NASA: I'm confused.

[mellestad]

So Obama changed NASA strategy, killing an overbudget program and boosting the budget by 6B.  Fine.  What I am confused about is some of the reaction.

NPR had an interview with Tea Party protesters who were complaining about Obama killing NASA and the constellation program.

To me, it seems like if you want NASA to get funded by the government, then, yay! Obama just boosted their budget and told them to start working on a new heavy lift rocket that might actually be built someday.

But then I was even more confused, because why aren't Tea Party people protesting the fact that NASA is using tax money for the space program in the first place?

------

So my question:  Are these people just standard Republicans riled up about the potential loss of some Florida pork, and they hopped on the Tea Party band wagon without really knowing what it meant, or is there some other facet to the Tea Party that I'm missing?

I would get Tea Party wanting to kill NASA.  And I could get Republicans complaining about cancelling Constellation if the budget was being cut.  But I don't get Tea party people protesting the death of NASA when it just got a budget increase.

Can someone help me out here?  What am I missing?

[AZRedhawk44]

Can someone help me out here?  What am I missing?

Where's your hate gland?  You need to enhance it.

I can accept the premise of not going to the moon again, if we build a true space ship.  Something intended as a MANNED solar system explorer, with no intent of being landed anywhere with atmosphere or substantial gravity... maybe some asteroids and that's it.

Something that works as an interplanetary transport between fixed orbital installations, and refuels via depots in the asteroid belt that electrolysis water into H2/O2.  Or similar orbital satellites at the moon, mars and elsewhere.

Something with centripetal force to simulate gravity, and shielding to protect crews from long term exposure to solar winds.

Space can be profitable if capital machinery is put up there to do some freakin' work.  Smelting asteroids would be a great first step.  Earth-orbiting hydroponic gardens would be another good step.

Obama's plan seems to come from Lockheed-Martin rather than Boeing.  He's partly out to shaft Boeing since he wants to shake up the conservative support base a bit (including jobs for conservatives) and Lockheed has more facilities in CA than Boeing does, I think.  Definitely less in FL, which is a conservative leaning state.

[mellestad]

Where's your hate gland?  You need to enhance it.

I can accept the premise of not going to the moon again, if we build a true space ship.  Something intended as a MANNED solar system explorer, with no intent of being landed anywhere with atmosphere or substantial gravity... maybe some asteroids and that's it.

Something that works as an interplanetary transport between fixed orbital installations, and refuels via depots in the asteroid belt that electrolysis water into H2/O2.  Or similar orbital satellites at the moon, mars and elsewhere.

Something with centripetal force to simulate gravity, and shielding to protect crews from long term exposure to solar winds.

Space can be profitable if capital machinery is put up there to do some freakin' work.  Smelting asteroids would be a great first step.  Earth-orbiting hydroponic gardens would be another good step.

Obama's plan seems to come from Lockheed-Martin rather than Boeing.  He's partly out to shaft Boeing since he wants to shake up the conservative support base a bit (including jobs for conservatives) and Lockheed has more facilities in CA than Boeing does, I think.  Definitely less in FL, which is a conservative leaning state.

So would that fall under the, "Republicans protesting potential loss of Florida pork"?

Personally, I think I'd like to see NASA focus on long term science goals and keep the tech as open source as possible so private industry can work on commercializing space.

I'm torn about stuff like manned Mars missions.  On one hand I'm a huge nerd and, hey, Mars!  On the other hand I imgine you would get a lot more bang for your buck with robots and probe missions.

Honestly, it is tough for me to be objective about the space program because I have a lot of emotional stuff tied into it.

[kgbsquirrel]

I can accept the premise of not going to the moon again, if we build a true space ship.  Something intended as a MANNED solar system explorer, with no intent of being landed anywhere with atmosphere or substantial gravity... maybe some asteroids and that's it.

Something that works as an interplanetary transport between fixed orbital installations, and refuels via depots in the asteroid belt that electrolysis water into H2/O2.  Or similar orbital satellites at the moon, mars and elsewhere.

That's the point of setting up a station on the moon though. Cracking the ice into fuel with the added benefit of being in a 1/6G gravity well to make it easier to loft up into orbit, and it's a lot closer (2-4 days space flight) than any of the potential asteroids for the same purpose. Far more economical than trying to lift all the needed fuel/consumables for a mars or asteroid belt hop straight out of the Earth's gravity well. It's essentially the first jump off point into the rest of the solar system.

[mellestad]

That's the point of setting up a station on the moon though. Cracking the ice into fuel with the added benefit of being in a 1/6G gravity well to make it easier to loft up into orbit, and it's a lot closer (2-4 days space flight) than any of the potential asteroids for the same purpose. Far more economical than trying to lift all the needed fuel/consumables for a mars or asteroid belt hop straight out of the Earth's gravity well. It's essentially the first jump off point into the rest of the solar system.

I've heard people say the moon is just another gravity well to sink energy into.

Obviously I'm out of my league though.  The rocket scientists don't agree on the best way to approach the problems of putting people past the moon, so I duobt I'm going to do any good  

[AZRedhawk44]

That's the point of setting up a station on the moon though. Cracking the ice into fuel with the added benefit of being in a 1/6G gravity well to make it easier to loft up into orbit, and it's a lot closer (2-4 days space flight) than any of the potential asteroids for the same purpose. Far more economical than trying to lift all the needed fuel/consumables for a mars or asteroid belt hop straight out of the Earth's gravity well. It's essentially the first jump off point into the rest of the solar system.

I've heard people say the moon is just another gravity well to sink energy into.

Obviously I'm out of my league though.  The rocket scientists don't agree on the best way to approach the problems of putting people past the moon, so I duobt I'm going to do any good 

I'm inclined to believe that the moon is worth about as much as an asteroid:  It's a larger resource to mine, but a crappy destination.

I'd just as soon see us focus on getting somewhere with a gravity rating between 0.6 and 1.1G's and building terraforming stations or self contained domes.

Lifting from earth's 1G and depositing on the moon's 0.18G just means we then have to expend lots of energy to build a lunar base, so we can lift from the moon's 0.18G to build a spaceship.

Ultimately, we want to build a spaceship from the asteroid belt's various < 0.01G environments.  Using robots for the construction, though:  I can imagine the slag spitting around from welding in zero G!

[kgbsquirrel]

Well run the math. Which would take more energy to loft: An thousand ton ice cracking plant out of 1G gravity well, dropping it on the moon and letting it process for a while autonomously before then lifting a million tons of cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen out of .17G gravity well, or lifting that million tons straight out of the 1G gravity well to start with? It is an economy of scale. The amount of consumables you need to lift out of earth's gravity well to reach the moon is trivial compared to the amount required to reach any other celestial body. Note this is for manned flight. When you look at the amount you would need to reach Mars or the Asteroid belt what you would save from having a reduced gravity well is immense. Plus here's another point. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere. If you had fuel lifters at the moon running round trips from surface to orbit they don't have to worry about reentry shielding, and as the lunar landers from the Apollo program show, single stage to land, single stage to orbit at the moon is more than within our ability. We have yet to create any single stage to orbit craft that can loft a decent cargo here on earth. The resources that we throw away each time we lift something to low earth orbit is astounding.

Now, once you have a suitable generation plant running on the moon it can use an automated reusable lifter to loft the readied fuel into lunar orbit and then return to the plant for more cargo and to refuel itself (since that's what the plant is making). Short of maintenance issues this can continue indefinitely. With this in place the only things you really have to worry about lifting out of Earth's gravity well are the materials for construction of said interplanetary craft. Once it's assembled it's just a quick jaunt over to lunar orbit to pick up the stockpiled fuel and then head out to mars/A.belt. If you also found a suitable large icy asteroid and sent a similar automated fuel plant to it, as you did the moon, you now have a refueling point for the return trip, halving the consumables you would need to take with you. Or, you could start doing hops, moon->asteroid->Europa/Ganymede.

[sanglant]

mining the moon is a really bad idea, get it light enough and earth starts to look like the algore's day dreams.

[AZRedhawk44]

mining the moon is a really bad idea, get it light enough and earth starts to look like the algore's day dreams.

Yeah, I get that vibe, too.

The moon is receding from us a few inches each year as it is.  No need to destabilize the orbit any more.

In fact... who's to say that the orbit wasn't destabilized by landing on it in the 60's and leaving some mass behind there that wasn't part of the original equation?  And we've only had the sensory equipment to detect the couple-inch movement in the last 30 years or so?

Can't say one way or the other and the argument for/against is similar to globular warming... but I'd just as soon we study the matter thoroughly before potentially screwing it up.

[mellestad]

Yeah, I get that vibe, too.

The moon is receding from us a few inches each year as it is.  No need to destabilize the orbit any more.

In fact... who's to say that the orbit wasn't destabilized by landing on it in the 60's and leaving some mass behind there that wasn't part of the original equation?  And we've only had the sensory equipment to detect the couple-inch movement in the last 30 years or so?

Can't say one way or the other and the argument for/against is similar to globular warming... but I'd just as soon we study the matter thoroughly before potentially screwing it up.

I'm assuming your kidding, but for anyone reading:  The moon is really, really, really, really big.  If we intentionally put all human effort into simply moving mass from the moon and chucking it into the sun for the next 100 years, it still wouldn't make any difference.  We could strip mine the moon from now into the next thousand years and it wouldn't matter.

However, the moon is moving away from the Earth, but very slowy.  It is sort of neat to read about though, because the cause is tidal shift.  Every orbit the tides shift and the moon wiggles a teensy bit further away, and also because the earth's rotation is gradually slowing.  By the time the sun swells up large enough to envelope the earth's current orbit, the moon will be quite a bit further away, and the day will be 960 hours long!

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=124
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2195
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_mechanics_0303018.html

[RocketMan]

Down the road a piece, Obama will shift NASA's emphasis from space exploration and aeronautics research to global warming climate change mitigation.  That's where those new dollars will ultimately go.

[BrokenPaw]

What mellestad said, plus:

According to NASA the earth is hit by ~33 metric tons of meteoroids per day.  Accounting for the fact that the moon is 0.273 earth diameters, that means it has a surface of ~0.075 earths, so we can estimate that it's hit by about 0.075 * 33, or 2.4 metric tons per day of meteoroids. 

If we assume that fully half of that mass is ejected into space (which is generous), that leaves us with ~1.2 metric tons being added to the moon's mass every day.

The zero-fuel mass of the descent stage of the Lunar module is 2134kg, and there are 7 of them that were left behind, so that leaves ~14938kg of man-made additional mass on the moon's surface.  Round that up to 20000, and you have 20 metric tons of manmade mass on the moon, so we've accelerated the moon's accretion by just over a fortnight.

-BP

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

While I haven't actually run any of the numbers, it strikes me that by the time the moon changes in any significant way, the human race will probably be either long dead or evolved beyond all recognition (not to mention spread to far reaching corners of the galaxy).  

I doubt human actions relating to the moon are able to change that any.  By the time the moon changes enough to matter, we won't care any more.

[kgbsquirrel]

What mellestad said, plus:

According to NASA the earth is hit by ~33 metric tons of meteoroids per day.  Accounting for the fact that the moon is 0.273 earth diameters, that means it has a surface of ~0.075 earths, so we can estimate that it's hit by about 0.075 * 33, or 2.4 metric tons per day of meteoroids. 

If we assume that fully half of that mass is ejected into space (which is generous), that leaves us with ~1.2 metric tons being added to the moon's mass every day.

The zero-fuel mass of the descent stage of the Lunar module is 2134kg, and there are 7 of them that were left behind, so that leaves ~14938kg of man-made additional mass on the moon's surface.  Round that up to 20000, and you have 20 metric tons of manmade mass on the moon, so we've accelerated the moon's accretion by just over a fortnight.

-BP

Don't you mean decelerated the moon's accretion? Given a specified orbital altitude and speed, adding mass to the satellite without a proportional increase in speed to maintain a stable orbit would cause a progressive decrease in altitude and removing the mass would cause an corresponding increase in altitude. Also how many of those impacts are done to the leading edge of the moon versus the trailing edge, i.e. reducing it's inertial energy, slowing it's orbital speed and causing a further deceleration of that accretion?

[PTK]

...Bill, you just lost me. That's difficult to do, but you've done it. 

[S. Williamson]

Don't you mean decelerated the moon's accretion? Given a specified orbital altitude and speed, adding mass to the satellite without a proportional increase in speed to maintain a stable orbit would cause a progressive decrease in altitude and removing the mass would cause an corresponding increase in altitude. Also how many of those impacts are done to the leading edge of the moon versus the trailing edge, i.e. reducing it's inertial energy, slowing it's orbital speed and causing a further deceleration of that accretion?

Physics would seem to favor the leading edge (just look at a heavily-worn propeller).  Would the added mass (negligible as it is) to the moon/mass removed from the earth for interplanetary manufacture make enough of a difference to actually shift the orbital barycenter of the two bodies, and in a way that might explain the shift?

[roo_ster]

This topic is interesting in that the usual right/left divide is not particularly helpful when determining opinion, except for the BHO boot lickers.

I am ambivalent. 

I think NASA's SRB-derived lift vehicle was a bad idea from the get-go.  We can get into why later, but that is my $0.02.  I am not on board with transforming NASA into a climate change outfit.  It does too much of that junk science already. 

I am in favor of "going back to the moon" or elsewhere insofar as that is a military-themed and purposed effort.  Will it give America a leg up militarily?  Can we monopolize space-based military power?  Will it allow us to treat the treat of the solar system as our new frontier?  Can we implement a "Monroe Doctrine for the Solar System?"

What I would like to see is a pruning back of the regs that NASA & the FAA have written that are strangling private space travel efforts and perhaps help grease the skids to make the USA the preferred locale to develop such technology.

[BrokenPaw]

Don't you mean decelerated the moon's accretion?

No, I meant "accelerated the accretion". 

Main Entry: ac·cre·tion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈkrē-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin accretion-, accretio, from accrescere — more at accrue
Date: 1615

1 : the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup: as a : increase by external addition or accumulation (as by adhesion of external parts or particles) b : the increase of land by the action of natural forces

[Perd Hapley]

I am in favor of "going back to the moon" or elsewhere insofar as that is a military-themed and purposed effort. 

Wasn't it Obama that came out against "weaponizing" or "militarizing" space?  Or was that Kerry?

Whoever said it, it is a remarkably dumb position to take. 

[kgbsquirrel]

Wasn't it Obama that came out against "weaponizing" or "militarizing" space?  Or was that Kerry?

Whoever said it, it is a remarkably dumb position to take.  

Actually I think that was JFK and Breznev at the time, wasn't it? The non-weaponizing/militarizing of space has been a pretty constant agreement between the major powers since the original inception of space flight.

No, I meant "accelerated the accretion".  

Main Entry: ac·cre·tion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈkrē-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin accretion-, accretio, from accrescere — more at accrue
Date: 1615

1 : the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup: as a : increase by external addition or accumulation (as by adhesion of external parts or particles) b : the increase of land by the action of natural forces

Except in this case the "growth or enlargement" is of the total distance between the Earth and Moon as held in balance by a combination of their masses, tangential velocities and the total Force of their gravitational attraction as adequately expressed in this case by Newton's law of universal gravitation (we only need to step up to Einstein's relativity for extraordinarily large masses):



The masses of the two objects multiplied, divided by their distance squared and multiplied by the gravitational constant gives the attractive force between them. With a sufficiently large addition of mass to one or both of the two masses in question you get an overall increase in that attractive force. This increase of force coupled with a reduction of that tangential velocity (which is what is overcoming the attractive force and keeping the two bodies in cicumnavigational orbit) due to the impacts of the masses being added to the primary masses in question would lead to the conclusion of a deceleration of the overall accretion of the Moon's distance from the Earth, however scant.

[Perd Hapley]

Actually I think that was JFK and Breznev at the time, wasn't it? The non-weaponizing/militarizing of space has been a pretty constant agreement between the major powers since the original inception of space flight.

Oh, I did not realize that.  How dumb. 

[kgbsquirrel]

Oh, I did not realize that.  How dumb. 

Wasn't sure, so I went and looked it up again. It was SALT-II (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty No. 2) in 1979 that banned the placement of nuclear weapons in orbit or fractional orbits.

[Jamisjockey]

I'm mostly against the government sponsored exploration of space.  I wouldn't have minded if he'd have axed NASA altogether. 

[PTK]

I'm mostly against the government sponsored exploration of space.  I wouldn't have minded if he'd have axed NASA altogether. 

I agree and disagree... it's a bit odd, but in some senses there simple aren't the private resources nor incentives to explore space. NASA gets the ball rolling, plus, of course, all the tech they come up with is all over daily life. 

[Jamisjockey]

I see the practical side of it, but am against the government being involved in research.  Maybe if the government would retain the rights to produce said technologies and use it to offset the costs....then we could talk...