fredinno

2024? Are they sure they didn't confuse it with Red Dragon? Because that would be a conservative launch date for that spacecraft. Realistically, Mars will happen when SpaceX actually has the money and hardware. Meaning I would be surprised if it was before 2035 that we get a manned Mars flyby. And that would require a number of F9H launches (6?), staged at an elliptical earth orbit (since FH can't actually carry 50T to LEO due to its tiny payload fairing- SLS would do the same thing for Mars due to its low TWR 2nd stage). If it was NASA doing this, there would be a lot more prep missions in cislunar space before going out to a Mars flyby. But SpaceX isn't like that (deaths are bad, but not as devastating to funding). However, a Mars Flyby is far from a Mars Orbit or landing. Those need a true HLV. Because your supplies only last so long.

It looks like an ICBM. The Atlas looks more unique tho. Antares just looks like a standard rocket.

You wish. But then NASA would be able to cut a lot of pork, in and outside of the HSF budget. And that's not what Congress wants. And I'm fairly certain most federal agencies operate with individual items allocated by Congress. At least the DOD and NOAA do.

But how much NASA and how much private? That is the question. And the time it takes to send probes places DOES matter, since it means it takes that much longer to get the data, plan, and lobby for new missions. Granted, it's nice you said something about breaking new ground, since the only real locations for planetary probes to "break new ground" are high delta-V/transit time locations, like the Jupiter Trojans, Uranus, Neptune, Kuiper Belt, etc. that benefit the most from a HLV like SLS. Also, human missions that "break new ground" benefit the most from SLS, since it's a lot easier to build, say a Lunar Orbital Station, that are "new". And the entire SLS infrastructure was originally JUPITER DIRECT and Constellation, merged. Both were for manned missions to the Moon- only the destination has been changed, and now we have this situation. Turns out NASA and manned Mars missions is a bad combination. They have an ISRU experiment to extract O2 from the Martian atmosphere on Mars 2020, but I think it's safe to say ISRU lags in NASA priorities. I think piggybacking on human missions (Orion/SLS) is the only real way we'll get it. Humans need ISRU to be used as much as possible. Once the ISS dies, NASA will have no "Jobs program" at all. Plus, SLS/Orion consistently gets higher budgets every year. Congress is the string-puller, and NASA would have to do what they like. I think a lot of people WANT the SLS/Orion program to die, because they have some false premise that NASA and SpaceX are somehow competitors. Spoiler: They're in completely different businesses, and cutting one side of the NASA budget will NOT add money to the other. This has been shown empirically- and is largely due to the fact NASA does not have a fixed budget that they can decide what gets what. People on all sides of NASA support need to stop fighting against each other, because they think "freeing up" one part of the budget works. It rarely does. Unity, not division. Did you actually LOOK at the latest ARM plans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Redirect_Mission Then tell me how useful something like that actually IS. And Russia is dreading the day when NASA stops buying Soyuz from them, because that means they suddenly have a whole lot less money to work with, and they'll have to put even more programs (likely Soyuz-V, their Space Station, and/or PPTS) on the chopping block. Honestly, at that budget, they would be well off being able to maintain their current commitments.

But XS-1 isn't a huge part of the DOD's budget, or any of the other lifting body/spaceplane programs either? Yey. I don't really care. :/

1. Cassini probably was nowhere near the twr on its apogee engine needed to land on that moon. 2. The entire point of burning the probe up is to prevent it from contaminating that moon. Landing on it defeats the purpose. 3. It would probably be better to put it in a graveyard orbit around impetus, for example, if you really want to save the probe. There , it won't infect anything. Until recently, NASA'S biggest employer was the shuttle, a space plane. Also, a significant portion of nasa is still aeronautics. Granted, nasa supported lifting body/space-based until right before project constellation. On the other hand, DC-X was a DOD program....

Actually, no. Binary planets, though rare, do exist. However, a figure-eight orbit moon is probably unstable.

But the original proposal was to survey Europa via clipper, and near the end of the nominal mission, send the lander down to Europa. Obviously more risky, but a whole lot less expensive than another flagship probe and lander on SLS. I'd image Vostokhod would have those sorts of abort options available- after all, the Shuttle "aborts" were built into a ship without any real abort capability. NASA had the same situation, but the Shuttle hit them hard, and spaceplanes at NASA have been on the decline since then. You'd think the USAF would come to the same conclusion after all this time? In either case, the Nuclear Orion wouldn't have been made, since it capability was way too high in payload to be useful.

But a reusable SSTO would fall down into the negatives, or into the smallsat class. Considering how much larger the F9 is, I highly doubt it'd compete vs even an expendable methane TSTO in cost.

Technically, BFR is well above SLS payload capacity. And there was the Gateway Station being floated around Boeing and NASA for the majority of the SLS program. Lunar missions have been canned so far to allow for Mars by 2039. Truth be told, there are more manifested SLS missions- the SLS originally had 2 missions- ARM and EM-1. Now, there are 3 test missions for SLS, and 1 operational mission to send Europa Clipper to Jupiter. Unless you're ULA, LockMart or Boeing. Then, you're worse than the Kraken.

Asteroid missions would test out the Deep Space HABs, long durations in deep space, and be applicable to Phobos missions. The president and White House are the main political supporters of this mission. Once they are gone, ARM's prospects seem bleak. This is one case where cancellation was a good thing. No one liked ARM, except Obama. If they screwed up, the boulder grabbed was intended to be small to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere without damage. Larger objects, like Skylab, have fallen uncontrolled, into Earth's atmosphere at lower speeds, and no one got hurt. If you call a boulder a celestial body, than sure. Nope, the focus has sifted to the Moon, apparently, according to the article. ARM would have gotten tons worth of material, vs the grams of OSRIS-REX. ARM is great in the sense we have a lot more stuff to study. It was actually to a distant retrograde lunar orbit, but close enough. But they canned both.... The problem with that is that bearing a minimalist strategy like Mars Direct (NASA is not interested in doing such a mission), doing a Mars mission would take more than 8 years of no missions, thus, it is at serious risk of cancellation. That's why "direct to Mars" never really takes off, and a good reason why NASA can't go to Mars any time soon- the "interm" asteroid or Moon missions become the "end goal" as the "Mars Dream" goes further away into the distance... But building an entire rocket just for a few robotic missions is not worth it. Sending probes to the outer solar system on SLS is less the end goal, and more "let's use what we have!". Good luck on that budget part. Only problem is that neither NASA nor Congress has proposed prospecting. I'd imagine it's because extracting water out of hydrated rock, and bulilding a space smelter is well above NASA's capabilities right now. I would send a mission to the Lunar Poles to mine water first. At least that would fit inside a discovery budget. You know why it's taboo? Because we know sh"t about it. You might as well be arguing about the planned OrbitalATK EELV being cheaper than ULA's Vuclan. At least we have information of its basic layout. And BFR, in any case, is too big. SLS Block 1B send 100T to LEO. BFR sends 100T to MARS TRANSFER. It's OP for any lunar missions, and arguably even early mars missions.

No, using the vac. ISP gets way more Delta-V out of a rocket because the rocket equation is exponential, and most of the fuel is used in the atmosphere (ie why air-launch is useful). Also, you didn't add up landing equipment mass, heat shielding, reserve landing fuel, payload fairing mass (though that is ejected, it must be added for a good estimation)... Add that up first, even just landing fuel.

But Soyuz also had missions that missed their landing zones by hundreds of km, which is also a good reason why cosmonauts carried guns in the Soyuz. NASA is seriously considering adding the lander seperate to the Clipper mission for that reason. More expensive, but hopefully NASA might be able to get JAXA, ISRO, or Rocosmos involved to build the Orbiter (funding a SLS mission for a small lander would be pointless) (ESA probably still has a bitter taste in their mouths from JIMO and ExoMars). However, another option (probably cheaper) is to send ESA's JUICE spacecraft (which is ahead of Clipper in development) first on a SLS in exchange for lander development. JUICE is intended to do 2 Europa flybys. Then, Clipper is sent out on SLS, finishes JIMO's Europa mapping, then sends out the lander probe.

Yeah, I agree. People talking about BFR at this point are seriously putting the cart before the horse (like Congress :P)

The only part that would be useful to test asteroid redirection was the gravity tractor, and that's basic physics (Objects with mass attract each other). Not to mention, there is going to be a ESA-NASA asteroid Impact mission to test out that sort of redirection. Also, nobody in Congress supports this mission (it has little support in the science community too). If the president vetos an entire budget bill (keep in mind, these budget bills are not just for NASA, but for a collection of agencies, all crammed together in a single bill) just for a single mission, it will survive- but the next president won't be so picky- ARM was Obama's baby. I think it's fair to say very little was lost, and that it probably won't survive, even if it survives this round.

I wonder why the DOD likes spaceplanes so much? Didn't Soyuz and Vostok also face the same problem of landing in the middle of nowhere? why did it have it on the parachutes of all places?

http://spacenews.com/house-bill-increases-nasa-planetary-spending-but-cuts-off-asteroid-redirect-mission/ But seriously though, if it was to be the precursor to asteroid mining tech testing, instead of pure pork, it might have actually survived.

You could argue that is the case with every spacecraft. But it was a similar thing with Gemini and Blue Gemini, ejection seats generally suck im terms of actually saving people. But vostokod was a dead end. Dyna-Soar was pointless. Or you know, just piggybacks on actual planetary probes. And that cubesat constellation would provide little data, and thus less science. They can use a low gain antenna due to the very low amount of produced data. Plus, there should already be a relay orbiter available, in the form of a dedicated planetary probe at the planet.

I know that, but NASA does propose to congress, and influence its future, but NASA hasn't even done that. I think it's safe to say they aren't too interested... Yeah, I have no idea with the EU too. Also, China's budget should be roughly equal to NASA (along with ESA), since they all have roughly the same size of GDP. They seem to be doing well, and probably don't need the extra money to be funded. Also, it's probably already being studied by obsevatories.

An even easier and cheaper challenge would be to have a Lunar ISRU experiment challenge, or to a ARM 'asteroid'. The requirements would be a lot cheaper, and it might be accessible to smaller aerospace companies (but not private groups), and be about the cost of a Flagship if NASA did it. It should be robotic (along with the rest of the system) to reduce costs. In the finalist competition (leaving 2 final spacecraft, one backup of the other) there would be unfunded help provided by NASA. One system would be upscaled 200% for (oxidizer) production. The same thing would be done for Space tugs, and the LV system to carry the propellant to Earth. Each would have prizes, and a small contract at the end to keep those systems operating in the weaker early years of operation. NASA would buy out a scaled down version to do more difficult precious metal ISRU. It would likely not be economical to actually mine the stuff to send back to Earth though (for one, you'd need launch and operate a small shuttle system, like X-37B. The thing is though, NASA could do this if it wanted, but it doesn't. Ah, then that probably wouldn't happen ever in any case ever due to radiation.

If they actually showered money on SpaceX tomorrow: 1. Congress would defund them. 2. LockMart and Boeing would sue NASA for not informing them of the cancellation beforehand. 3. SpaceX would likely pocket most of the money. 4. SpaceX would get an uncompetitive advantage, and make the US launch industry more monopolistic, since now they have more than enough money to "convince" the govn't to stop giving ULA launches (and defund potential competitors funded on the RD-180 replacement program), and to absorb enough losses to easily undercut its global competitors. 5. It would be worse off for everyone. There's a reason you never dump money at one place at one time. If you mean planetary probes, SpaceX generally would lose- its launch pads on the Cape are filled (and soon also at Vandenberg, due to Iridium, and DOD launches). I agree with the rest, except that manned Lunar flights are BS. Why? We have a huge list of destinations on Luna to go to, even without an outpost, particularly the poles, Tycho Crater, Trosvoky Crater, and the far side, in general. And do we know the location of a stable martian cave? It would still require some pretty darned fast rover, or insanely precise landing to actually get inside the cave in 1 year. I thought we already sent/will send a lander/rover to a river delta on Mars? Any fossil biofilms are going to require a dedicated lander to detach due to almost certainly being just bacteria. Also, good luck getting people to accept nuclear+ space I wonder why NASA's budget is so much higher? Rotary Rocket didn't work as well as anticipated. I doubt it would be revived soon.

The problem is that Space Programs are concerned more about science than applications, so it's difficult to actually get them to do things like that. I would start on making bulk sample return probes (ie ARM) NASA is honestly selling ARM wrong. If they concentrated on its robotic mission (moving the SLS missions to the Gateway station), and on the asteroid mining aspect, it would be a LOT easier for Congress to support it. Alas, so far, politics prevent it, and ARM is constantly on the brink of political cancellation. A prize structure is not going to work- even the much simpler goal of landing a probe on the moon and roving it 500m has been shown to be incredibly difficult to actually get the competitors to complete. Even if the next flagship probe is to be Mars Sample Return, the next discovery probes for Mars would likely be a life-finder, or a Geyser Hopper, and Mars 2020 has ISRU experiments and a min-heli?

The idea is that things like space tourism would be a lot easier with the huge amount of investment into tech and infrastructure.

ok, let's assume a tsto carries 28T to leo. pretty reasonable for the biggest satellites. A altitude compensated ssto might carry around 5T, generously, which is too small for most satellites. The performance gain from tsto is so great that the extra complexity of a staged vehicle is taken. It would also be more well-understood and less complex than air-augmenting a 1st stage. not impossible, just difficult enough that no one bothers since they don't need to use it.

What do you mean? They are developing ISRU, ION, inflatable heat shields...