Space is awesome. I want interstellar travel. We need slod (revealed by the late Terry Pratchett). I am hoping it's something really easy to do, if we just figure out how. That maybe some current ideas are flawed and keeping us stuck. Like maybe this dark matter nonsense everyone is talking about is the kind of caveman thinking that got the neanderthals killed. There is actually another force in the universe that pushes gravity around. Lets call it anti-gravity. And once we figure out how to use it, it's super easy. Just need a paperclip and some slod and you can make a wormhole.
A minority of people on that particular board served in private industry, it's not like they dominated the field. The chairman and one of the four members who had worked in industry, Augustine, had a long and storied public career, with only a couple years at Lockheed (retiring over a decade before serving on the committee), and a brief period on the AIA. He is basically the guy to go to when you want administrative and budget advice for NASA. As for the minority representation of private industry, it again makes sense to have them around! Again, there aren't enough resources in the field to spend billions of dollars duplicating the efforts of others, and NASA needs to know what and how private organizations are working on so they can make the best decision for maximum impact. Humans aren't it, not when we can send robots that are not quite as versatile but a hell of a lot cheaper and can stick around for much longer missions.
Plus, the point of government-led research in technology isn't to just have more government research. It's to advance a field to the point where private industry can plausibly operate. No one wrings their hands about how industry has taken over microprocessors.
SpaceX isn't a threat to NASA. It's evidence of NASA's success.
Constellation and its cancellation is... complicated.
The original mission statement that got through Congress was "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations."
There's your first problem: if you want to go to Mars, there's no particular reason why you need to build a moonbase first. If you want to go to Mars, then go to Mars; landers designed for the Moon's lower gravity and lack of atmosphere aren't going to help you get there, they'll be an expensive distraction. (And if you want to build a moonbase as your primary goal, then don't bullshit the public! They'll catch wise partway through the program and kill all your funding!)
Constellation had four major parts. You have the Ares I rocket that launches the crew module, you have the Ares V heavy-lift rocket that launches the rest of the hardware, you have the Orion crew module itself, and you have the Altair lunar lander.
The Orion spacecraft didn't get cancelled, so I'll stop talking about it for the time being. The Altair lunar lander is only important for a lunar mission, if Mars is your actual goal it's an expensive distraction even if you keep the rest of Constellation. So let's talk about the rockets.
Ares I was the farthest along in development. The concept was that it would launch the Orion capsule into LEO using one of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters as a first stage. NASA even tested a prototype:
The problem is that it was unnecessary even before the program began, well before SpaceX became a real player in the space market. The rocket has about the same payload capacity, size, and cost as the rockets that the US Air Force was paying for under the EELV program, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. (ATK even pitched a variant of the Ares I rocket as a response to the EELV request for proposals, under the name ATK Liberty; the USAF didn't pick it). NASA claimed that the Ares I was safer for human flight than either of the EELV rockets, which is an incredibly dubious claim for a solid-fueled rocket. So it's another expensive distraction, and frankly if NASA (or, rather, Congress, it was Congress's call to make) had instead focused on getting an EELV human-rated they would already be done by now, and certainly would have gotten the same capability cheaper.
Then you have Ares V, an unmanned heavy-lift rocket, leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. For a Mars mission, this was the only really useful part of the Constellation program (aside from the Orion capsule, which is still kind of debatable). It was still in the very early stages of development, and the Augustine commission concluded that it was basically a fucked program. I've worked on some fucked programs in the defense industry, and I'm not ready to dismiss the commission out of hand -- which is to say I don't know one way or the other. What I do know is that it was replaced by the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. Maybe it would have been easier to keep the Ares V, or maybe the program needed the kick in the ass that the Augustine commission provided it, or maybe it was in such an early stage that it doesn't matter either way.
SpaceX and Elon Musk certainly didn't have anything to do with it, though.
Now that NASA's announcement is out, I think this is good news for both manned and unmanned exploration. For one, we know substantial amounts of water (usually as ice) exists below the surface on the lower latitudes of the planet, making more comprehensive ISRU a feasible goal for large expeditions as well as increasing the research potential (sampling the water to try to glean information about subsurface mineral deposits and geology, for example). Plus, there may be further support toward more involved missions now that the potential for life-supporting conditions have just ticked up in a big way.
The Orion spacecraft didn't get cancelled, so I'll stop talking about it for the time being. The Altair lunar lander is only important for a lunar mission, if Mars is your actual goal it's an expensive distraction even if you keep the rest of Constellation. So let's talk about the rockets.
Ares I was the farthest along in development. The concept was that it would launch the Orion capsule into LEO using one of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters as a first stage. NASA even tested a prototype:
The problem is that it was unnecessary even before the program began, well before SpaceX became a real player in the space market. The rocket has about the same payload capacity, size, and cost as the rockets that the US Air Force was paying for under the EELV program, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. (ATK even pitched a variant of the Ares I rocket as a response to the EELV request for proposals, under the name ATK Liberty; the USAF didn't pick it). NASA claimed that the Ares I was safer for human flight than either of the EELV rockets, which is an incredibly dubious claim for a solid-fueled rocket. So it's another expensive distraction, and frankly if NASA (or, rather, Congress, it was Congress's call to make) had instead focused on getting an EELV human-rated they would already be done by now, and certainly would have gotten the same capability cheaper
I could definitely be proven wrong here, but NASA does seem to be alone in its desire to use solid rockets as a major propulsion system for manned flights. "Common sense" at Roskosmos has generally frowned on solid rockets for manned usage--then again, there are so few manned spacecraft in service right now, we don't have a lot of comparisons. The Long March 2F doesn't use them (in the half-dozen manned missions China has had).
Honestly, NASA also has the most experience with them, so maybe the stereotype that they have undue risk isn't really justified.
Constellation and its cancellation is... complicated.
The original mission statement that got through Congress was "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations."
There's your first problem: if you want to go to Mars, there's no particular reason why you need to build a moonbase first. If you want to go to Mars, then go to Mars; landers designed for the Moon's lower gravity and lack of atmosphere aren't going to help you get there, they'll be an expensive distraction. (And if you want to build a moonbase as your primary goal, then don't bullshit the public! They'll catch wise partway through the program and kill all your funding!)
Constellation had four major parts. You have the Ares I rocket that launches the crew module, you have the Ares V heavy-lift rocket that launches the rest of the hardware, you have the Orion crew module itself, and you have the Altair lunar lander.
The Orion spacecraft didn't get cancelled, so I'll stop talking about it for the time being. The Altair lunar lander is only important for a lunar mission, if Mars is your actual goal it's an expensive distraction even if you keep the rest of Constellation. So let's talk about the rockets.
Ares I was the farthest along in development. The concept was that it would launch the Orion capsule into LEO using one of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters as a first stage. NASA even tested a prototype:
The problem is that it was unnecessary even before the program began, well before SpaceX became a real player in the space market. The rocket has about the same payload capacity, size, and cost as the rockets that the US Air Force was paying for under the EELV program, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. (ATK even pitched a variant of the Ares I rocket as a response to the EELV request for proposals, under the name ATK Liberty; the USAF didn't pick it). NASA claimed that the Ares I was safer for human flight than either of the EELV rockets, which is an incredibly dubious claim for a solid-fueled rocket. So it's another expensive distraction, and frankly if NASA (or, rather, Congress, it was Congress's call to make) had instead focused on getting an EELV human-rated they would already be done by now, and certainly would have gotten the same capability cheaper.
Then you have Ares V, an unmanned heavy-lift rocket, leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. For a Mars mission, this was the only really useful part of the Constellation program (aside from the Orion capsule, which is still kind of debatable). It was still in the very early stages of development, and the Augustine commission concluded that it was basically a fucked program. I've worked on some fucked programs in the defense industry, and I'm not ready to dismiss the commission out of hand -- which is to say I don't know one way or the other. What I do know is that it was replaced by the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. Maybe it would have been easier to keep the Ares V, or maybe the program needed the kick in the ass that the Augustine commission provided it, or maybe it was in such an early stage that it doesn't matter either way.
SpaceX and Elon Musk certainly didn't have anything to do with it, though.
For what it's worth, my dad was working on the SLS at Boeing before he retired and he says that program is pretty fucked, too.
The ORBCOMM launch and subsequent landing attempt by SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage has been put back 24 hours. For making me wait the thing better stick the landing this time.
The ORBCOMM launch and subsequent landing attempt by SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage has been put back 24 hours. For making me wait the thing better stick the landing this time.
Awesome, they were wait for me to get to Florida to launch.
They were soooo close on the last landing attempt. Man, if they can nail this one...
For anyone who's interested but doesn't know why being able to use the merlin to land a falcon intact is a Big Deal: a very significant part of the cost for modern rocketry is that the launch vehicles are, for the most part, destroyed by the launch. Yes, we recover parts of the rockets, but they usually land in the ocean and this does tremendously expensive damage to the engines.
Being able to land a rocket intact after it carries it's payload out of the atmosphere removes something like ~10,000 dollars per kilogram from the cost of every launch. It's huge.
They were soooo close on the last landing attempt. Man, if they can nail this one...
For anyone who's interested but doesn't know why being able to use the merlin to land a falcon intact is a Big Deal: a very significant part of the cost for modern rocketry is that the launch vehicles are, for the most part, destroyed by the launch. Yes, we recover parts of the rockets, but they usually land in the ocean and this does tremendously expensive damage to the engines.
Being able to land a rocket intact after it carries it's payload out of the atmosphere removes something like ~10,000 dollars from the cost of every launch. It's huge.
Is there some kind of breakdown chart or something for current rocketry costs vs what the projected costs are if we can start recovering rockets intact?
Is there some kind of breakdown chart or something for current rocketry costs vs what the projected costs are if we can start recovering rockets intact?
It's hard to say exactly; you'll still need some recheck/refurbishing process on the recovered launch vehicle and it's unclear how much that'll cost for Falcon 9. (For the Shuttle, it was more expensive than just using expendable Titan IV rockets, for example).
I think I meet the qualifications, and I kinda want to apply just for shits, because I absolutely do not want to be an astronaut. I'm good down here on good ol' Earth.
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They work great in Kerbal Space Program!
... that's all I got.
Plus, the point of government-led research in technology isn't to just have more government research. It's to advance a field to the point where private industry can plausibly operate. No one wrings their hands about how industry has taken over microprocessors.
SpaceX isn't a threat to NASA. It's evidence of NASA's success.
The original mission statement that got through Congress was "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations."
There's your first problem: if you want to go to Mars, there's no particular reason why you need to build a moonbase first. If you want to go to Mars, then go to Mars; landers designed for the Moon's lower gravity and lack of atmosphere aren't going to help you get there, they'll be an expensive distraction. (And if you want to build a moonbase as your primary goal, then don't bullshit the public! They'll catch wise partway through the program and kill all your funding!)
Constellation had four major parts. You have the Ares I rocket that launches the crew module, you have the Ares V heavy-lift rocket that launches the rest of the hardware, you have the Orion crew module itself, and you have the Altair lunar lander.
The Orion spacecraft didn't get cancelled, so I'll stop talking about it for the time being. The Altair lunar lander is only important for a lunar mission, if Mars is your actual goal it's an expensive distraction even if you keep the rest of Constellation. So let's talk about the rockets.
Ares I was the farthest along in development. The concept was that it would launch the Orion capsule into LEO using one of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters as a first stage. NASA even tested a prototype:
The problem is that it was unnecessary even before the program began, well before SpaceX became a real player in the space market. The rocket has about the same payload capacity, size, and cost as the rockets that the US Air Force was paying for under the EELV program, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. (ATK even pitched a variant of the Ares I rocket as a response to the EELV request for proposals, under the name ATK Liberty; the USAF didn't pick it). NASA claimed that the Ares I was safer for human flight than either of the EELV rockets, which is an incredibly dubious claim for a solid-fueled rocket. So it's another expensive distraction, and frankly if NASA (or, rather, Congress, it was Congress's call to make) had instead focused on getting an EELV human-rated they would already be done by now, and certainly would have gotten the same capability cheaper.
Then you have Ares V, an unmanned heavy-lift rocket, leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. For a Mars mission, this was the only really useful part of the Constellation program (aside from the Orion capsule, which is still kind of debatable). It was still in the very early stages of development, and the Augustine commission concluded that it was basically a fucked program. I've worked on some fucked programs in the defense industry, and I'm not ready to dismiss the commission out of hand -- which is to say I don't know one way or the other. What I do know is that it was replaced by the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket leveraging a bunch of parts from the Shuttle program, notably the main engines, solid boosters, and hydrogen fuel tank. Maybe it would have been easier to keep the Ares V, or maybe the program needed the kick in the ass that the Augustine commission provided it, or maybe it was in such an early stage that it doesn't matter either way.
SpaceX and Elon Musk certainly didn't have anything to do with it, though.
NNID: Hakkekage
I could definitely be proven wrong here, but NASA does seem to be alone in its desire to use solid rockets as a major propulsion system for manned flights. "Common sense" at Roskosmos has generally frowned on solid rockets for manned usage--then again, there are so few manned spacecraft in service right now, we don't have a lot of comparisons. The Long March 2F doesn't use them (in the half-dozen manned missions China has had).
Honestly, NASA also has the most experience with them, so maybe the stereotype that they have undue risk isn't really justified.
Too adorable.
For what it's worth, my dad was working on the SLS at Boeing before he retired and he says that program is pretty fucked, too.
Awesome, they were wait for me to get to Florida to launch.
They were soooo close on the last landing attempt. Man, if they can nail this one...
For anyone who's interested but doesn't know why being able to use the merlin to land a falcon intact is a Big Deal: a very significant part of the cost for modern rocketry is that the launch vehicles are, for the most part, destroyed by the launch. Yes, we recover parts of the rockets, but they usually land in the ocean and this does tremendously expensive damage to the engines.
Being able to land a rocket intact after it carries it's payload out of the atmosphere removes something like ~10,000 dollars per kilogram from the cost of every launch. It's huge.
Per kilogram, you missed there.
Is there some kind of breakdown chart or something for current rocketry costs vs what the projected costs are if we can start recovering rockets intact?
It's hard to say exactly; you'll still need some recheck/refurbishing process on the recovered launch vehicle and it's unclear how much that'll cost for Falcon 9. (For the Shuttle, it was more expensive than just using expendable Titan IV rockets, for example).
Well, ok Astronaut Candidate, but whatever!
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(I applied anyway...)
BF3 Battlelog | Twitter | World of Warships | World of Tanks | Wishlist
(And I'd have to hit the gym hard to pass the physical)
I don't see a height limit, is there a part that actually describes what the physical would be?
I think I meet all the criteria except the physical, but if I came in as a GS-11 (which I probably would) it'd be a pretty significant pay cut.
They do mention vague anthropometric requirements. I had seen an earlier posting with a limit I was over. Google to the rescue!
Height range for mission specialists is 4'11" to 6'4", which I *barely* make. (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_Astronaut_Requirements.html)
It also mentions that the physical requirements are similar to civilian flight requirements, so https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/ame/guide/standards/
So maybe if I get my blood pressure down (it's way high