You can also use aluminum and liquid oxygen processed from lunar regolith as rocket fuel.

Quote: Looks like natural gas isn't lucrative enough to justify continued public expenditures on manned space flight (U.S. no longer a space-faring nation).

For one thing, the US government is NOT halting expenditures on manned space flight. Contracting commercial providers for delivery services to ISS still counts as "public expenditures." Not to mention the R&D that would occur under the new budget proposal (heavy-lift, propellant depots, etc.) is all directly applicable to manned space flight. For another, I don't think that's a very good op-ed to cite. Not only is it biased, but there's lots of misleading and/or incorrect information in that one. For instance, US astronauts will not stop flying into orbit, as the op-ed implies. With this plan, they'll simply be going up on Russian rockets more often (they already do) instead of US rockets. The US government is paying the Russians for those Soyuz seats - more "public expenditures". In fact, that was the previous plan, too, which would have retired the shuttle by 2010 and not had its "replacement" come online until 2014 at the earliest. Another example is the following quote:

Quote: China, India, and Japan, who 40 years ago could only peer over NASA’s shoulder, now look up with excitement at their spaceships hurtling away from the Earth. Indians plan to be on the moon by 2016, and China has begun to plan moon missions. Russia announced it will land on Mars before 2020.

None of the programs mentioned there would be manned - they would be robotic landers. So far as I or any of my sources are aware, none of those nations have the technology to mount a manned lunar or Mars mission in any of those timeframes. The claims that "China will land men on the moon by 2020" are pure cold war-esque sensationalism - the Chinese themselves have stated that they're planning on building a space station, not sending men to the moon. India hasn't even got an indigenous crewed spacecraft yet. One is funded and in the works, last I heard, but no crewed moon landers. The Russian space program hasn't got the money to go to Mars as far as I know.

Then there is the claim that the Ares rocket is "successfully-tested," which is incorrect. The Ares I rocket would have consisted of a five-segment shuttle-heritage booster rocket as its first stage with a completely new upper stage. The Ares I-X test consisted of a four-segment shuttle booster (basically the same thing as the one currently in use on the shuttle, and different from the one that would have been in use on the final Ares I configuration) with a dummy upper stage. The actual upper-stage has never been fabricated and the engine, the J2-X, that would power it has never even been test-fired yet. Even the aerodynamics of the Ares I haven't been tested, since Ares I-X used a different nose cone shape and first stage, meaning that its trajectory was quite different from that of the Ares I. All in all that means that the one and only flight test of an "Ares I", Ares I-X was NOT representative of the actual rocket that would have flown. That means that the only "tested" component of any Ares I hardware would have been the five-segment first stage which was test fire on the ground last year.

Therefore, despite NASA management's attempts to claim the contrary, no Ares rocket has ever flown, since the Ares I-X test shared almost nothing in common with the actual rocket concept it was supposed to be proving. Ares I-X was basically a shuttle booster with a can stuck on top - a huge flying model rocket that happens to look very much like an Ares I. That's not enough to call Ares I "successfully-tested."

In any case, while I agree that NASA being "directionless" is a bad thing, saying that the US is "no longer a space-faring nation" is premature at best and downright incorrect at worst. There is also this which would remedy a lot of the problems presented in the op-ed.

edit: By the way, for anyone who's interested in following this stuff, nasaspaceflight.com is an amazing source. The site appears to have a lot of access to NASA internal documentation (memos, power-points, etc), so the material in the articles isn't just paraphrasing whatever the NASA public-affairs office puts out the way many other news sources do it. Also, the forums have some incredibly knowledgeable people on them - including, I believe, guys who actually work at or with NASA or other space-related agencies and companies.

[Edited by - Oberon_Command on March 4, 2010 12:36:41 AM]

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Rocket fuel. A moon base would use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen which becomes rocket fuel. Google it if you need more convincing.

Has anybody found any Krypton or Argon on the Moon 'cause the last time I checked burning Hydrogen and Oxygen in space is a damn waste? I guess you could bring a load with you but even then, another damn waste...... There is talk of Moon based laser propulsion....

Flow Diagram:
-in situ realization of solar power farm
-electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen or this which makes sense as Titanium Sponge is already an usual method for Hydrogen gas storage
-enzyme production facility
-bank of enzyme catalyzed fuel cells
-giant LED laser
-mission to Pluto yay <===== another moon with water lolz :P

o-o

[edit] methane on mars would make for great raw materials for enzymes [/edit]

Quote: Original post by Buttacup
Has anybody found any Krypton or Argon on the Moon 'cause the last time I checked burning Hydrogen and Oxygen in space is a damn waste? I guess you could bring a load with you but even then, another damn waste...... There is talk of Moon based laser propulsion....

"Hydrogen has about 40 percent more "bounce to the ounce" than other rocket fuels,..." Countdown! NASA Launch Vehicles and Facilities (1991)

Here's a great reference site for Rocket & Space Technology. The sections on propellants and propulsion are especially relevant to this discussion.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Buttacup
Has anybody found any Krypton or Argon on the Moon 'cause the last time I checked burning Hydrogen and Oxygen in space is a damn waste? I guess you could bring a load with you but even then, another damn waste...... There is talk of Moon based laser propulsion....

"Hydrogen has about 40 percent more "bounce to the ounce" than other rocket fuels,..." Countdown! NASA Launch Vehicles and Facilities (1991)

Here's a great reference site for Rocket & Space Technology. The sections on propellants and propulsion are especially relevant to this discussion.

Magnetoplasmic Dynamic MPD thrusters are not listed and I can't seem to find a vs Hydrogen atm..... dido on laser.....

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Looks like natural gas isn't lucrative enough to justify continued public expenditures on manned space flight (U.S. no longer a space-faring nation).

For one thing, the US government is NOT halting expenditures on manned space flight. Contracting commercial providers for delivery services to ISS still counts as "public expenditures." Not to mention the R&D that would occur under the new budget proposal (heavy-lift, propellant depots, etc.) is all directly applicable to manned space flight.

You assume commercial providers will be able to put people in space in some meaningful fashion (as opposed to merely offering thrill rides for the superwealthy).

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
For another, I don't think that's a very good op-ed to cite. Not only is it biased, but there's lots of misleading and/or incorrect information in that one.

I cited it because it was recent, not because I agree with it. Rivkin is a former Reagan administration official, most notable in recent years for arguing that waterboarding isn't torture [1] [2].

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
For instance, US astronauts will not stop flying into orbit, as the op-ed implies. With this plan, they'll simply be going up on Russian rockets more often (they already do) instead of US rockets. The US government is paying the Russians for those Soyuz seats - more "public expenditures". In fact, that was the previous plan, too, which would have retired the shuttle by 2010 and not had its "replacement" come online until 2014 at the earliest.

Interesting. Perhaps I should have said "manned space flight program" because we'll no longer send them up ourselves but pay the Russians to do it for us.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
Another example is the following quote:

Quote: China, India, and Japan, who 40 years ago could only peer over NASA’s shoulder, now look up with excitement at their spaceships hurtling away from the Earth. Indians plan to be on the moon by 2016, and China has begun to plan moon missions. Russia announced it will land on Mars before 2020.

None of the programs mentioned there would be manned - they would be robotic landers. So far as I or any of my sources are aware, none of those nations have the technology to mount a manned lunar or Mars mission in any of those timeframes. The claims that "China will land men on the moon by 2020" are pure cold war-esque sensationalism - the Chinese themselves have stated that they're planning on building a space station, not sending men to the moon. India hasn't even got an indigenous crewed spacecraft yet. One is funded and in the works, last I heard, but no crewed moon landers. The Russian space program hasn't got the money to go to Mars as far as I know.

Yes, cold war-esque. Rivkin is a hawk. Perhaps the firm he works for has clients poised to lose government contracts because of the changes to the NASA budget.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
Then there is the claim that the Ares rocket is "successfully-tested," which is incorrect. The Ares I rocket would have consisted of a five-segment shuttle-heritage booster rocket as its first stage with a completely new upper stage. The Ares I-X test consisted of a four-segment shuttle booster (basically the same thing as the one currently in use on the shuttle, and different from the one that would have been in use on the final Ares I configuration) with a dummy upper stage. The actual upper-stage has never been fabricated and the engine, the J2-X, that would power it has never even been test-fired yet. Even the aerodynamics of the Ares I haven't been tested, since Ares I-X used a different nose cone shape and first stage, meaning that its trajectory was quite different from that of the Ares I. All in all that means that the one and only flight test of an "Ares I", Ares I-X was NOT representative of the actual rocket that would have flown. That means that the only "tested" component of any Ares I hardware would have been the five-segment first stage which was test fire on the ground last year.

Therefore, despite NASA management's attempts to claim the contrary, no Ares rocket has ever flown, since the Ares I-X test shared almost nothing in common with the actual rocket concept it was supposed to be proving. Ares I-X was basically a shuttle booster with a can stuck on top - a huge flying model rocket that happens to look very much like an Ares I. That's not enough to call Ares I "successfully-tested."

Perhaps his client(s) stood to make a profit from the Ares rocket.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
In any case, while I agree that NASA being "directionless" is a bad thing, saying that the US is "no longer a space-faring nation" is premature at best and downright incorrect at worst. There is also this which would remedy a lot of the problems presented in the op-ed.

Sponsored by a Senator who just lost her primary bid to run as the Republican nominee for Governor of Texas. Her bill may not get anywhere. If I was in charge of the Senate, I'd hold that bill over her head when it came time to break filibusters.

Quote: Original post by Buttacup

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Buttacup
Has anybody found any Krypton or Argon on the Moon 'cause the last time I checked burning Hydrogen and Oxygen in space is a damn waste? I guess you could bring a load with you but even then, another damn waste...... There is talk of Moon based laser propulsion....

"Hydrogen has about 40 percent more "bounce to the ounce" than other rocket fuels,..." Countdown! NASA Launch Vehicles and Facilities (1991)

Here's a great reference site for Rocket & Space Technology. The sections on propellants and propulsion are especially relevant to this discussion.

Magnetoplasmic Dynamic MPD thrusters are not listed and I can't seem to find a vs Hydrogen atm..... dido on laser.....

Yes, he doesn't cover it, probably because it hasn't been deployed.

Quote: "Hydrogen has about 40 percent more "bounce to the ounce" than other rocket fuels,..." Countdown! NASA Launch Vehicles and Facilities (1991)

That's quite true; a rocket fuelled by kerosene can typically get a specific impulse (somewhat like gas mileage) of around 300-350 seconds maximum. A rocket fuelled by liquid hydrogen, on the other hand, can get an specific impulse that is 100 seconds higher. That means that its exhaust velocity is about a full kilometer per second faster than the rocket using kerosene as a fuel.

On the other hand, if you used an ion or plasma drive with krypton or argon as a propellant (NOT a fuel! there's a difference), you can get at least double that impulse. That might have been the kind of "rocket fuel" Buttacup was referring to. Ion drives HAVE been deployed; the Dawn spacecraft, which is set to visit some asteroids this decade, has two ion rockets aboard for its primary propulsion.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Looks like natural gas isn't lucrative enough to justify continued public expenditures on manned space flight (U.S. no longer a space-faring nation).

For one thing, the US government is NOT halting expenditures on manned space flight. Contracting commercial providers for delivery services to ISS still counts as "public expenditures." Not to mention the R&D that would occur under the new budget proposal (heavy-lift, propellant depots, etc.) is all directly applicable to manned space flight.

You assume commercial providers will be able to put people in space in some meaningful fashion (as opposed to merely offering thrill rides for the superwealthy).

The new budget would have funded a number of orbital spacecraft designed and operating by commercial providers in order to deliver crew and cargo to the International Space Station; this has nothing to do with tourism. It's purely an extension of the current system, where the government designs and operates the spacecraft and commercial contractors build it. For instance, Ares I had ATK as its contractor for the first stage, Boeing for the second stage, and Lockheed-Martin for the Orion spacecraft that was due to fly on top of the rocket. STS (shuttle) has ATK as the contractor for the boosters, Lockheed-Martin for the external tank, and Rockwell International (now a part of Boeing, apparently) built the orbiters themselves while Pratt and Whitney-Rockedyne builds the engines. In a way, commercial providers already put people in space and have for some time.

Some of these same contractors would be involved with the new system but instead of acting soley as contractors for government-designed hardware, they both design and operate the spacecraft as well as building the hardware. However, the government is still the customer here - no "superwealthy" people involved. The crew for these spacecraft would still be government astronauts. In the event that funding for beyond-LEO exploration materialized, the crew transportation system would probably be one of these crewed spacecraft.

Associating "commercial space" soley with tourism is a common mistake.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
For instance, US astronauts will not stop flying into orbit, as the op-ed implies. With this plan, they'll simply be going up on Russian rockets more often (they already do) instead of US rockets. The US government is paying the Russians for those Soyuz seats - more "public expenditures". In fact, that was the previous plan, too, which would have retired the shuttle by 2010 and not had its "replacement" come online until 2014 at the earliest.

Interesting. Perhaps I should have said "manned space flight program" because we'll no longer send them up ourselves but pay the Russians to do it for us.

And then the US would pay American corporations to do it for them, too. That's what the new Obama budget says, that NASA will pay commercial ventures to design and build crewed spaceships for them. In fact, NASA is already doing that thanks to the COTS program. In a way, the new program proposed by the White House is a huge extension of this.

Quote:
Perhaps his client(s) stood to make a profit fom the Ares rocket.

Probably. However, that does not make the claim any more true.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
In any case, while I agree that NASA being "directionless" is a bad thing, saying that the US is "no longer a space-faring nation" is premature at best and downright incorrect at worst. There is also this which would remedy a lot of the problems presented in the op-ed.

Sponsored by a Senator who just lost her primary bid to run as the Republican nominee for Governor of Texas. Her bill may not get anywhere. If I was in charge of the Senate, I'd hold that bill over her head when it came time to break filibusters.

The new budget has been received almost uniformly poorly in Congress. It isn't just her. There's been a number of hearings regarding the new budget and involving the new NASA administrator. He has been taking a lot of flak for this stuff.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
Ion drives HAVE been deployed; the Dawn spacecraft, which is set to visit some asteroids this decade, has two ion rockets aboard for its primary propulsion.

Does the Dawn employ an MPD drive? The MPD link implied the technology is still in development.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Original post by LessBread
You assume commercial providers will be able to put people in space in some meaningful fashion (as opposed to merely offering thrill rides for the superwealthy).

The new budget would have funded a number of orbital spacecraft designed and operating by commercial providers in order to deliver crew and cargo to the International Space Station; this has nothing to do with tourism. It's purely an extension of the current system, where the government designs and operates the spacecraft and commercial contractors build it. For instance, Ares I had ATK as its contractor for the first stage, Boeing for the second stage, and Lockheed-Martin for the Orion spacecraft that was due to fly on top of the rocket. STS (shuttle) has ATK as the contractor for the boosters, Lockheed-Martin for the external tank, and Rockwell International (now a part of Boeing, apparently) built the orbiters themselves while Pratt and Whitney-Rockedyne builds the engines. In a way, commercial providers already put people in space and have for some time.

Some of these same contractors would be involved with the new system but instead of acting soley as contractors for government-designed hardware, they both design and operate the spacecraft as well as building the hardware. However, the government is still the customer here - no "superwealthy" people involved. The crew for these spacecraft would still be government astronauts. In the event that funding for beyond-LEO exploration materialized, the crew transportation system would probably be one of these crewed spacecraft.

Associating "commercial space" soley with tourism is a common mistake.

So the difference will be that now they'll fly under corporate logos rather than the stars-n-stripes and that any scientific discoveries made will be private property even though they were paid for with public money?

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Interesting. Perhaps I should have said "manned space flight program" because we'll no longer send them up ourselves but pay the Russians to do it for us.

And then the US would pay American corporations to do it for them, too. That's what the new Obama budget says, that NASA will pay commercial ventures to design and build crewed spaceships for them. In fact, NASA is already doing that thanks to the COTS program. In a way, the new program proposed by the White House is a huge extension of this.

Sounds like another massive ripoff, like outsourcing military operations to Blackwater.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command
The new budget has been received almost uniformly poorly in Congress. It isn't just her. There's been a number of hearings regarding the new budget and involving the new NASA administrator. He has been taking a lot of flak for this stuff.

You can't trust what Republicans say about anything Obama has proposed. They're on track to attack everything he tries to do, even when doing so contradicts positions they've taken in the recent past. So a poor reception from Congress is nearly meaningless.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Does the Dawn employ an MPD drive? The MPD link implied the technology is still in development.

Apparently so and also Deep Space 1 MPD is just the decorated name :P Ion drive is ideally powered by Hydrogen fuel cells so the water on the Moon is well suited for a fueling station after having escaped earths gravity and atmosphere. Going back to my original statement though neither form of propulsion is ideal because spitting any resource out the ass end of a tin can is generally negligent on our part! This is especially true when there are still other avenues capable of being explored. If it's about efficiency the Suns energy is not going to stop radiating if we don't use it. Cycling between water and a Hydrogen/Oxygen mix is actually a pretty good use of energy presently going to waste..... <==== unless in doing so we destroy some Interstellar Medium ecosystems... I don't even see the need for Hydrogen thrusters in inner atmosphere as Earth based laser propulsion is a fuel free system >.< RPI Pulsed Plasma Propulsion

pssst for invite o-o

Quote: Original post by LessBread
So the difference will be that now they'll fly under corporate logos rather than the stars-n-stripes and that any scientific discoveries made will be private property even though they were paid for with public money?

The first half, though the "stars-n-stripes" will be on the craft as well. The second half makes no sense, given that the research takes place on the ISS, which is an international, government-funded venture. The commercial providers only take stuff up to the station and bring stuff back, mostly people.

Quote:
Sounds like another massive ripoff, like outsourcing military operations to Blackwater.

Better than having NASA's bureaucracy involved, which has often been noted to be a problem with the agency. Apparently there are quite a few issues with management, communication and corruption being among them. Plus by not having the government build a rocket that would compete with commercial rockets that already exist (Ares I was in the same payload class as Atlas-V and Delta-IV Heavy - Orion could theoretically have flown on either one of those, but more likely D4), they can redirect the money to other parts of NASA. Like research, or actually building a proper heavy-lift rocket and beyond-LEO exploration spacecraft.

Quote:
You can't trust what Republicans say about anything Obama has proposed. They're on track to attack everything he tries to do, even when doing so contradicts positions they've taken in the recent past. So a poor reception from Congress is nearly meaningless.

Note that I said "almost uniformly." That doesn't mean "only Republicans." The poor reception is also coming from democrats, Bill Nelson being fairly prominent among them. I think you're generalizing a bit too much.

Quote: Ion drive is ideally powered by Hydrogen fuel cells...

Actually, I would think solar power would be better for inner-system and nuclear power for outer system (since the solar flux isn't good enough out there, which is why none of the probes that have ventured past Jupiter have been solar-powered). If you're powering the ion drive with an energy system driven by chemical reactions, you might as well just use chemical rockets instead of electric rockets. One of the reasons the space shuttle can only stay on orbit for ~2 weeks is because it runs on fuel cells. By contrast, a solar-powered or nuclear-powered spacecraft can operate for years.