NASA: "We're going back to the moon!"

M.A.R.S.!

Eyes full of sorrow, never wet
Hands full of money, all in debt
Sun coming out in the middle of June
Everyone's gone to the moon

You see a long time ago life had begun
Everyone went to the sun

Parks full of motors, painted green
Mouths full of chocolate-covered cream
Arms that can only lift a spoon

You see everyone's gone
Everybody's gone
Everyone's gone to the moon
Everyone's gone to the moon
What will happen now
Everyone's gone to the moon
There's nobody left
Everyone's gone to the moon

Take heart - maybe Bush will hire Edward Bass (of the Biosphere 2 debacle) to head the effort.

back to capsules for a while before we get better propulsion -> shuttlecraft.

we'll get off this planet, but it's gunna be the chinese who do it first.

but who cares; as long as we can get sustainable colonies elsewhere so when we finally nuke ourselves, we don't end our species.

As Discovery Magazine pointed out a coupla years ago, we can get to Mars _now_. It's just that the astronauts would probably go insane along the way.

And as long as Bush is dusting off old nuclear programs, he could resurrect the Orion project for this moon redux.

Huh? Does this mean Apollo will start growing more feminine man-tits???

-- Paunchy Stratego (fluxion2...), September 19th, 2005.

robble

"this is the moon blowing up, and this is me smiling...."

NASA is an acronym--na-sa

but I kind of agree

I don't know man. Chinatown NYC has trouble locating a building with a 4th wall...

We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon...

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.

http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html

Huh.

Wonder what that could be.

loch ness monster>??

golf ball

predator ship

wait wait wait, that's in the future, and also is the intellectual property of 20th century fox, so i think you've go that wrong buddy

something that they sent out to space 50 years ago, and lost?

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/theoryandpractice/monolith.jpg

http://www.marveldirectory.com/pictures/individuals/g_1d/galactus.gif

Laika!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Laika.jpg

Hitler?

the uss eldridge !?

Major Tom? That's only about 40 years...

i'm guessing this will the most boring discovery, like "ooh a type-s-z system never seen before it has 0.0000000000000000000000001% less hydrogen than other systems blah blah"

black hole? or did we already stop believing in those?

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1947/1

Is OMB wiping out planetary exploration?

As part of US-European cooperation in Mars exploration, NASA had planned to launch a European orbiter, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (above), on an Atlas rocket. Those plans are on hold, and may be scrapped. (credit: ESA)

by Lou Friedman
Monday, October 10, 2011

Comments (52)

In 1980, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the NASA Administrator made the decision to shut down planetary exploration in NASA in order to free up funds for the development of the Space Shuttle. This decision triggered Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and me to start the Planetary Society. The administration leaders told us, face-to-face, that the planets could wait because soon the cost of access to space would be so cheap that we could fly any missions about which we could dream.

We fought back, and they didn’t shut down planetary exploration. However, they did cut it deeply, resulting in a dark decade with no launches to and no data coming back from from other worlds.

We’re in a similar situation today. Behind closed doors, the administration is deciding on NASA budget cuts that may not be in the best interest of either the agency or the American people. Having caved in to Congressional special interests on the Space Launch System (SLS), the administration is now prepared to sacrifice science and exploration programs in order to prematurely start its development, with requirements that will neither be met nor needed for more than a decade.

Imagine a NASA that for ten years (say, 2015 to 2025) ceases to explore the solar system and stops looking deep into the universe. Already, the administration has said that flagship missions to explore the outer planets will cease. Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini will be followed by nothing. Already, the administration has deeply cut the Mars program, reducing American plans to support a 2016 European mission and taking away funds that were to be used for a 2018 follow-on to Mars Science Laboratory, leading to Mars sample return.

Now, news reports and reliable sources are saying that the administration (in the form of OMB) may refuse to allow NASA to proceed with any joint Mars exploration plan with Europe. This decision would destroy the whole NASA/ESA Mars collaboration that has been built in the past several years. The collaborative plan was to have the US provide an Atlas launch of a European Trace Gas Orbiter mission (with several US instruments) in 2016, and then NASA and ESA would jointly develop a sophisticated astrobiology and sample cache rover mission in 2018. OMB seems to be cutting out the American role in the 2016 mission and refusing to let NASA commit to the 2018 collaboration. (ESA has sent a letter to NASA saying that ESA has committed about $1 billion to the joint NASA-ESA mission, but that financial commitment depends on the US formally committing to its role in the mission. We hear that OMB has refused, thus far, to let NASA respond positively).

The administration has also punted the James Webb Space Telescope. The current plan states that they will support JWST, but they do not specify either a budget or where the money will come from. Are they going to leave that to Congressional special interests too?

We are very much in danger of another dark decade with NASA funding going to new launchers that will have nothing much to launch and no results to show the American people. Sure, tough choices must be made given the financial state of the country, but, as I see it, if the choice is between continuing space exploration with the space telescope and with the search for life and habitability on Mars, or building a rocket to nowhere, it’s not a hard decision.

To be clear: I am very much for both human space exploration and development of a deep space rocket (heavy lift or otherwise) to enable it. I am for it—but not at the expense of cutting out science and exploration. The rocket development, by NASA’s own (surely optimistic) schedule, will not lead to a mission until 2021. Can’t we postpone the rocket new start and then build it with a shorter development schedule (and hence lower cost)? It’s not as if we don’t have rockets or access to space: we have Atlas, Delta, Falcon, and, of course, Soyuz. We have even more rockets around the world for cargo and payloads. Our astronauts and cargo can get to the International Space Station for the rest of its life without the Space Launch System.

This is not some humans-vs.-robots argument. I am among the staunchest supporters for human explorers to go beyond the Moon and on to Mars as soon as possible. But for that to happen, NASA needs to do more than build a rocket over the next decade. Stopping robotic space exploration decreases the chances for human space exploration. If NASA’s Mars program is really devastated, as it now is on paper in OMB’s offices, then public support and interest in NASA doing space exploration in general will wither. It truly will become another federal jobs program.

Desperate times bring desperate reactions, and the ill-advised in-fighting going on among some—fortunately a small number—in the science community over Webb vs. Mars vs. astrophysics vs. solar physics vs. Earth science proves we are in desperate times. Rep. Frank Wolf, the chair of House Appropriations Committee subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, stoked the in-fighting fires by sending a letter to OMB Director Jacob Lew last month, asking the administration to tell the Congress how they recommend cutting the budget to pay for the increased costs of the James Webb Space Telescope. In tough budget times, such questions are not unfair; however, in this case, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering is being kept secret. The administration should respond directly to Rep. Wolf’s question by recommending delays in the Space Launch System (as President Obama originally proposed) until the fiscal conditions permitted a sustainable and cost-effective program. The money from the delay would pay for JWST, restore the Mars exploration program, including allowing the American role in 2016/2018 to proceed, and pay for a host of other science and technology initiatives.

If the administration will not make that recommendation, then Congress should, as I said last month, vote no on the Space Launch System

Just watched low-budget sf/horror film 'Apollo 18': really lovely recreation of Apollo technology, etc--porn for space race nerds

You might like Stephen Baxter's alt.history novel Voyage about the first manned Mars landing in 1986 using Apollo-era technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_(Stephen_Baxter_novel)

I DID like that!

The Huell Howser of the astronaut corps is very cheerful when he takes you on a tour of the ISS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_832bo27jo

I'm actually blown away by just how big this thing is now. When the tour ends inside the shuttle, I actually kinda miss it...

Dear Vanity Fair, please hire me to write about science and NASAy subjects because if this is publishable I 100% guarantee that I can write something better: Emo NASA Is Taking Its Feelings Out on the Moon

ISS appears to be full of bales of cocaine.

Noises and sounds of the ISS space station

I just listened to space toilets IN SPACE!

• server room
• coffee machine
• underneath an aircon vent
• office kitchen cupboard
• more server room
• office ping pong table
• someone finally gets around to washing those coffee mugs
• need to call IT and get them to fix the fan on my computer
• restroom ambience
• in the stationary cupboard
• fire escape door won't open properly because people keep going through outside to smoke
• office cleaners' hoover
• roadworks outside the street block out the sound of hitting the stapler to make it work

that guy's blog is amazing

I put this on the Cassini thread, maybe it's better here.

Not sure where else to put this, but here's a 25-minute tour of the international space station hosted by astronaut Sunita Williams.

http://kottke.org/13/01/a-tour-of-the-international-space-station

NASA: "We're not going back to the moon!"

Here's where I rep for Kerbal Space Program, a neat little game/physics sandbox where you construct various rocketry and spaceplanes in an attempt to make orbit, translunar, or intrasolar travel, before failing spectacularly and having your little green astronaut dudes bail out right before everything blows up.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

"NASA human spaceflight is the Terry Schiavo of the US government, its been dead a long time, they just need to pull the plug..."

i didn't know about this! http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/FEATURE-FirstPhoto.html

https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2912016/Kepler-186f_20x30.0.jpg

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2912018/HD_40307g_20x30.0.jpg

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2912020/Kepler_16b_20x_30.0.jpg

Beautiful.

(Those JPEGs are hueg, BTW)

Voyager 1 has already departed the solar system. For the past five years it’s been sailing between our star and another, and every day it still calls home. One day it will stop calling. For years the team has been slowly turning off instruments on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in order to preserve the most important feature — the communication link. Suzy Dodd thinks the spacecraft have several years left. There’s no way to know for sure what Voyager’s final call will be. “You don’t exactly know when you get to say goodbye.” she tells me. “So every day you should say goodbye.”

https://longreads.com/2018/03/15/welcome-to-the-center-of-the-universe

Was recently reading a biography of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and there was this surprising to me part of her life in the mid-'60s when she was in the US hanging out with astronauts from the Gemini program in order to write profiles of them. She was fascinated by space travel and apparently intrigued by the astronauts, and became especially close with Pete Conrad. This work led to a book published in English as If the Sun Dies (1966). Wondered if anyone here has read it.

After the first moon landing she wrote another book about that, apparently published only in Italian in 1970.

I have an Italian copy of If the Sun Dies and enjoyed what I was able to read of it

Wow, that's cool - I gotta look for this

Think you can still get an ebook like I did

It mentions The First Law of Robotics on the first page so there’s that

So I found a copy of If the Sun Dies and this thing is amazing. I've never read such revealing character studies of the astronauts. Plus a ton of fascinating speculation, both practical and philosophical, about the implications of space travel and technological progress. And on top of that, the endlessly interesting perceptions of mid-'60s America through the eyes of a youngish Italian woman. Am only halfway through the 400-page hardcover and can wholeheartedly recommend.

I so want that book

Coincidentally, I've been reading former NASA deputy admin Lori Garver's book Escaping Gravity for the past couple of days and it's not that I *want* Artemis to fail, but it should never have gotten this far. SLS = Senate Launch System.

Scrubbed. I find the entire idea of manned space missions absurd but SLS is a special kind of terrible.

e.g., the annual budget for R01s is $2.2 billion. The cost _per launch_ of the SLS is $2.2 billion.

NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/nasa-finally-admits-what-everyone-already-knows-sls-is-unaffordable/

One of the commenters:

As a very junior software engineer for a potential second-tier subcontractor, I was in the back of the room at the first preproposal meeting for the Shuttle. The NASA executive giving the briefing stated that all bids should be on a "Design for Success" basis, that is, your cost estimate should assume that every component you interface to will operate according to spec. Grumbles of discontent from the hardened aerospace systems engineers in the room was met by "Do you want the business or not?" from the NASA guy. It was all shenanigans from their forward.

Well, I guess I now know why I didn't get a second interview (everything was frozen). sigh - back to the coding saltmines.

Yeah saw that news the other day. Fucking ridiculous.

NASA: "We're not coming back from low Earth orbit!"

(in short, Boeing's spacecraft is doing about as well as their airliners)

NASA builds $450 million lunar rover/driller and then cancels it because it has no money to get it there
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02361-1

NASA OIG report is damming
https://nasawatch.com/artemis/nasa-oig-boeing-is-having-big-problems-with-sls-block-1b/

NASA OIG: “Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards. We project SLS Block 1B costs will reach approximately $5.7 billion before the system is scheduled to launch in 2028. This is $700 million more than NASA’s 2023 Agency Baseline Commitment, which established a cost and schedule baseline at nearly $5 billion. EUS development accounts for more than half of this cost, which we estimate will increase from an initial cost of $962 million in 2017 to nearly $2.8 billion through 2028. Boeing’s delivery of the EUS to NASA has also been delayed from February 2021 to April 2027, and when combined with other factors, suggests the September 2028 Artemis IV launch date could be delayed as well. Factors contributing to these cost increases and schedule delays include redirection of EUS funds to the core stage during Artemis I production, changing Artemis mission assignments, maintaining an extended workforce 7 years more than planned, manufacturing issues, and supply chain challenges.”

what if they boeing starliner capsule returns to earth... but it's not actually empty

https://nasawatch.com/procurement/nas-report-cites-significant-issues-affecting-nasas-future-viability/

Core Finding 1: NASA’s ability to pursue high-risk, long-lead science and technology challenges and opportunities in aeronautics, space science, Earth science, and space operations and exploration has arguably been the agency’s greatest value to the nation. Pursuit of such potentially transformative opportunities requires constancy of purpose, consistent long-term funding commensurate with the tasks it has been asked to undertake, a technically skilled workforce able to devote sustained effort to address challenging problems, and leading-edge equipment and supporting infrastructure that enable work at the cutting edge of science and engineering.

Core Finding 2: NASA faces internal and external pressures to prioritize short-term measures without adequate consideration of longer-term needs and implications. This produces adverse impacts on contracting, budgeting, funding, infrastructure, R&D, and execution of NASA’s mission portfolio. If left unchecked, these pressures are likely to result in a NASA that is incapable of satisfying national objectives in the longer term.

Core Finding 3: NASA’s budget is often incompatible with the scope, complexity, and difficulty of its mission work. The long-term impacts of this mismatch include erosion of capabilities in workforce, critical infrastructure, and advanced technology development. The current relative allocations of funding to mission work as compared with that allocated to institutional support has degraded NASA’s capabilities to the point where agency sustainability is in question.

Core Finding 4: NASA’s shift to milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts for first-of-a- kind, low-technology-readiness-level mission work can, if misused, erode the agency’s in-house capabilities, degrade the agency’s ability to provide creative and experienced insight and oversight of programs, and put the agency and the United States at increased risk of program failure.

Core Finding 5: Mission effectiveness across NASA is compromised by slow and cumbersome business operations that have been a consequence of legitimate efforts to increase efficiency and better coordinate complex tasks.

Core Finding 6: Over the past decade, significant responsibilities and authorities for major programs previously delegated to the NASA center level have been shifting to the mission directorates. This may have potentially compromised checks and balances for a clear and independent technical oversight. While the optimum allocation of checks and balances can depend on the needs of a particular organization and mission, incorrectly establishing this balance can have extreme impacts.

Core Finding 7: Although NASA has successfully carried out many extraordinarily challenging missions over its lifetime, the agency has had a continuing failing in conveying to external stakeholders accurate cost, schedule, and technology readiness estimates, as well as estimated levels of budgetary reserves needed for complex major development projects. The profound negative consequences of this are felt far beyond the specific projects producing the delays and unanticipated funding demands.

pinboard guy is a bit of a weirdo, but i don't think he's wrong: https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

You could reword those core findings to refer to a lot of organizations that do R&D and have long-running goals. Kind of depressing that producing product and hitting milestones has eroded long-term thinking

this thing could land in your yard! Like TONITE

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/09/part-of-soviet-era-spacecraft-to-crash-to-earth-this-weekend

I remember reading about the Venera probes when I was young - this was just as the Shuttle was about to take off, so the most recent space news was Skylab, Viking, Voyager, and Venera. They were really sturdy probes. From what I remember they had surprisingly weak parachutes, because the atmosphere of Venus is so dense that probes can almost swim down to the surface. I learn from the internet that they detached the parachute at an altitude of thirty miles and just floated down the rest of the way. The conditions on Venus are horrendous - there's no mobile phone reception at all - and only two or three probes have survived long enough after landing to transmit data.

The Soviets concentrated had a run of really bad luck. Veneras 11 and 12 landed but couldn't transmit photos because the lens caps got stuck. Veneras 9 and 10 could only transmit from one camera, because the other lens cap got stuck. Venera 14 dropped its lens cap just below the soil sensor, so the sensor didn't work. The probes were all designed to survive on the surface for just half an hour at a time, although some of them lasted longer.

It's a shame we haven't been back, although the surface of Venus has been mapped with radar. It'll be interesting to see if the probe survives intact enough to show in a museum, although it'll probably just plunge into the sea.

That could be the plot of a sci-fi comedy. Imagine if the Soviets had sent a cosmonaut up in the probe in the 1970s, frozen in suspended animation, and he comes down to Earth in 2025 and has hilarious misadventures whereby he asks people in the United States about universal healthcare, state-funded housing, and a decent standard of state-supplied education! It would be... hilarious.

As in Good-bye Lenin, which I wanted to watch recently but it doesn't seem to be available on any streaming platform in the UK.

I remember seeing that grainy photo from the surface... it wasn't much but it was cool to see, probably some book from the school library

there's been talk of sending a probe to Venus that would act like a dirigible or balloon, floating high up in the atmosphere rather than on the crushing surface.. it's even speculated that there could be microbes living up in the clouds

NASA being cagey about the 'illness' on the ISS so we have to assume it's some kind of lovecraftian space madness, an unspeakable cosmic horror... I hope to god they don't bring it back down to earth whatever it is, or we're all doomed

...or maybe it's an STD

space rabies

chrono-synclastic infundibulum type flu

space measles

they just never did any research into the long term effects of space-wanking