Actually, Obama did cancel the American space program designed to return to the moon. That plan was called the Constellation program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02nasa.html?_r=0
Out of ISS: Russia going solo with space station?
- Thread starter B00Mer
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Actually, Obama did cancel the American space program designed to return to the moon. That plan was called the Constellation program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02nasa.html?_r=0
And Congress cancelled a similar program in the mid 90s. They're pretty good at coming up with ambitious programs then cancelling themselves down there.
The US manned civilian space program is over. Obama killed it when he cancelled the Constellation space program. America's days as a spacefaring nation are finished.
Please give me a link so I can review what you've written in context and respond to it. Thanks.
You don't understand. When Republiklans do it, it's prudent fiscal management and stopping government boondoggles. When Dumbocrats do it, it's destroying America's standing in the world.
Move.
http://history.nasa.gov/seisummary.htm
They have the technology and the resources to change that any time they want. There's still Orion, if it ever gets off the ground.
Neither the president nor Congress supported that specific $500 billion project. From the article you cite:
"Although the Academy largely concurred with the NASA study, White House and Congressional reaction to the NASA plan was hostile, primarily due to the cost estimate."
The Apollo technology is being lost with the deaths of its engineers. American civilians don't have the resources to return to the moon since it has become a European style welfare state.
Orion is a vehicle without a mission.
Americans will return to the moon in the future, but they will be soldiers on a military mission.
They have the designs and most of the vehicles still exist in museums. Its not as if only the scientists and engineers had all the secrets in their heads.
Yes, but its a manned vehicle they are developing. You say their manned spaceflight program is over. If they develop this and put just one person in orbit that proves you wrong on that point.
All the guys who flew on Apollo were in the military and that space race was a battle in part of the Cold War. So if things go that way it wouldnt be a major change.
To develop a replication of something along the lines of the Apollo program will be like reinventing the wheel. It can be done in theory, but I'm not sure American society is structured along lines that will permit the devotion of so many assets to accomplish this objective.
I anticipated your objection. Please review my postings. I draw a distinction between the American civilian space program and the US military space program.
In what capacity were the Apollo astronauts acting? Civilian or military? The distinction is crucial. Apollo was not a military program.
Well you can stay here when the asteroid comes to obliterate us. I'm sure a bomb shelter will protect you for a few years and when you decide to finally come out, you won't be able to be cause you're encased in a glacier.
The technology?
The ISS is pretty much entirely run by a few main computers with 1.5 GB hard drives where most of today's home computers have 500 GB - 1TB.
The computers to operate the Apollo program were pretty much oversized, overglorified pocket calculators by todays standards. The Apollo Guidance Computer only had about "64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz."
Modern Toasters with programming start/stop buttons have more computing power.
I don't think we need to worry about technology being lost from the Apollo Program. :lol:
Apollo 11: The computers that put man on the moon
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Apollo-11-The-computers-that-put-man-on-the-moon
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Maybe for you... I plan to live forever. Extinction is just another one of those barriers to break like sailing across the ocean, flying, reaching space, the sound barrier, the moon, etc.
Does America have rockets to carry people to the moon today? Does America still have landers that can land on the moon and blast off for a return trip? If not, how difficult would it be to start from scratch?
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Good luck with that.
What's your basis for thinking that extinction is simply just another physical barrier to be overcome?
Sorry, but I sure as sh*t would not want to be propelled into space and towards the moon in 45+ year old rusty antiques. The shuttles themselves already reached their age, those things from 1969 have long ended up useless and unsafe.
How difficult would it be to start from scratch?
Not hard at all. All the information and specs from the equipment and resources used to reach the moon are everywhere, including the internet. Money and interest is the main requirement.
Luck won't be required.
Experience and knowledge.
If humans can colonize and thrive on 3-4 planets at least, the chances of human extinction are reduced the zero..... the more planets, the more assurance of long term existence.
Let's say we humans live on 6 planets in the galaxy and doing well on each. If a major disaster on an extinction level occurred on one planet, humanity would live on elsewhere.
Let's say something catastrophic occurred and by freak accident two planet-wide disasters occurred almost at the same time as each other and prevented those planets from evacuating...... tragic, yet not an overall issue for humanity's long term existence.
Two planets doubles our odds.... more than that increases our overall long term survival by even more.
12 planets and extinction of humanity is more than squashed.
Even with 3-4 planets, if something happened to 1-2 planets, we still would have the knowledge of how to travel to other planets and colonize those, forever prolonging our existence before something happened to the remaining 1-2.
When a bird builds a nest in a tree to live and a forest fire occurs, they either fly off and make a new nest in another tree away from the fire, or sit there and wait to die in the burning tree.
You can sit in your tree and wait for the flames, I'd prefer to fly off somewhere else and continue to live.
Indeed, and Orion is being developed by NASA, not the military.
Officially, civilian. It might as well have been military given who worked there at nearly every level. They were in one branch or another of the armed forces, got all funding from the government and were given a mission to beat the Soviets in space as part of the cold war. So sure, technically civilian but in practice might as well have been the military. If the military were to develop a manned space program today I doubt it would be much different from what NASA was or is.
And we are all going to die, but why not do everything we can to put it off as long as we can?
I'll take that as a no to my first two questions.
America's public school system in this era doesn't produce sufficient numbers of skilled and highly qualified engineers necessary to take old knowledge and execute on a plan to return to the moon. American demographics have changed as well since the time the last American walked on the moon. The new Americans are interested in federal govt. transfer payments, and not in the space program.
Why not?
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Scarce resources are needed to help people on earth in the hear and now. Excess monies cannot be found for space exploration as long as people are dependent on the federal govt.
That brings us to Drake's Equation and Fermi's Paradox. How likely is it that a high technology based spacefaring civilization will be born and rise before the civilization destroys itself...thus cutting off interstellar mass migration?
What plans does NASA have to use Orion for a specific mission?
The Apollo mission wasn't designed to kill people or seize their resources. The Apollo missions were acts of scientific exploration that had incidental geopolitical overtones.
All things are finite. Imo scarce American resources should be devoted to improving the lives of human beings in the here and now. Besides, the Chinese are going to the moon in the not too distant future. So that solves the problem.
Using European expertise and European technology.
And whilst the the Europeans are now sending spaceships to comets, the Americans are now having to rely on Russian rockets to launch things into space.