Budgets & a "voice in the wilderness"

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docm

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Stephen Metschan of TeamVision on the implications of NASA's budget woes.<br /><br />Space Review article....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Another voice in the wilderness</b><br /><br />by Stephen Metschan<br />Monday, February 19, 2007<br /><br /> “The FY07 appropriations, if enacted as the House has resolved, will jeopardize our ability to transition safely and efficiently from the Shuttle to the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares 1 Crew Launch Vehicle. It will have serious effects on people, projects, and programs this year and for the longer term.”<br /> – NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, February 5, 2007<br /><br />Created by political forces to win the hearts and minds of free people everywhere, NASA is still defined by those same forces. NASA’s missions continue to inspire a grander vision for mankind’s future, bridging generations and social boundaries. While the recent reductions in funding for the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) is unfortunate, we need to focus our energy on what we can achieve rather than commiserate over what could have been if only unfettered by the same political forces funding our space exploration endeavors.<br /><br />The original congressional approval of VSE directed NASA to retire the shuttle by 2010 and also promised sufficient funding to field NASA’s replacement system before 2014. The recent budget reductions have now made it all but impossible to achieve VSE’s objectives on time using NASA’s current approach. Despite this fact, NASA continues to move forward with retiring the Space Shuttle in 2010. While “go-as-we-pay” is a practicality of year-to-year funding, it should not be confused with a realistic strategy of transitioning of our existing space exploration infrastructure and workforce towards the objectives of the VSE.<br /><br /><font color="yellow"><b>If we cannot increase the budget then we must alter ou</b></font></p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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spacester

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I would suggest that rather than watch from the sidelines and accept the budget cuts that we space advocates try to get Congress to restore full funding. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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nyarlathotep

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<font color="yellow">Bottom line: is it cheaper to develop a new system for Orion or man-rate an existing one? </font><br /><br />Depends on how you define 'man-rate'. By NASA's definition, the only way you can man-rate is if NASA builds and launches the vehicle.
 
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j05h

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<i>> I would suggest that rather than watch from the sidelines and accept the budget cuts that we space advocates try to get Congress to restore full funding. </i><br /><br />Normally I would agree, but for ARES I, the last thing I want is ATK getting more money: they make the most dangerous part of STS. It's the wrong path to future spacelift. ARES I, if successful, will drive human spaceflight costs up instead of down. Current ELVs are more than capable of putting capsules and 10-30t payloads into LEO for ISS or basecamping toward the Moon. <br /><br />There is a glut in the current market for spacelaunch. If anything we need more frequent flights with current rockets (Delta, Atlas, Ariane, Zenit, etc) than new, non-revolutionary (SpaceX), rockets. The last thing we need is more of the same. If it can't fly every day, NASA shouldn't be involved in it's development. <br /><br />Lockheed is involved in two of the three current US capsule efforts: CEV and the possible Bigelow capsule. They've already proposed a CEV-lite-on Atlas for quicker ISS access.<br /><br />Nyalathorp is right on man-rating, essentially you can't get the rating from NASA. It doesn't matter for commercial ventures (that's FAA's territory), but might make a difference in publicity terms. Then again, neither Shuttle nor Soyuz are officially man-rated. <br /><br />The proof will be in the pudding, let's check back in a decade, in 2017. I would predict that Lockheed will be flying it's own & Dragon capsules on Atlas with or without NASA, ARES I/CEV will still be dragging toward first flight and more than one Bigelow-built station in orbit and beyond. A propellant depot will be seeing first-element launch without any NASA funding, because it is needed by business. <br /><br />For human spaceflight, what we (as citizens, biz and people) really need is an economic end-run around politics. How to make human spaceflight profitable? That is the question that leads to an unlimited future.<br /><br />If you do c <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>
 
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halman

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docm,<br /><br />That wilderness you mention seems like downtown compared to where I am standing on this issue. There is a third alternative to the two that you mention. Scrap the idea of building yet another 'almost but not quite' rocket, and hire the Russians to ferry us around. The will certainly be able to do it cheaper, and faster, than any program we will have to go through to duplicate yet again existing launch capacity. That is, if you take the view of someone who believes that getting off of this planet transcends political divisions. The Russians either have operational right now, or have used in the not-to-distant past, all the rocket power we need up the the super heavy lift category, and they might even have a design for one of those which uses existing motors.<br /><br />The Vision for Space Exploration is not, or should not be, for merely proving that the U.S. can build a rocket, it should be about getting past Low Earth Orbit again, and actually going somewhere. It is not important how we get there, what is important is that we get there as soon as possible. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>
 
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spacester

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JO5H, I hope you know by now that I highly respect you, your opinions and what you are doing. But I respectfully ask that you reconsider your position here.<br /><br />I may not be much of a politician, but one thing my engineering training and life experience has taught me is that when in the political arena, one must set achievable goals.<br /><br />What I am hearing you say is that we should starve NASA until they do what we want. I just don't see how that can be interpreted as effective space activism. Activism perhaps, but highly ineffective and ultimately self-defeating.<br /><br />What makes you think that I would NOT be promoting commercial space? Crikey man, I was the first person here to post on Armadillo, JP Aerospace, asteroid mining and others I'm forgetting. I was the lone voice in the wilderness here on space tourism for 2 years. I challenge you to find someone here more supportive of commercial space.<br /><br />But having started down that road years ago, and being the kind of person who continuously re-evaluates my position, I have come to see the debate, as you express it here, as a very self-limiting adoption of the Fallacy of the False Choice.<br /><br />Do we enable an unlimited future by flawed and therefore limited thinking? <br /><br />Have I set an achievable goal here in trying to get you to see that support for commercial space does not mean starving NASA until they build the rocket you want them to build? It's a political rocket, not an optimized rocket. Let's take advantage of whatever we can get.<br /><br />To suppose that citizen input could shift large amounts of gummint funding from NASA programs to commercial space is totally fallacious. It's as politically ignorant as supposing that cutting space flight programs will feed the hungry. It just does not work that way. (You already know that, I point it out for others.)<br /><br />I could go on and on here (as I suppose y'all well know), but I would no doubt be accused of hijacking the thread. Never <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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halman

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spacester,<br /><br />Hey, the new site is looking very promising, in spite of a few rough edges. Good job!<br /><br />Sometimes, I almost despair, when considering the crazy way that our government does things. But I have to keep reminding myself that the government is a servant of the people, especially the rich people, and many things that it does are to benefit them, without regard for long-term consequences. Such as pouring money into the military-industrial complex just to keep the handful of defense contractors who remain from folding. This is what I call corporate welfare, and NASA has indulged in it, also. It is a symptom of stagnation, of treading water, without any clear goal for the future.<br /><br />This discussion regarding ATK (formerly Morton-Thiokol,) is exactly what I am talking about. Because ATK is a defense contractor, Congress is directing as much money towards them as possible, because who will we buy our missiles from if ATK goes under? The amount of the federal budget dedicated to the Department Of Defense which actually goes to the armed forces is much smaller than the total allocated. Where does the rest go? Into corporate welfare, I think. Weapons development programs, weapons testing programs, weapons prototype programs, and most of them will never actually be implemented as operational weapons.<br /><br />This is a very ignorant way of dealing with the problem, shortsighted, and counter-productive. Instead of giving the military-industrial complex make work, we should make them work on developing the technology we need to survive in the long term. A powerful military is useless in the face of global warming, or an incoming rock. The greatest advances in weapons technology usually come from research into things other than weapons, new ideas, processes, materials, which it is discovered have military applications.<br /><br />To make those kinds of discovery possible, a lot of money needs to be spent creating new technologies, as well <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>
 
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j05h

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I am trying to set a reasonable goal: get Congress to force NASA to buy seats to LEO, as the various commercial space acts have already attempted. I'm not trying to present any false choices, I understand the political need to employee people in key districts. My concern is that the rocket they've annointed as the Next One True Rocket interferes with the market while using the worst element of the Shuttle. I'm concerned that ARES I will kill crew and nothing NASA has said so far changes that. Even flying Shuttle longer makes more sense than ARES I. I've tried to like it, but it just doesn't work for me. <br /><br />Commercial space shouldn't be after NASA's money, they should be searching for organizations to buy their products. COTS is cool, but still development work, both SpaceX and RpK might become beholden to a fickle master. The things I'd like to see from NASA are standing cash offers for spaceflight services and standards for an open infrastructure. The current plans (ARES series, polar moon base) are essentially a series of single missions. It presents no growth options and no synergy, what in computing would be called a brute-force approach. <br /><br />On a technical side, I think that instead of planning One Giant Payload, NASA should plan for refuelling and ISRU from the start. They could be building the LEO-LLO and LLO-Luna craft right now, and flying them on available rockets. Propellants depots are planning for the future. We could be on our way much, much sooner, for less. But that's not what ESAS is about, and that is why ESAS is a poor answer to the VSE.<br /><br />The two main camps I see are the Shuttle-Derived-Forever (Mars Never) crowd and the Pay-Alt-Space-For-Everything crowd. On the outside are a few Shuttle-Forverers and a few Commercial-Frontier-Only types. <br /><br />Alt.space is largely not ready for product contracts, the Shuttle components are designed to be expensive (we've learned a lot since) and once the frontier is opened, it is Open a <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>
 
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spacester

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Very Cool!<br /><br />I've been too busy to keep up on developments like I normally do, and I must admit that marsdrive.com had escaped my notice. That is far and away the best new space organization I've seen since, um well since ever I suppose. Having made an abortive effort in that same direction myself, Mr. Stratford's words ring true and I am THRILLED with what I see so far. I will be joining up shortly and look forward to reading every word on that site. <br /><br />I've said before that if I ever come across a space advocacy org that takes a realistic approach, and one that reaches out to the general public, that I would jump on it. Prior to this, IMO, space orgs have all taken an ineffectual approach, either by being for insiders only coughsffcough or by being, shall we say, less than pragmatic. These folks really seem to "get it" in terms of harnessing the power of the non-insider space advocate.<br /><br />I have no need to go my own way per se, I simply have not been willing to join orgs knowing that I would rapidly become a thorn in their side due to my objection to their basic approach. They are better off without me. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />So this is actually a huge relief (pending further reading; right now I have a very positive reaction to these MarsDrive folks) in that www.spacesterzone.com does not have to be as ambitious as I'd thought in order to accomplish my objective, which is simply to be effective in my advocacy in at least some small way. My concept was to use the project of tracking Congress as a gateway to a lot of the things Mars Drive is doing, knowing full well that I was over-reaching. Clearly, those folks are in a much better position than I to pull off something significant.<br /><br />Very cool.<br /><br />Of course, my interests are not limited to Mars and in a perfect world they would be talking about lunar activity and asteroid prospecting as well. But waiting <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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thereiwas

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Another way to look at this, to paraphrase Gene Kranz, is "What has NASA got that works?" where "works" means "can contribute to establishing a base on the moon". (as opposed to just funneling money to defense contractors)<br /><br />To start the list, they have some prime real estate at the right latitude for launching to the moon. Some of the facilities are a bit rusty, but that can be fixed.<br /><br />
 
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docm

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>To start the list, they have some prime real estate at the right latitude for launching to the moon. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> <br />Since when has it been a staple for the airports to design the airplanes? <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <br /><br />Besides, if private space companies want to use/build facilities there some arrangement is likely to get worked out.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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j05h

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<i>>Another way to look at this, to paraphrase Gene Kranz, is "What has NASA got that works?" where "works" means "can contribute to establishing a base on the moon". (as opposed to just funneling money to defense contractors) </i><br /><br />Ah, now that brings us to the crux of the matter. Is the goal of ESAS to establish a base on Luna, or is it to maintain the status-quo for their contractors and state workers? Have they decided to shake things up, or are they travelling the path that leads to the same string of failures (X-33, OSP, ACRV, etc) that the last 2 decades have provided? ESAS represents a new version of the Space Exploration Initiative, but without the same blue-sky/kitchen-sink approach. Instead of asking for everything up front (SEI), they have created a proposal (ESAS, ARES) that can just barely do the job while almost staying in budget guides. I'm not confident they can pull it off.<br /><br />(EDIT: <br />Spacester suggested several false dicotomies that I refuted (ie. It's ARES or alt.space, but not both). One real conflict that could be make or break for returning to the Moon may be the current Standing Army. With astronomical fixed costs, impacted by tight discretionary budgets, the ARES architecture will be so expensive that they can't afford to build anything else. This year's budgets are flat, next year's have a good chance of going down. Staging in LEO, with NASA building modular, refuellable cis-lunar infrastructure and flying on commercial, medium-lift boosters may be the only thing they can afford. In a shrinking budget, which is better: a half-built HLV rocket or a Delta-delivered yacht already in LEO that you can fly back to using a capsule, refuel and use? They are already doing assembly in LEO, why does it "have" to go up 100t at a time, especially when it's mostly propellant?<br /><br />I agree with Spacester about the importance of not getting into the subtle issues inside the space community with Congresspeople.<br />)<br /><br />KSC mi <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>
 
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thereiwas

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Building additional facilities next to KSC at Cape Canaveral is unlikely: it is in the middle of a wildlife refuge.<br /><br />Launch site is an important consideration for the moon, by my understanding of the mechanics. If we want to do assembly in LEO for a trip to Luna, ISS is in the wrong orbit. The assembly point should be in an orbit inclined to match the moon's orbit to minimize fuel required for the TLI burns. We will want to be sending a lot of mass that-a way so changes of inclination, or getting a TLI window only once a month may be undesirable.<br /><br />This unfortunately makes getting pieces to that assembly point expensive for the Russians if they continue to insist on launching from their own territory.
 
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Swampcat

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A couple of points...<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"KSC at Cape Canaveral...is in the middle of a wildlife refuge."</font><br /><br />This issue is apparently being addressed. See this thread.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"This [orbit inclined to match the moon's orbit] unfortunately makes getting pieces to that assembly point expensive for the Russians if they continue to insist on launching from their own territory."</font><br /><br />The Russians along with ESA are hard at work building launch facilities at Centre Spatial Guyanais (commonly called the Kourou Space Center) in Kourou, Guiana. This will give them a better launch site for lunar missions.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="3" color="#ff9900"><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>------------------------------------------------------------------- </em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."</em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong>Thomas Jefferson</strong></font></p></font> </div>
 
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bpfeifer

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If you're interested in taking action rather than just complaining, you can participate in political action organized by the Mars Society. Call your Congressmen. I've included the full details below:<br /><br />1. Mars Society Launches Congressional Phone Blitz<br /> Posted by: "marssoc" marssocinfo@aol.com marssoc<br /> Date: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:49 am ((PST))<br /><br />The Mars Society Phone and Fax Blitz<br />February 21, 2007<br />For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at <br />www.marssociety.org<br /><br />The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) is under attack. In a <br />Continuing Resolution (CR), Congress has cut $500 million from the <br />2007 NASA budget, with $900 million cut from the Exploration mission <br />directorate repsonsbile for implementing the Moon-Mars initiative. <br />This cut will hurt VSE and could be the first volley in a new round <br />of attempts to kill it. There are those in Congress who would like to <br />eliminate human space flight all together. This job will be much <br />easier if they only hear whimpers from supporters of space <br />exploration.<br /><br />We need to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that VSE is vital to <br />our nation and that they need to restore the funds that have been <br />cannibalized from the 2007 budget. In addition, they need to support <br />a healthy increase in funding in the 2008 budget.<br /><br />We hope that members of the Mars Society (and other interested <br />people) will make hundreds of telephone calls and send hundreds of <br />faxes (for faxes, see bottom of page) to Congress to send them the <br />message that the american people want a space program that is really <br />going somewhere.<br /><br />JUST TAKE A FEW MINUTES OUT OF YOUR DAY! IT IS EASY! And report <br />back to us once you've called at marspolitics@yahoo.com.<br /><br />W <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Brian J. Pfeifer http://sabletower.wordpress.com<br /> The Dogsoldier Codex http://www.lulu.com/sabletower<br /> </div>
 
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docm

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>halman said;<br /><br />That wilderness you mention seems like downtown compared to where I am standing on this issue. There is a third alternative to the two that you mention. Scrap the idea of building yet another 'almost but not quite' rocket, and hire the Russians to ferry us around.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />That puts our manned access to space at the whims & whiles of the Russian government, such as it is. That IMO is a stupid thing to do from so many directions I'd get writers cramps listing them all.<br /><br />No thanks <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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pathfinder_01

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“KSC might be a good location, but the Air Force has a base next door that is just as functional and much more accomodating to commercial launch. If NASA wants to go to the Moon again (vs. feeding ATK), they should reexamine the current path, especially regarding heavy-lift, prop depots and whether they are going to be an operator (Shuttle) or an explorer. They obviously have trouble doing both concurrently. It's not a diss, they just haven't kept up with the times and have accreted like any bureaucracy. “<br /><br />Last, a lot of the development I advocate will render all of this obsolete. Commercial human spaceflight will outpace government flight in the coming decades. This already occured with comsats and barring to many troubles, will happen with people-in-space, too."<br /><br /> While governments tend to be less efficient than operations,. NASA can not depend on the private sector to be an operator at this time. When Space X or who ever launches a manned capsule from the US with similar capabilities as the NASA capsule then NASA should by tickets. I think NASA should support the private sector as much as possible, but this countries manned access to space should not be held hostage to the vagaries of the private sector. <br /><br />It kind reminds me of what a woman who lived to be a hundred said about the automobile when it first came out. How they were constantly breaking down such that she preferred horse and buggy for at least you could be sure of getting there. And yes, I could see her point. <br /><br />I think private spaceflight will happen one day, but odds are the first companies to be able to do so will not be racking in the money. And odd are many of the first companies that do so will fold.(Sorta like internet companies in the 90ies or Railroads in the 19th century)<br /><br /> It isn’t just a question of putting the means in the hands of coperations rather than the government. It is how do you operate a spaceflight service profitably which is quite a
 
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barf9

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What I worry about is Orion/Ares I running over buget and killing all other NASA space exploration programs with it. The navy had problem like that with the A-12 program in the 90's and it killed any "all new" aircraft till the JSF program. NASA's CEV has one encreidibly fatal flaw (not that it doesn't have any others) only one customer, NASA. I'd rather see more of a COTS based CEV that has investors other than NASA with a LEO space station on a useful orbit (lets say on the way to the moon), and a reuseable ferry vehicle to a lunar base.
 
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frankmars

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I wasn't sure where to put this but just providing an update on the Marsdrive Mission design. We are also looking at several small scale r&d projects to see what ISRU systems work and what doesn't as a first step to get something real done before the final design comes out. <br /><br />We will most likely publish an initial design later this year but with technology demonstration tests pending which could change the future design quite radically. Any help through these processes is appreciated and we do intend to follow normal engineering design processes instead of the usual "Hey look at my new Mars plan" and hope for the best. So anyone interested in serious pursuit of a solid and professional peer review human mission plan, you are welcome to join. We have 10 in the team as it is and 2 advisors but we'd like to increase that number really get it going. The team update and discuss over at our forums- http://www.marsdrive.com/phpBB2/<br /><br />It is an invisible forum so you have to register first, let me know what qualifications you can bring and beyond that just to have an open mind is the key.
 
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j05h

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FrankMars- Thanks for the Mars Drive heads-up. You might consider starting a MarsDrive thread here in Misisons and Launches or in SB&T. I liked the MarsDrive guys at ISDC '06, and the ground-up approach your group is taking.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>
 
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frankmars

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Thanks Josh, we have also decided to pull down the old Mars For Less design we have and will be posting up a temporary "Mission Goals" status page for the new design effort in the next few days so when that goes up I will notify everyone of the changes. I'll start that thread in here once we get all the details up for the goals of the new design on our site. <br /><br />In this way I hope we can design a Mars mission that listens to advice and criticism to ensure a result that is something we can all be proud of. So I'll be looking forward to any input from anyone here at Uplink. Stay tuned...
 
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JonClarke

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Frank<br /><br />It is very important you keep the old study available for archive purposes even if you have decided to abandon that approach.<br /><br />Other than that, I also would urge you to start a thread discussing the Mars drive misison proposals.<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>
 
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frankmars

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Thanks for the tip Jon, well, I will move it into our downloads section instead for future reference plus being a peer reviewed study it is avaliable from other sources if you google hard enough. All mission designs contain good and bad points too so it useful to keep a reference I agree.
 
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frodo1008

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The following is from an article that was referenced right here on space.com.<br /><br /><font color="yellow"> While the bill funds NASA's science, aeronautics and education accounts above the president's request, it shorts the agency's $6.79 billion request for the Space Operations Mission Directorate - which runs the space shuttle and space station programs - by $100 million, most of which would come out of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) procurement on tap for 2008. While NASA relies on TDRSS to communicate with the shuttle and station, the heaviest user of the aging system is the Defense Department, which pays the majority of TDRSS operations costs." </font><br /><br />Now if a cut of $100 million out of a budget of $6.79 billion is going to totally destroy NASA's efforts to go back to the moon via the VSE program (and said cuts come off an item TDRSS, that do not even affect the VSE program directly), then somebody has come up with some kind of new version of economics here!<br /><br />Not only does the budget approved by the HOR give NASA all it asked for, but it even gives NASA so much that the administration is threatening to veto the entire budget!!<br />(this from the same article).<br /><br />Now, while it is well known on these boards that I am a fervent supporter of NASA and its program, if NASA can't make the current systems that it has developed for the VSE work on the monies that NASA has itself asked for, then perhaps we (the taxpayers) should just turn NASA's entire budget over the the new alt.space crowd and see what they could do with such funding!!<br /><br />In the meantime we can no longer really blame congress (as both Republicans and Democrats voted for these increases) for NASA's difficulties!!<br /><br /><br /><br />
 
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