Ex-NASA Admin pick blames Musk ties for pulled nomination Jared Isaacman, former NASA Administrator nominee, has shared how the US space agency might have looked under his leadership and blamed his connections with Elon Musk for the abrupt withdrawal of his nomination. "It was a real bummer," Isaacman told the All-In podcast. "I got a call on Friday last week that the president had …
Posting threats to cancel each other's spacecraft on one's own social media.
The US has gone from "We choose to do this ... not because it is easy, but because it is hard" to throwing rattles out of prams.
Really, really, hoping that Japan's attempts have more success, that India, ESA and everyone else - yes, including China - keep their socks pulled up and their missions flying.
"Isaacman reckoned that having astronauts go to Mars to collect the samples rather than investing in robotics was a better option,"
Tell us you're an idiot without saying you're an idiot. Whatever the costs of getting samples back by robot, that would pale into insignificance against getting people to mars and back (alive).
Totally agree.
It's the same reason drone aircraft are much, much cheaper.
Robots don't need heavy, expensive life support, and if the robot dies, the whole project isn't cancelled for another 20 years.
If he said, it would be a great achievement to get people on Mars, then fine.
Also the shit about chucking loads of telescopes is just nuts. It's a dumb as buying a 10 telescopes off Temu then boasting 3 of them can just about see the moon.
>Also the shit about chucking loads of telescopes is just nuts. It's a dumb as buying a 10 telescopes off Temu then boasting 3 of them can just about see the moon.
Lots of telescopes makes a lot of sense with the reduced launch costs
.
The model of Hubble: A shuttle launch costs $1bn so need to make sure the mission can't fail, so the telescope costs $1bn and takes decade. Then you need to make it serviceable so that costs another $1bn and puts it in a crap orbit
Or make 10 telescopes on a common spacecraft bus for a fraction of the cost, launch them every 1-2 years with improved detectors on a cheap commercial rocket - all for the price of one Hubble service mission.
> Robots don't need heavy, expensive life support, and if the robot dies, the whole project isn't cancelled for another 20 years.
Not to mention that if the robot dies, you don't have the flags at half mast for a week and sobbing widows, widowers, and/or traumatized children.1
__________________
"we would eventually send people to Mars when we run out of things for robots to do."
Provided the robots find things that make sending people worthwhile.
The state of the art needs to advance significantly to the point where nuclear propulsion is viable and astronauts can be sent via a much shorter transit time. A progressive lunar program that gets more technology completed and tested would speed that up.
I haven't played the clarinet in ages. Even if I bought a quite nice one and started practicing, I won't be joining a well known big band or orchestra anytime soon. I'd be better off finding some smaller ensembles to get back into the groove. The US Artemis mission is something like that. Instead of planning a basic mission that does something useful besides testing hardware, they want to land at a difficult to reach spot, use all sorts of new orbits and mission elements. I'd be excited if they stripped the goals down to doing an Apollo + program with a landing near what looks like a cave entrance and shoving an ROV down the hole to have a look. Perhaps more than one site if a few can be reached by a rover. Some test solar rigs could be installed to see how they perform over a few cycles. Maybe even plant some EV charging stations for later missions. The south pole is fine and dandy, but an extremely tough first shot back.
By that argument we should all descend into a WALL-E style existence, letting robots do absolutely everything for us.
MatthewSt,
Human flight to Mars is currently close to impossible. We don't have a craft that could do it, and building one will be hideously expensive. But worse, the radiation exposure on the trip would be extremely high. If there's some kind of solar flare, in the direction of the craft, everybody dies. If there isn't, everybody receives a radiation dose that might be high enough to risk killing them within 10-20 years - and might be enough to cause physical problems during the actual trip.
We can take radiation shielding, but it's very heavy. And we don't have in-space manufacturing facilities or the heavy launch capacity to build a shielded spacecraft at any reasonable price. It supposedly cost around $100bn to build the ISS (although that does include operating costs for at least a decade) - but it would be that kind of ballpark.
Had a solar flare hit during an Apollo lunar mission, everyone would probably have died. But they were only outside the Earth's magnetic field for under a week - so the risk was acceptable. And round trip to Mars is about 18 months.
MatthewSt,
Fair enough. Our launch capacity is improving, and costs falling. So building a Mars vehicle is going to get cheaper.
But there's another problem. Landing on Mars is going to require landing on rocket power. But then you're stuck on Mars for a few months. They were worried the LEM engines might not restart after only a couple of days on the Moon. Going to Mars you take advantage of orbital position - so as I understand it you have to either go and stay for a day or two then come back, or go and stay for 6 months - with a 6 month journey each way. It's a long time since I read Buzz Aldrin's explanation of flying to Mars and back, but he came up with the idea of a Mars cycler, a permanent spacecraft going from Earth to Mars and back every year - and you just have to accelerate your smaller capsules to catch up and board that - then decelate when you get to Mars - then piggyback on it to get home.
Also Mars has no magnetic field of its own to speak of. So you'd need shielding there, or to live underground.
"They were worried the LEM engines might not restart after only a couple of days on the Moon"
Not exactly, the LM ascent stage engine was a one-time only device, a separate much more complex engine was used for the landing, so it was never the case of 'restarting' the engine.
The ascent engine was made as simple as possibly, hypergolic fuels where used where simply mixing them would ignite, no need for any sort of ignition system, the engine couldn't be throttled, it was running full or off, it couldn't be steered (no gimbaling). The fuel was pushed into the chamber by pressurised helium, there were no pumps to go wrong, there were redundant pipes and valves to feed the helium into the fuel and oxidiser tanks; basically as long as there was fuel and oxidiser in the tanks and pressurised helium and 'most' of the valves worked on command, that engine would absolutely fire!
It was about as simple as you could get, for good reason.
And no, you can't go and stay for a day or so, once you get there the Earth and Mars are no longer in a good position for an easy return, so with current technology, you are sort of stuck for six months or so for the next favouable alignment.
There is a known way to get to Mars quicker and/or make the timing almost irrelevant, a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine; these will work, the technology is fairly well known, but there are 'issues' shall we say about launching a nuclear reactor into orbit!
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"a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine; these will work, the technology is fairly well known, but there are 'issues' shall we say about launching a nuclear reactor into orbit!"
Launch the bits for assembly on the moon and launch to Mars from there. Delivery vehicles with nuclear fuel can be lofted when the 1st stage boost is mainly over ocean. Redundant systems can be built in so if there are problems later, it can either be pushed down system or brought back to Earth at a disposal location. There was a RTG that was recovered after a failed launch, cleaned up and reused for another mission.
Excused Boots,
Good point. Two engines on the lunar lander. I must have been thinking of re-lighting the descent engine a few times during Apollo 13. Which fortunately worked. Whereas the ascent engine was a simpler "this has to work" - as there's no back-up and no abort option.
It's got to be a worry for Mars though. You're going to be there for months - so you've either got to have a separate crew on a ship in orbit, or take several landing craft - and all go down - but then worry thaht you're going to need to take off again.
We can clearly leave craft in space for 6 months and use them reliably, we do it on the ISS all the time. A bit different for a craft that's landed on the dusty surface of Mars and has to sit there for months.
As for not being able to stay a couple of days - I'm sure I read in Aldrin's proposal for an Earth-Mars cycler craft that you could stay for a very short visit - if you could carry enough fuel. Very fast deceleration, visit and acceleration back to rendezvous with the cycler for the trip back to Earth. Of course that relies on leaving your long term life support on a craft you're planning to abandon and return to - plus probably carrying unfeasibly large amounts of fuel. If you're going there for a quick trip, it's nuclear propulsion only.
Realistically it's all very expensive options. None of which look very attractive.
At least building the cycler would allow you to solve certain problems. Like taking digging equipment could be done way before astronauts actually got there. That could even solve some of the other problems, in that your digging equipment could also build you nice flat landing pads - so your expensive rockets don't get sandblasted.
"so as I understand it you have to either go and stay for a day or two then come back, or go and stay for 6 months - with a 6 month journey each way."
That's the gist even if the times are off. How well are the people going to perform on Mars for those few days after 6 months in zero G? How much could they do if they can do something? It would make more sense to send a rover that spends the time collecting samples, rolls back into the rocket and launches back to Earth. They could even leave the rover behind to save mass and just bring back its sealed payload box. The rocket would need to haul the fuel to return with it so it will have to be something storable.
How well are the people going to perform on Mars for those few days after 6 months in zero G?
MachDiamond,
Mars gravity is quite low, we could fit out our ship with lots of excercise equipment, and give the crew more time on the machines than the ISS crew get - i.e. fewer science tasks to do and more trianing to arrive in better shape. Plus, if we send them for months, they'll have more time to acclimatise.
But it's such a big list of problems to solve. And every one, difficult, dangerous and expensive.
Much easier to go back to the Moon. And that's still expensive and difficult.
And living underground requires digging a big hole, and that requires heavy equipment. One article I saw pointed out that heavy construction equipment wears out all the time because of sand getting in the works, hoses breaking, etc. Mars surface is a very hostile environment not just for people but for backhoes and bulldozers.
Unless you land near one of those volcanic skylight things, but I would want that to be fully robot-mapped before I went into one.
> "We don't have a craft that could do it, and building one will be hideously expensive. But worse, the radiation exposure on the trip would be extremely high."
I have the ideal solution.
Someone should convince Elon to (a) do it at his own expense and (b) that since he's the one paying, he should get to go there first.
I mean, even if he's heard of the risk of cosmic radiation and solar flares, his actual "scientific" knowledge seems to come from goofy sci-fi space operas, so he probably thinks they'd give him super powers instead of frying his DNA.
That'd be what *anyone* would call a win-win!
Maybe, just maybe this planet was setup to make it very difficult to impossible for us to leave on purpose. We are not supposed to be able to export our dysfunctional life form to elsewhere. Robots exploring the neighborhood is one thing, but we can never expect to actually go anywhere and survive for long, until we learn to get along with each other like some civilized life form, without killing each other over minor differences that don't really matter. Hide color, eye shape, gender, sexual preference and other normal differences that exist in other species of animals on this wet rock.
"If robots are the only thing we're going to send off-world then is there really any point going?"
Of course it is, if the purpose is acquisition of knowledge. Which is fortunate, because there are many places in the universe a human will never be able to "explore". Venus, for example.
And, on a more practical level, it occurs to me we need to prove Mars is actually dead before we cross contaminate it. So the robots absolutely need to come back before we send walking, breathing, microbial factories.
If you want to start paying for the human travel capabilities, go ahead. However, for a government-funded operation whose goal is to get samples, they should decide whether human flight is cheaper (no), better (no), less prone to disaster (no), more likely to succeed (no), or less likely to cause damage to other things (no) than a robotic mission. If several of those things were yes, it would justify the expense, even assuming that the astronauts were just fine with the high chance of death for the spirit of adventure. Which they probably are not, by the way.
This doesn't mean that humans will never leave, but that in our scientific exploration, we're not going to prioritize having humans dig up some rocks at the cost of probably killing the humans who do it and being able to do it once for every ten times we could have done it with robots. Sending robots will also teach us more which will be useful when we want to send humans. Returning rock samples will give us scientific information, whereas landing a human there will just show off that we could or more likely demonstrate that we actually couldn't.
"This doesn't mean that humans will never leave, but that in our scientific exploration, we're not going to prioritize having humans dig up some rocks at the cost of probably killing the humans who do it and being able to do it once for every ten times we could have done it with robots. "
I'm sure there would be plenty of people to take the risk, but the cost and complexity is so much higher for no additional gain. Humans would still need to take instruments to do some basic analysis so they collect geologically interesting samples that are more than shiny. Robots could be sanitized carefully before launch and sample containers too so as to not make finding any organic materials suspect. If DNA was found on Mars and the confidence was high it wasn't introduced by the mission, that would be very significant. It might hint that panspermia is a thing. If an entirely different flavor of DNA is found, that would be mind blowing.
NASA contractors worked hard on bulking up the price of Mars sample return by robot. They just didn't go high enough to compete with golden dome. They should have proposed ten Mars sample return missions each with different single-use spacecraft designed from scratch.
Ted Cruz has unzipped his fly and sprinkled his contribution on the proposed NASA budget. Artemis IV & V are back. Both required a new upper stage and mobile launch platform. V also has the benefit of requiring re-starting RS-25 production because all the shuttle left-overs will be in the Atlantic. Lunar gateway is back so if lift-off from the Moon is delayed astronauts will have to wait 7 days for their ride from NRHO to Earth to complete an orbit. These exorbitantly priced components should be easily enough to soak up any budget NASA might want to spend on science.
Clearly Isaacman had to go with his talk about using NASA to perform scientific research and leaving Mars sample return until a multi-purpose commercial ride becomes available.
Also it does strike me 'why'? Think about it, any crewed mission to Mars would be on the surface for what, at least a couple of months - plenty of time for a trained geologist (or three) armed with the Mk. 1 Human Eyeball, and likely to do far better job at finding interesting samples than even a team of experts looking at a video feed from a few hundred million miles away.
So to return the Perseverance samples would mean the human landing would have to also be in or close to Jezero crater. So if you are going to the same place, why bother picking these up, when it would probably be preferable to search for and collect 'better' samples. Of course if you land somewhere else with a different geology to be able to do comparisons, then you probably won't be close enough to collect what is already there anyway.
The proposed MSR mission did seem to have a lot of things that could go wrong* and although more expensive by many orders of magnitude, I suspect that people picking them up is far more likely to succeed, just because everything has to be over engineered, multiple backups systems and also humans are really quite good at realising that something isn't gong quite right and improvising. Had 'Eagle' been landing autonomously, it would have crashed, only action by Armstrong who realised where it was heading, took control and steered to a smoother place ensured a safe touchdown.
* Incidentally, does anyone know if the proposed MSR mission was to collect 'all' of the sample tubes and try to return them? If so, it does seem a risk, all your eggs in one basket. A failure to achieve Mars orbit, failure to properly execute the Earth return burn, failure of mid-course corrections, failure to properly re-enter and land safely; and all the samples are lost! At least if 'some' were left then you could have another go.
While I was looking for a different story, I found this on the possibility of humans being able to dynamically adapt after a journey to Mars.
Yes there are options, water is a fairly good shield, and you do need water to keep humans alive, so, hypothetically have a small section of the spacecraft surrounded with water tanks; a sort of storm-shelter.
There is potentially another solution, but it involves having a lot of energy available. You could generate a temporary artificial magnetosphere around the spacecraft, just to deflect the incoming charged particles away. And realistically, that's a nuclear reactor, which could also provide the thrust necessary to get to Mars far sooner than currently possible.
"hypothetically have a small section of the spacecraft surrounded with water tanks; a sort of storm-shelter."
it's not an insignificant amount of water. It's also not just solar radiation that's a concern. Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCRs) isn't healthy either and can be far more energetic. Common Sense Skeptic did a couple of episodes on rad shielding and they have references to their sources of info. TL:DR, to have enough shielding using water is more mass than a current rocket can launch. They used Starship as a model, but the figures can be used anywhere.
GCR's are also an issue on the surface of Mars since it has no magnetic field. Habitat domes on the surface would be subject to everything hitting the planet.
Also it does strike me 'why'? Think about it, any crewed mission to Mars would be on the surface for what, at least a couple of months - plenty of time for a trained geologist (or three) armed with the Mk. 1 Human Eyeball, and likely to do far better job at finding interesting samples than even a team of experts looking at a video feed from a few hundred million miles away.
Can't remember where right now but I remember hearing of an experiment where operational mission control teams were put in remote charge of probes on Earth roughly compable to e.g. Spirit and Opportunity in capability and that had been placed in a location rich in fossils and other geological evidence of life.
They completely missed the lot. As the team running the experiment noted, it wasn't that they missed a few microscopic specimens here and there, they drove straight past very obvious features that in person you would be expected to pick up at a glance. And yes, the teams had experienced geologists and paleontologists on them.
I have searched for this, and so far, I haven't found it. The closest I came was an article describing a failure to detect life using instruments the rovers have on them, but that means either sending more complicated equipment that can detect it (probably not Mars-certified yet) or bringing the samples back so it can be tested here (exactly what they're talking about).
That doesn't prove that the study you're talking about is incorrect, but to justify the added risk of sending humans and the added complexity of getting them there and back without contaminating Mars or killing them, we should have a clear understanding of what limitations they would face using robots and what limitations they would face while present. They would have the ability to look around more freely, which should help, but most other actions they do would be limited by the need to survive and preserve as much of the original area as possible so, if they failed, someone or something else could try again. If we concluded that the range of vision was the problem, we should ask ourselves whether that problem could be fixed or improved by changing the way the cameras worked before jumping straight to sending humans.
Found it. Carol Stoker at NASA Ames Research Center, as featured in BBC Horizon from 2009 "Mars: A Horizon Guide". Start about 45:30 in.
"No, they were missing very obvious things. (laughs) ... They were missing dinosaur tracks the size of dinner plates."
"Can't remember where right now but I remember hearing of an experiment where operational mission control teams were put in remote charge of probes on Earth roughly compable to e.g. Spirit and Opportunity in capability and that had been placed in a location rich in fossils and other geological evidence of life."
Steve Squyres, the Principal Investigator behind Spirit and Opportunity has said on many occasions that a geologist walking around kicking over rocks and hitting them with a hammer is much more efficient at finding interesting things than a rover. Cost and risk impact that advantage a lot. I wish they would have open-sourced the MER rovers. I can imagine the numbers of makers that would have loved to build their own. They'd also extend the tech and do things like make battlebot versions. NASA and other agencies would have loads of research posted online to really evolve what they have been doing. Having a bunch of rovers on Mars being operated by many different teams would find more than one or two operated by one agency with similarly trained people.
"* Incidentally, does anyone know if the proposed MSR mission was to collect 'all' of the sample tubes and try to return them? If so, it does seem a risk, all your eggs in one basket."
Another rover would follow in the track and pick up the sample. I thought it would have been easier for everything to be in one box and the box collected to be brought back. The collection mission could have another sample box on hand and fill that up too, just in case.
A few weeks ago it looked like Musk was going to grift massively from his overly close relationship with the US government - not just with NASA but with the FAA, SSA, IRS, ICE and so forth. Now not only is all his grifting gains from helping Trump get elected under threat, but he might lose contracts he had before he went all in for Trump last summer.
The more you see the more you realize that Rick Wilson's book titled "Everything Trump Touches Dies" is the most accurately titled book in the history of book titles.
after Isaacman's idiotic statement, I understand why musktwat went more insane than he already is.
it's now plainly obvious he wanted Isaacman as he would funnel nasa budget directly to musktwat
pure greed once again, but don't feel sorry for musktwat even if his companies go to the wall, he's never going to be destitute, rich people always have plenty of ill gotten gains hidden away.
even if they deserve to be nothing
NASA should keep the SLS system for launching large payloads and to go too the moon. We lost this ability after the Apollo missions and Saturn V were discontinued. It took us decades to get it back. THe SLS could also be used to launch large payloads into space such as a new space station to replace the ISS.
"NASA should keep the SLS system for launching large payloads and to go too the moon."
It's a limited production run unless they restart the RS-25 rocket engine line. Those engines were used on the Shuttle so they have a stock of them on hand which saved development and production costs over coming up with a new design. In 10 years or so when those engines are used up, it could make sense to sponsor a New Glenn XL or whatever heavy lift vehicle Blue Origin has going if it fits the bill. If they need something not in any catalog, it could make sense to use BE-4 engines or their successors on a hull that's purpose built.
If there were some sort of lunar colony that's regularly staffed, there would a need for a heavy lift rocket to be kept in service. I'd like to see NASA and other agencies breaking trail for commercial lunar installations by getting a lot of the basics researched and doing interesting pure science that private companies can license and run with if they find a profitable application for it. That shifts NASA from having to do everything to only needing to book passage and freight services to continue doing science. That gives private industry another customer to amortize costs and justify more frequent trips. At that point, putting humans on Mars may be more realistic. Finding a nice valley on the moon to conduct nuclear rocket engine tests could speed up development of that technology. It's more difficult to build test stands and hook things up, but no protestors to prevent science from being done. Perhaps the engines can be mounted in a way to slow the moon drifting away as it does.
Isaacman was the wrong man for the job, and another abominable nomination. His only strength was he wasn't a Fox news weekend anchor with a history of drunkenness and financial mismanagement. NASA has been on the wrong path for several decades. The loss of corporate knowledge as the "public-private" partnerships drained funds from the agency driving up overall launch costs and leaving us showered with private rockets that keep experiencing "rapid unscheduled disassembly" over varying launch azimuths. NASA has long needed to return to doing the things instead of pretending that it "manages" while others "do". Under that model NASA did little except dole out its funds to a few well connected companies while starving the organization. (okay, not all NASA centers adhered to that model, but it has been the hallmark of recent administrators and administration in Building 1)
While one can always throw rocks at NASA for x, y or z, it, with all its flaws, was a nation treasure that did great things. It needs to get back to doing the great things and let the technical developments be spun-off into private industry (remember Velcro?), instead of spinning itself off into private industry. NASA needs to retain its core business of manned and unmanned spaceflight and science and get out of the "management" business.
The contracting paradigm has always been NASA's Achilles heel. More of a jobs-project for middle-income engineers and "managers". Now don't get me wrong, I'm not raining on the whole contracting idea. There were some damn good contractors employing talented and dedicated engineers that made the system work. But NACA/NASA was in the aviation/spaceflight business, not the management business for much of its existence, up really until return to flight post 51-L and then the the number of contractors and organizations grew from something you could list on one page to something that more resembled weeds in a vacant lot than any sane organization chart.
Isaacman would have overseen the continued intentional deterioration of the agency and loss of agency spaceflight and science knowledge on a historic scale. Good riddance he is going the way of the chief Doggy Bro.
"His only strength was he wasn't a Fox news weekend anchor with a history of drunkenness and financial mismanagement. "
I don't know about him enough to dispute your claims, but the head of the agency needs management skills and be crazy about space and aeronautics. Somebody that's a generic management type isn't a good choice and neither is a cheerleader that's thin on being a manager. The nominee also needs some science chops to be able to understand what their subordinates are telling them so they can make rational decisions.
The people that work at NASA are mainly very talented. The shortcomings come from the top and how the agency can be whipsawed by failed lawyers (congresscritters) that have the attention span of a two year old high on Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal.
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