Pence: “America Will Return to the Moon–and Go Beyond”
whitehouse.gov
whitehouse.gov
Maybe it's not NASA's budget, but how it's spent?
If NASA needs a bigger rocket, they can buy the SpaceX BFR, which has a substantially greater cargo capacity than the SLS, and if they offered SpaceX a fixed price contract at $200M a launch I'd bet Musk would jump at it.
I was more thinking about politicians not just continuing exhaling hot air through their vocal cords in front of cameras, but having them actually make concrete commitments by actually putting their money where their mouth is.
If they doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX, great, that would probably have incredible results. But seriously, stop talking big and actually commit to these dreams, dammit!
I agree. If the US said they would tax Apple's cash pile @ 10% if Apple were willing to repatriate the money, that'd bring in enough to double NASA's budget. I'm not saying 10% is the right number, but just giving an example.
Plus California takes another 10% off the top, so they could start their own space program!
What about support of the privatized space industry, instead? It seems to be progressing faster than NASA did.
As progress in the industry moves forward, though, I expect we may find other forms of government support, such as what we see in many countries' policies towards renewable energy.
Right now we have much more advanced tech than was available during the space race, and a lot of the pioneering work has already been done.
Comparing NASA from the 60's - 70's to current space companies is not useful.
There are a lot of ways for the government to support an industry otherwise; an example being many countries' policy on renewable energy and clean transport, for instance.
This article is about government support of the space industry, and the parent comment stated "I'll believe it when NASA's budget is raised."
My point is that the government can support the space industry in many ways, some of which won't involve more funding for NASA. As an example, governments have 'supported' renewable energy through policy without needing to do so through a NASA-like equivalent in the renewable energy sector.
I'm not proposing anything else.
This is potentially bad news for SLS/Orion. They have no ability to land on the Moon. SLS doesn't do retro-propulsion and Orion can only land on Earth's ocean using heat shields and parachutes.
That's why NASA has pushed for asteroid missions and building a space station around the Moon. Those are things that SLS can do.
Of course if the intention is to land on the moon this is very good news for SpaceX and Blue Origin, both of whom have working retro-propulsion landings under their belt. Arguably, Blue Origin is in an ever better position than SpaceX since their New Shepard is about the right size for a moon lander. SpaceX would have to develop one.
(Dragon 2 was originally supposed to do retro-propulsion landing, but NASA nixed the idea of landing legs that extended from a heat shield, so the idea was dropped. They would either have to develop a lander version of Dragon 2, or wait until the BFS is available)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQ0jBKH36Y
Edit: realized you were probably referring to this when you said BFS.
The truth is none of the existing or currently planned systems, other than BFR, would make any sense as lunar landers. They’re just not designed for it. Dragon and Orion are Apollo Command Module replacements, not LEM replacements. For lunar landings and excursions we’d need a new vehicle along the lines of the LEM. Lightweight, vacuum only, reusable and refuelable with an ‘infinitely’ restartable engine. SLS would be perfectly capable of launching such a vehicle, in fact that’s exactly the sort of thing it’s designed for.
And of course SLS could launch a LEM. The problem there is that it costs $2 billion/launch. That's "just a bit" of a price premium relative to Falcon Heavy, or whatever the fully reusable generation of rockets is going to cost.
Additionally, even if you did want to recreate a Saturn V, the designs themselves aren't going to get you very far. Most of the tooling has been lost likely along with much of the institutional know how, especially on the technician side of things. I'd be very surprised if you could recreate a functioning Saturn V for a lower cost than designing an entirely new launch system.
> As part of the Space Launch System (SLS) program, NASA had been running the Advanced Booster Competition, which was scheduled to end with the selection of a winning booster configuration in 2015. In 2012, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) proposed using a derivative of the F-1 engine in the competition as a liquid rocket booster ... The F-1B engine has a design goal to be at least as powerful as the un-flight-tested F-1A, while also being more cost effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_C-3#Pyrios
> Developed during the later stages of the Apollo program, the F-1A was test fired, but never flew. Several were crated and stored by Rocketdyne (later Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne). The company has also maintained an F-1/F-1A knowledge retention program for its engineers for the entire period the engine has been mothballed.
Also, https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/new-f-1b-rocket-engi... .
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/vice-president-pence-visi...
Nonetheless, I think him repeating the claims a second time signals more commitment.
Far more than past administrations, a huge number of things that come out of Pence's mouth are straight-up lies.
He and the rest of the administration have demonstrated they will lie with abandon to serve their own ends. We've long passed the point where we should take anything at face value this administration (and this GOP congress as well) says.
Mike Pence has a growing credibility problem: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/18/vi...
It's not just the Russia scandal, Pence lies about health care too: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/its-not-just-the-rus...
How can Mike Pence get away with outrageous lies about the health care bill? https://www.salon.com/2017/07/17/how-can-mike-pence-get-away...
All False statements by Mike Pence http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mike-pence/statement...
Para 2: China etc. threatening our military dominance... Uh oh, hope this isn't going to a bad place.
Para 3: "We will refocus America’s space program toward human exploration and discovery."
Yes, robots are more effective, but this is good, exciting, inspirational stuff. If it happens. And at least he didn't say "We will refocus our efforts towards military control of near-Earth orbit."
The US Space Corps is in the budget for 2018.
edit: Thanks for the Wikipedia link. Those slippery weasels! That's the wrong direction.
Apparently Russia's was reformed in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Space_Forces
You've got to be kidding me.
edit again: Apparently this includes the US Space Command
>"HR2810 FY18 could re-establish the United States Space Command as a subordinate unified command under the United States Strategic Command not later than January 1, 2019. This bill also includes the creation of the United States Space Corps."
> This proposal is opposed by the Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, Air Force Space Command, and military leaders such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva, Chief of Staff of the Air Force General David L. Goldfein, and the current commander of Air Force Space Command General John W. Raymond
Also, from a joint perspective it makes no sense to bring this to the level of of Joint Chief. This would however be a perfect thing to talk about amongst the Chiefs as it would involve resources and personnel from across the services. I imagine that kind of thing is already happening, however.
(I'm imagining a Battlestar Galactica / space marine future I suppose.)
It's very common for sci-fi space forces to be modelled on terrestrial navies (frequently very heavily on Age of Sail / colonial era European navies.)
But especially in the near future, there's not really likely to be a whole lot of functional similarity justifying that.
> I don't often make exact predictions about the future; that's not an SF writer's job, and it's really easy to get egg on your face. Howver, here's a prediction:
> If Donald Trump is still president, US astronauts will return to circumlunar space around July 16th, 2019 ...
> I'm making this a prediction, however, because the POTUS factor.
> July 2019 lies within the term in office of Donald Trump (or Mike Pence, depending whether impeachment/removal has happened first then). Trump is nothing if not an egomaniac, and offering him the opportunity to make a historic phone call to lunar orbit in front of the TV cameras is a guaranteed ego-stroke. Trump is of an age to have young-adult memories of Apollo and I can't see the idea not appealing to him if he can take credit for it.
We need to get Trump to lead the way to the moon personally. I heard Kim Jong Un said he doesn't have what it takes.
In practice, I suspect that a policy around 2 is much more likely, but it seems unlikely the money for that will be showing up in NASA's budgets.
This is proper Kremlinology stuff. What does it really mean? Could be anything or nothing. Only those inside the loop know for sure. And that's subject to change.
> To achieve these goals, the National Space Council will look beyond the halls of government for insight and expertise. In the coming weeks, President Trump and I will assemble a Users’ Advisory Group partly composed of leaders from America’s burgeoning commercial space industry. Business is leading the way on space technology, and we intend to draw from the bottomless well of innovation to solve the challenges ahead.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-will-return-to-the-moon...
(lapalissade is an actual word. Came in handy today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapalissade)
If a company would sit on a capability for 45 years without expanding and improving it. The government does things like this, it doesn't have market pressures or complete focus. If a new politician of a popular party gets elected and decides to reallocate the funds, they can do that at the snap of their fingers.
The problem with the government is that they are managing the immediate needs of the electorate while balancing long term goals which are volatile. A healthy company is more narrow, more nimble, and more committed to a goal. A business is resource-time bound, a government not so much. A business must respond to the market/pressures much more so than a government. An unpopular business doesn't last long, whereas entire functions of government hold historic unpopularity, yet is free of anxiety. A great business caters to the individual in all of us, while the government caters to clashing interest groups.