NASA plans to put man on Moon again in 2019

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=240260

The head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration says the United States plans to put humans on the moon again by 2019.

At the same time, he said he is concerned by what he described as a 'significant' gap in U.S. human space flight following the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle program in 2010.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said his agency has budgeted for plans to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon 50 years after the first successful lunar landing in 1969.

'Our plan right now is people back on the moon in 2019,' said Michael Griffin.

Griffin acknowledged that the date is far in the future, but said his agency has many other commitments to complete first. Among these is winding up the space shuttle program by 2010 and having replacement vehicles ready in a timely manner.
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2019 is the soonest they can put a man in space and in the 60's we did it in 4-6 years they are lookin at 12
why so long? its suspicous and by that time almost anybody affiliated by Apollo space group will be dead
You have to wonder are we the nation who first stepped on the moon really going to wait 12 years ???

and leave them?

The PTB won't even take care of this planet, I don't trust any of us with another celestial body at this juncture.

We desperately need some off-site backup because it can always get worse.

Luna might be a bit too close, though.

I'm glad to see it, regardless. The regolith has tons of molecular hydrogen, and solar stations can be set to capture and microwave solar power to Earth with a higher efficiency than we can get down here.

Honestly, I trust scientists and the likely first wavers to treat the Moon very carefully. After all, to even get there is going to require brains, dedication and a strong interest in the science. These are not going to be Rapture Ready fundies or oil barons looking for the lunar dead dinosaurs.

The distance is too great.

The orbital period of a satellite increases as its mean distance from Earth grows. The space shuttle in a low altitude circular orbit, just above the atmosphere, completes one circuit in about 90 minutes. It orbits some 6700 km from the Earth's center, while the moon, at 380,000 km, completes one orbit in 27.3 days. Intermediate distances go with intermediate periods, and somewhere between those two extremes is a distance where the orbital period is 24 hours. It turns out to be at about 42,000 km or 26,000 miles, some 6.6 Earth radii.

As you can see, the moon is ten times further away than is geosynchronous orbit where solar power satellites have been proposed to be built.

By the time a microwave beam comes from the moon, it will have spread out too much to be able to be captured by a rectenna array on the Earth.

:rofl: thats right Bush did say that

first things first ...2019 I just was shocked at that date

This trip (actually, series of trips) will put a permanent base on the moon. I imagine portions of it will be deployed by unmanned vehicles first, so that when the humans get there all they have to do is plug things in, unload cargo, and voila, moonbase. A much more daunting plan than "just land, walk around, and take back off," which is what Apollo 11-17 were all about.

There's a lot more advance planning and preparations needed for this operation. Then the moonbase will be the waystation on the planned voyages to Mars.

Don't you understand, the proper response is to react to the frightening new ideas with mocking hoots and fearful, angry grunts.

:rofl:

I think this is great.

How about the next Democratic Presidential Candidate step up to the podium and say the following...


I say to YOU America...
NO more trips to the Moon or Mars or any other planet.
We will not spend a single dime on such nonsense.
WE WILL ELIMINATE THE WORDS CANCER AND AIDS FROM OUR VOCABULARY BEFORE WE SPEND ANOTHER DOLLAR ON SPACE EXPLORATION.
THIS IS "OUR MISSION".

JFK redux.

:woohoo:

There's a helluva lot more money in the Vatican than there is at NASA.

Gimme a break. Here's an idea- we spend half a trillion a year on the Military-Industrial Complex, NOT including the War in Iraq. (Another $400+ billion, to date) We spend $40 Billion a year to keep consenting adults from smoking a relatively harmless plant- NOT including the costs of our being the number one per capita incarcerator of non-violent offenders in the industrialized world.

NASA, science, and peaceful exploration of the Universe that -like it or not- we inhabit and better fucking learn about lest we go the way of the dinosaurs one day? They get a pittance. Beans.

Yet somehow the only way we're ever going to cure cancer and AIDS is to take the money from space exploration. Hey- we're barely spending jack shit on space as it is. If the logic is that we would somehow solve all our problems "down here" if we only weren't wasting our time "up there", why the fuck do we still have so many problems down here?

Even leaving aside the fact that peaceful exploration of -and expansion into- the universe is, in and of itself, a VERY worthwhile goal for humanity, seeing as money spent on science and exploration generally pays off IN SPADES years and decades down the road, I think we'd do better to look elsewhere in the budget with these spending either/or "ultimatums".

But am not surprised. :hi:

We don't have to make that kind of choice. We can fund universal health care, find cures for diseases that can be cured, give effective palliative care to those that can't, limit population growth and invest in science, get off this planet so we can clean it up, and generally become the species we have the potential to be.

We just have to stop fighting wars, stop contributing to that neo-feudalist system known as laissez-faire capitalism and realize that "#%^ off, Chump, I got Mine" is not effective world policy.

While eliminating cancer and AIDS from our society is a worthwhile and noble goal, so is space flight. Frankly it might be a more pressing priority than either of those two diseases. For humans are quickly outgrowing this planet, and we have absolutely got to find somewhere to go, the moon, Mars, Alpha Centauri, somewhere. Otherwise we're going to suffer a massive die-off and collapse of civilization. Why go through all of that if we can find the safety valve of colonizing other planets:shrug:

Besides, next to war, space flight provides the single greatest force expanding our new knowledge. Few people realize the immense benefits that resulted from the sixties space program, everything from new materials to electronics. Frankly, if it wasn't for the impetus provided by the space program, we probably wouldn't be sitting at our PCs right now chatting with each other.

One does not preclude the other, and techniques developed for one may aid the other.

n/t

:rofl: No he's not a man not sure what he is ???

It's not like we haven't sent chimps into space before ya' know! :patriot:

Good. NASA has my complete support and best wishes in all of this.

Then my brain locked up.

... to such space-farers, given the limits of current technology?

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

he Van Allen Radiation Belt is a torus of energetic charged particles (plasma) around Earth, held in place by Earth's magnetic field. The Van Allen belts are closely related to the polar aurora where particles strike the upper atmosphere and fluoresce.

The term Van Allen Belts refers specifically to the radiation belts surrounding Earth; however, similar radiation belts have been discovered around other planets. The Sun does not support long-term radiation belts. The Earth's atmosphere limits the belts' particles to regions above 200-1000 km,<3> while the belts do not extend past 7 Earth radii RE.<3> The belts are confined to an area which extends about 65°<3> from the celestial equator.

that we never went to the moon after all... and that its going to take us freakin 12 years when we are more savy technologically than the 60's to get to a place we had been before... is more evidence that its true...

Its another photo op just like McCains walk down the Baghdad streets
Photo ops and how would we know?

Those in the Apollo program will be dead by the time we go back there again if we ever can conquer the Van Allen Radiation Belt
Its almost like we are a prison planet when you take in account the radiation belts

but nasa has those things figured out already so lets go guys

on Christmas eve. Just a little dot, but it wasnt there the night before, and it wasn't seen the week after.

The radiation cooks you slowly.

If you stay in Low Earth Orbit then you are underneath the bottom of the Van Allen belts.

After we invade the moon, I want to see the photos of the
Brave Earthians pulling down the statue of Marvin the Martian.



I also want to hear Bush trying to pronounce "Illudium PU-36
Explosive Space Modulator", or even just plain old "Modulator".

Tesha

12 years? It only took us EIGHT the FIRST time we did it!

But then again, we used to have real presidents, not
immature, ignorant puppets.

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to
achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a
man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No
single space project in this period will be more impressive
to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration
of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to
accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the
appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate
liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being
developed, until certain which is superior.

President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

A man who could not only enunciate liquid
and solid fuel boosters but also understand
what they both meant.

:)

There is no way in hell we're going back to the moon. We have too many problems right here to deal with.

I have a somewhat different take on manned space exploration.

Let me first tell you that I started reading science fiction (SF, not sci-fi) in 1957 when I was seven years old, it was a little book called _The Wonderful Flight to The Mushroom Planet_ by Eleanor Cameron.

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

This book made such an impact on me that I have been a life long SF fan ever since. I have been reading and dreaming of manned space flight for most of my life. I'm a space enthusiast.

That being said, I think that manned space flight to the moon and beyond is a cynical and deliberate attempt by a profoundly anti-science administration to divert money away from true scientific research that is desperately needed to study the Earth from orbit to help us overcome the coming environmental catastrophe.

At the present level of technology and funding, robotic space missions return immensely more basic scientific knowledge per dollar spent than do manned space missions. In manned space missions, the great majority of the funding goes to simply keeping the men alive in an utterly hostile environment.

That's my point of view and I'm willing to defend it. I would welcome comments and/or criticism.

Personally, I think we should fund the science AND the manned exploration. The only other argument I would offer in rebuttal to what you've said is, the first photos of the Entire Earth taken by the Apollo Missions had a PROFOUND impact on humanity, and I think it can be argued that the perspective gained by the apollo astronauts and shared with the rest of the planet were instrumental in fostering the environmental awakening of the late 60s early 70s.

Moving out into the Universe WILL broaden our perspective. And force people out of two-dimensional, calcified modes of thinking. Having humans on the moon will wake people up. Shake people up. Make people think. Aside from the other good reasons to do it (I can think of many; the moon is a tremendous resource that could help solve environmental problems here on Earth) from where I sit, that is a MAJOR recommendation to go back. This is not a George Bush, partisan project. This is something that is long overdue.

The US is already beyond bankrupt. Our children and grandchildren are going to be paying for Bushies war for a hell of a long time.

We absolutely have to get the most bang for the buck.

The technology really hasn't developed that far past disintegrating totem poles, we desperately need some way to get the launching costs down below the thousand plus dollars a pound that is killing us now going to space.

I agree about the blue marble effect, it made a big impact back in the seventies. People are blase' now and cynicism is rampant.

Look at the returns we have gotten on the Hubble Space Telescope, the science done by Spirit and Opportunity on Mars, the Galileo spacecraft at Jupiter, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft at Saturn. The list goes on.

If we had waited for men to do these things, we would still be waiting.


http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00138

In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war – in both blood and money – has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number – the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East – now seems low.

One source of difficulty in getting an accurate picture of the direct cost of prosecuting the war is the way the government does its accounting. With “cash accounting,” income and expenses are recorded when payments are actually made – for example, what you pay off on your credit card today – not the amount outstanding. By contrast, with “accrual accounting,” income and expenses are recorded when the commitment is made. But, as Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, notes, “The budget of the United States uses cash accounting, and only the tiniest businesses in America are even allowed to use cash accounting. Why? Because it gives you a very distorted picture.”

The distortion is particularly acute in the case of the Iraq war. The cash costs of feeding, housing, transporting and equipping U.S. troops, paying for reconstruction costs, repairs and replacement parts and training Iraqi forces are just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Costs incurred, but not yet paid, dwarf what is being spent now – even when future anticipated outlays are converted back into 2006 dollars.

Our Debt to Veterans

A major contributor to this long-term cost is the medical care and disability benefits provided to veterans. More than one million U.S. troops have now served in Iraq. And once they leave, each is entitled to a long list of benefits for the remainder of his or her life. Veterans can apply for compensation for any disabling injury or disease (physical or mental) that occurred on active duty or any existing condition that was made worse by military service. Benefits are based on the extent of the disability, ranging from 10 percent to 100 percent. And, because some medical problems do not become apparent right away, claims are likely to be filed for years after the war is over.

More:

Thereby avoiding the launch costs you speak of.

As for the unmanned missions you speak of,that will still be the main focus,for the very reasons you cited.A manned mission to Mars,as much as I would love to see it (or better yet,do it myself),isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Lastly,the argument that the money is better spent elsewhere is a strawman.There is already plenty of money to pay for the veterans and everything else.Taking it from the space program doesn't mean the money will go to them (if that was guaranteed I'd be for ending the space program today).Hell,it's more likely to go to more bombs and weapons,not the people who need it.If they really cared about these people they would have helped them already.The money we spend on a space program isn't the reason for their lousy treatment.

Anything that gets assembled on Luna is going to have to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well anyway for the foreseeable future.

Believe me, there is no one who would like to see it happen more than me. But we have some possibly overwhelming challenges here on Earth. If the environment continues to deteriorate as it has in the last fifty years or so, we could well be looking at global environmental collapse.

The next administration is going to have to cooperate with the international community far more than the US has ever done before if we are to hold off the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

With peak oil either here or coming soon, energy supplies are likely to be our biggest challenge in the medium term. There needs to be a crash program on the level of the Manhattan Project and Apollo Program combined to wean this country off of petroleum and put us on the path to some sort of renewable, sustainable energy supply.

I'm getting ready to go out to dinner for the evening, I'll get back with more later.

It's been nice chatting with you about things of substance.

How are we ever going to get anywhere with thinking like that? ;)

Enjoy your dinner.

on the asteroid Eros.

I think that is the most powerful example of the human mind going along with the spacecraft.

The project NEAR spacecraft touching down on Eros.

It was never designed to land on any surface.

The NEAR team thought of idea while the spacecraft was on route to Eros.



The last image from NEAR which shows it working after touchdown.



http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/nearlanding_preview_010212.html



Spacecraft Lands on Asteroid
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 10:30 pm ET
12 February 2001

LAUREL, Md. -- Scientists are delighted with the high-quality, close-up images of Asteroid 433 Eros that NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft transmitted as it floated to a historic landing on the rocky surface nearly 200 million miles (322 million kilometers) from Earth on Monday, February 12.

"We're seeing things really well," said Joseph Veverka, NEAR's imaging team leader from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "The pictures are absolutely fantastic. This is a great experience to just sit here and accompany a spacecraft down to the surface."

"I'm happy to report the NEAR spacecraft has touched down on the surface of Eros. We're still getting some signals, so evidently it's still transmitting from the surface itself. This is the first time that any spacecraft has landed on a small body," said Farquhar.

Legalize- and tax- marijuana. Stop spending more than every other nation combined on "defense". Get our fucking heads on straight.

Then there'd be money to do lots of things.

But I don't think it's gonna happen.

the man on the moon or bring him back ? doesnt' say.
if so, let it be *. just sayin.

It took us that long before, and most of the expertise gained therein is long gone. Sure, we could do quick 'n' dirty again, as though we were tweaking the noses of imaginary Russkies, but if we want to go back to stay, and to make colonization viable or even profitable, a measure approach is desirable.

I have severe doubts, though, that we'll manage to do anything more than plant another flag. Earth's gravity well is just too deep, and coming economic/ecological crises will, I think, dilute or divert any efforts we make beyond low Earth orbit.

The US will never go back to the moon, unless our astronauts go on a joint Sino-American mission.

willing to wait longer than 12 years. It was a major feel ggod victory in the cold war days, but those days are long gone. There wasn't anything to do on the moon in 1969 and there isn't anything to do there now.

You know, we could have just stayed and we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

But we did waste some serious time between then & now.

Had we kept a functional space program, we'd have regular flights to the moon by now.

:patriot:

Can visit when he's not vacationing in Disneyland...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FbELD3aFrU

look at the equipment in the 1960's

In the 2020's, will the cry be "Go Up"?

It should be.

Mankind's future is outside the cradle in which it was born. Yes, we have problems here on Earth, but with the ability to live and work in Space and on the Moon many of those problems can be solved.

Take the Energy Crisis and Global Warming (they are linked, you know).

Orbital Powersats in Geo-synchronous obits could beam enough power back to Earth and greatly reduce or eliminate the need for the fossil fuels we now use that spew greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. Asteroids could be placed into low Earth orbit and mined; thereby eliminating the need to tear open the planet's crust and pollute the groundwater. Helium-3, needed for Fusion Reactors, can be found in the very dust on the surface Moon and thus brings a much more efficient and cleaner source of power within our grasp.

Anybody the least familiar with current technology and Science Fiction of the last 50 years understands that this is possible.

There is a straw-man argument that it's too expensive; "We should spend it here instead of the Moon."

Two points, first off, we don't spend it on the Moon (or in Space); every dollar is spent right here on Earth, making something or putting someone to work. Second, the money spent toward the development of Space is money spend on something constructive, not destructive.

Along time ago, our ancestors looked up at the sky and saw Gods. Mankind needs to look up again, and this time, through the eyes of science, see our future.

There is already way to much junk in LEO, mining asteroids there will make it like flying into machine gun fire, but much worse.

Maybe one of the Lagrangian points, but even those will lose material.

Here is a picture of pit in a space shuttle windshield.