The Moon 2020 Why

[clearz]

Hi<br /><br />This is my first post here but I have been a long time visitor to space.com. This is something that i have been wondering for a while. NASA intends to go back to the moon by 2020 but why the delay. In 1962 Kennedy said that man would set foot on the moon by the end of the decade and we did 7 years later in 1969. Recently in 2004 Bush said that we would return by 2020 16 years after his speech. This is after the expierence and know how of having gone there already. Technology is 35 years more advanced (I read that a handheld PDA computer is more powerfull than the computer that put a man on the moon). So why the long delay. You would think by now we could go there within a year or two of deciding to go.<br /><br />John.<br />

 

[nacnud]

The difference is that NASA doesn't have the same level of funding it did during the 60s and I also has many more projects on the go that divide up that money further.

 

[vogon13]

welcome! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[grooble]

Also this time it is supposed to be long term and Affordable, which the original wasn't really. <br /><br />The apollo missions were ahead of their time.

 

[rocketwatcher2001]

Apollo could have been that sailing ship, of sorts. The way I mean that is it had the two basic things:<br /><br />1. Pressurized docking, the actual interplanetary ship could have been huge, and only a the Command Module needed to be tough enough for re-entry.<br /><br />2. It was tough enough to survive the much faster re-entry from "outer space" rather than just re-entry from LEO.<br /><br />The Service Module was good enough for the moon, but a *MUCH* bigger Service Module would have been needed for the months long trip to and from Mars, as well as a Comfort Module, which wold need a sort of gym to keep the crew from too much bone/muscle loss, plus a little elbow room for sanity. The Landing Module would also need to be a lot beefier, Mars has more gravity, and an atmosphere.<br /><br />Project Apollo could have done it, but the new CEV is going to do it a lot better. I like to think of it as picking up where Apollo left off. I just wish we we'd spend the money to get neat CEV missions and get Shuttle II type large scale LEO assembly projects.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">So why the long delay.</font>/i><br /><br />I think this simple question is not so simple to answer, and those of us who try bring our biases to the answer. Here are my answers/biases.<br /><br />(1) Apollo was essentially a [cold] war effort and not really about exploration or science, and as can be seen with the current conflict in Iraq, dedicating large portions of the national treasure for war is easier than doing it for science. Once Apollo was no longer seen in the context of the cold war, the political support was gone. [Surprisingly, there was never much public support for financing Apollo]<br /><br />(2) Today NASA has a number of legacy efforts to support, namely the shuttle and ISS, and these efforts will consume considerable resources for the next decade. Funding for the new exploration effort slowly ramps up, with a big jump about 2010 with the retirement of the shuttle and another jump around 2016 when the US exits the ISS. Apollo did not compete with such legacy systems.<br /><br />(3) Two primary goals of the new effort are to be sustainable and flexible. Apollo was neither. Even before Apollo landed on the moon NASA's budget was being cut back. And Apollo was focused almost exclusively on achieving Kennedy's goal (man on the moon and back). Certainly others had big visions, but the Apollo project was constrained by the primary goal. One goal for the new vision is to be sustainable financially and politically -- not a big 4-5 year ramp up in funds before they start being cut back. Another goal is to be flexible -- to develop the capabilities to support missions to the moon, near-earth objects (e.g., asteroids), Mars, and beyond.<br /><br />In Frederick Brooks' <i>the mythical man-month</i> Brooks compares the effort to develop a single software program, run by the authors, on the system they developed it on versus a general programming systems product (e.g., operating system) designed to be built upon by othe</i>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">You can think of Apollo as a single program (built by a small group of people</font>/i><br /><br />PS. I know Apollo had a huge number of people, but I was trying to capture how the effort was more tightly focused politcally, financially, and with respect to command and control. A good comparison would be with ISS, where a seemingly simple issue (e.g., funding a second soyuz to be on station) can become a complex international affair.</i>

 

[cybernomad]

Why so long? <br />Cold war competition.

 

[mott]

our only hope is for china to decide to go to the moon before 2020 then we will get there first. politics lol.

 

[rogers_buck]

Well, in 2020 the moon will be at its closest approach to the earth. Not really, but that's the excuse they like to use for mars. (-;

 

[grooble]

Personally i think Mars is a waste of effort unless your sending a self sustaining colony ship, people who will NOT be coming home, not for decades at least. Otherwise it's a waste of money. The whole point of our mars efforts should be for colonisation. <br /><br />The first settlers will have it the hardest, but they'll be building infrastructure and it'll get easier with each new arrival. <br />

 

[scottb50]

I have to disagree, we've done it in Antarctica for a long time and we are a long way from colonizing it. Mars will be that way for a long time. A nice place to visit to do science or see the sites, but other than the staff it would be a long time.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mott]

i think that all we have to do is find valuable mineral reserves that would make it worth the colonization. that has been the driving goal for most of civilizations advances...GREAD!!!

 

[no_way]

"I have to disagree, we've done it in Antarctica for a long time and we are a long way from colonizing it. "<br /><br />Um .. could this have something to do with what we call Antacrtic Treaty ?

 

[mott]

i agree the antartic could be colonized. but when it comes to buisiness why would it? it would cost too much for the return. right now there are still alot of places in more temperate climates to colonize (although this may not be a good idea for the enviroment) like the rain-forest and desarts. it cost alot less to chop down trees or to irregate than to build the energy supply that it would take to heat polar housing..

 

[nacnud]

How about foamed steel dropped from the sky into your local ocean?

 

[no_way]

"but when it comes to buisiness why would it?"<br /><br />quote from a relevant site:<br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The Antartic natural resources potential can be enormous, having copper indications, gold, lead, silver, platinum, chromium, coal, iron ore, petroleum and natural gas. However, in 1988, Atartic Agreement members decided that economic exploration projects were prohibited, fearing that the pollution placed in risk the continent and its life process of last climates. <br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Have your fingers crossed that the same will not become true for Mars, but much more importantly, Moon.<br />

 

[najab]

><i>Have your fingers crossed that the same will not become true for Mars, but much more importantly, Moon. </i><p>I'm reasonably sure that there's no danger of us messing up the Moon's ecosystem. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /></p>

 

[no_way]

"If we mined a solid gold asteroid, gold would be used for frying pans by everybody. The same thing happened with aluminum, once more expensive than gold."<br /><br />Uh, once again .. you see this as a bad thing ? Cheap aluminium has had a _net positive_ impact on world economy, agreed ?<br /><br />If you are concerned over profits for the would-be space miners then dont set your business plan up selling the imported material, because you know in advance you are gonna crash that market. Sell the derived products instead, especially brand new types products enabled by abundant and cheap availability of the previously scarce material.

 

[mott]

true but the simple fact that we find a gold astroid is not enough. first you have to figure in the cost of mining it. true once we finally have all the gold harvested it may drop the price. (although look at opec) but if that much gold is ever found the industrial demand for it would most likely go up. and never forget that the population is increasing and i doubt that its likely to go down anytime soon:more demand.

 

[mott]

still supplying the poles with food and supplys would be diffacult. just give it a few years as our mines dry up see how long that treaty lasts... unless we start mining the moon, astroids, or other dead planets...

 

[no_way]

>>I'm reasonably sure that there's no danger of us messing up the Moon's ecosystem. <br /><br />The ecosystem concerns arent the primary reason why Antarctic is currently "locked" to miners. The antarctic treaty roots go back to first arms control and territorial claims agreements during cold war.<br />The environmental and scientific concerns were entirely secondary back then.

 

[mott]

think of all the alloys that have been derived from alum. just imagine what we could do if we had a large supply of gold.

 

[nacnud]

Platinum and rare earth metals would be the real prize, think of all the catalytic converters and cell phones there are, both of them need a fair amount of rare earth metals.

 

[mott]

exactly the reason for mining the moon or astriods... so we dont do it to earth. think of all the pollution we could stop if we mined in the vacume of space. and if we get really good we can refine it up there.