Posted on 12/10/2007 6:20:45 PM PST by Names Ash Housewares
Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday. "Our job is to build towns on the moon and eventually put tire prints on Mars," NASA's Rick Gilbrech told reporters here, one year after the US space agency unveiled an ambitious plan to site a solar-powered, manned outpost on the south pole of the moon.
"We have the International Space Station; we're going to have a lunar outpost, and someday, certainly, somebody will go to Mars," said Jeff Hanley, head of NASA's Constellation program, which is developing the tools to return humans to the moon.
"Thirty-five years ago this week, Gene Cernan, Ron Evans and Jack Schmitt were on the surface of the moon. We are working hard to return a future generation of astronauts to the moon," said space flight veteran Carl Walz, who now works for NASA's exploration systems mission directorate.
Despite budgetary constraints, NASA hoped to have Constellation fully operational by 2016, Gilbrech said.
"We're hoping we get a budget passed by Congress," he said, pointing out that only six-tenths of a penny of every tax dollar went to funding NASA's space programs.
"We're making plans to be ready for any and all scenarios. The (budget proposal) we put in keeps our program on track for the March 2015 initial operating capability... and full operating capability a year later," Gilbrech, who leads new spacecraft development at NASA, said.
"That will enable the human-moon return by the 2020 date that the president envisioned."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
This nation is moonbound again, and for good this time. Then, beyond.
I just saw the special Mars Rising. It was great. I didn’t know the Russians were actively working on a program. Good for everyone involved!
They are just going to tell us to leave and not come back again!
Being the greatest nation on earth and showing it can only convince some that we can bring global warming to the moon and destroy it's natural state.
We need to pay dearly for our sinful directives. /s
After Mars, there’s not many planets left where we can set up housekeeping.
Which is pretty much the foundation of the entire sorry...ahem..."religion".
I wouldn’t mind living in a town on the moon - as long as they don’t allow any liberals up there to ruin it.
Hmm. Private companies may beat them there (with a robotic probe) by six years! Maybe by 2020 someone from Rutan space delivery systems will be there to meet them with a hot toddy.
Can we beat the Chinese to it? And Japan is talking about a space effort, as is India.
Will we compete, or decide it’s not worth it? What side will the Dinosaur Media be on, I wonder?
I suspect we’ll partner with someone, like we are doing with the International Space Station.
Step 1: replace the Shuttle system.
Then, beyond.
You meant “to infinty-and beyond!”
“...space exploration offends Allah...”
Didn’t that come up already? Concerns that Mercury was going to intrude on the resting place of the crystal coffin of Mohamed?
2020? Private enterprise will get there first.
I watched breathlessly at age 14 while Neil Armstrong took that first step, fascinated as I was with astronomy and the space program.
But now, I have to say “Why?” There’s nothing new up there. Nothing’s changed. And anything that can be done on Mars can be done with robotic probes.
They may as well shove $100 bills up the thrusters and use those for fuel. They act like they want to burn up the money anyway than can. I think thats reall what the want to do. And it would make a great global warming experiment to boot.
If they wait that long, they may need to get landing permission from the Chinese.
W has returned vision to our floundering space program.
HA!! What? Our tax dollars going to run out or something?
"We have the International Space Station; we're going to have a lunar outpost, and someday, certainly, somebody will go to Mars," said Jeff Hanley, head of NASA's Constellation program, which is developing the tools to return humans to the moon
Oh yeah great idea that was Jeff. The ISS, over budget and unreliable. Yep, sounds like something funded by an entity that doesn't have to produce a product for its shareholders. I can't tell you how safe I would feel in a 'lunar outpost' built by the government. How many tens of billions will this boondoggle run over?
"We're hoping we get a budget passed by Congress," he said, pointing out that only six-tenths of a penny of every tax dollar went to funding NASA's space programs.
Well you got to start somewhere Jeff. That's six tenths of a penny that belongs to me and not to you. Myself I'd rather invest that six tenths of a penny in a private company doing the same thing. That way I get actual return that can be measured. It's called capitalism Jeff. Free market. Maybe the government could look into it
Now shall we hear all the cheering from 'conservatives' how government should be wasting money this way?
We only scratch the surface on when we went to the Moon last time.. Also those Robots on Mars also is just scratching the surface on Mars.. Humans can do a better a job.. I rather have the money spent on NASA than on the social welfare programs..
Wow, I'm impressed!!! It took them LESS than 10 years the FIRST time they did it!!!
This is BS and it sucks swampwater. With every passing year, I become more disenchanted with NASA and what it has become.
Am I the only one bothered by the fact that it is going to take longer to get back to the moon than it took to get to the moon?
“Am I the only one bothered by the fact that it is going to take longer to get back to the moon than it took to get to the moon?”
Nope, I noticed that. In the years since, the government has taken more and more money to get less and less done. Now, fuel gauge errors ground our birds and most commercial sat launches are done overseas.
We must privatize space- in thirty years we’ll be getting all of our steel from asteroid mining.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
Praise GOD that...
President BUSH has promised...
Freedom’s return to:
Communist North Vietnam
Communist Vietnam
Communist Cuba
..as well as..
Freedom’s arrival to:
All the countries of the Middle East
..as America’s own best self-defense against future terrorist attacks here at home.
.
This while sending us back to Earth’s Moon permanently and then onto the rest of the Universe starting with the Planet Mars,
..bringing those still living in the 7th Century AD here on the Earth along for the ride.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
NASA needs to focus on breakthrough basic science and let the private sector handle space operations. Unfortunately NASA has been more concerned about putting enough pork in the districts of powerful congressmen than actually doing cutting edge scientific research.
Why wait until 2020 when a private company could get there before January 1, 2011?
You nailed it . . . . . . . several times!!!!
I agree completely!!
Plus, IMO, the shuttle has been nothing more than a huge waste . . . . . . . . both of money and time!! All the money and time we have wasted doing donuts in LEO could have been used on developing technologies and space vehicles capable of taking us to the universe!!
Wow. If you think your water bill is high, just try to guess how much it will cost to transport 50,000 gallons of water to the moon.
You nailed it . . . . . . . several times!!!!
I agree completely!!
Plus, IMO, the shuttle has been nothing more than a huge waste . . . . . . . . both of money and time!! All the money and time we have wasted doing donuts in LEO could have been used on developing technologies and space vehicles capable of taking us to the universe!!
Typical MSM error. Evans was never on the moon, he was orbiting the moon in the command module while Cernan and Schmitt were on the surface. Three men have never been on the moon at the same time.
Don’t you know it takes twice as long to get back there the second time?
It will take three times as long, the third time. Etc, etc....
Either that, or something like finding Mohammed in the center of Uranus.
I was the first person to show up at the visitors center (even before any employees) and was one of a dozen people on the first bus out to the site of the ceremonies, which was the Saturn V building out near the VIP viewing stands for shuttle launches. When we got there Cernan was standing on a bench along with Miles O’Brien of CNN doing a “two shot” interview. O’Brien was set to do a full day of interviews and it was apparent he was going to use Cernan as his “go to guy.” I stood there about 10 feet away while they finished. At the end of the interview they started discussing more times to try to get together for additional commentary on both the history and future of the space program.
One thing neither of them knew was the exact schedule. I said “excuse me” and handed them the schedule I’d just been given for the day’s events. They finished their planning and O’Brien went on to do other stuff and Gene Cernan took the time to thank me and talk with me for a few minutes. I think he was impressed with what I knew about the US program as well as other related matters, though it was obviously pitiful compared to his knowledge.
Later O’Brien’s reports kept getting bumped by CNN as the first news about JFK Jr. started filtering in. They basically canceled everything that he was scheduled to do and left both he and Cernan with free time they weren’t expecting. I ended up talking to both of them for quite some time, even if in relatively short conversations.
Cernan was also signing copies of his new book The Last Man On The Moon (spectacular book, by the way). Needless to say I bought a copy, got his autograph on it (with a real personal inscription about what we’d discussed). I also got an autographed copy of the then new book by NASA's host for the events, Homer Hickam, Back To The Moon. His first book was the really great autobiographical Rocket Boys (made into a movie as October Sky). Pretty memorable day for me.
I keep these two hardback books together with Aldrin's Men From Earth, which I got him to autograph at the 20 year anniversary events in Huntsville. Can you tell I'm a bit interested in the space program?
Homer Hickam is one of my heroes.
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Not to be a nudge, but what is the benefit of going to the moon at this time? Why are we to finance this expenditure? Is it really necessary? I can think of a couple of hundred things we should be focusing on before sending a handful of people to the moon to do what robots could do cheaper and faster.
I have never heard anyone state a specific goal except as a stepping stone to other even more amorphous goals of going to Mars. Why?
This is just to maintain a cover for deep black spending programs not subject to meaningful oversight by the people of the US.
I will answer why as best I can, and some words from a few others, all I ask is that you give it consideration as best you can........
Human presences in space accomplishes so much. we learn how to live there, to construct things, and we learn from our mistakes too. we learn by doing, humans must explore themselves, robots are great, but it is in our blood to want to go there ourselves. It is critical to maintain these endeavors in so many ways.
NASA enables astronauts to bring back the visions of space, they bring back what its like to see our earth as an outsider. They bring back what its like to be a child of earth. To see our world as it truly is, an oasis in a vast black expanse.
They take human presence beyond our world. They teach us that the sky is not the limit, that there ARE no limits.
They keep an American/western world presence in space. If we dont. Someone else will most certainly take the lead. China is seeking the high ground now.
Again, the nations that lead on the frontier, dictate the course of human history.
There are reasons why this nation is where it is today. Reasons why any of us are here at all. Brave people took the risks and went beyond the horizon. They did so on ships they knew may not return and on imperfect wings.
“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” -John A. Shedd
"You have to keep pushing the frontier not just because it's there, but because that's how we find things that end up changing humanity," -Paul Hill, Mission Control
Astronaut Story Musgrave.....
“We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We’ve been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture, and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way America has been born and how it evolved.”
Why Space, Why Explore? Astronaut Story Musgrave...........
"We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life
The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth surface, You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere
It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know. Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar System, other parts of the Universe
There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn’t simply politics, it is not simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of Life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to Push On
Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that is to try to understand their Universe and to try to participate in the entire Universe and not just their little Neighborhood" -Story Musgrave
You mentioned "nothing new up there" but, there is no up in space. We are in space right now. One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the analogy that Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about how to function and live in space applies directly to our spacehip Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power efficiently, how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is important. All of this can benefit mankind in a world with a fast growing population. Understanding other worlds is how we understand OUR world better, to understand how it formed and where it is going. It's our only home for now.
“We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the first time.” T.S. Eliot
Gallup survey.....
“More than three-fourths (77%) of the American public say they support a newplan for space exploration that would include a stepping-stone approach to returnthe space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station, build areplacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond”
Q: Why should America send astronauts to Mars?
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin ........
A: I can give you a bunch of different answers that matter to me. But why did Spain bankroll Magellan to leave port with five ships and head out around the world, two of which never made it past the Canary Islands and two more of which were lost on the way? They got one ship back three years later with something like 20 or so people out of an initial crew of 122 across all the ships. Why’d they do that? It is in the nature of humans to find, to define, to explore and to push back the frontier. And in our time, the frontier is space and will be for a very long time.
Give me a counter example to the statement I’m about to make. When the history books are written, the nations that are preeminent in their time are those nations that dominate the frontiers of their time. The failed societies are the ones that pull back from the frontier. I want our society, America, western society, to be preeminent in the world of the future and I want us not to be a failed society. And the way to do that, universally so, is to push the frontier.
Now we don’t do that with every dollar we’ve got. Obviously, most of our money has to be spent on today’s concerns. But we’re talking about something here that uses six tenths of a percent of the federal budget. This is not exactly spending money like a drunken sailor. This is an investment for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.
I could make a very good argument on the basis of economics, that the European investment in the New World didn’t pay off, really, for Europeans for 400 years. I could make an argument for you that the biggest payoff of European investment in the New World was the existence of America to bail them out of World War 2. Europe would have sunk into a dark age in the 20th century with the set of political activities and behaviors that led to World War 1 and then World War 2, which followed from that. Without the investment in the New World, there would not have been another society elsewhere on the planet to prevent Europe from falling back into a second dark age. And I could make an argument that European investment in the New World was a net loss for hundreds of years and finally was worth the effort.
These kinds of activities, as I say, they’re not large in the grand scheme of things, although it looks large when you write down the budget numbers, and they don’t pay off today. They pay off for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. And I care about that and I think everyone else should, too. -NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
A note was found from the Challenger commander in his briefcase after the accident... Excerpted from Silver Linings : Triumph of the Challenger 7. by June Scobee Rodgers and June Scobee Rogers.
“We have whole planets to explore, we have new worlds to build. We have a solar system to roam in. And if only a tiny fraction of the human race reaches out toward space, the work they do there will totally change the lives of all the billions of humans who remain on earth, just as the strivings of a handful of colonists in the new world totally changed the lives of everyone in Europe, Asia & Africa.”
"Had Dick left the note in his briefcase for us to find if something happened? Did he write it on scratch paper to use to quote in a speech? All we’ll ever know is that when we most needed a message, it was there. He left for us his dream for the world, his vision for space exploration.”
And that work continues. New designs are being worked on and tests are beginning now. This... is what is next for NASA.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vZ8RIcmWAk
Lunar helium 3 may end up powering fusion reactors on earth someday. You never know what is going to matter and change the world.
We learned of lunar helium 3 because of our exploration efforts there.
We must push forward, challenge and improve and yes sometimes manage risk. Always.
Even as individuals. And we all know what it means when we do not do these efforts. It is no different as a nation or a species.
"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." - K.E. Tsiolkovsky
And who can know what breakthroughs will come? Revolutionary discoverys in propulsion may put Mars weeks away instead of many months. Who can say we will be capable of? Even terraforming Mars one day.
Please consider the above. Consider the grand picture.
The tax money spent is tiny.
I am all for private industry. I helped fund the X-Prize myself actually with a donation.
But it cannot do the the things that an entire mobilized American people can do under Government sometimes.
Yes, as imperfect as that is.
Private industry has had decades to take us to the moon since Apollo.
It has barely scratched sub orbital flights.
Just like we have a military, some endeavors require we pull together as a people, not a company.
Why do these things?.....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1937656/posts?page=39#39
They could send Rupaul for all I care!. LOL
As long as I see humanity on Mars before I die.
So, we have no specific goal except to go there and hope something useful results...
Not buying it. We live in a practical world, and having poets who never actually pushed out the frontiers themselves wax quixotic for a generalized emotion of exploration is nice. Would the Spanish people have approved a tax to pay for that exploration?
In the US, the people going West knew that there were resources and opportunity there, and went there on their own dime. There was a clear goal for each and every one of them when they left. They never went there just to get there, in the hopes of going somewhere else from there.
I’ll bet we could use the same funds for basic scientific research and get better results.
Are we going for commercial purposes? For military purposes? For pure scientific purposes? To look for aliens?
One of these guys was in the command module I believe.
Well as long as they are Boilermakers, I really don’t care.
LMFAO!
We learn to live off this planet or we go extinct.
hows that for a reason?
All humanitys eggs are in one basket right now.
It’s simply in our nature to press out, the frontier has changed, but the challenges are the same.
Anything less, we stagnate as a race and die.
I cant put it any better the this..
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1937656/posts?page=39#39
OMG, you injected that $%^& into this story?
Here is an awesome interview with Gene by the way.....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml
He was a really nice guy and very interesting that day. I actually got to spend more time (though not much) with his wife. While waiting in line for the autorgraphs on their books I noticed this very attractive woman not standing on line and also talking to several people involved with the event.
I eventually asked "so, who are you?" She pointed to Mr. Hickam (Dr.?) and said "I sleep with him." That led to an interesting conversation. From there I spent a few minutes talking with him away from the autograph session.
Obviously he was very interesting. We talked mostly about October Sky/Rocket Boys as it was the current thing I would have any knowledge of (good movie, better book) and my knowledge of the program and our hopes for the future He seemed really enthused to talk about the things I wanted to talk about as he could easily relate them to his new novel which provided a plausible (very plausible technically, but only semi-plausible plotwise, IMHO, but it was a great read).
She was very "pleasant" (I hate to use that phrase but it's the best that fits under the circumstances - they were both much nicer to a complete stranger than that term might imply) and quite knowledgeable (duh). I don't know that she was involved with the program but I've always assumed as much (see link below). Either that or she's just a very smart person who listens well when her husband and others related to the program talk. (Note: this post prompted me to do a little googling - this article/interview with her from 2003 is the most interesting single one I found and I'm certain it's the same woman I met and spoke with that day)
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