Space Exploration

Are NASA's future missions and budget justified?

  • It's worth the time and expenditures

    Votes: 224 66.1%

  • Complete waste of money

    Votes: 41 12.1%

  • We need to explore, but not at the current cost

    Votes: 74 21.8%
  • Total voters
    339
#6,062
#6,062
The vast majority of this was expected. Make "Gateway" a commercial endeavor. The Mars sample return wasn't expected till the 2030's by then Elon & SpaceX hopes to have humans on the way there.




 
#6,064
#6,064
LouderVol said:
I think we still need the small base somewhere. I totally get jettisoning SLS, eff them.
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I heard a podcast a month or so ago and the guest was I think a former NASA employee they were comparing SpaceX & NASA. He talked about there are NASA employees closing in on retirement and the only project they have ever worked on the last 20 years is SLS and it's only flew once. Compare that to some SpaceX employees who in the last 20 years started with Falcon 9 and have now moved to Starship.
 
#6,065
#6,065
CagleMtnVol said:
I heard a podcast a month or so ago and the guest was I think a former NASA employee they were comparing SpaceX & NASA. He talked about there are NASA employees closing in on retirement and the only project they have ever worked on the last 20 years is SLS and it's only flew once. Compare that to some SpaceX employees who in the last 20 years started with Falcon 9 and have now moved to Starship.
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Meanwhile, while SLS has only launched that one time, SpaceX is often launching 3 Falcon 9‘s PER WEEK.
 
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#6,072
#6,072
LouderVol said:
is the idea of this one that the longer time cuts costs?

and this would be used for long term, or non perishable items? A couple months in space is a lot of radiation to protect a cargo load from.
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Constraint by propellant limits. The longer journey requires less changes in velocity and therefore less propellant. Which lets you send a larger mass is actual payload. It is a game of trade offs.
The direct ascent used by Apollo to reach the moon in three days requires a lot of delta v and a LOT of propellant
 
#6,073
#6,073
OrangeTsar said:
Constraint by propellant limits. The longer journey requires less changes in velocity and therefore less propellant. Which lets you send a larger mass is actual payload. It is a game of trade offs.
The direct ascent used by Apollo to reach the moon in three days requires a lot of delta v and a LOT of propellant
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I get it. I am more questioning the application. I don't think that would ever work for any type of manned flight.

unless we start offering the equivalent of those retirement cruises in space.
 
#6,075
#6,075
LouderVol said:
I get it. I am more questioning the application. I don't think that would ever work for any type of manned flight.

unless we start offering the equivalent of those retirement cruises in space.
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Indeed. Humans (or meat bags as some space Fans call them) require large amounts of consumables like oxygen and water both of which are heavy. Unmanned probes like we are talking about now don’t need such things allowing the slow boat to China approach.
 
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