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Information is being leaked on the next NASA rocket.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/07/preliminary-nasa-evolved-sls-vehicle-21-years-away/
![[image loading]](http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/B41.jpg)
What you're looking at here could be the SLS design implementation. It is essentially the Ares V design, but scaled down to reuse virtually all current Shuttle launch components - four segment SSRB, 3 shuttle SSMEs, and the 8 meter tank, rather than the 10m tank found on Ares V.
Really pressing information in the article is the snail-paced schedule of launches; the first launch in 2017/2018 time frame, followed by a 4 (!) year gap to the next launch, and then one launch per year for the schedule. Pretty lame. Perhaps NASA is really betting on commercial sector to provide manned LEO flights.
The US congress also just subpeoned NASA for the hard documents on the SLS, so maybe we'll be seeing the actual rocket and plan soon (if indeed the above is not the case). Any other space aficionados here ... what do you guys think of this whole fiasco?
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I think it looks like they don't have enough funding and that is the cause of the "fiasco". I'm sure if they allocated something like say, another $10 billion (roughly how much the DOD spends on air-conditioning in Iraq/Afghanistan every 6 months) it wouldn't be moving at a snails pace.
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Really pressing information in the article is the snail-paced schedule of launches; the first launch in 2017/2018 time frame, followed by a 4 (!) year gap to the next launch, and then one launch per year for the schedule. Pretty lame.
By 2017/18 SpaceX would have launched and possibly delivered or flown crew members, and more importantly Bigelow Aerospace would have launched it's 330 model already. Then by 2022 who knows what the two companies as well as others would already have.
So what are law makers going to look for and what is NASA's response on the cost?
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I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs.
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On July 29 2011 11:18 Z3kk wrote:
I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs.
NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the total federal budget.
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Just imagine how far along the space program would be if we stopped waging shadow wars and sticking our hands in other people's business.
Just as well, I suppose. Glad to see theyre at least still working
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What's with you guys, if anything, going to space is fucking cool, and it's not like the marginal funds they'd divert to NASA from the budget would end up "making the world a better place before moving out to space", they'd probably get lost in the system anyways, read "le filling-ze-pockets".
I was a little surprised when on the radio they were going on about how the last "Space Shuttle" had landed for the last time, and I guess this is what they're replacing that technology with.
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Would be nice just to see how far we can extend our reach in the universe before mankind fizzles out completely 
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United States7483 Posts
On July 29 2011 11:27 TheNihilist wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2011 11:18 Z3kk wrote:
I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs. NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the total federal budget.
And by tiny, we mean TINY.
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This picture sums up NASA's budget. When it was considered vital to national security (beat dem Russians!) it spiked. Also I'm sure the article about how we spend more on Air Conditioning in Iraq for soldiers than on NASA as a whole was a great bit of fun for everyone to read.
Also totally hilarious is that public perception is that NASA takes approximately 24% of the Federal budget (as opposed to it's actual ~0.6%). "In other words, respondents believed NASA’s budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money."
Just about every dollar goes back to American people or companies. That can't be a bad thing either.
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With the ending of the Constellation program and the Orion Spacecraft system I really don't think any new rocket systems will be implemented.
Also it isn't NASA that is hoping for the success of the commercial sector, it is actually Congress. NASA would love to be the only space program in the world(besides Soyuz), but Congress and feels the commercial industry is able to take over in the near future.
Personally I feel the same as several other posters and think that the DOD budget just be sliced a tiny bit more in favor of NASA since space exploration is a sort of preemptive defense system if you think far enough in the future.
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On July 29 2011 12:15 Ympulse wrote:
Just imagine how far along the space program would be if we stopped waging shadow wars and sticking our hands in other people's business.
Just as well, I suppose. Glad to see theyre at least still working
Imagining such a thing is a little ridiculous in my opinion . . .imagine how far science would have gone if there was no religion, for instance, or how futuristic our society and tech would be if a couple of genetic mutations had occurred in our genetic line millions of years ago to alter fate. Imagining anyone's life or any timeframe without any mistakes made is ridiculous, as such a thing could never occur. There won't be a time where people trust each other enough to stop waging shadow wars and getting into others' business.
As far as my thoughts on Nasa's new snail pace, I too think its a shame that we've cut funds from it and still invest so heavily in the war.
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On July 29 2011 11:18 Z3kk wrote:
I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs.
Why the hell not? As it stands now, we spend more money air conditioning tents in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan than we do on the entire NASA budget.
Centuries from now, our descendants will look back and wonder why we squandered our money on silly wars instead of exploring the great mysteries of the universe.
In my opinion, the space program is one of the first things we should be continuing.
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NASA's budget makes me sad. Space exploration and colonization is arguably the most important component to humanties continued survival and advancement. Yet we spend so much money tring to kill each other.
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More proof that as of right now NASA has no actual/reliable plan to return to Space.
WASHINGTON — The rocket and capsule that NASA is proposing to return astronauts to the moon would fly just twice in the next 10 years and cost as much as $38 billion, according to internal NASA documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.
The money would pay for a new heavy-lift rocket and Apollo-like crew capsule that eventually could take astronauts to the moon and beyond. But it would not be enough to pay for a lunar landing — or for more than one manned test flight, in 2021.
That timeline and price tag could pose serious problems for supporters of the new spacecraft, which is being built from recycled parts of the shuttle and the now-defunct Constellation moon program. It effectively means that it will take the U.S. manned-space program more than 50 years — if ever — to duplicate its 1969 landing on the moon.
Source
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If the Defense budget is cut that cut should not be reallocated to NASA but simply be left out of the budget. There is no reason the government should have anything to do with space exploration other than military research. If space exploration isn't profitable in the private market then that is fine although I suspect it would be. Instead of being forced to pay tax towards NASA people who want could choose to invest or even donate if they really want.
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On July 29 2011 12:33 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2011 11:27 TheNihilist wrote:On July 29 2011 11:18 Z3kk wrote:
I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs. NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the total federal budget. And by tiny, we mean TINY.
yeah but most people in the US are proud of nasa in some sense it's probably the most liked government program or atleast least hated. Also nasa's science and research could be called a job creator! :D
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On August 07 2011 03:40 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2011 12:33 Whitewing wrote:On July 29 2011 11:27 TheNihilist wrote:On July 29 2011 11:18 Z3kk wrote:
I'm just not sure as to whether they should continue the space program, at least for the time being... :x
For now, I really do not think money should be invested--at least so heavily--into NASA programs. NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the total federal budget. And by tiny, we mean TINY. yeah but most people in the US are proud of nasa in some sense it's probably the most liked government program or atleast least hated. Also nasa's science and research could be called a job creator! :D
Yeah the government taking money and creating jobs with it is in fact creating jobs when you're not talking about the free market, creating jobs isn't necessarily a good thing. In the free market job creation will always be the result of production or at worst, someone foolishly investing which is at least their choice. The government on the other hand, takes money from the people to create jobs. Sometimes this is good but it is often bad. The government may be foolishly investing just like the man in the free market and instead of this coming at the expense of one man who chose to do that it comes at the expense of all tax payers who may or may not have supported the investment.
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This is a true casualty of this entire financial crisis. Who knows where we would have been as a race if we had invested into space technology,ven 50 years ago this wouldn't have been acceptable. Exploration has been humanities largest endeavor for thousands of years and now its coming to an end just because some guys on wall street decided that one yacht wasn't enough.
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I do hope they don't return to space. That is, until they find a new propulsion technology that is faster and more efficient than rockets. For now they should probably just work on research, and let spacex and biggelow do their thing.(though real experiments are important for research as well)
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EPT
