Would it be possible to re-fund NASA for the Apollo Applications Program (or derivates)

[Skyler4856]

Sure we can, just find oil on Mars

[fredinno]

Sure we can, just find oil on Mars

No, we can't. Even if we did, no one would bother to pend the money to go there and extract it- it would be the most expensive oil ever. Hell, there are oil reserves in the Arctic Islands of Canada found in the 80s. No one has yet to actually extract the stuff due to its remoteness, and the fact it's not a huge deposit, like the ones in Alaska were.

You could probably find oil under Greenland's ice sheets. Good luck convincing anyone with the money to actually start to go look for it and extract it.

[RuBisCO]

Trashing Apollo was a half of the epic mistake that started the manned space dark ages that we still exist in. The other half was the money drinking 2-crew killing albatross called the "Space Shuttle".

Had we not done the shuttle and stayed with Apollo we would have likely been to Mars already, years ago!

Apollo ending up costing both in infrastructure and production, half as much as the space shuttle per mass to LEO, and had proven capability to make it to the moon and beyond.

http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html

"Let’s assume that we had kept flying with the systems we had at the time, that we had continued to execute two manned Apollo lunar missions every year, as was done in 1971-72. This would have cost about $4.8 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars. Further, let us assume that we had established a continuing program of space station activities in Earth orbit, built on the Apollo CSM, Saturn I-B, and Skylab systems. Four crew rotation launches per year, plus a new Skylab cluster every five years to augment or replace existing modules, would have cost about $1.5 billion/year. This entire program of six manned flights per year, two of them to the Moon, would have cost about $6.3 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars. The average annual NASA budget in the 15 difficult years from 1974-88 was $10.5 billion; with 60% of it allocated to human spaceflight, there would have been sufficient funding to continue a stable program of lunar exploration as well as the development of Earth orbital infrastructure. I suggest that this would have been a better strategic alternative than the choices that were in fact made, almost 40 years ago." --- Michael D. Griffin, Former administrator of NASA (2005-2009).

There is no fixing this mistake, all we can do is look back at 50+ years of dinking around and failure.

Edited November 10, 2015 by RuBisCO
woops the other half

[Kryten]

Well, there's Helium-3 there, but China's going to get it first.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/197784-china-is-going-to-mine-the-moon-for-helium-3-fusion-fuel

Helium-3 isn't terribly useful, and there's no major amount of it on the moon. You'd have to process enormous amounts of regolith to produce it, and a second-generation fusion reactor to feed it into. Even if you assume you have one of those, it's going to be easier to just produce it from tritium.

[davidy12]

At this point, there's no point. The capsule design is much more inferior than today, there are more modern materials, and at this point there is no point in reviving the Saturn because the SLS is too far along. AAP had it's glory and I wish that they could have had a Lunar Base, but alas, it was not to be.

[RuBisCO]

At this point, there's no point. The capsule design is much more inferior than today, there are more modern materials, and at this point there is no point in reviving the Saturn because the SLS is too far along. AAP had it's glory and I wish that they could have had a Lunar Base, but alas, it was not to be.

The SLS is a sad junk design, but in a way it was a lesson learned though: instead of trashing all that had been built with the space shuttle we just make a big dumb booster out of the parts, unfortunately we decided to do that after dedicating years and billions of dollars to the Constellation program which tried to modify the shuttle basics too much for too much money. We should have from day 1 gone with DIRECT Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles using as much of the shuttle hardware (minus the shuttle themselves) with a minimal modification. Ultimately this is what the SLS is because of how over-budget and overreaching Constellation was!

[fredinno]

The SLS is a sad junk design, but in a way it was a lesson learned though: instead of trashing all that had been built with the space shuttle we just make a big dumb booster out of the parts, unfortunately we decided to do that after dedicating years and billions of dollars to the Constellation program which tried to modify the shuttle basics too much for too much money. We should have from day 1 gone with DIRECT Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles using as much of the shuttle hardware (minus the shuttle themselves) with a minimal modification. Ultimately this is what the SLS is because of how over-budget and overreaching Constellation was!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Commonality_DIRECT.jpg

Ares V's original designs actually went full circle to SLS Block IB, only with J-2Ss instead of RL-10s, and a consequently larger upper stage. But then, they decided to replace the core engines with RS-68Bs, and things began to spiral out of control....

[Bill Phil]

Ares V's original designs actually went full circle to SLS Block IB, only with J-2Ss instead of RL-10s, and a consequently larger upper stage. But then, they decided to replace the core engines with RS-68Bs, and things began to spiral out of control....

What about RS-68s?

[fredinno]

What about RS-68s?

Lower efficiency of engines led to larger 10-meter dia core stage, then the ablative heating resulted in extreme base heating problems, then the 5-segs had to be replaced with 5.5 seg SRBs due to the requirement for greater performance. Then the SSMEs were re-introduced to Ares V, Ares V was canned, and SLS was born. SLS Block IA originally proposed, only for increased acceleration due to the advanced boosters on Block IA cause it to replaced with Block IB, which introduces a proper upper stage instead. The design for Ares V, in many ways, went full circle.

[Bill Phil]

Lower efficiency of engines led to larger 10-meter dia core stage, then the ablative heating resulted in extreme base heating problems, then the 5-segs had to be replaced with 5.5 seg SRBs due to the requirement for greater performance. Then the SSMEs were re-introduced to Ares V, Ares V was canned, and SLS was born. SLS Block IA originally proposed, only for increased acceleration due to the advanced boosters on Block IA cause it to replaced with Block IB, which introduces a proper upper stage instead. The design for Ares V, in many ways, went full circle.

But I know that SLS uses SSMEs.

Although I think RS-68s might have been better to start out the whole thing.

[fredinno]

But I know that SLS uses SSMEs.

Although I think RS-68s might have been better to start out the whole thing.

You would have to solve the base heating problem though. RS-68 isn't designed for even a 2-engine cluster.

[Bill Phil]

You would have to solve the base heating problem though. RS-68 isn't designed for even a 2-engine cluster.

Yeah, but I think multi core would be a good start. DIV style. But maybe something a bit less expensive...

[jwenting]

422 billion is just a number pulled from somewhere unpleasant, and not far off the total NASA budget from foundation to now. Peak NASA budget was just under $6 billion in 1966, (roughly $43 billion today).

so $422 billion sounds about right. $42 billion for the rockets and other hardware, plus the people actually running the mission, and $380 billion for the bureaucrats and lawyers.