NASA Moon Program Moves into Gear

Space.com ^ | February 14, 2004 | Leonard David

[Cincinatus' Wife]

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has been given the nod to lead a robotic lunar mission in 2008 -- a key step in President George W. Bush’s recently announced space vision strategy.

The lunar reconnaissance orbiter would likely be geared to investigate the potential for water ice trapped at the Moon’s poles. This type of investigation may involve powerful radar to scan the always darkened craters, thought by some scientists to contain bountiful quantities of water ice.

Water ice is believed to have been brought to the Moon by impacting comets. Both NASA’s Lunar Prospector and the Pentagon’s Clementine spacecraft offered tantalizing data interpreted by some experts as indicative of water ice deposits.

A number of alterative, fast-track approaches are under review at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to build the lunar orbiter. A newly formed GSFC lunar study team held their first meeting Thursday to begin scoping out how best to move the project forward.

Series of robotic lunar missions

President Bush has directed NASA to undertake lunar exploration activities to enable sustained human and robotic exploration of Mars and more distant destinations in the solar system.

Starting no later than 2008, the Bush plan calls for initiating a series of robotic missions to the Moon to prepare for and support future human exploration activities. A follow-on robotic lunar lander is also slated for 2009.

The White House space directive states that the first extended human expedition to the lunar surface could occur as early as 2015, but no later than the year 2020.

In reestablishing and reenergizing NASA’s Moon program, the White House envisions lunar exploration activities to further science, and to develop and test new approaches, technologies, and systems, including use of lunar and other space resources, to support sustained human space exploration to Mars and other destinations.

[Lawdoc]

Ping to read later

[Orlando]

The majority of the American people are against funding
NASA more Tax $$$, because they lie alot !
Look at what they are doing on Mars withholding the true
colors and editing alot of the images. The recent polls show that 61% of the Americans are against funding them, and 48% are Republicans.


http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/66923/1/.html


In 2002, only 38% of the american support NASA sending people to Mars....If, you want to lose a election just support NASA...People are tired of there lies and deceptions,etc......

[Flyer]

The majority of the American people are against funding NASA more Tax $$$, because they lie alot !

Then they should also oppose funding 97.24% of all government, by that standard.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You are certainly anti-space exploration. If you took the time to truly research what it has returned to the world for the cost, you wouldn't be so quick to slam it. Take the time to find out. You'll be informed and appear less uneducated on the topic. It's easy enough to check out, just do a search on FR. Unless, of course, you just plan to post another quick anti-space slam. Then it will be obvious you have an agenda.

[foreverfree]

bump

[dr_who_2]

The supposedly false-color pictures of Mars are not an issue. There is no conspiracy to fool people into thinking that Mars is colored red. If you are not satisfied with the colors you see in the pictures, get a good telescope and look at mars yourself.

As for NASA, they sent out plenty of probes to the moon during Apollo and have already sent probes to look for water. If they find some, wazoo, wazoo, but building a base on the moon is not going to make a trip to Mars less expensive. It's going to make it even more expensive and twice as pointless.

[Lawdoc]

I fall in with those in favor of manned space flight in general and with the Mars program in particular. The economic benefits to the private sector of the spin offs are undeniable. Keeping our scientific community and our aerospace engineers well employed and academically well honed, continues to give us a decisive edge militarily and secures our future as world class innovators. This does not even begin to address the intangibles that an agressive manned space program brings to our national pride and the benefits of the likely generational flood of children entering our univerisities with renewed interest in (and prepared to study) math and the sciences.

Yes, it is clearly expensive. Yes, there are plenty of short term band aid social prgrams that could use that money. But,(while admittedly it is hard to precisely account for) manned space flight is worth it both economically and in terms of furthering the general good.

I am hoping that my underwear has the heat dissipating properties of shuttle tiles as I stand by to be flamed :)

[dr_who_2]

But the Moon is a significant destination in its own right.

Certainly. But it's a 384,400 km stretch to say a "permanent" base on the moon would justify the cost. If you want to spend lots of money, build a city underneath the sea. Plenty of resources down there, and it's only a one day trip at best. But even that has little strategic importance, or the US Navy would have already done it.

What I'm waiting to see is the discovery of life on Mars.

How long are you willing to wait?

[Lawdoc]

"Ah, welfare for the college educated. I understand the concept."

I prefer the baseball analogy of having a bullpen of pitchers. To each his own.

[dr_who_2]

As long as it takes to build a healthy space infrastructure that's economically solid and practically planned.

No, you're willing to spend as much (taxpayer) money as it takes to build a "healthy space infrastructure that's economically "... blah blah blah.

Right now space science is being run by a committee that isn't concerned with sustainable growth.

Space science won't be run by anyone else until the overall benefit of space travel exceeds the cost. That won't happen anytime soon, regardless of how much money the government spends on it now.

I don't really care about "life on Mars". It's irrelevant to the more pressing issue of resource exploitation.

Then stick to the point.

As I said, as soon as we find life on Mars, we'll see Mars closed to

Yeah, that sort of crap keeps me awake at nights.

Look at the big picture, and you'll see Luddites everywhere reaching for the NASA budget, and using every tactic in the book to shut it down.

Luddites were worried about new machines that were capable of out-producing them, effectively threatening their jobs, so your point is lost on me. The only "Luddites" here are the NASA bureaucrats and patrons who are afraid of the military and private industry getting payloads into space more cheaply and reliably than NASA.

[hopespringseternal]

NASA setting a four year schedule to do the preliminary post-Apollo survey is a bad sign that they don't intend to make Bush's plan succeed on schedule.

That is the way things are done in space. There is nothing "standard", nothing off the shelf. The companies NASA contracts to always start clean sheet, because that maximizes the amount of money to be spent.

[hopespringseternal]

The only "Luddites" here are the NASA bureaucrats and patrons who are afraid of the military and private industry getting payloads into space more cheaply and reliably than NASA.

Well, it looks like Bush is flatly putting NASA out of the launcher business with this proposal, and that is a good thing.

And don't count on the military to do anything cheaply either. They played a huge part in making the shuttle as expensive as it is. Also, "private industry" must be someone outside the present aerospace oligopoly. None of the current players have any interest in changing the status quo.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Microwaves and Tang.

'Nuff said.