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The Moon Rocket Project NASA Doesn't Want You to Know

news.yahoo.com — By day, the engineers work on NASA's new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design. These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

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  • rinpoche, on 07/15/2008, -6/+55Look at the X-prize. Private individuals and companies don't have the bureaucracy of government and can put a man into space cheaper, faster, and safer than the government.

    This is like the open source community that has given us great software.
    • illt, on 07/15/2008, -9/+4except there is no market for space beyond tourism.

      there's no monetary incentive to develop technologies to land on mars or anything else that only satiates human curiosity.
      • JBrown99, on 07/15/2008, -0/+12...Except for things like advancing new technologies, colonizing to combat increasing Earth populations, new potential resources, and more. There certainly IS a huge monetary incentive, or else there would be little interest and no such thing as the X-prize.
      • CSharpSauce, on 07/15/2008, -3/+8yeah, the possabilities of manufacturing in zero gravity has no profit potential
      • B1663r, on 07/15/2008, -1/+1Wait, what are the manufacturing possibilities in micro gravity? Machined ball bearings already have a higher precision than the cheap mass produced micro-gravity ball bearings.
      • B1663r, on 07/15/2008, -4/+1JBrown99,

        Im lookin at all the planets, and Im not seeing a single place that people could live for any amount of time, let alone ~want~ to live. As it stands, there are is no shortage of places that are arctic cold on earth, let alone require to manufacture all your own air and water as well.

        As far as technology development, well there you have a point. Fish bowls for humans. Hmm, I think I would rather take all the other science that is easily accomplished with robots, before we give up on the environment on earth and develop humans living in fish bowl technology.
      • ploop, on 07/15/2008, -1/+7That's bull. Complete bull.

        There is mineral wealth that has the potential for being cheaper to acquire out there than on Earth, provided the transportation technology becomes cheaper, which it has the potential to do.
      • mtnone, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1"except there is no market for space beyond tourism."

        Why did they build a Death Star then?
      • simg, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5"except there is no market for space beyond tourism"

        You are soooo wrong.

        The value of the minerals in a single "small" (1 Km) asteroid is worth billions, if not trillions of dollars...
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

        Space spaced solar power stations and space based farms could provide all the energy and food we need for billions more people.

        And that's just for starters.
      • sn4ke666, on 07/15/2008, -0/+0Hahahaha. More stock for us.
    • B1663r, on 07/15/2008, -0/+12Great, now the x-prize guys just need to make their craft go about 15 thousand miles an hour faster so they can get to orbit. Then they need a re-entry system to burn off those extra 15 thousand miles an hour as it re-enters the atmosphere.
    • wem003, on 07/15/2008, -0/+6I'm going to agree with most of your point, but the safer thing? Let's see an xprize winner get hundreds of humans to space and back with a better record for a terrible statistic before you call that.
    • fadeout, on 07/15/2008, -0/+6There is a big difference between skimming the atmosphere and launching a multi ton piece of cargo into space.
    • yaddayaddayoda, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3I'm glad that this is finally getting some press. "The Stick" is a retarded rocket and will not perform as promised... they are spending billions of dollars to make up for its shortcomings.

      DIRECT is a much better alternative. They have a big fight ahead of them... good luck!
      • CriX, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1No, it's not. It can't put the mass in orbit to do what NASA has been instructed to do.
    • Culyt, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I just wish there where open source rockets. Granted NASA did 'opensource' the new ARES so contractors could make it cheaper, but I don't see anywhere I can go to download rocket blueprints.

      In the end the opensource component wasn't really opensource, I think rockets are probably classified as weapons so it would be impossible, I remember reading that the weapons classification was the reason they couldn't release the software that runs the mars rover, I would assume this would apply much more to a rocket that with some tweaks could be turned into a missile (not that people (or rather countries) who have enough resources to make one wouldn't be able to design their own anyway.
    • tradun, on 07/18/2008, -0/+0While it's true that the DIRECT proposal was put together by a group of volunteers, actually getting the rockets built and flown is going to take massive resources. It's doubtful that any private corporation would take on the risk of flying a rocket whose main purpose is to put people into space for exploration. At this point, the possibility of profit is so small as to not be worth the risk. The possibility of generous donations from a wealthy contributor is appealing, such as what happened a hundred years ago when Victorian gentlemen sponsored expeditions to the unexplored corners of the Earth. But the cost of outfitting a group to find the source of the Nile doesn't even come close to the cost, the _recurring_ cost, of sending people into space. Unfortunately, the only kind of backer that can really build the rockets in the DIRECT proposal is government. And the only government body in the world that has the resources to build and fly DIRECT is NASA.

      Unless somebody wants to organize a REALLY big bake sale.
  • OHaloThar, on 07/15/2008, -12/+3... good for them?
  • BlankVerse, on 07/15/2008, -1/+44It makes you wonder what NASA might be able to achieve if it had a Google-like Innovation Time Off for its engineers.
    • schneb, on 07/15/2008, -1/+11"It's not feasible. We said, 'It doesn't work' and moved on,'" Cook said

      I'm sure he would have said the same thing about the Virgin-funded SpaceShipOne. I do not like that kind of comment in the least.
    • tradun, on 07/18/2008, -0/+0If the engineers did have that kind of time, they might have come up with something like DIRECT. But the management at NASA right now seems to be stifling any kind of innovation of that sort. They seem to have an emotional investment in the Ares rockets. This is not entirely surprising. NASA Administrator Dr. Mike Griffin was involved in a private study in 2004 making recommendations for returning to the Moon. In that study, a rocket for launching a crew capsule was highlighted, including an illustration. When the official NASA study came out in 2005 outlining the Moon rockets, the crew launch vehicle looked incredibly like the one in Dr. Griffin's study. One might think that Griffin had pushed a design because it was his idea. Even rocket scientists can have an ego.

      Link to the study:
      http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/aim_for ...
  • bosssmiley, on 07/15/2008, -0/+41Open competition leads to greater efficiency. Good for them.
    • elnerdo, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3However, this: "A spokesman for the competing effort, Ross Tierney, said concerned engineers at NASA and some contractors want a review of the Ares plans but can't speak out for fear of being demoted, transferred or fired."

      Is AWFUL if you're planning on completing a huge engineering project. If I was serious about something like this, and some other engineer told that it wasn't going to work, I would stop working RIGHT away and let them explain themselves.
      • hexydes, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1Right, but it isn't that Ares isn't going to work, it's just that these handful of engineers think they can do it cheaper and faster. The last time engineers at NASA used that as their guiding mantra, we ended up with the STS, which costs more and flies less than was ever estimated.
      • darkcooger, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4@hexydes: I was under the impression that the two little rovers currently (or at least until recently) wandering around on the surface of Mars were developed under the mantra of "cheaper and faster," as was the Sojourner/Pathfinder mission. If I'm right, those are both more recent and more thoroughly successful than the STS program.
  • juniorb, on 07/15/2008, -2/+16The Moon Rocket Project NASA Doesn't Want You to Know ... About.

    Unless you mean "know" as in the biblical sense, in which case, party on Wayne.
    • Rocketman1882, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2The Jupiter mission even has its own website...
    • coyote1284, on 07/15/2008, -2/+6So does the mission to Uranus

      /sorry, I just had to
  • yerbestfrend12, on 07/15/2008, -1/+16This isn't exactly a secret.
  • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -10/+63I just what to know what happened to the space shuttle?!? NASA has basically explained ZILCH about this. Now, I'm fully aware of the official (and credible) explanations that "the new design is cheaper" and "this will include major technology upgrades" etc.

    What I'm talking about is simply that NASA spent decades telling us all that the shuttle was vastly superior to the Saturn series and we had to build it because reusable spacecraft were the future. "Reusable, reusable, reusable" and "cost savings" and all that mantra was repeated for years. Then we built the thing and now it's like they are saying: "Sorry, my bad. Turns out reusable spacecraft aren't a good idea after all. The whole gliding back to earth concept was a dead end."

    I'm not trying to be snippy about this. I'm just honestly shocked that it seems like no one at NASA has been forthright enough to directly address that retiring the shuttle makes a lot of us (very reasonably) wonder if we were led down a 30-year development blind alley. They trumpeted the shuttle as the absolute pinnacle of space technology. America had something that was orders-of-magnitude better than the rest of the world. Sure the Russians, the Europeans, and the Chinese were making singe-use rockets, but NASA actually FED US this "have national pride in the shuttle" stuff for decades.

    Now (and VERY SUDDENLY from the public's perspective) they are saying: "reusable is a dead end" but they are somehow trying to use a Jedi mind-trick so that we will all applaud when Orion/Ares is unveiled and say "wow, what an upgrade" instead of "Holy smokes! That's my GRANDPA'S rocket!!! You mean instead of the shuttle being a step towards something better (dual-mode space planes, an elevator, whatever) it's actually been a gigantic blind alley and we would have been better off just putting Saturn on steroids 30 years ago?!?!"

    It's like there's no way that this can't be seen as a national embarrassment, but no one wants to admit the emperor has no clothes. I honestly am really upset as a taxpayer that we seem to have worked in the wrong direction for THIRTY YEARS and (even more) that no one at NASA is even trying to address this "public perception of dismal failure" issue. It's a pretty astonishingly large mistake that NASA made if the reality is that we would have been better off all along building ordinary rockets like the Russians, Europeans, Chinese, etc. have been all this time.

    I really think the American public deserves an explanation for this.
    • Jeez, on 07/15/2008, -0/+9Russia/USSR did work on Space shuttle program but they collapsed by then. Currently both India and china are working on space shuttle concept. Space shuttle is very efficient and safe means of transport (granted NASA design had plenty of issues) compared to the alternative (Soyuz). Just ask the poor Japanese astronaut who had rough landing in Soyuz last year.
    • Ninjamonkey, on 07/15/2008, -1/+27The Shuttle fine for its time. It did what it was designed to do for NASA's mission at the time. It allowed us to deploy and repair satellites in space, build the ISS, etc. At the time it was an amazing piece of technology, nothing like it had been built before.

      That's not to say the shuttle was/is perfect, it confined us to low earth orbit missions, but remember at the time NASA's mission was not to go back to the moon, we had been there done that. Not to mention the public was bored with it and Congress cut funding.

      Now that it is time to go back to the moon, the capsule works, the shuttle doesn't. It is time to move on.
      • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -1/+4Just to be clear, I'm sure there are plenty of NASA engineer type here and you might think I'm just trying to be troll or something, but I'm *genuinely* at a loss about this entire apparently massive step backwards. That said, my questions might make more sense:

        "The Shuttle (was) fine for its time."
        I certainly DON'T remember NASA ever saying "the shuttle is a stop-gap and will fill a temporary need and then we'll go back to Saturn designs."

        "It allowed us to deploy and repair satellites in space"
        This is going to sound snippy, but remember I'm not an engineer, so I have to ask: How are we going to deploy and repair satellites now? If Orion can do that, then why build the shuttle in the first place? Don't the Russians do this with single-use rockets? It still looks like the shuttle was wrong all along, and your explanation is the same one that NASA has made: "Our needs are different now" etc. But that's VAGUE and just doesn't make sense when I look at the details here.
      • hexydes, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2This response is spot-on. Before you go demanding explanations as a tax-payer, remember that it was the average American citizen who was bored with Moon missions, and wanted a change of pace. NASA simply responded to that.

        Now, I definitely think it is fair to ask questions about why the STS was so much less efficient (in terms of visits, cost, safety, etc) than was originally promised. However, we have the STS because it is what we asked for (even if it is not quite at the level we were promised).
      • nevetssav, on 07/15/2008, -1/+10Not an engineer myself, but from what I can tell, Prisoner24601:

        1960s Question: How do we get to the moon?
        Answer: 1-time-use tubes filled with enough propellant to...get you to the moon. (that metaphor loses something).

        Done.

        1990s Question: How can we get into space to deploy low level satellites, space stations, and telescopes and effectively maintain them?
        Answer: With a reusable aircraft that lets us make multiple short range trips without rebuilding a majority of the electronics.

        2008+ Question: How do we get back to the moon with enough stuff to start building/testing/exploring?
        Answer: Start with the vehicle that got us there in the first place.
      • Ninjamonkey, on 07/15/2008, -1/+7How is that Vague? When the mission changes, so must the hardware and the tools. When we stopped going to the moon because national interest and funding was lost the mission changed to how can we live in space for long durations. In this case the shuttle succeded. We built the ISS using it, we deployed and repaired Hubble with it, it has carried out many science experiments, it has done its job and it is now time to move on.

        I'm no engineer either but it does not take a rocket scientest to know the shuttle which was built to achieve and do work in orbit cannot fly to the moon.
      • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2"How is that Vague?"

        Well, let me try to clarify my concerns about "specificity" here. Apparently the shuttle can carry a payload-to-Low-Earth-Orbit of 55,000 lbs and a Russian Proton rocket about 48,000 lbs in comparison. (That's just a quick wikipedia search, I'd be fascinated to see more detailed numbers if anyone has them.)

        So I would think: "gee, 30 years ago we could have built these (FAR cheaper) Proton thingys to lift the same stuff that we've been lifting until now."

        My concerns about the "vagueness" of NASA's response is quite simply that there is no apparent rational reason in hindsight that we needed the shuttle for anything if we don't need it now. It's not that it "fit a need at a time" at all apparently. It was ALWAYS cheaper/easier to lift LEO stuff with a Proton.

        If, on the other hand, all this "reusablitiyishness" that NASA said was "teh bomb" when they told us we had to build the shuttle in the 1970's actually *IS* as great as they said for LEO operations, then why do we suddenly NOT need it?
      • listrophy, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1@prisoner24601
        The Proton is an unmanned rocket. The Shuttle is manned. All of that life support equipment is not included in the payload-to-orbit numbers... because it's not a deliverable payload. In addition, the launch characteristics, such as g-levels and vibration levels may not be suitable for manned travel.

        In addition, the Proton has a lifetime 88% success rate (294 successes, 41 failures) while the Shuttles have a 98% success rate (119 and 2).
      • milkmage, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1@prisoner
        I think the current version of the shuttle is being retired because it's just not safe. what i mean is they've had 2 blow up in less than 200 missions. the next flight that goes up will be sts-125 (i believe that's the 125th mission). I read somewhere (reputable) that the failure rate was anticipated to be 1 in 200 according to the spec. right now that's a failure rate of just under 2%, where the spec says it should be around .5%. If any more astronauts die on a mission - there could be budget cuts.. etc (look at what happened after Apollo 1)
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+2@prisoner
        The only thing the shuttle had against regular boosters was that it could return payloads.

        The boosters that put MIRVs on target need little change as they are basically perfected designs. There are some advances in turbopump technology and newer engine designs, but hypergolic H2 and O2 reactions are pretty clean and demonstrably work to get payloads into orbit.

        IMHO the Lofstrom loop launcher will be the best method to get payloads off a planet baring the invention of antigrav. Orbital towers/elevators will come as the first major innovation, but Lofstrom loops will ultimately prevail due to their ability to get tonnage into orbit at much much higher rates than a tower.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lofstrom_loop

        Until then the chemical booster is the best.
    • teeheehee, on 07/15/2008, -0/+14I had thought that the reason for the new design was for farther-reaching space missions. The shuttle was designed for achieving orbit, not flying to the moon. The two types of mission are supremely different and the craft needs to reflect the needs of the mission.

      This is a warm-up to getting to Mars. The shuttle won't make it to the moon, let alone Mars. It doesn't even have enough fuel on it to make it back home, it has to glide in.

      Besides, do you have any idea how piddly the NASA budget is?

      I offer for you the top two results by our favorite search engine:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_budget
      http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1

      P.S. I am not Javert.
    • Ze1da, on 07/15/2008, -1/+5This has been happening for a while. LSP(Launch Services Program) has been dealing in expendable rockets this whole time. LSP mostly deals with the Atlas, Delta and Pegasus rockets. And it's because expendable rockets are cheaper, more reliable, and easier to deal with. This entire time the shuttle program has been losing gobs and gobs of money while LSP has been paying for itself. The problem is, NASA relinquished control over the rocket industry when it abandoned the expendables for the shuttle, so now the contractors have more control over the rockets than NASA does. And, the shuttle program employs thousands and thousands of people. NASA would loose support if they just did away with the shuttle program all togeather. As for the Ares rocket, it is all about keeping shuttle people employed. We could just switch to the Atlas V rocket and everything would be much cheaper, safer, and quicker, but NASA would have to fire thousands of people because they would become superfluous. And that does not fly for government agencies.

      In short NASA messed up and has been trying to cover their asses for a while now.
      • robertawerner, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Umm, please compare the payload to LEO of the Ares V against the Atlas V before saying "cheaper, safer, and quicker". Now look at a proposed Mars mission and see how many Atlas V launches are required to move the required fuel to LEO. Now imagine doing that with Atlas V. Right.

        Here, I'll give you a head-start:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
      • Ze1da, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2Dude I know my rockets and in case you weren't aware, there is an AtlasV HVL that can carry 250,000kg compared to the Ares V 130,000 kg
        Please research before trying to cut people down with your 'superior knowledge'.
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Ze1da, ok I love people who check up on things, but the wikipedia article mentions that the Atlas V version Heavy (HLV DEC (5H2)) can only put 25000kg in LEO. Thats 25 thousand, not 250 thousand.

        Of course the wiki could be wrong, but I doubt that a regular Atlas V, that can haul 10000-20000kg to LEO(wiki), could be beefed up to provide an order of magnitude in capability as you suggest.

        The Ares V is twice as tall and three times the diameter of an Atlas V. This gives the Ares V 18 times the volume, which should be more or less proportional to its life capacity.
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I hate the thumbs down feature, I don't want to block Ze1da, just put a small negative reinforcer in to say, hey you are wrong.......... so I am not diggin him down.
      • Ze1da, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I'm sorry. You are right. We would need a heavy lift rocket but the atlas is upgradeable, it would be easier to upgrade than build a new rocket. But you wouldn't have to man rate the newer version. Space X is thinking about having the atlas V man-rated anyways.

        I'm sorry, I acted rashly and took out frustration here.
    • merlin5, on 07/15/2008, -0/+7The thinking at the time, when the shuttle program first started, was that one of the safety risks would be using the equipment for too many years. In order to avoid catastrophes, a decision was made to set a retirement date. The shuttles are actually quite old now.
      • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4My point is not about the age of any one specific shuttle, it's about the concept. Here's an analogy:

        Imagine the US Navy goes to congress in 1930 and says: "Battleships are the past, the aircraft carrier is the future. We need to design and build the next generation." OK, fine (and historically accurate.) The navy makes the aircraft carrier the new top-of the-line capital ship. Sure, when one been in service for 30 years, you replace it with a new (and technologically improved) one. But the next ship is still an aircraft carrier.

        In this analogy, NASA is like the Navy going back to congress after 30 years and saying: "sorry guys, we built a bunch of these but they just don't perform. Turns out we were wrong anyway, and the battleship was actually the best ship design in the first place."

        NASA either needs to say "the shuttle was a dead end" or they can say "we need to have 5 shuttles at all times and so we need to build one new one every 8 years" etc.

        Why haven't we been "staggering" the lifespan of these shuttles all along? The Navy didn't build 15 aircraft carriers in the 1970's and then wait for them all to simultaneously rust apart. Frankly I honestly "just don't get it" here with this whole debacle. The only thing I'm clear on is that NASA owes us all an explanation.
      • Ninjamonkey, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3Your anology doesn't work. It is not that the craft doesn't perform it is that the mission has changed so we need another craft.

        Let's use your military anology. In the mid to late 20th century, the US government built thousands of nuclear warheads and rockets to deliever them to the USSR. Now that the Cold War is over, those nukes are not suited to the type of warfare we are in today so many of those weapons are being decomissioned.
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Prisoner, there were very compelling reasons for the shuttle.

        The formost was, to return military payloads to earth. That trumped all cost concerns. The second reason was that it could return military payloads to earth.
    • B1663r, on 07/15/2008, -1/+3teeheehee

      Im not sure how you come up with 20 billion dollars being piddly by any rational measure...
      • Gustomucho, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4100 billion/year for War in Iraq.

        What did you get from it?
      • teeheehee, on 07/15/2008, -0/+420 Billion dollars sure is a lot of money for many things. But not, for example, for our Defense department. The space program's budget is piddly when compared to Defense.

        Now, my personal opinion is that space exploration holds the future of all humanity, should we ever figure out how to live without trying to kill each other off. All of the future of humanity, and how much are we investing in it?

        I guess it depends on what you think is rational.

        Here's an exercise, find the NASA logo on this flash-based map of our budget.
        http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
        I'll help you, it's in the upper right, and gets about half as much as the Department of Homeland Security.
      • lasterisk, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1"should we ever figure out how to live without trying to kill each other off. All of the future of humanity, and how much are we investing in it?"

        100 + 20 billion should be enough to make real progress on that.
        but it seems the owners have other plans.
    • McVador, on 07/15/2008, -6/+1So what are you, a rocket scientist? You sound more like an idiot to me.
      We've been using the shuttles for 30 years, they have paid for themselves a hundred times over, now we need a new car. What is there to explain? Did you expect to use the same exact vehicles forever? How old is the car you drive, I've personally never owned one older than 20 years, and after about 150,000 miles they all get junked. The shuttles are older than that, and have far greater miles on them, and the consequences of them breaking down are far greater, so I would say they were the deal of the millennium.
      • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2If the shuttle are so great, then why not build another one? Why didn't NASA "stagger" the fleet? (the way the Navy does with aircraft carriers or submarines.) If they are a good deal financially, then why not make more of them, making slight refinements as we go? Why is NASA throwing the design out?

        If the shuttle is "the only thing" that could accomplish certain tasks in earth orbit then what are we going to do without them? How would that even make sense though? The Russians, Europeans and Chinese launch satellites with normal rockets all the time. If that's what we are going to do now, what didn't we do that for the last 30 years?

        You can be rude and insulting if you choose (and that's always easy to do with someone on the Internet isn't it since they aren't completely a "real person" unless you let them be in your mind?) but no one could reasonably extrapolate from my comment that I expected to launch any ONE SPECIFIC space shuttle repeatedly for over 30 years. Despite your assertion of my idiocy, I'm clearly not suggesting that Atlantis has an infinite lifespan. I'm trying to understand how this is any different from Navy having 30 nuclear submarines in it's fleet and building a new one every couple of years.
      • Gustomucho, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2USA and other countries use single-use rocket to put sattelites in orbits. You can service them either by shuttle (easier and inexpensive) or by single-use rockets (costs more and harder since the shuttle have more room and tools onboard).

        USA needed a shuttle to service a lot of sattelites, hubble and the ISS. It is a great "repair" vehicule and a good low orbit transport craft. It is way too heavy to go to the moon and it was never built for that intent, the radiation shielding is way to low because when we stay near earth we are still shielded from the solar radiation.

        Sure NASA could have continued with the shuttle idea, but it would have cost a lot more than using a single-use rocket to go to the moon, it would be the equivalent of sending a train in space vs a ferrari. The power needed would be way too high and would be way to costly.

        I am pretty sure the single-rocket is a phase too, in the long run everyone will use reusable shuttle when we can launch heavy payload for a lower cost.
      • teeheehee, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2In the long run the cheapest way of putting things into orbit will be space elevators.
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+2I hate to disagree teeheehee but it will be Loftstrom loop launchers.
    • DeskFlyer, on 07/15/2008, -0/+6The Space Shuttle is being scrapped because it can't go to the Moon.
      • olenick, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Why not? I don't mean that rhetorically; just don't understand why NASA can't have a rocket deliver a solid rocket booster -- or something like it -- to space, strap one to a shuttle, and fly it to the moon. I thought once you're in space it doesn't matter whether you're close by earth or floating out in the middle of nowhere, between the earth and the moon. Another question: with no computers and having never done it before we went to the moon the first time in under a decade; why with all know know and all our computers are we aiming for 12+ years?
    • majordanger, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2It's all about safety..
      A capsule is much safer for launch and re-entry then the shuttle.
      The human cargo is on the very-very top with simple pull-away solid escape rockets if the lower plumbing goes bad during launch.
      The simple small bullet shaped heat shield for reentry backed up with reliable parachutes requires no active controls and heavy hydraulics. Not quite the buck rogers hand on the stick return to Earth, but reliable.

      I do like to hear that Skunk Works INC. is still in business.
    • robertawerner, on 07/15/2008, -4/+1You really shouldn't write a long diatribe when you don't understand the facts. How about spending the time it took to write that researching the facts? I could spend a long time explaining this to you, some already have in part, but its very easy to find from a first hand source with this new, underground website called google.
      • prisoner24601, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1Your condescension notwithstanding, google (and wikipedia) have been very helpful in making me far MORE concerned that there's been some major strategic error at NASA.

        The shuttle and a Russian Proton can apparently lift basically the same payload to low earth orbit. If we could have been launching the Hubble, the parts for the ISS, and those whiz-bang spy satellites the CIA wants, etc. on something so much cheaper for 30 years, why didn't we do that?

        If, on the other hand, reusability is so awesome, then why don't we need it anymore?

        By the way, I've read the press releases from NASA on this since Orion was first announced and there has been a lot of text, but little actual explanation of this. Many words revealing not much that couldn't be read as "Drat! We just figured out that the Saturn V was better all along and now we're going to recycle it!" Basically it reads like: "Orion is better. Your suspicions that NASA is a massive bureaucracy that tricked the country into building an astonishingly expensive space truck 30 years ago that we never actually needed are unwarranted. Trust us. We know better. We'd NEVER push the American public to fund a massive program to produce the most complex machine in human history to do a job we can already do with much more simple machines we already have just because we've spent most of our lives learning how to build complex machines. Oh, and we're smarter than you." The responses have always seemed to have a bit of an air of "superiority" to them, like "if you don't immediately see the advantage, you're not smart enough to be worth explaining it to." Somewhat like yours.
      • elementop, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2robertawerner: prisoner may not have all the facts -- neither do I, so I'm not pointing fingers -- but he does have a valid point. Either:

        a) single-use rockets are cheaper than the space shuttle for launching satellites into LEO and working on satellites in LEO, therefore the shuttle was a waste of time, energy and money;
        b) the cost of the shuttle is approximately the same as the cost of a single-use rocket for working in LEO; or
        c) the space shuttle is cheaper for working in LEO, therefore it was a good investment.

        If a) then NASA made a poor call, end of discussion. If b) then it's a wash and doesn't really matter. We learned a few things, but didn't save any money, end of discussion. If c) however, there's a problem. While NASA may well be looking at going back to the moon and going to Mars, *we still need to lift satellites into LEO and work on satellites already placed in LEO*. This mission will not just go away because we want to go back to exploring beyond earth's orbit. So, if the shuttle really is cheaper than single-use rockets, what are we going to use now?

        All of the arguments above about "the mission has changed" and "the shuttle has outlived its design lifetime" are irrelevant. The mission for which the shuttle was designed still exists, and like prisoner says, just because a particular shuttle has reached its design lifetime you don't necessarily have to scrap the whole program -- just the one particular shuttle.
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Prisoner, again, its the shuttle's capacity to return payloads that drove it.

        Now thats all moot, you don't need to recover spy satelites' film canisters and replace them in orbit, we have microelectronics, so that Air Force mission requirement is no longer a requirement.

        NASA built it so the USAF would not insist on its own budget to do military space operations. There was a time when many thought that both NASA and USAF would have separate space programs. STS shut that argument down.
    • Balanced, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3I think it's more saying that reusable designs don't fit current mission parameters, not that they don't work.

      One limitation with the Shuttle is that it has a lot of minimum 'infrastructure' that goes up on every flight: The crew cabin, the full bay, etc. The cost/pound, which is always an issue, gets even worse when you're looking at lifting a lot of weight that isn't relevant to the at-hand mission.

      If the budget existed, it would probably make more sense to focus on multiple designs for multiple roles. To a point I'm sure NASA does this , but the shuttle and it's "replacement" tend to be the focus and we forget about he other projects. Maybe have teams working on a heavy lifter (Ares/Jupiter), a crew transport/maintenance platform (Shuttle), and maybe a third niche.

      Remember that we're still in the very early stages of space travel. We're in the space-age equivalent of sending crude rafts out from the shore. Space is much less forgiving than other 'frontiers' and we need to respect that, but keep pushing.
    • gettempapa, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1The Orion/Ares rocket uses many of the same technologies as the space shuttle. It is essentially the shuttle redesigned for a moon mission.
    • Xondar, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I think they should use the Ares technology to build a better space shuttle.

      The current space shuttle uses plain old aircraft aluminum for the hull, the Ares craft will use carbon fibre. Why can't they build a new shuttle with a carbon fibre hull?

      I should also point out that NASA is retiring the shuttle fleet because Moron-in-Chief George W. Bush ordered them too.
  • DErallde, on 07/15/2008, -1/+3It just makes Sense that something like this would happen, NASA Either doesn't have the funding doesn't like to spend the little it has. This is a chance for the people put onto a project that is controlled by the Government to get away from the Bureaucracy and work how engineers should work, without the Boss looking over your shoulder and stopping innovation. The future of space travel will be decided not by NASA but by the private (probably corporately funded) developers.
    • fuhcough, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4The thing is NASA is fighting for their budget just like any other government organization. The best way for them to get the bucks they need is to apply it towards the research of technology that is reusable.

      And by reusable, I don't mean a space shuttle. I mean rockets and rocket technology that has other MILITARY implications.
  • joe90210, on 07/15/2008, -13/+1LOL, another 12 years and 230 billion dollars to redo what they did in the 60s, what a joke.
    • cotaskmemalloc, on 07/15/2008, -1/+2You're an idiot. You do realize technology has moved on, right? The new hardware isn't build with the same materials as it was in the 60s. It's a lot more expensive these days. And I wouldn't say that going to Mars is what they did in the 60s, unless you come from a completely different universe than me.
    • Xondar, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Yeah, cause they had stuff like carbon fibre and nano-tubes back in the '60s.
  • megamod, on 07/15/2008, -2/+10YAY, so we get to go through another lunar landing conspiracy where crazies will say it never happened?
  • a1cd, on 07/15/2008, -2/+59Give them the war budget.
    • CSharpSauce, on 07/15/2008, -0/+17We'd have space elevators for that kind of money :)
    • Dumbledorito, on 07/15/2008, -1/+3Hell, we'd all have our own Monoliths for that kind of money.
    • DeskFlyer, on 07/15/2008, -0/+13If NASA was given the DOD's budget every year since 1969, you'd be able to find tickets to Mars on Orbitz today.
    • Xondar, on 07/16/2008, -0/+2We'd be colonizing Pluto with that kind of money.
  • fearziz, on 07/15/2008, -9/+1The point is to spend (waste) as much of our tax dollards as possible. Don't you understand how the U.S. government works? Forget Katrina Victims, Forget midwest flood victims, forget vietnam, desert storm, iraqi freedom veterans. Instead we waste billions on a rocket to the moon with no adverse benefits on our lives. Depressing isnt it?
    • cotaskmemalloc, on 07/15/2008, -1/+9Right, because the contributions the Apollo program made to physics, mathematics, computing, etc, essentially science in general, have had no benefits on our lives since the prorgam ended.

      You're a ***** idiot.
    • CSharpSauce, on 07/15/2008, -0/+6I hate how I have a cell phone, and a microwave, and i can navigate through gps...
    • fearziz, on 07/15/2008, -1/+1Apollo didn't have ***** to do with todays technology you dumb *****
    • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -1/+1Right on fearziz, as much as I love space exploration, the deficit spending policy has done little to reduce the costs associated with space access.

      Other diggers, just because the government can do some nice basic research and engineering, does not justify its means.

      Yes, it is indeed true that NASA only gets a tiny percentage of the yearly monetized debt congress, the treasury and the federal reserve creates. It is also true that there are actually some very legitimate spin offs from space exploration, not to mention the physiological sense of wonder from exploration.

      But this creation of money through debt is crippling the american middle class and has done so for nearly a hundred years. This waste as fearziz calls it, can perhaps inform this forum as to the motives behind the continued spending on the STS ove its 30 year lifetime. But if thats too complicated to think about, just dismiss it outright.
    • cotaskmemalloc, on 07/16/2008, -1/+1fearziz and kurtu5, you're ***** *****.

      http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/pdf/80660main_Apo ...
      • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -1/+1WTF? How am I a *****? Where does your NASA pdf counter the argument that space access costs are inflated by a deficit monetary policy?

        I told you, if its too hard to think about it, just dismiss it outright.
  • oneredeye, on 07/15/2008, -6/+3Pics or it didn't happen.
  • barstegry, on 07/15/2008, -2/+10The best innovation comes from underground, behind walls, and in the shadows. Hiding from those who would suppress it's call for radical change and open collaboration.
  • brainscab, on 07/15/2008, -0/+14The press loves a "little guy vs the boss" story so they are all over this
  • billbugger, on 07/15/2008, -5/+6It's sad to see NASA reduced to this :-
  • funkyjunk3, on 07/15/2008, -2/+6"Besides being a simpler, more powerful system, backers say, the Jupiter rockets would save NASA $19 billion in development costs and another $16 billion in operating costs over two decades."

    Relevant quote: "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
  • sockpuppets, on 07/15/2008, -2/+9I know a few people working on ares, this article is spot on. The ares is so poorly engineered at the moment that it lacks the capacity to get off the ground, it's grossly overweight. Apparently there was bad math from the very start. Seriously, isn't one of the most fundamental decisions in a project like this determining the amount of lift you'll need?

    Nasa is filled with talented engineers and bloated bureaucracy. It's sad to see it continue on in a project that could have been a great clean start for them.
  • Dumbledorito, on 07/15/2008, -1/+24This will never work. Their lead scientist is some boozer nutcase named Zefram Cochrane.
  • greeniemeani, on 07/15/2008, -0/+4The other thing that NASA doesn't want you to know: they just built a ***** DOLLAR GENERAL right in front of the Space Center!
  • leerayIG88, on 07/15/2008, -1/+1the moon is really made out of cheese? :-)
  • vexingmodstwo, on 07/15/2008, -4/+4The actual title of the article (not this sensationalized ***** one above) would have sufficed. Buried.
  • thedogfatherx, on 07/15/2008, -3/+2MakiMaki (poster) I hate you with a passion. I don't think I need to explain why.
  • fireburner23, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3Didn't something like this happen during the early space program? I remember watching History channel about something similar to this.
  • rowlodge, on 07/15/2008, -0/+2wheres the picture or artist render of this secret ship thats supposed to be cheaper and safer?, not saying it 's not true .
  • paulot, on 07/15/2008, -2/+1To the moon Alice!
  • gidd, on 07/15/2008, -0/+7This isn't the first time NASA engineers have bypassed or sidestepped the chosen way of doing things. The choice of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as the mission mode for Apollo was thanks to engineers bucking the company line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbit_Rendezvou ...
  • dthebear, on 07/15/2008, -0/+7its better to spend our tax money on space programs than on a retarded war
  • ganymede2010, on 07/15/2008, -2/+3 NASA Is nothing more then a civilian space program. The real space program is being conducted by the DOD, and everything they do is top secret. The military space program has an estimated annual budget of 22 Billion dollars.
    • Axemantitan, on 07/15/2008, -0/+3Do you have a link? I would honestly be interested in reading anything, including speculation, on what is being developed.
  • AmnesiacJack, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1Can we get the Freedom and Independence, I thought those things could sling shot around the moon and back.
  • rtmeacham, on 07/15/2008, -0/+0"when we talk about this in secret, we will call it after constellations and planets. when you are with your buddies, call it a crotch rocket"
  • diggenerate, on 07/15/2008, -1/+1It looks to me as if the new Jupiter rocket is a step in the wrong direction. I think that the "space plane" design of the orbiter vehicle is important and more R&D should be done to incorporate it.
    • diggenerate, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1you know, instead of digging someone down, perhaps you can try and make a reasonable comment, this is exactly why Diggs comment system still sucks balls.
  • Vanor, on 07/15/2008, -0/+0So will Harvey Keitel, Kirk Douglas, and Farrah Fawcett be on it?
  • yoda17, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I wonder if it has anything to do with this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-C

  • kurtu5, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Mark Wade over at Astronautix has a good break down of the CEV designs and some critcisms that some Apollo mistakes were being made all over again.

    http://astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm
  • Svenagen, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Open source rockets FTW. Did anyone else imagine Star Wars Episode 1 and Anakin's pod? :D
  • savagesteve13, on 07/17/2008, -0/+1Okay, let's clear the air here:
    1) The Shuttle was never intended to be a "cheap" system to fly astronauts. It was a cold war project created expressly for the purpose of lofting extremely large Department of Defense spy satellites. Our spy sats are the size of the Hubble Space telescope.

    The rocket is still the cheapest form of putting things into space. The russians can put something into LEO for less than it costs to make a single hollywood movie.
  • SMetch, on 07/17/2008, -0/+0Video showing how the Space Shuttle transitions to the Jupiter-120 (Ares-II) and then the Jupiter-232 (Ares-III)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6WCHefUJgc
    • tradun, on 07/18/2008, -0/+0Thanks for posting the link, Steve. It really helps illustrate how directly the Jupiter rockets are derived from the Shuttle components.

      I would just like to point out something from the story. Mr. Cook said that NASA had informally reviewed the DIRECT proposal last fall and found it lacking. What the story does not say is that several interested parties had asked NASA if they had performed any reviews of DIRECT, and Mr. Cook, as recently as a month ago,said that they had not. Finally, when the pressure become too great, NASA finally released the study that they now admit to having performed. That study was released on Thursday, July 3. The DIRECT team is currently formulating a rebuttal to NASA's findings.

      The denial of the existence of the report is suspect. The date of release of the report is suspect. NASA management needs to be more open about the efforts surrounding this country's next manned launch system. And if it turns out that the DIRECT proposal is a better option than Ares, which I think it is, then they need to have the integrity to admit as much and redirect work towards the Jupiter rockets. We can't afford to have another manned launch system that can't deliver everything that it promises.
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