A Return to the Moon by the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary.

[Urwumpe]

Who were founded when Elon Musk was in school in South Africa and are launching payloads since Musk first enrolled into college...:lol:

Pssst... don't tell him about such details like reality. :lol:

 

[RGClark]

It isn't Cygnus - the company is Orbital Sciences.

The reporter who wrote the article is not the same as the Space Shuttle Program Manager who gave the speech, obviously. Wayne Hale is highly regarded in the industry so his opinion carries a lot of weight.
A video of the speech is available on the conference web page:

6th Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium.
Bringing Exploration Forward.
October 7-10, 2013
http://media.uah.edu/LiveStream/

Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 02:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:01 PM ----------

Participants at the NASA workshop on the asteroid mission also suggested following a commercial approach to cut costs:

Commercial Firms Push Alternative Approaches for NASA Asteroid Initiative.
By Irene Klotz | Oct. 4, 2013
http://www.spacenews.com/article/ci...ative-approaches-for-nasa-asteroid-initiative


Bob Clark

 

[RGClark]

Renewed Congressional Push for a NASA Return to the Moon.
Sparked by Chinese Chang'e 3/Jade Rabbit.
Mark Whittington, Yahoo Contributor Network
Dec 21, 2013

COMMENTARY | One salutary thing about the Chinese landing the Chang'e 3/Jade Rabbit probe on the lunar surface is that it has caused a new congressional push for an American return to the moon. But will President Obama heed it?
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, has sent the president a letter in which he urges him to hold a White House conference gathering the best minds, not only in the United States, but from among America's international allies, to devise a lunar exploration program to start within ten years. The coalition that would return to the moon would include such entrepreneurial companies such as Golden Spike and Moon Express.
Wolf is retiring at the end of the current Congress. The man who is likely to replace him as chief House NASA appropriation, John Culberson, echoed Wolf's sentiments in a recent interview. Culberson specifically singled out the presence of rare earth elements, which have become crucial for making high tech products, on the moon as a rationale for going and for not allowing the Chinese to be the sole lunar explorer.
http://voices.yahoo.com/renewed-congressional-push-nasa-return-the-12463138.html

Bob Clark

 

[fsci123]

COMMENTARY | One salutary thing about the Chinese landing the Chang'e 3/Jade Rabbit probe on the lunar surface is that it has caused a new congressional push for an American return to the moon. But will President Obama heed it?
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, has sent the president a letter in which he urges him to hold a White House conference gathering the best minds, not only in the United States, but from among America's international allies, to devise a lunar exploration program to start within ten years. The coalition that would return to the moon would include such entrepreneurial companies such as Golden Spike and Moon Express.
Wolf is retiring at the end of the current Congress. The man who is likely to replace him as chief House NASA appropriation, John Culberson, echoed Wolf's sentiments in a recent interview. Culberson specifically singled out the presence of rare earth elements, which have become crucial for making high tech products, on the moon as a rationale for going and for not allowing the Chinese to be the sole lunar explorer.

Hopefully the (minor)threat of Zhong scares our politicians into giving more funding to our manned space program. Maybe they can get funding from the military and DARPA

 

[RGClark]

Six Reasons NASA Should Build a Research Base on the Moon
A planetary scientist suggests we should "boldly stay" where no one has stayed before.
Sarah Fecht
for National Geographic
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 20, 2013

An artist's conception of what a lunar base could look like.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131220-lunar-research-base-mars-mission-science/

Bob Clark

 

[Ghostrider]

Six Reasons NASA Should Build a Research Base on the Moon

Is it just me or does it look a little like SHADO's Moonbase?

 

[C3PO]

A planetary scientist suggests we should "boldly stay" where no one has stayed before.

The big question is: What part of the federal budget should be cut to pay for this.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

[Codz]

The big question is: What part of the federal budget should be cut to pay for this.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

A tax increase would be nice...

 

[Urwumpe]

A tax increase would be nice...

Lets introduce a "Tax on declaring war against something". Could get you a few Mars missions.

 

[Ghostrider]

The NSA budget, of course. They can outsource everything to Zuckerberg & Co. Why spend zillions of bucks spying on people when they'll throw their info at you for free?

 

[Lucy]

OF Staff Note: While we accept there is some crossover between the topics, we'd like to remind posters that political content should be posted only in the basement.

 

[RGClark]

The big question is: What part of the federal budget should be cut to pay for this.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

I don't have access to the full article but according to the abstract the scientist Chris McKay suggests 10% of NASA's budget, which will be around $1.8 billion per year:

The Case for a NASA Research Base on the Moon
Christopher P. McKay
Space Science Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/space.2013.0018

This might be doable if for example we use commercial assets such as by Bigelow to maintain a presence in LEO, thus removing the expense of the ISS.

Bob Clark

 

[MattBaker]

The NSA budget, of course.

To be honest I don't think you can build a Moon base from $11 billion per year. One SLS launch is something like $10 billion for the first four launches, not to mention a Moon base usually includes manned missions. So you'd have to wait until the SLS is ready and then have one launch per year from that money. Although the Falcon Heavy should actually be cheaper but has a quite small payload to the Moon, so not really an alternative either.

Oh and Booz Allen Hamilton thought of these costs as optimistic. Wait, Booz Allen Hamilton? Sounds familiar.

 

[kamaz]

To be honest I don't think you can build a Moon base from $11 billion per year.

Spudis & Lavoie (2010) proposed a lunar base program costing $6.6B per year:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Affordable_Lunar_Base.pdf

One SLS launch is something like $10 billion for the first four launches

IIRC this is because the SLS has high fixed costs, which have to be paid regrdless if something is flying or not. However, if SLS is going to be the main US space vehicle for the next decades -- i.e. service a wider range of mission, then charging the entire costs of SLS to the lunar program is disingenious.

However, even if you did that, then we need to remember that SLS is basically Shuttle without orbiter. So if we assume that all of Shuttle program costs were fixed costs which are going to be retained for SLS, then there is no reason why the SLS program should cost more than $5B per year:

So $6B/year for the base ops plus $5B/year to maintain SLS adds up to $11B per year.

 

[RGClark]

Spudis & Lavoie (2010) proposed a lunar base program costing $6.6B per year:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Affordable_Lunar_Base.pdf
IIRC this is because the SLS has high fixed costs, which have to be paid regrdless if something is flying or not. However, if SLS is going to be the main US space vehicle for the next decades -- i.e. service a wider range of mission, then charging the entire costs of SLS to the lunar program is disingenious.
However, even if you did that, then we need to remember that SLS is basically Shuttle without orbiter. So if we assume that all of Shuttle program costs were fixed costs which are going to be retained for SLS, then there is no reason why the SLS program should cost more than $5B per year:

So $6B/year for the base ops plus $5B/year to maintain SLS adds up to $11B per year.

Thanks for that. I once asked Spudis how much cheaper it would be if we used the Falcon Heavy instead of the SLS. Spudis however is not a supporter of commercial space and didn't offer such an estimate. However, since launch costs would be a big part of the expense it would have to be significantly less.

China's success with the Chang'e mission has led to renewed calls to return to the Moon:

Scientists Petition U.S. Congress for Return to the Moon.
by Leonard David, SPACE.com’s Space Insider Columnist | December 23, 2013 03:32pm ET
http://www.space.com/24068-destination-moon-petition-congress.html

Bob Clark

 

[kamaz]

Thanks for that. I once asked Spudis how much cheaper it would be if we used the Falcon Heavy instead of the SLS.

You can probably estimate that yourself, because the budget breakdown in his paper (linked above) identifies LV costs. Basically plug SpaceX prices instead of Atlas/SLS prices and see what comes out.

 

[RGClark]

On another forum it was mentioned Dave Masten of Masten Space Systems in a SpaceVidcast video discussed adapting a Centaur upper stage to serve as a lunar lander. In the video he estimates it to cost in the range of only $50 million(!)

The discussion on the lunar lander takes place about 15 minutes into the one hour video. Masten also mentions this modified Centaur could transport 6 metric tons between a Lagrange point, L1 or L2, and the lunar surface. Such a lander could also be used between low lunar orbit and the lunar surface, as for a manned mission from Earth:

If true, then it is unconscionable that NASA claims a return to the Moon can’t be done because a lander would cost ca. $10 billion, when it can actually be done two orders of magnitude more cheaply than that. In any case NASA needs to do a study to see if this conversion of a Centaur to a lander can actually be done so cheaply.

Bob Clark

 

[MattBaker]

I can also transport all of the world's oil supply in Volkswagens and rowing boats but due to some reason we use huge ships, pipelines and trucks. Transporting oil from Alaska to Austin would be cheaper in a Volkswagen! Exxon has to study this alternative transportation!

You know, we don't try to go to the Moon for fun and giggles, we try to go there to build a base on another body of this solar system, which doesn't have an atmosphere. And I doubt this will happen with the tiny payload a repurposed Centaur would provide.

 

[RGClark]

The reason why we use huge cargo ships to transport materials across oceans is that they are going to supply hundreds of millions of people. You wouldn't use those to only supply 4 people.
Still, a key fact is according to Masten the Centaur derived lander can transport 14 metric tons to the lunar surface in cargo mode, about the same as the $10 billion Altair lander:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_(spacecraft)#Description

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

And since the Altair uses the same engine as the Centaur you can imagine what maybe makes the Altair expensive ... all the rest you need for landing on the moon and especially getting there. Even if you scrub the NASA bloat from the mission design. Its not cheap. The Chinese just landed about 1% of that mass. For a lot more than 1% of 10 billion.