how come we cant go to the moon with all our newfangled tech?

[Zorkorist]

Nope. Your tax dollars are going straight into feeding hungry federal employees.

Government spending, is going straight into debt.

There's a reason NASA is a shadow of what they once were.

-John

 

[norseamd]

It's not so much that we can't go to the moon, it's more that the moon doesn't offer us enough value once we get there

Not true.

Nothing has went backwards, space exploration has moved into different areas, or more towards private companies.

It has moved forwards and backwards.

For what purpose? Even "beating the Ruskies" wasn't really a practical application or business justification for going to the moon and we no longer have even that reason anymore to make a return trip. It's kinda like saying "how come we can't build CB radios anymore with all our newfangled technology?" Well once the 70s were over and we got tired of pretending we were Smokey and the Bandit people realized that CB radios were kinda pointless. Same thing with the moon.

I hope you ever go through a nuclear winter.

Yes... lots of helium 3.... but way to expensive to get to. Maybe when fusion reactors are the energy producing standard.

That is a very big reason, but there is more than just that.

Microchips are useless for real space exploration.

No they arent, they are very useful. They just cant replace other technologies like spacecraft propulsion or radiation shielding.

Makes you wonder how or why it was a such a huge event.......and why we spent BILLIONS of dollars to do so.

Think of it as a way for politics to wave their dicks to communist and say "we are better than you".

When in reality, communist/Russia had most of the records and won most of the races and had better results........with 1/100th of the budget or resources.

Well the Cold War was going on, can you think of any reasons why they might want to compete with the Russians in lunar operations?

There is no reason to just go to the moon. It's completely pointless.

Now if we could set up an H3 mining base, that's another thing, but that's not feasible atm.

No and no.

We can go to the moon with no problem, in fact we can go anywhere in our solar system with no problem. The question is purpose and cost. We've been to the moon, there is a project for going to Mars. But why? Just to say we've been there? That's great, but the costs are astronomical, who bears the burden of the cost? Personally, as a tax payer, I would like $0 of my taxes going to something superficial like this.

No we cant put a human anywhere we want, and sending unmanned systems to areas farther out like the Oort Cloud is still something we havent done much of yet. And no, none of this is superficial.

That brings up a good question. Why is there no space station that orbits the moon? Wouldn't that have been easier than trying to land on the moon again?

That is actually what NASA is planning to do right now.

no....

Because it's pointless. Manned space exploration is a waste of money, as we can get far mar out of unmanned exploration.

True, but stepping on the moon 3 times isnt doing a whole lot in the first place.

I can tell whether or not you read anything about space, you obviously dont really understand much of it at all.

Our sun won't become a black hole.

In about 5 billion years from now, the sun will begin to die. As the Sun grows old, it will expand. As the core runs out of hydrogen and then helium, the core will contract and the outer layers will expand, cool, and become less bright. It will become a red giant star.

I might need to brush up on my solar science, but this is the general reality. Turning into Red Giant is not something that happens instead of a supernova or collapse into a black hole. The Sun will first turn into a Red Giant, then eventually it will go supernova, and then finally there is a possibility of the remnants turning into a black hole, or maybe some other cosmological object like a pulsar, quasar, or white dwarf. The Sun will grow into a red giant before 5 billion years, and I think the time before Earth becomes uninhabitable for life, or at least multi-cellular life, is about 1 billion years or so. I think bigger suns tend to turn into black holes, so maybe our star will not, but it will still turn into a red giant, and then go supernova.

We currently rely on the Russians just to reach low earth orbit.

In theory it should be much cheaper. At one point in 1968 NASA had 400,000 engineers. At todays wages youd be looking at 60-80 billion dollars a year just to cover their salaries and benefits. Back in the late 60s NASAs budget was 5% of the national budget and this was during the height of the Vietnam War. Today its half of 1 percent, like a 10 fold difference in funding.

Back then everything had to be hand made and blueprints drawn on slide rule. Now with advancements in technology and automation a lot of those things are easier. NASA could get to the moon with a small fraction of the employees it took to launch Apollo.

But the issue at this point isnt funding, but construction. With the heavy deindustrislization of the US we're now more reliant on ever on reusing old parts from the Space Shuttle and even Apollo days for future programs since getting new parts constructed can take a lot longer than it did in the 60s due to lack of manufacturing facilities that can build all the parts needed for a moon or mars mission--its a time/volume issue now. Getting to the moon in 5 years even with unlimited funding today is probably an impossibility. Back in the 60s we manufactured the vast majority of the worlds durable goods. NASA relied on hundreds of private constructon companies to build the Saturn V. Those companies just dont exist anymore. I believe an ex-NASA director came in out recently and mentioned China will likely beat us to the punch in building a next generation heavy lift rocket.

Yeah, Nixon really fucked the pooch when it comes to NASA. Him and Henry Kissinger are also the ones who lead the increase of politics and business with the PRC. And funding is an issue, although it isnt the only issue. The right thing to do is just stay the course of what we are building right now, and cancelling programs again will only mean we wont ever get anything done.

Bah, we can't even currently put people into low earth orbit right now. It will take us longer to get back into LEO then it took us to go from knowing dickall about space and space travel to landing on the moon. You would think we would be embarrassed as a nation to have to hitch rides to the ISS with the Ruskies but evidently not.

The answer is because we don't want to. NASA currently gets roughly half a penny of every tax dollar and that is what pays for EVERYTHING they do. Mars rovers, ISS, research satellites, Hubble telescope, the new James Webb, etc... Just imagine what they could do if we gave them a single penny of every tax dollar.

We just aren't that big on science anymore. We planned and spent billions of dollars on a super collider that was more than 3 times as powerful as the Hadron and then we said fuck that shit and cancelled the program. There is a massive underground structure in Texas that was supposed to house it and it is completely unused now. Maybe we can get a group buy going, always wanted a batcave.

Yep.

 

[Zorkorist]

Dude didn't acknowledge my post.

Nope. Your tax dollars are going straight into feeding hungry federal employees.

Government spending, is going straight into debt.

There's a reason NASA is a shadow of what they once were.

-John

-John

 

[brycejones]

Dude didn't acknowledge my post.


-John

Oh, poor baby.

 

[Darwin333]

Due to what they call the "tyranny of the rocket equation" putting bigger and bigger things into space gets really crazily incredibly difficult. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html And the saturn V was indeed an incredible machine.

The other thing though is where you would want to go or what you would want to do. We have enough delta v in the current launch devices (falcon 9 1.2, atlas 5, delta 4 heavy, ariane 5, proton, etc) to put things into LEO or GTO/GEO 'easily' enough and that is what communications businesses and governments with spy satellites want to pay for. If you want to go to mars we have enough delta v to get there, although getting something to the surface and back is rather more difficult. For something bigger than SLS block II to make sense you would have to have a requirement for an extremely heavy mass you want to put on the martian surface or similar, and because of the nature of the mass fraction in rocketry it gets absurdly difficult if that mass has to only be a few percent of the overall rocket weight.

I do like some of the current ideas being looked into to tackle this though. spacex is shooting for reusability which would be awesome (see the waitbutwhy article for that), and if ULA's ACES actually comes online and works then the idea of getting a light mass into orbit, refueling, and then sending it on its way could perhaps give us a little more umph to branch out beyond LEO/GEO.

I am hoping that we develop a nuclear thermal rocket engine. I was actually shocked that NASA started looking into building one for the SLS a few years back (jointly with Russia I think). That would be game changing as well even though unfortunately it only starts to be really good once you get out of Earths gravity well. Interestingly enough it's not a new concept but a very old one, we actually tested some and had one engine damn near flight ready back in the 70's. They are at least twice as efficient as chemical rockets and could be three times as efficient or greater. You could use one as a "space tug" to ferry fuel to a depot at a Lagrange point and one as the upper stage for a mission and drastically increase the weight of your vehicle and "stuff" you take to mars or deeper because you only need to launch the fuel to get you to the depot. Alternatively we should be able to get to mars much faster because of the vastly increased fuel you have available.

At least twice as efficient engine + vastly increased amount of fuel + much bigger payload = hell yeah

Although I haven't read anything about it, I would think you'd be able to use an engine like that to park fuel in mars orbit so your fuel for the return trip is already there waiting on you. I'm not sure if that's more efficient than bringing it with you but it would cut down on the size of the fuel storage tanks by a considerable amount.

 

[Jeff7]

I watched Moon Machines recently, a good documentary from 2008 on the early space program.
Good stuff, recommended viewing.

The missions were very expensive and carried a good bit of risk. I've also heard it referred to as a massive government-level dick-waving competition.

As may have been mentioned, simply building the stuff again wouldn't be easy. Aside from the challenges of having to restart production lines to build things that are long outdated, some of the original plans are gone.
Or the flight computer: A simple microcontroller today could do the job of their computer, which used new integrated circuits that were still being assembled by hand at the time, but programming and testing one to do the job of their flight computer would still not be easy. (They were doing program entry with punch cards in those days.)


Robotic probes and rovers are also much more capable these days, so there's less need to send humans.

...
I might need to brush up on my solar science, but this is the general reality. Turning into Red Giant is not something that happens instead of a supernova or collapse into a black hole. The Sun will first turn into a Red Giant, then eventually it will go supernova, and then finally there is a possibility of the remnants turning into a black hole, or maybe some other cosmological object like a pulsar, quasar, or white dwarf. The Sun will grow into a red giant before 5 billion years, and I think the time before Earth becomes uninhabitable for life, or at least multi-cellular life, is about 1 billion years or so. I think bigger suns tend to turn into black holes, so maybe our star will not, but it will still turn into a red giant, and then go supernova.
...

Yes, you do.
Our sun is a small star, sometimes referred to as a "yellow dwarf." It doesn't have enough mass to become a black hole, or even neutron star.
It'll puff out to be a red giant, eventually puff out its outer shell into an expanding planetary nebula, and we'll be left with a white dwarf star that'll very slowly cool down for the rest of its existence.

So there'll be nothing fancy for our sun. No supernova, no nova, none of those wacky things like pulsars or neutron stars. Just a simple red giant that eventually blows away the outer shell, and a white dwarf that slowly peters out to a frozen remnant over trillions of years.

And it definitely can't turn into a quasar. (You really need to brush up.) A quasar is an extremely energetic galactic nucleus.

Appreciate the response, but I guess my question is why even develop the SLS if it isn't better than Saturn V. Why not just make more Saturn V's?

A 10lb mallet is great for pounding the hell out of something.
If you don't need a 10lb mallet though, and can get away with a 6lb one just fine, there's no sense in spending the extra money and lifting effort on the bigger one.

 

[Moonbeam]

All our new tangled tech would weigh too much to take to the moon. We couldn't even take all our iPhones.

 

[Darwin333]

And funding is an issue, although it isnt the only issue. The right thing to do is just stay the course of what we are building right now, and cancelling programs again will only mean we wont ever get anything done.

That is another MAJOR issue for NASA. Their goals are all long term but the person who sets those goals changes every 4 to 8 years. Two recent examples are the Constellation project and Bush's mission to put a base on the moon which Obama promptly canceled and changed after billions of dollars and untold man hours were already spent. That leads to NASA wasting substantial amounts of their already limited budget and time. We had even gotten as far as launching prototypes of the Ares I and the Ares V, iirc, had almost 1/3 larger maximum payload to LEO then the SLS.

Then unfortunately there is the political bullshit they have to deal with. In order to get their budget passed through Congress they must use certain parts and suppliers regardless if it is the best part for the job. The SLS (Space Launch System) currently being developed is often jokingly called the "Senate Launch System". Granted it's not always a bad idea to reuse certain parts that we are already tooled to make it shouldn't be a political decision based solely off of whose district a certain part is made in.

 

[Blue_Max]

It's the kiddie pool of space travel. You build a base on the moon and learn how to survive. You get in trouble the earth is only 250,000 miles away to send help. Then you move on to the deep end, Mars. The lessons you learned from the moon will help you to succeed.

That's actually an excellent point. While *some* of that data can be acquired from our current space bases, it's definitely not the same as building "practice domes" on the moon to get ready for Mars colonization attempts. I can't see our few practice domes and handful of launches to/fro to affect lunar orbit enough to cause tidal irregularities.

I wonder if there's been any research towards "space elevator" technology, allowing us to supply a space/moon base at a fraction of the resource cost...


...and someone mentioned flying cars. That technology's been made (see Moller Skycar as an example) but think about it... your average dum-dum can barely drive in a straight line without hitting something (see driver fatality statistics!) Would you want the general public flying?? You wouldn't need roads anymore - just follow the trail of wreckage and bodies to the next stop! :thumbsup:

 

[norseamd]

I am hoping that we develop a nuclear thermal rocket engine. I was actually shocked that NASA started looking into building one for the SLS a few years back (jointly with Russia I think). That would be game changing as well even though unfortunately it only starts to be really good once you get out of Earths gravity well. Interestingly enough it's not a new concept but a very old one, we actually tested some and had one engine damn near flight ready back in the 70's. They are at least twice as efficient as chemical rockets and could be three times as efficient or greater. You could use one as a "space tug" to ferry fuel to a depot at a Lagrange point and one as the upper stage for a mission and drastically increase the weight of your vehicle and "stuff" you take to mars or deeper because you only need to launch the fuel to get you to the depot. Alternatively we should be able to get to mars much faster because of the vastly increased fuel you have available.

At least twice as efficient engine + vastly increased amount of fuel + much bigger payload = hell yeah

Although I haven't read anything about it, I would think you'd be able to use an engine like that to park fuel in mars orbit so your fuel for the return trip is already there waiting on you. I'm not sure if that's more efficient than bringing it with you but it would cut down on the size of the fuel storage tanks by a considerable amount.

Nuclear thermal rockets are an amazing technology that was available 40 years ago, but just like the Apollo program got fucked over by Nixon, including the promising Apollo Applications Program, so did the nuclear thermal rocket, and they defunded it as soon as they got into office.

We could have had a large and fully staffed lunar base, both Earth and Lunar orbital stations, manned exploration of Mars, and maybe even manned flybys of Venus by now.

 

[norseamd]

A 10lb mallet is great for pounding the hell out of something.

If you don't need a 10lb mallet though, and can get away with a 6lb one just fine, there's no sense in spending the extra money and lifting effort on the bigger one.

That isnt the real reason though. The real reason is that Saturn Vs were made a long time ago, and it would probably cost just as much to start making them again, if not more than the SLS. Plus the SLS is supposed to scale up to being even more powerful than the Saturn V.

 

[Darwin333]

Nuclear thermal rockets are an amazing technology that was available 40 years ago, but just like the Apollo program got fucked over by Nixon, including the promising Apollo Applications Program, so did the nuclear thermal rocket, and they defunded it as soon as they got into office.

We could have had a large and fully staffed lunar base, both Earth and Lunar orbital stations, manned exploration of Mars, and maybe even manned flybys of Venus by now.

Yes they are! I was really excited to hear that NASA was looking into them again. I think the biggest problem will be selling it the public, this is a lot different than the existing nuclear generators we use on probes. Maybe we could pay China to launch it for us to appease all of the NIMBY people.

 

[Darwin333]

That isnt the real reason though. The real reason is that Saturn Vs were made a long time ago, and it would probably cost just as much to start making them again, if not more than the SLS. Plus the SLS is supposed to scale up to being even more powerful than the Saturn V.

Do you have a link to that? Everything that I have read has said that at the largest planned scale the SLS will fall just shy of the Saturn Vs payload capacity. Maybe you are thinking of the canceled Ares V?

 

[norseamd]

Do you have a link to that? Everything that I have read has said that at the largest planned scale the SLS will fall just shy of the Saturn Vs payload capacity. Maybe you are thinking of the canceled Ares V?

Interesting. Wikipedia confirms you are right. Seems the projected ratings must have changed in the last few years. From what I remember reading, SLS was supposed to start out lower than the Saturn V, but it would be improved gradually through block improvements, and eventually it would have been somewhat more powerful than the old Saturn V rockets. I might also have been thinking about another rocket. Or maybe there was another block configuration used to be planned, and they are not considering it anymore.

 

[ViperXX]

I'm still holding out hope for the EM drive. I read on Reddit the other day that it's going under peer review. What if the thing pushes on the newly discovered gravity waves to induce propulsion? Just a thought....
Article http://www.popularmechanics.com/spa...e-will-undergo-peer-review-that-it-wont-pass/

 

[Darwin333]

Interesting. Wikipedia confirms you are right. Seems the projected ratings must have changed in the last few years. From what I remember reading, SLS was supposed to start out lower than the Saturn V, but it would be improved gradually through block improvements, and eventually it would have been somewhat more powerful than the old Saturn V rockets. I might also have been thinking about another rocket. Or maybe there was another block configuration used to be planned, and they are not considering it anymore.

The Ares V that was being developed under the canceled Constellation program was going to have a significantly larger payload capacity than the Saturn V. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of?

 

[Darwin333]

I'm still holding out hope for the EM drive. I read on Reddit the other day that it's going under peer review. What if the thing pushes on the newly discovered gravity waves to induce propulsion? Just a thought....
Article http://www.popularmechanics.com/spa...e-will-undergo-peer-review-that-it-wont-pass/

Even if it is proven relatively soon it will probably take a decade or more of testing alone before they fly a test engine into space and then a while longer before they use it on any manned flight. Personally I am hoping that the already tried and true nuclear thermal drive gets approved and flown much sooner than that. It has a small problem of fuel though, we stopped making PU-238 a while back and our stockpile is dwindling out, hopefully we have enough for the test drives and at least a few manned crafts. The DOE is supposed to start making some again in the next 7 years or so but who the hell knows. Combined with fuel depots we could send a pretty massive (relatively) payload to mars in 3 months instead of 8 with enough fuel to get back.

 

[AtenRa]

The area that mostly impacts our ability to go to the Moon or Mars or any other body in the Solar system is propulsion. And in that area we are way back in technology than any other tech today. We still use rockets with liquid fuel, a tech from early 1900s.

And that is because nobody was willing to put money on that tech the last 30-40 years.
So, no matter how much more technologically we have evolved in every other technology like electronics, engineering and manufacturing the last 50 years or so, the lack or advanced propulsion technology keeps us from exploring the rest of the solar system and beyond.

 

[Fenixgoon]

my understanding is there isn't a lot to be gained from a lunar mission right now. if we start pushing for mars, then setting up a lunar station might make sense. but otherwise, in terms of strictly scientific value, the rovers have been unbelievable, and JWST is going to take astronomy to a whole new level.

 

[Pocatello]

We rather spend hundred of billions of dollars fighting pointless wars across the world. Maybe far into the future, we'll realize that killing extremists just make more extremists.

 

[Screech]

The area that mostly impacts our ability to go to the Moon or Mars or any other body in the Solar system is propulsion. And in that area we are way back in technology than any other tech today. We still use rockets with liquid fuel, a tech from early 1900s.

And that is because nobody was willing to put money on that tech the last 30-40 years.
So, no matter how much more technologically we have evolved in every other technology like electronics, engineering and manufacturing the last 50 years or so, the lack or advanced propulsion technology keeps us from exploring the rest of the solar system and beyond.

Right but generally you have a choice between a liquid fuel that has a lot of thrust but has limitations as noted previously, or a much more efficient form of thrust such as an ion engine or (still under development) solar sails or emdrive or such. Liquid fuels (and I'm gonna group nuclear thermal here also, as it is still a liquid fuel) create enough thrust to get you going pretty quickly in a short amount of time whereas the others will take some patience ........

Insofar as rocket engine technology not really progressing at the same pace as other areas, I think one of my favorite quotes is (from elon musk from the waitbutwhy article)

There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering … Even if better technology is available, they’re still using legacy components, often ones that were developed in the 1960s … [many] use Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.

 

[woolfe9998]

Do you have a link to that? Everything that I have read has said that at the largest planned scale the SLS will fall just shy of the Saturn Vs payload capacity. Maybe you are thinking of the canceled Ares V?

I've seen several articles which say this.

http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-most-powerful-rocket-set-for-testing-in-2017/2984
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/slsannouncement_Kennedy.html

Then again everything I read says something a little different. And it gets a bit confusing, for example,:

The SLS is currently designed to have three engines but this number could grow to five according to NASA. The SLS will be capable of lifting 70 metric tons or 10% more thrust than Saturn V. Expansion of the advanced boosters will provide lifting capacity up to 130 metric tons or 20% more thrust than Saturn V.

Those maths don't seem to add up, but then perhaps I'm missing something.

 

[norseamd]

This one says 143 tons to LEO.

Capable of carrying 143 tons to low Earth orbit or a crew to Mars, it will be the most powerful rocket ever built.

http://www.airspacemag.com/space/bigger-saturn-bound-deep-space-180952802/?no-ist

 

[woolfe9998]

This one says 143 tons to LEO.



http://www.airspacemag.com/space/bigger-saturn-bound-deep-space-180952802/?no-ist

What I've read so far ranges from "about the same as Saturn V" to "a little more than Saturn V." Your article is a little more recent than those I've read which say 130 tons to LEO. So perhaps it's more accurate to the current projections.

 

[norseamd]

What I've read so far ranges from "about the same as Saturn V" to "a little more than Saturn V." Your article is a little more recent than those I've read which say 130 tons to LEO. So perhaps it's more accurate to the current projections.

Also note this infographic, and the difference between lift capacity and thrust.

http://www.space.com/12957-nasa-giant-rocket-space-launch-system-infographic.html