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First Ohio; Next 'The Moon'?
While markets are digesting the probabilities of a dramatic rise in taxes and cut in spending as we approach the fiscal cliff, it appears that behind-the-scenes there has been a secret plan that we can only imagine is designed to rocket-boost us over the cliff - new manned missions to the moon. As Space.com reports, NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say. They go on to comment that "The space agency has apparently been thinking about setting up a manned outpost beyond the moon's far side, both to establish a human presence in deep space and to build momentum toward a planned visit to an asteroid in 2025. The new plans have probably already been cleared with the Obama Administration but have been kept under wraps in case Republican candidate Mitt Romney won Tuesday night's (Nov. 6) presidential election." While the claims are that this will not increase the budget, we suspect out-of-this-world manned outposts cost a little more than the $17.7bn budgeted for NASA in 2013... someone is clearly eating space-cakes. Ironic really given our earlier post...
Via Space.com,
NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say.
The space agency has apparently been thinking about setting up a manned outpost beyond the moon's far side, both to establish a human presence in deep space and to build momentum toward a planned visit to an asteroid in 2025.
The new plans have probably already been cleared with the Obama Administration but have been kept under wraps in case Republican candidate Mitt Romney won Tuesday night's (Nov. 6) presidential election, said space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University.
"NASA has been evolving its thinking, and its latest charts have inserted a new element of cislunar/lunar gateway/Earth-moon L2 sort of stuff into the plan," Logsdon told SPACE.com. (The Earth-moon L2 is a so-called libration point where the two bodies' gravitational pulls roughly balance out, allowing spacecraft to essentially park there.)
"They've been holding off announcing that until after the election," Logsdon added, noting that Romney had pledged to reassess and possibly revise NASA's missions and direction.
A new vision of human space exploration
In 2010, President Obama directed NASA to work toward sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. To reach such deep-space destinations, the agency is developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and a crew capsule named Orion.
But astronauts likely won't head straight to a space rock when SLS and Orion are ready to fly together in 2021. In the last year, word has begun leaking out that NASA wants to explore Earth-moon L2, a point in space that lies beyond the moon's far side, as a precursor.
Rumors currently point toward parking a spacecraft at the Earth-moon L2 gateway, so NASA (and perhaps international partners) can learn more about supporting humans in deep space. Astronauts stationed there could also aid in lunar exploration — by teleoperating rovers on the moon's surface, for example.
NASA officials think they can pull off such manned missions without busting their budget, which stands at $17.7 billion in the proposed 2013 federal budget.
"They're not talking about plans that imply significant budget increases," Logsdon said. "It gives a more focused use for SLS and Orion before an asteroid mission."
Moon missions coming soon?
Exploration of Earth-moon L2 could get started as early as 2021 with the first manned flight of SLS and Orion, which NASA calls Exploration Mission 2. (Exploration Mission 1 is the initial, unmanned test launch of SLS, slated for late 2017.)
"I'm not privy to the specifics of this, but one could conceive of the second SLS mission being the start of activity in cislunar space, rather than just being a lunar orbit mission," Logsdon said.
We may know soon enough. NASA higher-ups have dropped hints recently that a big announcement may indeed be in the offing before too much longer.
"We just recently delivered a comprehensive report to Congress outlining our destinations which makes clear that SLS will go way beyond low-Earth orbit to explore the expansive space around the Earth-moon system, near-Earth asteroids, the moon, and ultimately, Mars," NASA deputy chief Lori Garver said at a conference in September.
"Let me say that again: We're going back to the moon, attempting a first-ever mission to send humans to an asteroid and actively developing a plan to take Americans to Mars," Garver added.
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Cut spending? When has a democrat ever cut spending? The writer must be one of those cockeyed optimists or just another fool.
http://www.ironsky.net/
It's all coming true ! Amazing !
The film opens with an American manned landing mission returning, in 2018, to the Moon. The lander carries two astronauts, one of them a black male model, James Washington, specifically chosen to aid the President of the United States in her re-election (various "Black to the Moon" word-play posters are seen in the film, extolling the new Moon landing).
they are already at the south pole, no need to go to the moon to find them.
http://thinkingaboot.blogspot.ca/2011/09/no-way-to-sugarcoat-nazis-emerg...
The Galactic Federation has banned us from the Moon base activities. Obama shot a nuke into a Moon crater just months into his Presidency and their pissed. Were not doing any Moon walkng without an all out war.
Better a few more bilion to NASA than a few hundred billion to our bankster friends.
At least we get to watch something fun rather then reading about some yahoo purchasing his own island with bank bonus funds.
The current energy and resource constraints will keep this project from working in any of several ways. We will be lucky to still be flying planes in 15 years if not sooner.
At Last... We get to meet the Klingons !
With the TSA already exploring Uranus, NASA plays catch-up with plans to probe the backside of the Moon.
This is great news, stuff like that inspires toooons of young people to become scientists...and that stimulates the economy. The ROI for the moon landings for example was pretty good.
You guys wanted him to piss away money on NASA, here you go... There's your pork.
ROI in the long run is actually pretty good...
The surface of a planet is not the correct place for an expanding technological civilization. -- R. A. Wilson
Starting from scratch sux...
Maybe they should just borrow the LEM from the Smithsonian....
http://zapp5.staticworld.net/images/article/2012/08/explosion-11396197.jpg
Total waste of money. Do it all with robots. When we develop decent propulsion systems send in the men to take the glory.
"this will not increase the budget"
-Krugman laughs uncontrollably-
I'll believe it when I see it. But if they are serious, and really they can't be too serious without an increase in the budget, then it would be a potential boon to mankind.
People don't realize that the Space Program literally created trillions of dollars of business from overcoming obstacles confronted in accomplishing the missions.
Microwaves, tang, computers that weren't the size of a mcdonalds. So yes, no Nasa, you probably aren't even rocking an Apple II in your house. No iphone. Steve Jobs might as well have been Blow Jobs. The off the shelf tech wouldn't of existed. That's how they made Apple, by putting together off the shelf parts themselves. An opportunity only made because of the space program.
People have to get the whole every dollar spent is equal fallacy out of their asinine minds. It does matter what money is spent on. Is it spent to bail out fraud? Or is it spent for wealth creation? Well the Space Program is a wealth creator. There is always 'money' for that.
It won't change the fact that the fraud of derivatives, of Wall Street without Glass-Steagall, and subsequently your deposits are the collateral for those derivatives, and the lack of a focus overall in the physical economy in lieu of the paper casino service economy. It won't neuter these facts. But such a plan IS necessary. The money isn't wasted. It IS a wealth creator.
Though I still don't believe they are serious with it. They really need to increase the budget on it. Then I need to see people being hired, prototypes being shown, and test flights flown.
Besides, we will have experience hyperinflation with austerity (that's two at the same time) along with a high potential for thermonuclear war by 2021. Hell some of it could happen still in 2012.
Glass-Steagall