Okay, I'm going to do a little analysis here.
Obama aims to ax moon mission
NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.
When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.
There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.
In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama's long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new "heavy-lift" rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.
In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.
There will also be funding for private companies to develop capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station — a major change in the way the agency has done business for the past 50 years.
The White House budget request, which is certain to meet fierce resistance in Congress, scraps the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration and signals a major reorientation of NASA, especially in the area of human spaceflight.
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I am fully in favor of space exploration and the exploitation of resources found there. I firmly believe that the 22nd century will belong to those nations who expand into space in the 21st century.
Helium 3, Metahelium-64, megatons of iron in near-earth asteroids; the possibility of finding a "variagate" asteroid of solid gold or solid thorium... the possibilities are endless.
And one day colonizing moons, planets, space habitats, zero-gee industrial stations... there are incredible possibilities.
Yet right now we still don't have a good, cheap way into orbit. I still remember very well when the first shuttle rolled out... I was disappointed. There had been a great deal of talk about the scramjet/spaceplane concept, or single-stage-to-orbit possibilities, and the Shuttle, awesome though it is in its own way, was not really as much of a jump forward as I'd hoped for.
Basically the scramjet got shelved in favor of a shorter-term, cheaper-to-
develop alternative.
We need more basic research into propulsion systems, and cheaper ways into orbit. The development of carbon nanotubes opens the door to the possibility of a skyhook system; mass-driver launchers could be another way; even the scramjet/spaceplane concept would be a dramatic improvement over what we've got. There was an intresting idea, the Delta Clipper, for a SSTO that apparently vanished in the 80's.
We've got to find a better (cheaper!) way to get into orbit if we're really going to get anywhere.
We need better propulsion systems. It's going to take fusion rockets or perhaps Metahelium-64 rockets to really put the solar system within reach of practical manned missions.
All of this needs research and development.
The idea of going back to the moon in 2020 was exciting... then I saw that they were basically planning to re-engineer the same methods that were used for the Apollo and Saturn V moon missions. That was less exciting. It seemed like a step backward, instead of forward.
Private enterprise, like the X-prize and Virgin Galactic, show what innovative enterpreneurs can do. NASA comes across as overly bureaucratic, and hamstrung by Congressional "oversight" by Congresscritters who probably can't spell "asteroid" and don't know what Helium-3 is. Maybe private space exploration will really be the key to the future.
If we spend the next 20 to 30 years developing a better way into orbit, and a better propulsion system for getting around once we're out there, we will ultimately be a lot better off... even if I might not be around to see it come to fruition, I'd feel better knowing it was being done right.
I don't necessarily trust this political move as being anything other than political, or necessarily the RIGHT kind of re-direction of efforts I think we need... but IF they actually do some of the things I bolded in the quoted text, we might get somewhere.
If we had the budget I'd love to see us doing the kind of research I'm talking about while CONTINUING to explore space with what we've got on hand...but if I have to chose one or the other, I want the research and development done on better surface-to-orbit and propulsion technologies. I might not live to see it, but my son or my hypothetical grandchildren might get to see it
from the surface of the moon.
One way or another, though, we'll either expand into space in the 21st Century, or we'll be relegated to the dust bin of history like the Spanish Armada and the Conquistadores.
My two bits.
G.