Total Members Voted: 102
Voting closed: 02/12/2016 08:01 pm
International efforts really don't save you any money.
Plus you end up outsourcing American aerospace jobs instead of building your space architecture domestically. But NASA should offer a couple of seats on the journey for six human crews to the astronauts of foreign agencies for about $150 million for each astronaut. [...] For foreign space agencies, sending an astronaut to the Moon for just $150 million plus bringing back lunar samples would be an incredible bargain!
Quote from: hydra9 on 02/20/2016 05:54 pmInternational efforts really don't save you any money.The reason why human spaceflight efforts get internationalized isn't to save money.QuoteYou're certainly correct on that one. International cooperation doesn't save the American tax payer any money!Plus you end up outsourcing American aerospace jobs instead of building your space architecture domestically. But NASA should offer a couple of seats on the journey for six human crews to the astronauts of foreign agencies for about $150 million for each astronaut. [...] For foreign space agencies, sending an astronaut to the Moon for just $150 million plus bringing back lunar samples would be an incredible bargain! They don't want to do it at bargain prices. They want to do it to insource aerospace DDT&E.
You're certainly correct on that one. International cooperation doesn't save the American tax payer any money!Plus you end up outsourcing American aerospace jobs instead of building your space architecture domestically. But NASA should offer a couple of seats on the journey for six human crews to the astronauts of foreign agencies for about $150 million for each astronaut. [...] For foreign space agencies, sending an astronaut to the Moon for just $150 million plus bringing back lunar samples would be an incredible bargain!
But I disagree with you as far as no nation wanting to pay for a cheap seat to the Moon, plus bring back lunar material that your country can study for their own space program. 10 kilograms of lunar regolith would be some very precious material for a country that would someday like to use its own technological resources to travel to the Moon.
Quote from: hydra9 on 02/21/2016 10:17 pmBut I disagree with you as far as no nation wanting to pay for a cheap seat to the Moon, plus bring back lunar material that your country can study for their own space program. 10 kilograms of lunar regolith would be some very precious material for a country that would someday like to use its own technological resources to travel to the Moon.Of the material we brought back from the Moon, part of it was given away as gifts - essentially no real scientific value.There is always a cost-benefit analysis of doing something, but I don't see where the country of Portugal would see a big need to pay for 10 kilograms of random Moon dust. Or Saudi Arabia. Or ??And material from the Moon is only "precious" right now because of scarcity, not because it consists of material we can't find here on Earth. The more material that is brought back will lower the perceived value of what is brought back, so at some point it doesn't make sense to spend so much money to get so little. Based on that, other than geologic knowledge random material from the Moon is not really of any value.
Whether NASA likes it or not, the only think Orion/SLS is useful for (and was actually designed and scaled for) is cislunar exploration. Orion is useless for Mars and with infrastructure scaled for 1 launch/year, assembling an MTV that will require 3 or 4 SLS launches is pretty much impossible.Orion was originally designed to go to the Moon, and although it has evolved a lot since Constellation, that's still pretty much all it can be used for. Although NASA is towing the party line with its silly "Journey to Mars" PR, everybody knows that what they are building now is a cislunar infrastructure, not a Mars vehicle.
Quote from: Nibb31 on 03/28/2016 09:19 am<snip>And looking at the current rate & cost of development, and projected rate of launch, you are looking at 2040 before you would see the first humans on the moon. With a subsequent flight-rate of one mission every 2 years or so.
Getting people on the Moon will not take decades. There are cheaper alternatives to both the SLS and Orion in the pipeline.