackr 7y ago
      [citation needed] Not that I dispute what you say, but I don't buy it hook-line-and-sinker.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - ajross 7y ago
      I'm not aware of anything specific to HFCS and inflammation that doesn't apply to any other fructose source. It's cheap sugar. Sugar is bad for you.
      - behringer 7y ago
        I think that's the point. By ending corn subsidies, we'd raise the price of sugar.
- broahmed 7y ago
  Great way to visualize the size of the military budget in comparison to other programs: https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016 https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016 Looks like the latest year they have for 2016, but still useful.
- api 7y ago
  For the current military budget we could probably build O'Neill cylinders in Lunar orbit and start a terraforming project on Mars. (Of course don't get me started about what we could do on Earth for this money.) We are just very clever tool using animals, not yet a truly intelligent species. I don't think we'll truly be "intelligent" until our intelligence is able to overcome both our evolutionary legacy and game theoretic effects that emerge in our economies and societies. A true intelligence would be the master of these things. We are slaves to them.
  - magduf 7y ago
    If we had the technology to build O'Neill cylinders, I can't imagine why we'd want to bother terraforming Mars. Mars is pretty crappy by comparison: the gravity is too low, it's cold and kinda far from the Sun (and from Earth, compared to Lunar orbit), and it's questionable what kind of resources are there which we don't have easier access to on the Moon or nearby asteroids. Most of the interest in it just seems to be nothing more than nostalgia for planet-based living. Also, I think you'd want to build your O'Neill cylinders in one of the Langrangian positions between Earth and Moon, not Lunar orbit. A truly intelligent species would actually be working substantively on these projects, instead of merely talking about them.
    - vkou 7y ago
      A truly intelligent species would be working on not killing its own planet, instead of figuring out space habitation. The ROI on the former is many orders of magnitude better.
      - elsonrodriguez 7y ago
        A truly intelligent species would be doing both. Also an extinction level event happening on this planet is a certainty, so it's actually an infinite order of magnitude better to figure out how to live in space than to only focus on saving the earth. But again, a truly intelligent species would do both.
        7y ago
- sambull 7y ago
  I feel really shitty that we're watching our future generations get outright robbed of living a good life.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    true, but this is from a split moment in time when we have a dictator-wannabe as president, and an out of touch senate. If a democratic president did half the stuff Trump did democrats would be coming at him w/ a pitch fork and lead the impeachment proceedings, but the GOP rather have a corrupt leader because they're all corrupt and that's just how it works in D.C. in their brain. This is why we need senate term limits, hard to get corrupted by D.C. if you only can serve 8 years. New blood will bring change with it. Back to my point of this being a split moment in time, I honestly believe that pain is coming in the way of automation, loss of jobs, water wars, along with that will come out the pitchforks aimed at D.C. if politicians don't start making life better for everyone instead of enriching themselves. So mark my words, times they are achanging, equality will come back or there'll be a French-style revolution or two before it does.
    - clarkmoody 7y ago
      You might want to read a little history of the presidents for real examples of dictator-like behavior, from Democrats and Republicans.
      - gremlinsinc 7y ago
        Idealizing Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and the leaders of Russia and Saudia Arabia and creating concentration camps for kids while shitting all over our friendly democratic leaders from UK, France, Canada seems like a good start at becoming a dicator. What makes other presidents more dictatorial, I'd like to know.
        grayed-down 7y ago
        That's one view through the leftist lens, but at least you ended your comment with an appropriate question.
- tptacek 7y ago
  No, it's closer to $70B, over the 9-year lifetime of the Artemis project. The "$1.6B" this article talks about was a "down payment".
- tjpnz 7y ago
  NASA got a 1.6 billion USD increase. Around the same time it was announced that Wellington City (the third largest city in New Zealand, also the capital) had been given the equivalent of 4.5 billion USD for a revamped public transportation system. As far as public spending goes the two couldn't be more different. Yet it really did put into perspective the futility of NASA's situation, at least for me.
- InternetUser 7y ago
  Well, the Military will soon include the Space Force[0][1], so let's see how the funding of space-related activity goes in the next couple years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force [1] https://www.military.com/space-force https://www.military.com/space-force
  - anthuman 7y ago
    I suspect more and more funding will go to the Space Force and less and less will go to NASA. Looking at the budgets, it's clear that the military has far more pull in washington than NASA. Seems like whatever the military wants, it gets. While NASA has to beg, plead and grovel for every crumb. And if SpaceX, Blue Origin and the private sector become viable players in space, then NASA might be shut down or absorbed into Space Force. With China, EU, Japan, India, etc getting involved in space exploration, it's inevitable that space is going to be a new frontier of militarization and privatization. Space Force and the private sector are natural players in this new arena. Not sure where NASA fits in this picture.
    - thowaway9883 7y ago
      The majority of NASA's missions are instrument-driven science missions designed to answer questions about space (ex: JWST). Neither SpaceX or Blue origin has displayed serious interest in replacing this function of NASA. They are mainly engineering organizations, and while they are effective at doing what they do, they are organizationally not pursuing models that research fundamental astrophysics, heliophysics, or earth science.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The military budget buys you global dominance and never having to bend domestic policy to account for what anyone else thinks. What has NASA bought us? I think space is cool. I have a degree in aerospace engineering because of that. But if you look at space exploration in terms of ROI it has sucked.
  - jraines 7y ago
    https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i...
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Better question: what WILL it buy us? Things like asteroid mining, colonization. Worth trillions. No, we don't have a convenient number for what asteroid mining is worth - a better unit would be 'civilizations'? It even could bring space dominance if that's important.
  - balabaster 7y ago
    > What has NASA bought us? I'll leave this here: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html Highlights - - Water purification - Land mine removal - Freeze drying technology - Fire resistant reinforcement - Solar power - Satellite phones - GPS All having significant military applications, as well as public benefit.
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      GPS is kind of a stretch
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      I'd also argue SMT technology; while things were moving in that direction before then, it seems like the Apollo program really kicked it in high gear with the need for the compact AGC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer I'd have to think that SMT was available prior to the AGC development, but I don't think it was as widely used commercially (maybe more for the military and avionics?).
- simonsarris 7y ago
  Your "for comparison" figures do not seem true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
- siffland 7y ago
  Yeah but Russia hitting us with hypersonic weapons and China sabotaging us with electronic warfare or North Korea nuking us is a far greater possiblity that may occur than aliens invading. That is why our money is pumped there. But at least Will Smith is still around in case the aliens invade, so i feel safer......
  - mLuby 7y ago
    Come on, you know that "potential damage to US * likelihood of occurring" is not how funds get allocated. If that were true, they'd have ended our dependence on many foreign markets (especially oil), solved global warming (or at least built a great seawall), and headed off a bunch of social issues that threaten the stability and cohesion of the US. Follow the money.
duxup 7y ago
Sounds like it is simply that "if we'e not going to do / fund the thing there's not much for me to lead here" kinda situation.
- a3n 7y ago
  But why was he escorted out of the building. Unusual for a leadership position?
  - Balgair 7y ago
    Probably protocol. Many NASA sites are co-located on USAF bases or have the same 'legality/rules' if they have military projects on them. I wouldn't read too much into it until more is known.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
rjf72 7y ago
And this is why getting private industry into space is what matters. $1.6 billion is a tiny fraction of what we spend on things that will have basically 0 impact on the longterm outcome of our species. But since it doesn't get votes or feed special interests, it's left unfunded. Of course even if it was funded, it might well get cut. For instance one reason Nixon stripped down the space program was literally because he didn't like JFK and didn't want JFK's legacy overshadowing his own. [1] Bezos, for instance, wanting to spend the majority of his wealth creating a private space industry can be seen as capricious, but I think this is myopic. Some time, ideally not all that far from now, space will have revolutionized every single aspect of our society. It provides endless lands for colonizing, endless mineral resources for harvesting, and an infinite frontier to reach ever deeper into. If we only moved forward once everything else was sound and stable, we'd never move forward. [1] - http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-callahan/20141003-how-richard-nixon-changed-nasa.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-callahan/20...
- jaratec 7y ago
  "A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!" (Blade Runner)
- dmead 7y ago
  > And this is why getting private industry into space is what matters. Really? that's an interesting conclusion to jump to. Maybe it would be easier to properly run the government than try to make companies that pretend to do the job of nation states? Bezos is doing what he's doing precisely because he has the money to do it and not be beholden to profit motives. Saying "we should get private companies involved in space" comes with a HUGE asterix of "as long as they aren't beholden to profit motives". And yes, spaceX is a thing but they're never going to turn a profit. The whole thing is a for profit company in name only.
  - pault 7y ago
    At one point international trade was the job of nation states. I don't think it's outrageous to imagine that some large scale endeavors require enormous upfront capital and organization, but eventually become cheap enough to move to the private sector.
telaport 7y ago
NASA should say it needs $10B for searching for Clinton's emails on the Moon...
neuronexmachina 7y ago
This article from a couple months ago has some info on the new "Moon to Mars" mission directorate NASA wanted to establish, separate from the existing operations-focused Human Exploration & Operations Directorate. As the original submitter's article mentions, the proposal was rejected by lawmakers: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2019/03/new-mission-directorate-in-nasa-budget-request-would-explore-new-capabilities-for-moon-mars-missions/ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2019/03/new-mission-di... > “What we’re talking about is creating a new mission directorate at NASA,” Bridenstine said during the March 27 hearing. “And it’s focused on development activities that are very large in scale. And that mission directorate, we would call it Moon to Mars Mission Directorate, because it’s going to be focused on getting to the moon and using those capabilities to go on to Mars. So on the management side we’re trying to separate operations from development so that we can get a better mix of the right people in the right places to accomplish these objectives.” > The problem, Bridenstine said, is that the current division between operations and development is muddled. Operations refers to the actual missions: Flying to and resupplying the International Space Station, for example. Development refers to the design and implementation of never-before-used technologies.
rc_kas 7y ago
"back on the moon by 2024" This entirely smells of Trump wanting to stroke his own ego and get credit for a moon landing.
- Rooster61 7y ago
  It's also the year he would become a lame duck if he gets reelected. Very low risk thing pay lip service to for him. I doubt it's his idea though, nor of any of his cabinet. Just a convenient thing for him to latch on to politically.
- nabla9 7y ago
  It was was actually Pence's idea. Pence was visiting NASA and Bridenstine mentioned to Pence that getting into moon by 2024 was possible. Pence just added the new policy goal into his speech on the spot and it became the official policy of the Government. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-fifth-meeting-national-space-council-huntsville-al/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice... >In Space Policy Directive-1, the President directed NASA to create a lunar exploration plan. But as of today, more than 15 months later, we still don’t have a plan in place. But Administrator Bridenstine told me, five minutes ago, we now have a plan to return to the moon. (Applause.) ... little later >And I’m here, on the President’s behalf, to tell the men and women of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the American people that, at the direction of the President of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon within the next five years. (Applause.) Of course, this does not mean anything. WH is not committing any work towards that goal and probably don't know how. They just said it, requested money and left it there hanging. NASA has funding for Moon mission in 2028. The extra money to get there faster is nowhere to find.
  - rc_kas 7y ago
    I'm sure Pence and Trump have never had a conversation where Trump said he wanted a moon landing to happen during his time in office. /eyeroll/
  - mturmon 7y ago
ricardobeat 7y ago
The Apollo program ran for 12 years and ended with six successful missions. Here we are half a century later, with wildly more advanced technology, a bunch of ready-to-fly rockets to choose from, and they need another ten years for a single mission? What “organizational changes” are necessary that cost billions?
- yingw787 7y ago
  I think I read somewhere that we actually lost the technology to build the Saturn V; the fab tools, the blueprints, and the skilled labor isn’t there anymore. It’s like Damascus steel or Roman concrete or Greek fire. We may have to reinvent it.
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    To be honest I don’t know enough about this, but my understanding was that both the Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy have the ability to execute a moon mission, plus the Boeing SLS is already in development. Is there a need to start from scratch?
    - nradov 7y ago
      No one had proposed starting from scratch and building new Saturn V's. That would be totally impractical. But none of those new rockets have actually demonstrated the ability to lift enough payload for a manned lunar mission. They might be able to do so eventually but years of development work remain.
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      Maybe if you're willing to do multiple launches and Earth-orbit rendezvous. Neither the Falcon Heavy nor the Delta IV Heavy matches the payload of the Saturn V: https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-rockets-falcon-heavy-comparison/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-r...
      - a3n 7y ago
PorterDuff 7y ago
It seems to me that space proponents need to study other tricky-to-justify programs for lessons. Just do whatever the F-35 people did. I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Also, it would be nice to see a more results-oriented attitude rather than have the whole deal watered down with politics. Of course, you could probably say that about the US military.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  I think it's hard for a civilian agency to use the defence sectors tricks. NASA could probably get a lot of people behind building a giant laser on the moon to "strike the enemy", but it's hard to see how they could get much support from the science community for such a project.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Laser interferometry for astronomy. Just spec the lasers out so that they're useful for science, but can double as a weapon in a pinch.
  - PorterDuff 7y ago
    Au contraire. Just scatter around the components of the project into various Congressional districts. Build large facilities in places with political horsepower and name them after important people. Gemini/Apollo is fraught with this. Personally, I doubt that the science community would be behind manned space travel in any case. It's more marketed to the engineering and military world. I wouldn't doubt that internal NASA competition over limited dollars shows astronomers and planet scientists smothering the manned efforts in it's crib now and again.
- sq_ 7y ago
  > I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Totally agree with you on that. I think the current situation has to do with how political space has become, especially in the US. If missions are being used as popularity boosts on a per administration basis, it makes way more sense to propose something small and relatively feasible on short time scales like a glorified sample return mission as opposed to something that requires real, long term investment like colonization.
ohiovr 7y ago
Going to the moon again, making a permanent moon base, manned missions to mars, and other manned missions get proposed in every administration to make some headlines and excitement but ultimately in every case, they fail in funding, or politically, and they all quietly disappear and are forgotten.
- viburnum 7y ago
  Because it’s a dumb idea, but everyone is in denial about how dumb it is, so just lying about future plans is the best solution for everyone.
  - sq_ 7y ago
    Genuinely curious, in what way do you think it's a dumb idea? The whole "let's go to space" thing in general? Or just the way we're going about it?
    - viburnum 7y ago
      Most of the resources in manned space flight are devoted to not killing the astronauts. Just sending robots is way cheaper and you can do a ton more projects for the same amount of money. Landing a robot on a comet is way more interesting than the 130th trip to a space station that’s only 200 miles away from earth (a person can bicycle that far in a day). And going to Mars is impossible for less than hundreds of billions of dollars, if it’s possible at all. Sending people into space was a stunt, like climbing to the top of Everest. Having done it a few times there’s no point in doing it again. People say, oh you learn so much from it, but that would be true for trying to live on the bottom of the ocean or in treehouses or whatever. Romantic nonsense is fine but manned spacedlight is expensive and requires a ton of talented engineering that could be better used elsewhere.
  - mathgenius 7y ago
    It may or may not be a dumb idea, but it is certainly lacking in imagination. I am all for doing more science, but going to the moon? again? and what did we learn the first time? (apart from how awesome we are at doing stuff.)
thowaway9883 7y ago
During the Apollo era the NASA budget was about 10X what it is now as a percentage of the federal budget [0]. Given the budget is a fraction of what it was back then, compounded with the fact all of the people who lead during that era are now retired, the NASA request doesn't seem unreasonable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NAS...
- azeotropic 7y ago
  This is a strange way compare NASA's budget size over time. It mostly reflects the out of control growth of entitlement spending, which was only 20% of the budget in the 1960s and is half of the budget now (https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/entitlement_spending https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/entitlement_spending). According to your source, at it's peak during Apollo, NASA's budget was only twice what it is now in constant dollars. In constant dollars NASA's budget is basically the same as it was when it was operating a fleet of space shuttles in the 80's and 90's, but NASA isn't operating any now. Where does the money really go?
ilaksh 7y ago
It was weird though there was a big announcement video on YouTube about the lunar mission and no one even bothered to comment.
avmich 7y ago
We have so much of so good off-the-shelf technology, that technically the only thing seriously missing is the lunar lander. Practically all components today are better or significantly better than in 1960-s - engines, materials, control systems, electrical power, spacesuits, radios. However, the crucial difference is the risk tolerance, and here we have much higher requirements than we had, and that is what adds months and years to development and billions to costs. Some lunar lander could be created in time - we have variety of technologies, and people working on similar things. But to have it reliable so we'd be happy to send humans to the surface in 5 years - that requires a crash program with significant budget right now.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  Commercial lunar landers are fully part of the lunar exploration / habitation plan. I sincerely doubt NASA will be building a custom lander any time soon. What may get funded is novel rover types or instrument payloads on the commercial space taxi industry (which everyone I know is quite enthusiastic about, by the way). The vast majority of space launch, lift, transport, etc tech is mostly commercially made, ranging from pure COTS to custom-built. The emerging space-lift / space-logistics industry may make NASA missions significantly more cost effective.
- boltzmannbrain 7y ago
  Through NASA's Lunar CATALYST program [1] there are three companies contracted for lunar lander dev: Astrobotic, Masten, and Moon Express [2]. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/lunarcatalyst https://www.nasa.gov/lunarcatalyst [2] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-extends-agreements-to-advance-commercial-lunar-landers https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-extends-agreements-to-adva...
  - rory096 7y ago
    Don't miss the $45.5 million awarded to 11 companies last week for prototype work under the NextSTEP program: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-11-companies-for-lunar-lander-studies/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-11-companies-for-lunar-la...
- 7y ago
starpilot 7y ago
Let's not forget we planned on returning by 2020... in 2004: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Haha that's a great URL. God save us from that. "I see... WMDs... and banks that are... too big to fail."
- MeltySmelty 7y ago
  ISS
viburnum 7y ago
Manned space flight is a dumb idea and no amount of nerd fantasies will change that. Just send robots instead.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  We did send robots to the moon before we sent people. But no robot could do what those people who landed on the moon did, let alone bring back hundreds of pounds of selected moon rocks. And it wasn't just for the science; putting humans on the moon was a goal in itself, one put in motion by Kennedy in his challenge to the nation to do it "before the decade is out". Should we put humans on the moon (or Mars) today? I don't know, but I don't think it's a dumb idea. Impractical maybe, but still a laudable goal.
  - dooglius 7y ago
    >But no robot could do what those people who landed on the moon did, let alone bring back hundreds of pounds of selected moon rocks Can you elaborate? Robots in 1969 perhaps couldn't, but bringing back rocks seems well within the abilities of present robotics.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      People landed on the moon and returned in 1969. No robot could do that—we didn't have the tech. Even now it would be a tall order. The moon walkers didn't just scoop up a random bunch of rocks, they selected specific rocks that were chosen to prove or prove the geologists' hypotheses, drilled 10 foot core tubes, chipped pieces off large boulders, climbed mountains and steep hills, and set up complex, long-running experiments that would continue broadcasting to earth. Heck, they even sent a geologist to the moon, because a trained scientist can recognise what a human with a fixed camera cannot. I would bet that a pair of humans could do in a week what all of the Mars landers put together have done to date (apart from land on opposite sides of the globe). Don't discount human intelligence, ingenuity, and physical ability. Robots are great for assembly line work, but not exploring unknown territory.
- 7y ago
rurban 7y ago
"Sirangelo was escorted out of NASA’s headquarters in Washington on Wednesday after his resignation" does not sound like a resignation to me.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
> Sirangelo’s ouster was sealed by increasing skepticism that 2024 was a realistic deadline for moon landings This. Trump wanted a return to the Moon by the end of his second term, but it's just not possible. NASA doesn't even have a human launch vehicle capable of low-earth orbit (LEO) at the moment. It will in a few years, but getting to the Moon is significantly harder than LEO and getting people back from the Moon is 10x harder still. And we no longer have an existential cold war with Russia to motivate us.

176 points by Rooster61 7y ago

ryder9 7y ago

NASA requested $1.4B in increase for comparison, Military budget increased from $586B in 2015 to $713B in 2019

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Maybe they can hitch a ride on that ridiculous new "Space Force"?
- hsnewman 7y ago
  Even better, we need to build a wall on the moon.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    What I'm hearing is if Mexico could land a man on the moon the US would be there tomorrow.
- misterprime 7y ago
  Space Force may have a funny name, but with the new threat of predator satellites it seems that orbit may be a legit theater of battle.
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    If anything, creating a 'space force' will ratchet up the number of 'predatory' satelites. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy..
    - misterprime 7y ago
      How do you suggest avoiding it? Let other countries take that space while the US holds their head high with the moral high ground? That's not a winning strat IMO.
      - kazagistar 7y ago
        Who cares? Any country that has space war abilities is a country that fighting a war against would nearly end humanity regardless.
      - gmueckl 7y ago
        The problem is the aggressive language implied in terms like "space force" rather than the capabilities involved. Develop them in secret, store/shelve them until they are truly needed (hopefully never) and never talk about them because that would give others bad ideas.
      - phil248 7y ago
        By negotiating arms control treaties.
        craftyguy 7y ago
        And making it very difficult for incompetent heads of state to arbitrarily pull out of them.
        jryle70 7y ago
        I'm all for this, but says if Burkina Faso today demands the US to enter agreement not to weaponize the space, do you think the US would feel the need to respond? how about after Burkina Faso has successfully demonstrated its satellite shoot-down capability?
        craftyguy 7y ago
        Why must a country possess the capability to shoot down satellites in order to demand that other countries stop doing it? If Burkina Faso pays ESA to put something in space for them, they probably don't want some hot-shot US commander in chief waking up on the wrong side of twitter and deciding to blast it out of orbit. That seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse to demand others not use any capabilities they possess for shooting down satellites, even if Burkina Faso does not possess the ability.
- booleandilemma 7y ago
  And why is it ridiculous exactly? Where do you think the next frontier is? Do you think that humanity, which has warred with itself for its entire existence, is going to stop warring with itself when it’s living in space? If so, I have a wall to sell you. Do you not want the US to have a military presence up there? Do you want the US to take a backseat while China and Russia build out their own military capabilities in space? You’re like a person in the 1400s laughing at a country for building a navy.
  - blackguardx 7y ago
    The Air Force already does the job that the Space Force is supposed to do. Creating another military branch would duplicate a lot of administrative functions and not be very cost effective, IMHO.
    - taftster 7y ago
      > "If established, it would be organized as a military service branch within the Department of the Air Force, one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense." [1] So yes, any new military service branch is going to have overhead. But the Air Force already provides the structure and overhead for the space initiatives The Space Force is more about formalizing (and potentially funding) this branch of the AF separately from the main budget of the AF. There will still be a little additional overhead, but not really like you're implying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
      - Rebelgecko 7y ago
        Another perspective— that "little bit of overhead" for starting up the Space Force is almost as large as NASA's annual budget. At least that's if you believe the budget numbers from Heather Wilson (outgoing secretary of the Air Force). Unfortunately, I doubt that standing up a new military service is something that the government would actually be able to accomplish without going over budget.
  - 7y ago
georgeecollins 7y ago
Or they just asked for (and presumably will get) an additional $15 B of subsidies for farmers to compensate for the trade war. Nothing against farmers, but if it is so easy to do that, why not fund NASA a bit?
- ianai 7y ago
  They could fund nasa at DOD levels and not risk hyper inflation nor any other ills. They could probably be coaxed into helping employ more rural communities too. (Ref: modern monetary theory)
- 2Ccltvcm 7y ago
  America should reduce corn subsidies. Corn works its way into the American food ecosystem in many ways to the detriment of the Americans' health. It is highly inflammatory by itself and it is processed into compounds which also modulate inflammation in other ways. See high fructose corn syrup and its inflammatory pathways. Processed corn products are a multi pronged attack on Americans' health. End corn subsidies.
  - sathackr 7y ago
    [citation needed] Not that I dispute what you say, but I don't buy it hook-line-and-sinker.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - ajross 7y ago
    I'm not aware of anything specific to HFCS and inflammation that doesn't apply to any other fructose source. It's cheap sugar. Sugar is bad for you.
    - behringer 7y ago
      I think that's the point. By ending corn subsidies, we'd raise the price of sugar.
broahmed 7y ago
Great way to visualize the size of the military budget in comparison to other programs: https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016 https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016 Looks like the latest year they have for 2016, but still useful.
api 7y ago
For the current military budget we could probably build O'Neill cylinders in Lunar orbit and start a terraforming project on Mars. (Of course don't get me started about what we could do on Earth for this money.) We are just very clever tool using animals, not yet a truly intelligent species. I don't think we'll truly be "intelligent" until our intelligence is able to overcome both our evolutionary legacy and game theoretic effects that emerge in our economies and societies. A true intelligence would be the master of these things. We are slaves to them.
- magduf 7y ago
  If we had the technology to build O'Neill cylinders, I can't imagine why we'd want to bother terraforming Mars. Mars is pretty crappy by comparison: the gravity is too low, it's cold and kinda far from the Sun (and from Earth, compared to Lunar orbit), and it's questionable what kind of resources are there which we don't have easier access to on the Moon or nearby asteroids. Most of the interest in it just seems to be nothing more than nostalgia for planet-based living. Also, I think you'd want to build your O'Neill cylinders in one of the Langrangian positions between Earth and Moon, not Lunar orbit. A truly intelligent species would actually be working substantively on these projects, instead of merely talking about them.
  - vkou 7y ago
    A truly intelligent species would be working on not killing its own planet, instead of figuring out space habitation. The ROI on the former is many orders of magnitude better.
    - elsonrodriguez 7y ago
      A truly intelligent species would be doing both. Also an extinction level event happening on this planet is a certainty, so it's actually an infinite order of magnitude better to figure out how to live in space than to only focus on saving the earth. But again, a truly intelligent species would do both.
      - 7y ago
sambull 7y ago
I feel really shitty that we're watching our future generations get outright robbed of living a good life.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  true, but this is from a split moment in time when we have a dictator-wannabe as president, and an out of touch senate. If a democratic president did half the stuff Trump did democrats would be coming at him w/ a pitch fork and lead the impeachment proceedings, but the GOP rather have a corrupt leader because they're all corrupt and that's just how it works in D.C. in their brain. This is why we need senate term limits, hard to get corrupted by D.C. if you only can serve 8 years. New blood will bring change with it. Back to my point of this being a split moment in time, I honestly believe that pain is coming in the way of automation, loss of jobs, water wars, along with that will come out the pitchforks aimed at D.C. if politicians don't start making life better for everyone instead of enriching themselves. So mark my words, times they are achanging, equality will come back or there'll be a French-style revolution or two before it does.
  - clarkmoody 7y ago
    You might want to read a little history of the presidents for real examples of dictator-like behavior, from Democrats and Republicans.
    - gremlinsinc 7y ago
      Idealizing Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and the leaders of Russia and Saudia Arabia and creating concentration camps for kids while shitting all over our friendly democratic leaders from UK, France, Canada seems like a good start at becoming a dicator. What makes other presidents more dictatorial, I'd like to know.
      - grayed-down 7y ago
        That's one view through the leftist lens, but at least you ended your comment with an appropriate question.
tptacek 7y ago
No, it's closer to $70B, over the 9-year lifetime of the Artemis project. The "$1.6B" this article talks about was a "down payment".
tjpnz 7y ago
NASA got a 1.6 billion USD increase. Around the same time it was announced that Wellington City (the third largest city in New Zealand, also the capital) had been given the equivalent of 4.5 billion USD for a revamped public transportation system. As far as public spending goes the two couldn't be more different. Yet it really did put into perspective the futility of NASA's situation, at least for me.
InternetUser 7y ago
Well, the Military will soon include the Space Force[0][1], so let's see how the funding of space-related activity goes in the next couple years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force [1] https://www.military.com/space-force https://www.military.com/space-force
- anthuman 7y ago
  I suspect more and more funding will go to the Space Force and less and less will go to NASA. Looking at the budgets, it's clear that the military has far more pull in washington than NASA. Seems like whatever the military wants, it gets. While NASA has to beg, plead and grovel for every crumb. And if SpaceX, Blue Origin and the private sector become viable players in space, then NASA might be shut down or absorbed into Space Force. With China, EU, Japan, India, etc getting involved in space exploration, it's inevitable that space is going to be a new frontier of militarization and privatization. Space Force and the private sector are natural players in this new arena. Not sure where NASA fits in this picture.
  - thowaway9883 7y ago
    The majority of NASA's missions are instrument-driven science missions designed to answer questions about space (ex: JWST). Neither SpaceX or Blue origin has displayed serious interest in replacing this function of NASA. They are mainly engineering organizations, and while they are effective at doing what they do, they are organizationally not pursuing models that research fundamental astrophysics, heliophysics, or earth science.
rayiner 7y ago
The military budget buys you global dominance and never having to bend domestic policy to account for what anyone else thinks. What has NASA bought us? I think space is cool. I have a degree in aerospace engineering because of that. But if you look at space exploration in terms of ROI it has sucked.
- jraines 7y ago
  https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i...
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Better question: what WILL it buy us? Things like asteroid mining, colonization. Worth trillions. No, we don't have a convenient number for what asteroid mining is worth - a better unit would be 'civilizations'? It even could bring space dominance if that's important.
- balabaster 7y ago
  > What has NASA bought us? I'll leave this here: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html Highlights - - Water purification - Land mine removal - Freeze drying technology - Fire resistant reinforcement - Solar power - Satellite phones - GPS All having significant military applications, as well as public benefit.
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    GPS is kind of a stretch
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    I'd also argue SMT technology; while things were moving in that direction before then, it seems like the Apollo program really kicked it in high gear with the need for the compact AGC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer I'd have to think that SMT was available prior to the AGC development, but I don't think it was as widely used commercially (maybe more for the military and avionics?).
simonsarris 7y ago
Your "for comparison" figures do not seem true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
siffland 7y ago
Yeah but Russia hitting us with hypersonic weapons and China sabotaging us with electronic warfare or North Korea nuking us is a far greater possiblity that may occur than aliens invading. That is why our money is pumped there. But at least Will Smith is still around in case the aliens invade, so i feel safer......
- mLuby 7y ago
  Come on, you know that "potential damage to US * likelihood of occurring" is not how funds get allocated. If that were true, they'd have ended our dependence on many foreign markets (especially oil), solved global warming (or at least built a great seawall), and headed off a bunch of social issues that threaten the stability and cohesion of the US. Follow the money.

duxup 7y ago

Sounds like it is simply that "if we'e not going to do / fund the thing there's not much for me to lead here" kinda situation.

a3n 7y ago
But why was he escorted out of the building. Unusual for a leadership position?
- Balgair 7y ago
  Probably protocol. Many NASA sites are co-located on USAF bases or have the same 'legality/rules' if they have military projects on them. I wouldn't read too much into it until more is known.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

rjf72 7y ago

And this is why getting private industry into space is what matters. $1.6 billion is a tiny fraction of what we spend on things that will have basically 0 impact on the longterm outcome of our species. But since it doesn't get votes or feed special interests, it's left unfunded. Of course even if it was funded, it might well get cut. For instance one reason Nixon stripped down the space program was literally because he didn't like JFK and didn't want JFK's legacy overshadowing his own. [1] Bezos, for instance, wanting to spend the majority of his wealth creating a private space industry can be seen as capricious, but I think this is myopic. Some time, ideally not all that far from now, space will have revolutionized every single aspect of our society. It provides endless lands for colonizing, endless mineral resources for harvesting, and an infinite frontier to reach ever deeper into. If we only moved forward once everything else was sound and stable, we'd never move forward. [1] - http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-callahan/20141003-how-richard-nixon-changed-nasa.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason-callahan/20...

jaratec 7y ago
"A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!" (Blade Runner)
dmead 7y ago
> And this is why getting private industry into space is what matters. Really? that's an interesting conclusion to jump to. Maybe it would be easier to properly run the government than try to make companies that pretend to do the job of nation states? Bezos is doing what he's doing precisely because he has the money to do it and not be beholden to profit motives. Saying "we should get private companies involved in space" comes with a HUGE asterix of "as long as they aren't beholden to profit motives". And yes, spaceX is a thing but they're never going to turn a profit. The whole thing is a for profit company in name only.
- pault 7y ago
  At one point international trade was the job of nation states. I don't think it's outrageous to imagine that some large scale endeavors require enormous upfront capital and organization, but eventually become cheap enough to move to the private sector.

telaport 7y ago

NASA should say it needs $10B for searching for Clinton's emails on the Moon...

neuronexmachina 7y ago

This article from a couple months ago has some info on the new "Moon to Mars" mission directorate NASA wanted to establish, separate from the existing operations-focused Human Exploration & Operations Directorate. As the original submitter's article mentions, the proposal was rejected by lawmakers: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2019/03/new-mission-directorate-in-nasa-budget-request-would-explore-new-capabilities-for-moon-mars-missions/ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2019/03/new-mission-di... > “What we’re talking about is creating a new mission directorate at NASA,” Bridenstine said during the March 27 hearing. “And it’s focused on development activities that are very large in scale. And that mission directorate, we would call it Moon to Mars Mission Directorate, because it’s going to be focused on getting to the moon and using those capabilities to go on to Mars. So on the management side we’re trying to separate operations from development so that we can get a better mix of the right people in the right places to accomplish these objectives.” > The problem, Bridenstine said, is that the current division between operations and development is muddled. Operations refers to the actual missions: Flying to and resupplying the International Space Station, for example. Development refers to the design and implementation of never-before-used technologies.

rc_kas 7y ago

"back on the moon by 2024" This entirely smells of Trump wanting to stroke his own ego and get credit for a moon landing.

Rooster61 7y ago
It's also the year he would become a lame duck if he gets reelected. Very low risk thing pay lip service to for him. I doubt it's his idea though, nor of any of his cabinet. Just a convenient thing for him to latch on to politically.
nabla9 7y ago
It was was actually Pence's idea. Pence was visiting NASA and Bridenstine mentioned to Pence that getting into moon by 2024 was possible. Pence just added the new policy goal into his speech on the spot and it became the official policy of the Government. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-fifth-meeting-national-space-council-huntsville-al/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice... >In Space Policy Directive-1, the President directed NASA to create a lunar exploration plan. But as of today, more than 15 months later, we still don’t have a plan in place. But Administrator Bridenstine told me, five minutes ago, we now have a plan to return to the moon. (Applause.) ... little later >And I’m here, on the President’s behalf, to tell the men and women of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the American people that, at the direction of the President of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon within the next five years. (Applause.) Of course, this does not mean anything. WH is not committing any work towards that goal and probably don't know how. They just said it, requested money and left it there hanging. NASA has funding for Moon mission in 2028. The extra money to get there faster is nowhere to find.
- rc_kas 7y ago
  I'm sure Pence and Trump have never had a conversation where Trump said he wanted a moon landing to happen during his time in office. /eyeroll/
- mturmon 7y ago

ricardobeat 7y ago

The Apollo program ran for 12 years and ended with six successful missions. Here we are half a century later, with wildly more advanced technology, a bunch of ready-to-fly rockets to choose from, and they need another ten years for a single mission? What “organizational changes” are necessary that cost billions?

yingw787 7y ago
I think I read somewhere that we actually lost the technology to build the Saturn V; the fab tools, the blueprints, and the skilled labor isn’t there anymore. It’s like Damascus steel or Roman concrete or Greek fire. We may have to reinvent it.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  To be honest I don’t know enough about this, but my understanding was that both the Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy have the ability to execute a moon mission, plus the Boeing SLS is already in development. Is there a need to start from scratch?
  - nradov 7y ago
    No one had proposed starting from scratch and building new Saturn V's. That would be totally impractical. But none of those new rockets have actually demonstrated the ability to lift enough payload for a manned lunar mission. They might be able to do so eventually but years of development work remain.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    Maybe if you're willing to do multiple launches and Earth-orbit rendezvous. Neither the Falcon Heavy nor the Delta IV Heavy matches the payload of the Saturn V: https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-rockets-falcon-heavy-comparison/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-r...
    - a3n 7y ago

PorterDuff 7y ago

It seems to me that space proponents need to study other tricky-to-justify programs for lessons. Just do whatever the F-35 people did. I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Also, it would be nice to see a more results-oriented attitude rather than have the whole deal watered down with politics. Of course, you could probably say that about the US military.

SiempreViernes 7y ago
I think it's hard for a civilian agency to use the defence sectors tricks. NASA could probably get a lot of people behind building a giant laser on the moon to "strike the enemy", but it's hard to see how they could get much support from the science community for such a project.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Laser interferometry for astronomy. Just spec the lasers out so that they're useful for science, but can double as a weapon in a pinch.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  Au contraire. Just scatter around the components of the project into various Congressional districts. Build large facilities in places with political horsepower and name them after important people. Gemini/Apollo is fraught with this. Personally, I doubt that the science community would be behind manned space travel in any case. It's more marketed to the engineering and military world. I wouldn't doubt that internal NASA competition over limited dollars shows astronomers and planet scientists smothering the manned efforts in it's crib now and again.
sq_ 7y ago
> I wish that the main thrust (so to speak) was towards permanent off-planet settlement and economies rather than merely having a human grab the soil samples. Totally agree with you on that. I think the current situation has to do with how political space has become, especially in the US. If missions are being used as popularity boosts on a per administration basis, it makes way more sense to propose something small and relatively feasible on short time scales like a glorified sample return mission as opposed to something that requires real, long term investment like colonization.

ohiovr 7y ago

Going to the moon again, making a permanent moon base, manned missions to mars, and other manned missions get proposed in every administration to make some headlines and excitement but ultimately in every case, they fail in funding, or politically, and they all quietly disappear and are forgotten.

viburnum 7y ago
Because it’s a dumb idea, but everyone is in denial about how dumb it is, so just lying about future plans is the best solution for everyone.
- sq_ 7y ago
  Genuinely curious, in what way do you think it's a dumb idea? The whole "let's go to space" thing in general? Or just the way we're going about it?
  - viburnum 7y ago
    Most of the resources in manned space flight are devoted to not killing the astronauts. Just sending robots is way cheaper and you can do a ton more projects for the same amount of money. Landing a robot on a comet is way more interesting than the 130th trip to a space station that’s only 200 miles away from earth (a person can bicycle that far in a day). And going to Mars is impossible for less than hundreds of billions of dollars, if it’s possible at all. Sending people into space was a stunt, like climbing to the top of Everest. Having done it a few times there’s no point in doing it again. People say, oh you learn so much from it, but that would be true for trying to live on the bottom of the ocean or in treehouses or whatever. Romantic nonsense is fine but manned spacedlight is expensive and requires a ton of talented engineering that could be better used elsewhere.
- mathgenius 7y ago
  It may or may not be a dumb idea, but it is certainly lacking in imagination. I am all for doing more science, but going to the moon? again? and what did we learn the first time? (apart from how awesome we are at doing stuff.)

thowaway9883 7y ago

During the Apollo era the NASA budget was about 10X what it is now as a percentage of the federal budget [0]. Given the budget is a fraction of what it was back then, compounded with the fact all of the people who lead during that era are now retired, the NASA request doesn't seem unreasonable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NAS...

azeotropic 7y ago
This is a strange way compare NASA's budget size over time. It mostly reflects the out of control growth of entitlement spending, which was only 20% of the budget in the 1960s and is half of the budget now (https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/entitlement_spending https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/entitlement_spending). According to your source, at it's peak during Apollo, NASA's budget was only twice what it is now in constant dollars. In constant dollars NASA's budget is basically the same as it was when it was operating a fleet of space shuttles in the 80's and 90's, but NASA isn't operating any now. Where does the money really go?

ilaksh 7y ago

It was weird though there was a big announcement video on YouTube about the lunar mission and no one even bothered to comment.

avmich 7y ago

We have so much of so good off-the-shelf technology, that technically the only thing seriously missing is the lunar lander. Practically all components today are better or significantly better than in 1960-s - engines, materials, control systems, electrical power, spacesuits, radios. However, the crucial difference is the risk tolerance, and here we have much higher requirements than we had, and that is what adds months and years to development and billions to costs. Some lunar lander could be created in time - we have variety of technologies, and people working on similar things. But to have it reliable so we'd be happy to send humans to the surface in 5 years - that requires a crash program with significant budget right now.

jvanderbot 7y ago
Commercial lunar landers are fully part of the lunar exploration / habitation plan. I sincerely doubt NASA will be building a custom lander any time soon. What may get funded is novel rover types or instrument payloads on the commercial space taxi industry (which everyone I know is quite enthusiastic about, by the way). The vast majority of space launch, lift, transport, etc tech is mostly commercially made, ranging from pure COTS to custom-built. The emerging space-lift / space-logistics industry may make NASA missions significantly more cost effective.
boltzmannbrain 7y ago
Through NASA's Lunar CATALYST program [1] there are three companies contracted for lunar lander dev: Astrobotic, Masten, and Moon Express [2]. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/lunarcatalyst https://www.nasa.gov/lunarcatalyst [2] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-extends-agreements-to-advance-commercial-lunar-landers https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-extends-agreements-to-adva...
- rory096 7y ago
  Don't miss the $45.5 million awarded to 11 companies last week for prototype work under the NextSTEP program: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-11-companies-for-lunar-lander-studies/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-11-companies-for-lunar-la...
7y ago

starpilot 7y ago

Let's not forget we planned on returning by 2020... in 2004: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html

jessaustin 7y ago
Haha that's a great URL. God save us from that. "I see... WMDs... and banks that are... too big to fail."
MeltySmelty 7y ago
ISS

viburnum 7y ago

Manned space flight is a dumb idea and no amount of nerd fantasies will change that. Just send robots instead.

frosted-flakes 7y ago
We did send robots to the moon before we sent people. But no robot could do what those people who landed on the moon did, let alone bring back hundreds of pounds of selected moon rocks. And it wasn't just for the science; putting humans on the moon was a goal in itself, one put in motion by Kennedy in his challenge to the nation to do it "before the decade is out". Should we put humans on the moon (or Mars) today? I don't know, but I don't think it's a dumb idea. Impractical maybe, but still a laudable goal.
- dooglius 7y ago
  >But no robot could do what those people who landed on the moon did, let alone bring back hundreds of pounds of selected moon rocks Can you elaborate? Robots in 1969 perhaps couldn't, but bringing back rocks seems well within the abilities of present robotics.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    People landed on the moon and returned in 1969. No robot could do that—we didn't have the tech. Even now it would be a tall order. The moon walkers didn't just scoop up a random bunch of rocks, they selected specific rocks that were chosen to prove or prove the geologists' hypotheses, drilled 10 foot core tubes, chipped pieces off large boulders, climbed mountains and steep hills, and set up complex, long-running experiments that would continue broadcasting to earth. Heck, they even sent a geologist to the moon, because a trained scientist can recognise what a human with a fixed camera cannot. I would bet that a pair of humans could do in a week what all of the Mars landers put together have done to date (apart from land on opposite sides of the globe). Don't discount human intelligence, ingenuity, and physical ability. Robots are great for assembly line work, but not exploring unknown territory.
7y ago

rurban 7y ago

"Sirangelo was escorted out of NASA’s headquarters in Washington on Wednesday after his resignation" does not sound like a resignation to me.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

> Sirangelo’s ouster was sealed by increasing skepticism that 2024 was a realistic deadline for moon landings This. Trump wanted a return to the Moon by the end of his second term, but it's just not possible. NASA doesn't even have a human launch vehicle capable of low-earth orbit (LEO) at the moment. It will in a few years, but getting to the Moon is significantly harder than LEO and getting people back from the Moon is 10x harder still. And we no longer have an existential cold war with Russia to motivate us.