What will happen to the Ares program

[Gravity_Ray]

I have never wanted to bash NASA, and I think very few people on these boards actually bash NASA. NASA is an agency that is being directed by Congress, if I bash anybody it will be the Congress. They are a bunch of myopic, political slimy no-good self-aggrandizing degenerates. They have repeatedly mis-understood what going to space is all about.

What is going to space about? It’s about the future of mankind. There simply are not enough resources on this planet to continue the expansion of our species at our current inefficient rate. We will end, if we continue down the path we currently are not just walking towards, but running towards. It’s not about the political future of a few scumbag politicians.

We must expand into our solar system and create a solar system economy. That can only be achieved if we move onto Mars and then beyond. Even though, the Moon must be our first target. Mars is far and we need some practice before we go there, and now with the discovery of possible water on the Moon this must be attempted first to see if there actually is useful water on the Moon and if so we can practice ISRU there.

The reason for my original post was to show that a heavy lift rocket is necessary to get us out of LEO and towards Mars, and not a light rocket to go to LEO “AGAIN”. This will not be cheap and we certainly will not make any money off it for the first 50 years, and if making money is going to be the litmus test to go to space, then we are not going to get off this rock and we are doomed.

So whether that is Ares V or a Heavy variant of Delta IV I'm on board. But the work must be started and with some luck survive the useless Congress. I only wish the best for NASA.

 

[EarthlingX]

Hear! hear !

(i could nitpick on some finer points, but yea

I would just like to know, does anyone have an idea about a global 100t lift to LEO market, beside the potential fuel depots ?

 

[samkent]

There simply are not enough resources on this planet to continue the expansion of our species at our current inefficient rate. We will end, if we continue down the path we currently are not just walking towards, but running towards.

100% pure speculation without a shred of evidence to back it up. In fact the entire history of mankind has shown the exact opposite.
Did we go extinct when we ate the last Mastodon? No!
In WW2 our supply of rubber was cut off. Did we stop making tires? No!
It’s our ability to adapt. It’s our history to adapt. That’s what we do.

There is nothing on this planet that would doom mankind, if we ran out of it. That includes the precious metals. Yes you can still have electronics without gold.

All of this Nostradamus doom and gloom for mankind if we don’t expand into space is pure horse hockey.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

All of this Nostradamus doom and gloom for mankind if we don’t expand into space is pure horse hockey.

Here you go Sam... Chew on this “evidence” for a while.

http://www.beltramiswcd.org/Aquatic%20B ... Growth.jpg

By the way, I was not talking about "rubber" or "mastodon meat", I am talking about industrialization. I am talking about China and India, and the fact that there are more people on this planet now, than have ever died since the beginning of our species. Please don’t compare "rubber" or "mastodon meat" to a planet that is being stressed beyond the point of breaking. What has to happen for people like you to accept that we are playing Russian roulette? Will you be on board when the ice sheet on Green land melts and the North Atlantic currents change, and half of Florida is under water? Do you understand what will happen if Bangladesh goes under water and all 153 million of its citizens move inland?

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/new ... 5gyre.html

Such a change in the North Atlantic current will cause northern Europe to go into a mini-ice age, while most of North America will become a desert.

Please don’t be so short sighted. Don’t quote me what happened in WWII, our species is making large scale changes on this planet the likes of which has never happened. There has never been as much carbon in our atmosphere as there is now... NEVER!

http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/ ... armA3.html


Nature doesn’t work in a linear fashion, it works exponentially... I am afraid by the time you are "convinced" it will be too late to do anything about it. I am sorry that you think I am being melodramatic, but for people like you that need "a news alert from fox news" to accept something, I have to be melodramatic.

 

[kelvinzero]

I have never wanted to bash NASA, and I think very few people on these boards actually bash NASA. NASA is an agency that is being directed by Congress, if I bash anybody it will be the Congress. They are a bunch of myopic, political slimy no-good self-aggrandizing degenerates. They have repeatedly mis-understood what going to space is all about.

What is going to space about? It’s about the future of mankind. There simply are not enough resources on this planet to continue the expansion of our species at our current inefficient rate. We will end, if we continue down the path we currently are not just walking towards, but running towards. It’s not about the political future of a few scumbag politicians.

We must expand into our solar system and create a solar system economy. That can only be achieved if we move onto Mars and then beyond. Even though, the Moon must be our first target. Mars is far and we need some practice before we go there, and now with the discovery of possible water on the Moon this must be attempted first to see if there actually is useful water on the Moon and if so we can practice ISRU there.

The reason for my original post was to show that a heavy lift rocket is necessary to get us out of LEO and towards Mars, and not a light rocket to go to LEO “AGAIN”. This will not be cheap and we certainly will not make any money off it for the first 50 years, and if making money is going to be the litmus test to go to space, then we are not going to get off this rock and we are doomed.

So whether that is Ares V or a Heavy variant of Delta IV I'm on board. But the work must be started and with some luck survive the useless Congress. I only wish the best for NASA.

Wasnt aimed at you, Gravity Ray, but there are a huge amount of NASA bashers on most space sites.

Im very interested in space colonization but I dont think it is a solution to population growth or growth in consumption. Both of those are exponential and will always be able to outstrip any attempt to export this problem. We just need to learn how to live using sustainable technology.

However learning to live on a world like the moon or mars where recycling has to be efficient and nothing is for free would teach us a lot about how to live sustainably on earth. If we could colonize mars then we could certainly reclaim all the deserts of earth and have a recipe for technology that does not rely on petroleum and free oxygen. Sooner or later every resource on earth will have to be fully recycled as if we were living in a moon base.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

LOL KZ
After re-reading my post I am a bit embarrassed to say it does appear I blew an inhibition circuit and spazzed out a bit.

There are two things going on in this post as often happens (that’s why MW has to keep telling people to stay on topic I guess). My original post was about a heavy lift capability (60 tonnes plus) to TLI (Trans Lunar Injection) or Mars orbit. That’s one thing we as a space program and we as humans lack right now. That’s all I was trying to say. You are 100% correct in that Mars is not a solution for our population growth. As a matter of fact even if we had Star Trek technology we couldn’t get these billions of people off the planet faster than we are growing. My point was more about a very old saying “you don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”. It was true hundreds of years ago, and it’s still true. The reason why there are no more dinosaurs? They never developed space travel. That was a very successful species (if not the most successful species ever) and they are no more (except for the birds), so even a small outpost on another planet will be very useful for our species.

But what really got me (and gets me) riled up is the assertion that everything is “****** dorey” and let’s not worry about what we are doing on Earth and “doom and gloom” is just a state of mind. Well I take exception to that. It’s tied in with space travel, but you are right that space travel is not a panacea. But it would be truly sad if we are the only space faring life in the universe and we die off because of short sightedness in managing our planet.
We have been very poor stewards of our planet, and in general we are very poor stewards of our weaker relations and other critters that call this blue/green jewel of a planet their home. I hope when/if we do become a space faring civilization there will still be this beautiful planet to look down on.

So my apology to anyone I may have offended.

 

[vulture4]

The reason why there are no more dinosaurs? They never developed space travel..

I'm all for colonizing space, but this is perhaps a bit extreme. Mammals and many reptiles survived the C-T event without space travel, as would humans if a similar impact occurred today, though there would be great destruction. What would it take to kill all humans? An impact which would liquify the entire crust? This hasn't happened since the event that created the moon, and the Solar System was a very different place then, with planetoids in intersecting orbits.

Moreover, why let even part of our species die? Surely the first priority now would be improved tracking of near earth objects. Given decades of warning and precise prediction, even robotic spacecraft built with current technology could use ion propusion or a nuclear explosion to divert a large body the very small amount necessary.

Would a small Mars colony built with a few Constellation Mars landers even be able to survive without Earth? This isn't in the current plan. How long until the pressure suits wore out? How long until they had the manufacturing infrastructure to produce new ones, or even new pumps and seals for the habitats? How would they purify metals or composites? Build new solar panels, or purify new nuclear fuel? Again, if this is really our objective, more practical human spaceflight technogy is the first step, rather than putting our limited resources into a few flights with 40-year-old technology.

The crtical question isn't "what is the best booster?", it's "What is the strategic mission of Constellation? What practical benefits will the American taxpayers gain by investing this amount of money in this technology now?" Like Helium-3 and the moon race with China, this seems to be an attempt to find a mission of infinite value for a program of nearly infinite cost. We should be developing technology of lower cost, so that more realistic missions would become practical.

 

[frodo1008]

I too, am convinced that Gravity_Ray is correct. But it does not even take threats to the entire human race, nor even threats to just our civilization to show this.

That "Meteor Crater" in Arizona was caused by an iron core meteorite only about the size of a football field, nowhere near the size to be a threat to mankind in general, that is certainly true. But what if such an object were to strike New York City?

I mean look at what happened when a bunch of fanatics just destroyed a couple of large buildings in that center of human population? If such an object were to crash into Central Park, it would destroy all of Manhattan Island for a radius of at least 50 miles or so, with varying destruction continuing out for another 100 miles or so. No, I agree it certainly would not destroy the US itself, but just who could tell the difference in all of the horrendous destruction that would occur?

Just how many millions of Americans would it kill? I would say easily 20 million at least would be my estimate. As for the injured, at least another 40 million people. And finally property damage levels that would sink the economies of the world, let alone the US!!

And you know there are FAR more such objects out in near earth space than there are the larger planet or civilization killers!

So just how large a space program would be needed to stop such relatively small and fast moving object?

Well, you would first need space telescopes capable of even spotting such objects at least tens of millions of miles away. And these telescopes would need to be able to spot such objects coming at the Earth from ALL directions (such small objects do not just fly in the ecliptic plane). Then of course, you would need interceptors fast enough to not only get to such objects, but with power enough to even destroy them. They would need to be destroyed rather than just diverted like the larger objects as there would not be nearly enough time to just divert them. We are talking about objects flying in towards the Earth at dozens of miles per second here!

Do you even begin to get the picture of the kind of defense systems that would be needed here, and the full extent of the space program needed to support all of this?

Yeah, pretty massive at best. But try to think of it in the same way that you as a car driving individual would view your car insurance. You insure your $30,000 machine with a premium of only about $200 per month.

The possible damage to a populated area of the Earth by such an object could very well be in the tens of trillions of dollars, to say nothing of the additional damage caused to the economies of the Earth. Can you imagine a New York Stock Exchange without any existence of the physical stock exchange itself? If such a defense system were to cost far more than all of the space expenditures of mankind since the beginning of the space age with Sputnik, it would still be cheap in comparison!

And the ONLY Hogwash is that of Hollywood that seems to imply that we now have ANY kind of a defense against such a thing happening! Sorry people, but we don't!

And if a truly larger object were to be headed for us, the only remedy for literally billions of human beings is to bend over and kiss your rear ends goodbye!

Is that the kind of legacy we want to be leaving future generations (let alone ourselves?), especially when such an incredibly small amount of our national wealth could actually prevent it? What is now the percentage of NASA's budget in the heavily increased national budget. Some 0.3% or even less?

Besides which I know that most Americans are very nostalgic for the days when NASA had a budget of some 2.0% of the federal expenditures, and we had an unemployment rate that was less than a third of what it is now!

A stimulus package that included an increase in NASA's funding to even 1.0% would go a long way towards bringing true prosperity back to this nation, and would at the same time allow NASA to actually not only try just about ALL of the various options for going back to the moon. Thus settling many of the on going arguments as to the best methods that seem to continue on here forever!

Oh, I know, such an object might not hit the Earth for another 1,000 years, but it could just as easily hit in a few days from now for all we know! That is the little known nature of these types of statistics.

The ONLY Hogwash here is that put out by such as Hollywood that we have some kind of secret program that will protect us from such an event! That IS truly Hogwash!

I can not even believe that we have people on a site such as this that are so short sighted as to not see all this!

An I being clear here? :x