Obama axes NASA moon plan in new budget | Hacker News Reader

Obama axes NASA moon plan in new budget

newsdaily.com

28 pointsJ3L240442 comments

Obama deserves kudos for this. Lowering the cost of access to space by introducing commercial rocketry is a step in the right direction, which will facilitate many other things in future. Going back to the moon in a craft almost identical to Apollo would have represented neither a science nor an engineering advance.

This could be the beginning of the end of grandstanding "national prestige" space projects, and the start of an expansion in human activities in space.

Just to be clear: This announcement kills the entire Constellation program including Orion, the spacecraft meant to replace the Space Shuttle.

In other words, after the last few shuttle missions this year, the United States will no longer have a manned space program.

Right or wrong, this is devastating news to me.

We're just as well without it. Absent accountability via serious attention from higher-ups or the constituents themselves, bureaucracies tend to devolve into inefficient, unproductive jobs programs, and NASA is no exception: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=770268

The future of space travel will come from organizations with the accountability to properly motivate them to succeed. I, for one, welcome a future of private space flight.

The budget is also increasing NASA support for (or dependence on) private spaceflight companies for their rocketry needs. SpaceX's Dragon space capsule has a manned configuration, and the Falcon 9 rocket is due to make its first orbital launch in the next one to three months. Manned spaceflight is not dying.

Why does everyone assume that NASA will turn to the small startup companies?

History indicates it's the Lockheeds of the country that NASA will turning to.

Lockheed was once a startup to: http://steveblank.com/2010/01/07/the-secret-history-of-silic...

I'd agree that recent history has shown they turn to the Lockheeds

Actually, Lockheed is the company that is designing and building the Orion spacecraft. Which is why this whole thing is slightly confusing... NASA does very little design and construction of their own hardware. At least on paper, our manned space program is privatized.

Does this mean the only way to get people to and from the ISS will be via Russian spacecraft?

yep, there is money for "out sourcing" manned spaceflight.

Humans should not be going to the moon at this point in time for exploration. We should focus on robots going to the moon - spending that money on developing robots will have a much larger benefit than spending the money trying to keep a human safe. We'll develop advanced controlling and communication systems for this.

You can send a robot to the moon and leave him there - a human has to come back. That's an uneccessary expense.

When we have enough robots on the moon they can build the structures neccessary to support human life there.

Indeed this is the logical choice.

But the beauty of humanity is we prefer to reach for extraordinary things. I bet a large number of people would still love to send manned missions to the Moon.

Everyone loves the idea of it, just not the cost.

Robots are not better at exploration, they are just cheaper. Those are different things.

A human controlled robot on the moon is much better at exploration than a human. Humans have to do things like eat and shit.

If we'd had a human on Mars for the last 5 years, they would have covered many, many, many times as much territory as the robots have, and in far more detail.

Yes, it would have been incredibly expensive, but it would have been infinitely better from a science perspective. Which is my point.

A human on mars could certainly have covered more territory than the robots did, but the expense would have been several orders of magnitude more.

Had those billions been spent on robotic explorers, they would also have outperformed the relatively cheap robots that we actually have on the surface.

For the same cost, would robots have provided more data? I bet they would have.

No. Robots are still very much special purpose, humans are still very much general purpose.

But how many special purpose robots can you send up for the purposes that a human will do?

I certainly consider this bad news. I know there's a lot of people on here who poo-poo manned spaceflight as needlessly expensive and unnecessary. But let me say this, manned flight (both air and space) as inspiration is the number one reason that I'm an aerospace engineer today. I know I'm not alone in this. While moves like these make economic sense in the short term, I have no doubt that in the long term, they will rob this industry of talented and inspired people... in some ways, the lack of progress in aerospace in the last 30 years already has shown this to be true.

I'd rather the administration issue grand challenges in all fields (especially aerospace) in order to inspire us today and future generations. Having an inspired workforce is the most critical challenge and essential to continued success and growth in any field.

edited to add: In case it wasn't clear, my point is that there is no way I'd be an aerospace engineer today if the aerospace vehicles and missions in my youth were unmanned/robotic. Yes, robotics is "cool"... but it's not even in the same league as manned flight when it comes to inspiration for me.

As a pretty die-hard Obama supporter and also a huge geek, this is a tough one for me. The change in funding priorities gives us another 5 years of funding for the ISS of course, which is by far the greater achievement than landing on the mood yet again. And the greater funding for private space flight is also an excellent idea.

Still: it would have been nice to go to the moon.

Maybe this is just me, but I was never terribly keen on another Moon landing. In general, I'm not interested in further manned space exploration unless it contributes to establishing an industrial presence in space.

Probes and robots are doing a pretty damned good job at exploratory science.

Not just you, give me more Spirit/Opportunity and Cassini-Huygens please.

going to the moon was the first step in a potential Mars mission...this pushes back Mars by a decade at least

You have a cite for that decade number? Seems silly to me, given that we've already been to the moon, and over 40 years ago at that. Surely we should be at Neptune at least by now, no? :)

More seriously: what is the value of a Mars mission that we should be paying for it? There's no meaningful science to be done there (vs. what can be done via much cheaper means, anyway), just lots of eye candy and fantasy material for wannabe astronauts.

yes.... http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/orion_announcement.html

The orion crew capsule was part of the Constellation program. Same technology and innovations to bring the astronauts to the moon.

The moon has never made any sense as a stepping stone to Mars. Why truck fuel and materiel down a gravity well, only to bring it right back out again? Nor would the Apollo-redux spacecraft suitable to a moon mission be useful for a trip to Mars.

A realistic Mars mission would consist of a spacecraft assembled in earth orbit, then flown directly to Mars. However, the technology required to get a human crew to Mars and bring them back alive is so far beyond what we have now that the moon-as-a-stepping-stone plan is more of a way to avoid confronting the problems than a way to solve them.

$3 billion a week to occupy Iraq - no problem!

$8 billion over four years to go to the frickin' moon - too expensive!

Go figure.

We shouldn't be wasting $3 billion a week in Iraq. But, we shouldn't be wasting $2 billion a year to go to the moon either. AFAICT, there's no significant scientific justification for people to go to the moon or to Mars at this time. Robots can go instead. Previous robot-based Mars missions have been very successful--except for the ones that would have killed everybody on board if they were manned.

Absolutely. This was dumb, and quite frankly a cynical bread-and-circus idea in the first place. There was never any meaningful scientific justification for the project (nor the Mars one that was announced simultaneously).

Although the grandparent post is right: relative to other wastes in our government (the Iraq war being by far the biggest discretionary one), this is small potatoes. But $8B is $8B, and it means it doesn't have to be cut elsewhere.

quite frankly a cynical bread-and-circus idea

That may well be the truth. But at least it's a circus founded on science and engineering.

The Chinese will be on the moon in a decade minimum, two maximum. When you're sitting at home with the rest of the world watching a large chinese flag being placed on the moon in hi-def colour, what thoughts do you think will be going through your head? I bet it's not "boy, I'm glad we didn't waste that $8 billion back in the day!".

You are implying that the Chinese going to the moon will harm us. How so?

Maybe instead of thinking "Damn, there's a Chinese person on the moon!" we should think "Wow, there's a person on the moon!" and then maybe "But why?"

I didn't mean to come across like that. I will be delighted to see a Chinese person on the moon. I will be delighted to see anyone on the moon.

What will dismay me is the short-term thinking that led us to squander our lead in the first place.

And as for "why" .. why do anything? "Because it's there".

GAH, why does Hacker News cut off replies at certain points?

This is a response to the child of this post talking about Chinese moon missions:

My thoughts will entirely depend on just what space development we have done in the intervening years. If some company is beginning an asteroid surveying mission or there is an orbital construction platform, I'm not going to give two damns about what the Chinese are doing with flags. Good for them!

If we are going to spend money on space we should stop thinking in terms of spectacle.

Here's a trick: if you click the direct link to the post, you can reply there without any cutoffs :D

And hey, I agree. If Team USA is building orbital platforms and doing asteroid surveys by then, then I will be utterly delighted.

If, however, because of our lack of long-term vision and misplaced priorities, the space exploration arena comes to be utterly dominated by India, Russia, China, the EU and Japan, then I think I will be justified in lamenting the failings of leadership in my own country I perceive today. Well, I'm not even American actually (though I have family who are), but y'know, I feel a sort of inter-westerner kinship ...

The original space program paid for itself many times over with multiple technological and engineering advances which benefited the larger economy. One study I saw estimated the dividend as seven-fold, but that seems very low to me.

Money spent in technological and engineering development is rarely wasted. And frankly I reckon $8b is worth it in PR benefit alone.

Robots don't cut it. There's an irreplaceable excitement in seeing actual living breathing humans doing something incredible. At a time where inspiration and hope is sorely needed - and especially in the fields of science, technology and engineering - cutting the space program seems extraordinarily short-sighted.

You could make a valid point that NASA is not the agency for the job, but since the USG seems intent on pissing away every borrowed yuan it can find as fast as possible, I guess I just wish they'd piss it into something I can believe in once in a while.

"One study I saw estimated the dividend as seven-fold, but that seems very low to me."

What is the dividend of leaving billions of dollars in American's pockets?

Versus a seven-fold dividend from the space program, you mean?

The answer is: minus six times the program cost.

I don't want government to turn a profit. And, government shouldn't be in the excitement/inspiration/hope business.

When NASA started, private space exploration was unimaginable. Now, it seems very realistic. It's time to free the engineers at NASA from government bureaucracy by moving them to private industry. The profits/advances from space exploration can stand or fall on their own merit.

I don't want government to turn a profit.

If the purpose of government isn't to guide a nation to increased prosperity, what is it?

Every activity the government undertakes should be with an eye to creating the conditions for future prosperity. Public schooling. Secure borders. Fair and equitable laws. And investment, on a grand scale, in technological progress, like the internet we're using right now.

If anything I get wary when the government deviates from that goal. But never fear - if there's one thing the US Government is not doing right now, it's turning a profit.

I meant that I don't want the profits from space-related technology to get filtered through government.

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