Bolden: "NASA won't land another man on the moon in my lifetime"

[RanulfC]

Currently, the Russians and the rest of the world want to do human and robotic Lunar surface missions, and that fact is something Congress will carefully take into consideration during the next three decades.

Unsubstantiated nonsense again.

This is reality.  Congress will not decide if NASA astronauts are going to do productive long-duration missions on the Moon during the 2020s.  The US public does not support this.

Demonstrably false:

Demonstrably NOT-False Warren. This is the "re-introduction" of the same "bi-partisan" bill that was rejected in 2011. It has even less support this time around than it did the first time.

Action has been lacking though the words keep coming. I don't see Congress being any more "supportive" of this than the last time.

Randy

[Warren Platts]

An "aggressive" Mars program would be especially subject to avoiding the "side-tracking" of putting infrastructure on the Moon which we've seen demonstrated in both the "Mars Direct" and "Constellation" concepts.

Mars Direct was the inspiration of Constellation. It was not the only possibility on the table, however: [The VSE was about] going to the Moon for propellant and THEN using THAT to go to Mars; [that] WAS the plan, before Griffin perverted it.

No it wasn't, however it was the ONLY "plan" that would fit the political and financial reality that there was NO support for going back to the Moon to establish ISRU to provide propellant for a much longer range Mars mission and a Cis-Lunar infrastructure to support it.

Not true. There was plenty of political support for the VSE back in 2004--just go back and read what the pundits had to say about it back then. Congress approved the plan multiple times. The actual implementation--Mars Direct-inspired CxP--on the other hand, was Griffin's brainchild. He literally laid out the design for the Ares rocket on the back of a napkin, and then ran with it. Griffin's (2005) white paper on why he chose not to go with a  depot-based, commercial architecture is attached, in case you're interested.

The fault of the administration was (a) hiring him in the first place; and (b) not reigning him in when he went rogue: (a) imagine if Sean O'Keefe didn't have to send his kids to expensive universities and could have afforded to stay on as NASA administrator--the architecture would have turned out completely differently--in the end, Congress had very little to do with the origination of the CxP "implementation"--if you have DIRECT evidence to the contrary, please provide it; and (b) the administration could hardly be blamed here: they had bigger fish to fry like two wars and a reelection their plate, although an excessive loyalty to appointees and an unwillingness to fire people before it was too late DID seem to be a common thread in the Bush years, which is something that can be laid at Mr. Bush's doorstep. But after all, Griffin was the Ph.D. aeronautical engineer, so who was someone like Dick Cheney to question /his/ judgement?

IF there is a lesson HERE, it is that IMHO aeronautical engineers and astronauts should NEVER be chosen as the top Administrators. They should be deputy administrators at the highest. Consider that the two best administrators NASA ever had were James Webb and Sean O'Keefe: the former was a businessman and O'Keefe was an accountant--people who can understand the economic aspects of the Space Program IOW.

The problem is/was that the DAY Bush suggested the VSE, Congress started making it VERY clear that they had NO support for Lunar missions, Bases, or ISRU ...

Again, I don't believe this is the case because I am not aware of any direct evidence that that is the case.

Griffin played that angle by pitching ESAS/Constellation as a "cheaper-more-direct" mission. He played up all the financial and program angles straight to the Zubrin play-book, making any build up of "infrastructure" or Lunar missions as a money-pit, side-track that would cost billions for no return.

This I agree with: but if O'Keefe and Marburg had been in front of those committees instead of Griffin, things would have turned differently. No one in Congress had enough expertise to call incorrect on the Ph.D. aeronautical engineer.

The way things are currently organized, if NASA is given the task of "going-back-to-the-Moon" in 2017 then everything "deep-space" will be dropped and a crash program for a lander adopted with the "guideline" to put people back on there ASAP. ... We'll then simply "repeat" Apollo, ... NASA could probably do this once or twice a year with the current (projected) budget so that way we're "doing" something and "leading" in space, right?

The Golden Spike proposal shows that we could be doing a couple of "human precursor" missions 2 or 3 times per year for less than the current cost of SLS/Orion. While these necessary scouting missions are taking place, over half the HSF budget would still be available for developing (commercial) other legos in the system, like an ACES 3rd-stage, depots, and a heavy Lunar lander. These would allow the construction of a relatively major, permanently manned, research station on the Moon. There is more public support for this plan of action than any other (Evidence: National Research Council Report [2012], free pdf here)

[douglas100]

Irrelevant. Britain benefited and continues to get benefits today.

Long voyages across oceans in large ships were also new.

Edited.

What is your point? What has Britain's colonial history got to do with NASA and the Moon?

What was the most important geopolitical fact in the world in 1880?

That English was spoken in America and Canada........

I won't waste space re-quoting the screed you just posted about the place of English in the world. Not once did you mention the actual topic of the thread, NASA and the Moon. Your post is, to use your own word, irrelevant to this thread and completely off topic.

If you want to start a thread about historical analogies to unknown future histories, then feel free to go ahead.

[Rocket Science]

We threw the British bums out in 1776... Sorry Chris  Now how about that Bolden and not going to the Moon...

[HappyMartian]

Irrelevant. Britain benefited and continues to get benefits today.

Long voyages across oceans in large ships were also new.

Edited.

What is your point? What has Britain's colonial history got to do with NASA and the Moon?

What was the most important geopolitical fact in the world in 1880?

That English was spoken in America and Canada........

I won't waste space re-quoting the screed you just posted about the place of English in the world. Not once did you mention the actual topic of the thread, NASA and the Moon. Your post is, to use your own word, irrelevant to this thread and completely off topic.

If you want to start a thread about historical analogies to unknown future histories, then feel free to go ahead.

What language, legal system, culture, and type of government do you want on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and similar places across the Solar System? Make your choice now, not twenty years from now.

....

"We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace."
....
From: We choose to go to the moon
At: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_moon

Being in second or third or fourth or fifth place on a significant geopolitical issue isn't what America usually strives for. President John F. Kennedy understood that reality, the current President does not.
 
General Bolden is currently serving in a Presidential politically appointed position and what he said in the article this thread is about directly reflects the limited geopolitical understanding and goals of the President.

Deny or ignore it if you will, nonetheless, geopolitics got us to the Moon the first time. It will get us to the Moon the second time. This time we will stay there.

[RigelFive]

General Bolden is currently serving in a Presidential politically appointed position and what he said in the article this thread is about directly reflects the limited geopolitical understanding and goals of the President.

No way.  Remember Newt Gingrich proposed returning to the moon in the primary debates to win some cheap Florida votes?  He later withdrew any moon base proposals. 

When you listen to General Bolden speak to Congress, the eloquence of his words brings truth to the constant confusion and uncertainty that they relentlessly throw upon him. 

The moon has no purpose for exploration or science right now. What could we possibly gain with a new mission to the moon?  All the answers weve found on the moon lead to more questions from other objects such as near earth asteroids.

I think Bolden is onto a new path with just trying to gain some international clout..  It seems we can steer the other international groups toward a NASA goal if we back off from the lead.  Lets see who emerges... I'd bet they'll (other countries/territories) all back down from leading a mission to the moon in the near term.  Perhaps the political pendulum will swing back toward the moon and there will be a stronger sentiment to return at that point in the faraway future (20+ yrs)

[douglas100]

Deny or ignore it if you will, nonetheless, geopolitics got us to the Moon the first time. It will get us to the Moon the second time. This time we will stay there.

I don't deny your first sentence. It is true. But you left out an important word: unsustainably. Apollo was about the Cold War, not about settling the Moon. You may have noticed that the Cold War is no longer with us. Apollo cannot be done again. Constellation showed that.

If you are relying on geopolitics to return to the Moon I think you will wait a long time. Politics is a short term thing. Economics, on the other hand, is forever. If a proper economic use of the Moon is found, then humans will return to the Moon and stay. NASA may facilitate this process but does not need to lead it.

[HappyMartian]

Deny or ignore it if you will, nonetheless, geopolitics got us to the Moon the first time. It will get us to the Moon the second time. This time we will stay there.

I don't deny your first sentence. It is true. But you left out an important word: unsustainably. Apollo was about the Cold War, not about settling the Moon. You may have noticed that the Cold War is no longer with us. Apollo cannot be done again. Constellation showed that.

If you are relying on geopolitics to return to the Moon I think you will wait a long time. Politics is a short term thing. Economics, on the other hand, is forever. If a proper economic use of the Moon is found, then humans will return to the Moon and stay. NASA may facilitate this process but does not need to lead it.

Wrong. America needs to lead. Economics is always in a state of flux. Intrinsic values and other intangibles that lead to the creation or destruction of wealth last a very long time. Those who lead benefit from taking on the hardships of leadership.

Constellation showed that Apollo on steroids Lunar missions that were actually devised by someone who didn't want to do Lunar ISRU with other nations at a polar base, and who instead wanted to prepare for Mars missions, are not efficient and don't fit very well within NASA's budget.



"TITLE III—EXPANSION OF HUMAN
SPACE FLIGHT BEYOND THE INTERNATIONAL
SPACE STATION AND LOW EARTH
ORBIT
SEC. 301. HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT BEYOND LOW-EARTH ORBIT.
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The extension of the human presence from low-Earth
orbit to other regions of space beyond low-Earth orbit will
enable missions to the surface of the Moon and missions to
deep space destinations such as near-Earth asteroids and Mars.
(2) The regions of cis-lunar space are accessible to other
national and commercial launch capabilities, and such access
raises a host of national security concerns and economic
implications that international human space endeavors can
help to address.

From: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 also known as PUBLIC LAW 111–267—OCT. 11, 2010
At: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649377main_PL_111-267.pdf.



The USA doing SLS/Orion missions to low Lunar orbit is sustainable. And since lots of our international space exploration partners are saying they want their people on the Moon, let them build the Landers.

International missions mean that significant contributions, such as Landers and habs, are made by our international partners. American companies that want to build Landers and habs can build them for private companies that want to send folks to the Moon.

Polar Lunar ISRU mission costs can be shared. I'm sure Jim or some international folks that post here could come up with a plan on how to efficiently and fairly share those costs with the many nations that want their folks on the Moon. Or just maybe NASA could work with the space agencies of other countries, including India and China, and devise a fair and affordable plan to share those costs, if our space agency was instructed to do that by the President and Congress.

The International Space Station was expensive, but it is also a powerful ongoing example of what can and should be done to build a Lunar ISRU base.



President George W. Bush stated, "Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions."

Remarks by the President on U.S. Space Policy   January 14, 2004 NASA Headquarters  Washington, D.C.
At: http://history.nasa.gov/Bush%20SEP.htm



What is lacking is a consistent vision and leadership from several Presidents that we are going to lead as many nations as possible to the Moon's polar regions to tap Lunar ice to produce propellant and reduce the costs of Lunar, cislunar, and beyond cislunar human and robotic exploration and resource exploitation missions.


Edited.   

[JohnFornaro]

The moon has no purpose for exploration or science right now. What could we possibly gain with a new mission to the moon?  All the answers weve found on the moon lead to more questions from other objects such as near earth asteroids.

You may be right.  We already know all we need to know about the Moon.  What more could we possibly gain?  Plus, if we find out about NEA's, there will be no more questions needing to be asked.  The answers are kind of boring anyway.

This is good, because after we bag that one asteroid, we can say that we've been there and done that.  The lousy t-shirt will be available in the Imax gift shop.

[douglas100]

From Happy Martian:

Wrong. America needs to lead.

I said NASA not America.

Economics is always in a state of flux.

So is politics. So far political initiatives to return people to the Moon have failed. If there is a long term economic incentive to put humans on the Moon, it will happen.

[Mark S]

The moon has no purpose for exploration or science right now. What could we possibly gain with a new mission to the moon?  All the answers weve found on the moon lead to more questions from other objects such as near earth asteroids.

You may be right.  We already know all we need to know about the Moon.  What more could we possibly gain?  Plus, if we find out about NEA's, there will be no more questions needing to be asked.  The answers are kind of boring anyway.

This is good, because after we bag that one asteroid, we can say that we've been there and done that.  The lousy t-shirt will be available in the Imax gift shop.

Please remember to use the "sarcasm" tag appropriately, as there are some here who will take your post literally and line up at the gift shop to purchase said t-shirt. This could adversely affect ingress and egress at the gift shop, possibly causing violations of local fire codes.

Warning: Personal opinion follows. May not agree with your world-view. Caution is advised.

The Moon is an entire world that the Provider gave us for inspiration and for us to explore and exploit, and it is only three days away. Those who would bypass it in favor of flags-and-footprints to a captured rock are not leading us boldly into the Solar System, they are leading an exercise in reduced horizons.

For those who say BTDT to the Moon, they should understand that the Moon is just the first step in the harnessing of the resources of the Solar System. NEO's, Mars, main-belt asteroids, and all the rest will come later. But the Moon is our toehold into the Solar System. It can be the base-camp that precedes and enables scaling the highest peaks. It can give us invaluable experience in working vacuum and reduced-g environments. And yes, eventually it can be an endless source of materials for building the Solar civilization. But the first step, the critical step, is to establish that first base camp, and to then build upon it one step at a time.

We must cease with the one-shot missions, and decide on a long-term goal that is suitable and sustainable across multiple administrations. President Bush's original VSE was such a goal, before he allowed it to be redirected to become Apollo-on-Steroids. In spite of all the other good that the Obama administration has done, their BTDT attitude to the Moon has been detrimental to our space program and diminished NASA's ability to benefit our country. We must get back to VSE or something very like it.

And no, it absolutely should not be a grandiose "conquer the Solar System" plan with a 50-year time line and multi-trillion dollar budget runout. Such plans will never be accepted by the public and will never get out of the water-cooler stage. A simple goal to establish a base camp (not a "Moonbase" and definitely not a colony) at the lunar north pole would suffice. It would be analogous to our science camps in Antartica, and would allow exploration in-depth, instead of the "scratch-the-surface and claim BTDT" that is our current policy.

The Moon is an entire world and it's ripe for real exploration. Let's get to it.

Mark S.

[kch]

From John Fornaro;

Wrong. America needs to lead.

I said NASA not America.

Economics is always in a state of flux.

So is politics. So far political initiatives to return people to the Moon have failed. If there is a long term economic incentive to put humans on the Moon, it will happen.

Your quotes are from Hap, not John ...

[RigelFive]

The moon has no purpose for exploration or science right now. What could we possibly gain with a new mission to the moon?  All the answers weve found on the moon lead to more questions from other objects such as near earth asteroids.

You may be right.  We already know all we need to know about the Moon.  What more could we possibly gain?  Plus, if we find out about NEA's, there will be no more questions needing to be asked.  The answers are kind of boring anyway.

This is good, because after we bag that one asteroid, we can say that we've been there and done that.  The lousy t-shirt will be available in the Imax gift shop.

I think you are leading me to something profound here. 

President Kennedy was president and started saying sentences with "Ask not ..."  In another speech, he also mentioned that we should go to the moon "not because it is easy ..."

Eventually we went to the moon in that decade.

So if we think about everything were not going to do and not going to ask, seems like we should stay pretty busy.  In the year 2013, we are start making a list of all the places we are not going to go to.  Seems like we are going to make a pretty long list.  =)

[asmi]

I think the seeds of current situation around NASA were planted during Columbia tragedy, as investigations that followed exposed NASA's "underwear" for the public to examine, which turned out to be not pretty, and NASA's management doesn't want any of that to happen again because it carries a risk of ruining current status quo. Right now if LOC happens with Soyuz, or future manned Dragon, NASA can always point to the "other side" and come out more or less clean. The Congress supports this disposition for two reasons - first, it ensures pork coming to where they want it to, second, any NASA's manned mishap may backstrike at the Congress as by now it's absolutely clear that no single molecule is moving in NASA unless Congress has ordered it to.

[muomega0]

An "aggressive" Mars program would be especially subject to avoiding the "side-tracking" of putting infrastructure on the Moon which we've seen demonstrated in both the "Mars Direct" and "Constellation" concepts.

Mars Direct was the inspiration of Constellation. It was not the only possibility on the table, however: [The VSE was about] going to the Moon for propellant and THEN using THAT to go to Mars; [that] WAS the plan, before Griffin perverted it.

No it wasn't, however it was the ONLY "plan" that would fit the political and financial reality that there was NO support for going back to the Moon to establish ISRU to provide propellant for a much longer range Mars mission and a Cis-Lunar infrastructure to support it.

Not true. There was plenty of political support for the VSE back in 2004--just go back and read what the pundits had to say about it back then. Congress approved the plan multiple times. The actual implementation--Mars Direct-inspired CxP--on the other hand, was Griffin's brainchild. He literally laid out the design for the Ares rocket on the back of a napkin, and then ran with it. Griffin's (2005) white paper on why he chose not to go with a  depot-based, commercial architecture is attached, in case you're interested.

The 1.5 launch, HLV architecture was all about going to the moon, had nothing to do with Mars, and was not about finding the right missions for the right size budget.   The same is true today.  For Mars, one needs shielding for cosmic radiation, bone loss--1/3 vs milli-g trip, ability to land landing heavy objects, ....

From Griffin's 1.5 HLV paper you attached, he discussed

"interstate highways" not being the interesting part, but rather the destinations.  Griffin selected an approach that "allows us to meet lunar return mission requirements with U.S. government systems--no external entities are in the critical path for mission accomplishment.  It does not exclude external entities, but provides hooks and scars to enhance the mission.  By the time we return to the moon....."

 "From a purely architectural point of view, SDHLV is an expensive vehicle, most aptly utilized for lifting only expensive cargo,  such as the man-rated systems it carries...logically, we should seek to use the SDHLV only for the highest-value cargo, and specifically we should desire to place fuel in orbit by the cheapest means possible, in whatever manner this can be accomplished, whether of high reliability or not.....But if there were a fuel depot on orbit, one capable of being replenished at any time, the Earth departure stage could after refueling carry significantly more payload to the Moon, maximizing the utility of the inherently expensive SDHLV for carrying high-value cargo...but the architecture does not feature a depot"

So what does this have to do with background and specifying 70 *and* a 130 mT LVs?.

The fault of the administration was (a) hiring him in the first place; and (b) not reigning him in when he went rogue: (a) imagine if Sean O'Keefe didn't have to send his kids to expensive universities and could have afforded to stay on as NASA administrator--the architecture would have turned out completely differently--in the end, Congress had very little to do with the origination of the CxP "implementation"--if you have DIRECT evidence to the contrary, please provide it; and (b) the administration could hardly be blamed here: they had bigger fish to fry like two wars

IF there is a lesson HERE, it is that IMHO aeronautical engineers and astronauts should NEVER be chosen as the top Administrators. They should be deputy administrators at the highest. Consider that the two best administrators NASA ever had were James Webb and Sean O'Keefe: the former was a businessman and O'Keefe was an accountant--people who can understand the economic aspects of the Space Program IOW.

Actually, background does not matter.

The 2004 Congress and Admin wanted to return to shuttle derived and hence there was no need for an Admin who shifted to the cheaper alternative: existing launch vehicles and a depot centric architecture.

In 2010, Congress wanted engine development programs and crew on SLS....How to do this without having an Admin with the proper background?

Simple: if one wants to retain engine programs and fly crew on SLS, one simply has to specify a 70 *and* 130 mT LV.  It reflects that fact that SLS is every mission beyond low earth orbit, the destination does not matter.

Nor does background....nor does combining propellant and crew to create a 178mT LV in the HLV Evolution., the original intent of the HLV architecture, when destinations mattered, but not today, the ever shifting goalpost architecture.

OTH, why do so many engineers run Fortune 500 companies, so they can tell Congress what to do--IOW, let the free market decide?

[Lar]

... by now it's absolutely clear that no single molecule is moving in NASA unless Congress has ordered it to.

Clear to *us*. Not clear to the mundanes. They have no idea, IMHO, of what a mess NASA is or why.,

[asmi]

Clear to *us*. Not clear to the mundanes. They have no idea, IMHO, of what a mess NASA is or why.,

Fair enough, but when sh*t hits the fan, the bureacracy will do whatever it can to ensure self-preservation, and this connection may become public. I think NASA as bureacratic institution is more than happy to keep using Soyuz for the entire duration of ISS, although it will never ever publicly admit that. But since there is that "dependence on Russia" argument comes out every once in a while, it has chosen a solution that would ensure they still have the ability to point their fingers at someone else in case of major failure and so divert public rage away from them.

[douglas100]

Your quotes are from Hap, not John ...

Thanks for pointing that out. Apologies to John. Edited.

[HappyMartian]

From Happy Martian:

Wrong. America needs to lead.

I said NASA not America.

Economics is always in a state of flux.

So is politics. So far political initiatives to return people to the Moon have failed. If there is a long term economic incentive to put humans on the Moon, it will happen.

NASA is America's legally designated national BLEO human and robotic spaceflight agency. You may want to change that national policy but it hasn't happened yet. And it may never happen because most folks in Congress are not all that interested in using taxpayer money to create an inefficient private BLEO space transportation monopoly. Many folks in congress are not all that excited about mainly using taxpayer money to create a private LEO space transportation monopoly.

We "failed" to go to the Moon for millions of years and then we did it. Others will take the lead if we are unwilling to lead in BLEO human spaceflights to develop the Moon's resources.

Oil is important for transportation on Earth. For now, and for the foreseeable future, Lunar derived propellant will be needed to lower the costs of Lunar, cislunar, and beyond cislunar human transportation and resource exploitation.

The many issues of devising affordable means of sending Lunar resources to low Lunar orbit, high Lunar orbit, LEO, and the surface of Earth or Mars will be difficult to solve when our national space agency lacks a consistently supported and logical space policy that is widely supported by the American public.

Lots of folks love Mars and have been made use of to create our current convoluted and aimlessly wandering NASA anti-moon space policy that was devised by a President that has no interest in reducing the costs of human and robotic cislunar and beyond cislunar spaceflight.

[douglas100]

Your assertion that NASA is  "America's legally designated national BLEO human and robotic spaceflight agency" is irrelevant. There is no legal constraint on private companies or individuals landing on the Moon. If Golden Spike or some other company can raise enough capital and get customers (not very likely, I admit), then they can go to the Moon.

Despite your comments denigrating private space efforts, I think if you want to see humans on the Moon in a sustainable fashion, then an economic reason for them to be there will have to be found.