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New Manned Mission To the Moon in 2015
- Thread starter Mr. Anderson
- Start date
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The US landed people on the moon twice in 1969, twice in 1971, and twice in 1972 using no more technology than is contained in today's basic calculator. Here we are 33 years after the last person stepped foot on the moon and we are saying that we can't get back there for another 10 years?
Look at the success rate of the Apollo missions. Of the seven missions that were due to land on the Moon, six were successful and the seventh, the famed Apollo 13, suffered no loss of life. That is an 86% success rate. Now look at the 25 unmanned missions to Mars since 1972. Only 7 have been successful and each has been attempted with increasing amounts of technology.
All in all, it was very convenient for Apollo 11 to land on the Moon with only 5 months to spare to fulfill JFK's promise to land on the Moon before the decade was out.
Look at the success rate of the Apollo missions. Of the seven missions that were due to land on the Moon, six were successful and the seventh, the famed Apollo 13, suffered no loss of life. That is an 86% success rate. Now look at the 25 unmanned missions to Mars since 1972. Only 7 have been successful and each has been attempted with increasing amounts of technology.
All in all, it was very convenient for Apollo 11 to land on the Moon with only 5 months to spare to fulfill JFK's promise to land on the Moon before the decade was out.
jayscheuerle
macrumors 68020
topgunn said:
Just because the current generation in charge at NASA has better technology doesn't make them smarter. Quite often, we place limits upon ourselves based upon what we know what we can do with technology, thereby technology allows us to be dumber. We EXPECT it to do the work for us.
I love hearing about technologies that have been lost to the past, where there are no longer any practitioners or the art is gone. We still don't KNOW how the pyramids were built and we still can't create a violin that sounds as good as those that Stradivarius made. It's an honor to be humbled by the past... as well as a motivational tool!
jayscheuerle said:
The other thing is there is no Cold War - so we're not *racing* to get to the moon and NASA isn't the same as it was in the 60s. I don't think its a matter of not being as smart as the guys in the 60s, its a matter of bloating and bureaucracy....
Besides, it doesn't have the appeal that it once did, getting to the Moon. I'm all in favor for it, but it just needs to be done right.
Thanatoast has a good point - set up a shuttle service to the moon. One of the reason that the shuttles are in such need of repair is the lift off and re entry. If its just going back and forth to the Moon and Earth, there will be a lot less structural wear and tear. Also, you could set it up as a conveyor system, always have a shuttle in motion and just used a different one to temporarily dock from Earth or the Moon. This way the Moon/Earth shuttle is constantly using the gravity assist from orbiting the two planets to keep its speed. All you need to do is have the Earth rendezvous ship to transfer new oxygen and some smaller amount of fuel for orbit/speed adjustments - along with crews and supplies.
You could end up having a daily shuttle or even hourly shuttle, with a whole fleet of them coming and going at the same time.
D
It's sad how today we do have the technology and know-how to become a spacefaring race, but we are so focused on our petty problems on our tiny planet.
I say, fire up the old skool spacecraft and let's get on with it now!topgunn said:
Anyone remember the episode of Futurama when Fry went to the moon? One of the series' funniest, for sure...
FoxyKaye said:
"That's not an astronaut, that's a TV comedian. And he just used space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife."
FoxyKaye said:
The technology that got us there in 1969 to 1971 is no longer in production. This is the 21st Century. Today as mentioned by Mr. Anderson we can develop re-usable spacecraft. That in itself will save money. According to the article the CEV is currently in development. It should be capable of going to the Moon.
I agree, we dont need another disaster. Just use unmanned rockets for the big payloads and lets get tSpace involved in getting people to orbit, I love the SpaceshipOne concept that could lauch at any airport. Then we can throw away billions in Nasa fashion at Boeing/Lockheed so we can get all that paper.........plus a CEV.....billions more and perhaps a decent lander with payload capability.wdlove said:
Personally i think we should explore our oceans more thouroughly, we know more about the inside of the sun than we do our own planet
I'd prefer Burt Rutan, or another of the multi-billionaire space investors. The highly-subsidized and incredibly expensive Boeing and Lockheed have lost my trust. Isn't Lockheed building the F-22? Don't they charge tens of millions of dollars per plane!? And that's just a freakin' plane, much less a moon lander. I don't want them anywhere near the new space vehicles.wdlove said:
I don't see the problem here. Strap a booster onto it and let it fly.jayscheuerle said:
wdlove said:
What?!?! The CEV is for low earth orbit and a temporary replacement for the shuttle as far as I'm concerned.
Good article here
We need something that will get us to a higher orbit (not simple) and provide economical travel to space. It might require two space stations, one at low earth orbit and another Space Port at a higher orbit, that has a different vehicle shuttling people and supplies between them.
According to the article, the CEV won't be human rated until 2014 - so getting the moon by 2015 is really ambitious.....
D
WinterMute said:
Bugger? Gee I can think of better things to venusian princesses. Buggery may come later.
"Captain, There is a message coming from engineering"
"What is it Mr Data."
"It appears to be a form a poetry sir, called a Limerick.
There once was a lady from Venus.
Whose body was shaped like a ..."
[interrupting]"Thank you Mr Data, that is quite enough."
wdlove said:
Don't forget ESA they have massive resources and if our ministers carry on funding it the way we have they could be doing some great things. Look at Galileo and how accurate it is, and the time taken to build the damn things.. Very quick! I think India or China will be up there sooner though, a LOT sooner.
jayscheuerle
macrumors 68020
Raven VII said:
Now THAT's pretty warped..
A "spacefaring race"? What does that mean? In terms of proven technology, we have the know-how to go to the moon and that's it. How far do you want to go? Barring severe changes in known physics, we're pretty much limited to our own solar system, so unless your faith in technology is akin to a religion, our space traveling reality is doomed to be local.
Our tiny planet's problems are PETTY? There the only ones that even MATTER! This is the one place in the universe we KNOW we can live on and we're trashing it like a frat-party bathroom. Many would say we need to REFOCUS on our planet's problems instead of dumping billions of dollars into a red-planet wiener show. But hey, perhaps I'm being cynical and those billions of dollars will bring us some real-world benefits... perhaps a 21st century version of velcro?
NASA could always tell Dubya that there are weapons of mass destruction on the moon. That would get us there in no time. And then we would never leave. Fox News would provide round the clock coverage.
jayscheuerle said:
Look at this, spending trillions on that Iraq war. Heck, wars in general. And let's narrow that down... countries. Bands. Territories. We're practically barbarians, just on a larger scale. You don't call that petty? We have the potential to ignore all that stupid things and focus on the good of the planet, the good of the species, and space travel. We know how to travel through space. Isn't that what spacefaring is? We could have men on Mars a long time ago if we aren't so dependent on egos to get things done? Oh that guy's doing better than me! INNOVATE INNOVATE CRUSH HIM... Crushed? Good, let's sit down and relax.
That's what I'm talking about. It's petty.
Countries on the moon will be divvied out in exact proportion to the number of guns each occupier has on the surface.broken_keyboard said:
Thanatoast said:Countries on the moon will be divvied out in exact proportion to the number of guns each occupier has on the surface.
ha - but you forgot, they'll all be "Lasers"......
I'm thinking that its going to be a while before anyone cuts up the moon. There is that very rich silly person who is selling land on the moon for cheap, but I don't think that will stand up in court once someone actually makes it there and starts mining/moon farming for water and moon diamonds....
D
broken_keyboard said:
That is a very interesting concept to think about. At least on earth, possession is 9/10's of the law. The United States was there first and we still have the base stations where the Eagle landed with the America Flag in place. So we have five of those areas on the Moon, would need to negotiate the radius around the lander that we own. Don't really think this will be a problem in our life time. Would envision a joint mission wit other countries as with have with the International Space Station. When it comes to mining on the moon it also could be private industry.
jayscheuerle
macrumors 68020
Raven VII said:
Unfortunately, we really could not have gone to Mars in the past and we're not likely to get there anytime soon. Our shots to the Moon offer very little in terms of the know-how. We'll need to get to Mars and back while surviving the whole time. They're like biking to the corner grocery store versus traveling to the North Pole. Saying "we know how to travel through space" because we've been to the moon is like saying you know how to cook because you've made toast before.
The moon is 230,000 miles away. My dad's Honda did that. Mars is an average of 48 million miles away and that's in a straight line, which isn't how you get to a place you want to visit in space. The guys who went to the Moon could have survived off a box of Snickers. A multi-year round trip to Mars is a different story which has more in common with life on a nuclear submarine than it does with the the Moon trips that only provided us with maybe 5% of the knowledge we'll need to survive a trip to Mars and back. I doubt we'll be there by 2030. There's just too many other important things to invest our time and money on as a country and a species (and I'm not talking about war).
It's easy for our head buffoon to say "We're going to Mars" than it is to make it happen, but it's a dreamy statement that the people and the press can latch onto to lose focus on the fact that this is the guy that STARTED this petty war of which you speak.
jayscheuerle said:
If we set it up correctly, its not as big a problem as you say. It does require a very large infrastructure, which doesn't exist, and that's what we need. An Apollo-esque trip to Mars would be a waste. Set up the high earth orbit space port, regular shuttles to the Moon and a permanent base there. That will make it a lot easier to get to Mars. Besides, build the Mars ship in space (that will take a lot of learn and know-how) and it can be significantly larger than anything we could launch from the planet.
Also, get raw materials from NEOs - everything you need is up there, its just get a foothold and the right approach and we can do it. But this won't happen any time soon and even longer if we continue to shoot too high and not make baby steps.
D
I think another trip to the moon sounds very cool. To me space travel (even into low orbit) is a very romantic notion, and one that can/could be beneficial to the human race.
However i can not support any attempt to do so because of the large amounts of $$$ that will have to be thrown at the situation. The way things are going in the US i cant believe that teachers or the educational system are actually still being paid/funded. I guess that will stop with the next country that we decide to invade. If not sending another person to space will help get our education system back on track, and actually producing good results, then i say that NASA should have a yard sale, along with all branches of our military.
However i can not support any attempt to do so because of the large amounts of $$$ that will have to be thrown at the situation. The way things are going in the US i cant believe that teachers or the educational system are actually still being paid/funded. I guess that will stop with the next country that we decide to invade. If not sending another person to space will help get our education system back on track, and actually producing good results, then i say that NASA should have a yard sale, along with all branches of our military.