Ex-NASA chief: China likely to land humans on Moon before Uncle Sam does again A former NASA administrator has told the US Senate Commerce Committee that it is "highly unlikely" the US will return humans to the Moon before a Chinese taikonaut plants a flag on the lunar surface. The problem, according to Jim Bridenstine, is the architecture NASA selected to return to the Moon, and in particular the choice …
I love the idea ...... unfortunately the moon is waning on that date, and only 5 days from a New Moon.
So unless they were going for 'footprints & flags', and taking off a short time after landing, then it's not a viable phase of the moon I'm afraid.
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[edit] Unless they land on the far side of the Moon!!!!!
Now that really would trump the Merkins! Not only to reuse the date, but to go a step further in landing on the far side!
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[edit squared] Forget this. I was thinking you meant the same date as Apollo 11.
How about 4th of July and don't need to be picky about the year. Take up some fireworks (a classic Chinese invention, after all) and have a little celebratory show. Leave a few extra up there, on timers, as an experiment to see what happens after 12 months on the surface, then 24 months...
"Leave a few extra up there, on timers, as an experiment to see what happens after 12 months on the surface, then 24 months..."
After their first landing, I'd not be surprised to see them back in under a year starting to build their permanent Moonbase, probably by landing a manned and a larger robot lander to become the first "outpost".
Is this a problem? The US spent vast resources trying to achieve something nobody had ever done before, landing someone on the moon. They have been there, done that and spent a fortune. Now the Chinese may be able to do it at some point. If the US landed someone on the moon again what would it be for? What is the purpose?
> and 'control' it for the purposes of further expansion in the Solar System.
And control it for strategic reasons. Fixed it for you.
Why would anybody pay to "expand" in the Solar system if there isn't a guaranteed (short-term) return attached? Nobody would, and the proof is that while everybody talks about bases on the Moon or on Mars, no human has ever even left our orbit since the Apollo program half a century ago. Even the ISS is about to get scrapped, too expensive, not enough profit.
Let them find some (really) valuable resource on the Moon or on Mars and spaceships will be leaving daily... In the meantime the only group who doesn't care about spending huge amounts of money are the military.
I'm trying to think of something that could possibly be that valuable and coming up empty. It's vanity or possibly military. The 60's race was as much about getting satellites up for snooping as going to the moon. Moon was vanity I think. Now satellites are still vanity (trips for rich/famous instead of countries), military and of course possibly the most important thing, ability to watch cat videos while hiking a mountain.
There are resources on the Moon that have great potential value to science, especially Astronomy: rather a lot less atmospheric scattering/absorbtion, away from Earth's radio chatter on the Farside, and for a couple of weeks per month, away from the Sun's rays in every wavelength (the other two weeks let you charge the batteries). And our base lines get longer (they also become an ever-changing thing - but computational interferometry can sort that out). It'd be a lot easier to pump down the arms of a couple of Gravity Wave detectors up there.
Now, whether anyone will put up the money to access this valuable resource is another matter... After all, we can "get by on the cheap" with bigger Terrestial telescopes (if they can be finished and left to operate in peace: that latter is in doubt these days) or with satellite telescopes (with their size and operational life restrictions: ok, ok, LISA will do far better than any surface, 'quakey, instruments and will be a lot longer in the arms, but still has the operational life issue).
"As you can imagine, given that 60% of the human body is made up of water, this is a serious problem," Dr. Kris Lehnhardt, an element scientist for the Human Research Program at NASA, told Live Science. In the absence of pressure, liquid water in our bodies would boil — changing immediately from a liquid to a gas. "In essence, all of your body tissues that contain water will start to expand," he said.
"Why would anybody pay to "expand" in the Solar system if there isn't a guaranteed (short-term) return attached?"
China is capable of long-term thinking. They aren't constrained by the length of a Presidential or Congressional term. If they see the possibility of a return on investment, as long as it's within a decade or two, it might be fine.
ISS is wearing out and there comes a point where it's done all the science it can do without a major refit that there isn't the capability of doing since Shuttle was retired. From reports, it smells like prison. B.O., septic odors and rotting garbage. The Russians aren't the partner they once were and Elon was threatening to scrap Crew Dragon during one of his tirades against Trump. Rumor has it that Gwynne reminded him they had contract for transporting crews and many other contracts in place that would crash the company to even try to pull that stunt. It shows that having an outside company that controls a key element of the space program is problematic. I believe that the US government needs to write into contracts that NASA will own and control all of the IP that stems from those contracts to assure that programs cannot be held hostage. If Elon tried to scrap Crew Dragon, NASA could step in and take possession of all related hardware, drawings and engineering documents to provide to another company to continue the craft until not needed any longer. With few exceptions, NASA doesn't build rockets. They build missions and some payloads.
Even the ISS is about to get scrapped, too expensive, not enough profit.
Depends how you define profit. But here's a list that was prepared earlier-
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-20-years-of-science-aboard-the-international-space-station/
Stimulating the low-Earth orbit economy: From satellite deployment to in-space research, a vibrant commercial space economy has developed, with a value that now exceeds $345 billion. The space station has been a key part of supporting that growth.
Much (maybe too much?) of that $345bn has been profit, otherwise a lot of interesting science that's been done on the ISS. Some has been fundamental science improving our understanding of the universe, but there's also been a lot of interesting research into materials science in microgravity.. Which until we invent artificial gravity has to be done in space. Which is one of those fun economic thought experiments, like orbital fabs producing high value drugs or metamaterials that can't be produced in our gravity well and then how we define the cost.
I thought the current "solution" was partially down to SLS not having enough delta-v to get Orion into a low, circular orbit around The Moon (hence the strange orbit for the habitation module)?
Sticking something on top of a Superheavy might be simpler*, but it's not even on the design board.
* and a lot cheaper
Trump must be so pissed off that he didn't get an invite to the Evil Dictators' Forum (EDF) event that kicked off this week in Beijing. Hell, even Putin's fat butler in Minsk got invited, so Xi rates him higher than Trump.
I wonder if EDF could broaden its reach to the third tier dictators like Maduro, Trump, and some of the central African "leaders"? Khameinei from Iran also ought to get an invitation, but if he crawls out from under his stone then he won't get as far as the airport.
Too much KoolAid is bad for the brain! Constantly sniping at other countries that aren't our 'allies' -- that is, conforming to our will and hosting our military -- is very Orwellian. I'm not a great fan of military parades myself (and as it turns out we're just not very good at them -- remember our rather sad attempt at one last summer/).but its what they do and you don't have to be a dictator to hold one (ask the French). What was important for us was what you sarcastically refer to as the "Evil Dictators' Forum" was actually a SCO meeting of about 20 heads of state, something that is important to us because we're making such a nuisance of ourselves globally that countries are pulling away from us, leaving us increasingly isolated.
Well, according to CNN:
“(China’s military parade) will be the first time that the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are all present in the same place,” said Brian Hart, a fellow of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “There have been little or no quadrilateral engagements between the four countries, so this is a distinctive moment.”
Of course, it isn’t fair to characterize the SCO meeting as an event attended strictly by Evil Dictators. For example, Narendra Modi was in attendance. Apparently, connoisseurs can tell the difference.
Trump must be so pissed off that he didn't get an invite to the Evil Dictators' Forum (EDF) event that kicked off this week in Beijing. Hell, even Putin's fat butler in Minsk got invited, so Xi rates him higher than Trump.
Trump didn't even ask. So instead sulked and got a bit paranoid that he wasn't the centre of attention last week and China, India and Russia were conspiring against him. The great 'deal maker' wasm't able to announce any deals and some of the deals that were announced weren't good for the West. Like the new pipeline. China gets cheap Russian energy, Tibet gets transit fees instead of Ukraine, the EU loses cheap energy and US West coast LNG terminals lose exports.
I don't think there were any space announcements, but the BRICS/CSO attendees are more than capable of doing a moon mission, or building a new ISS, should they choose to.
"I don't think there were any space announcements, but the BRICS/CSO attendees are more than capable of doing a moon mission, or building a new ISS, should they choose to."
China already did their own "ISS". Whether they choose to allow "allies" to join in and help build it out is another matter thought. They seem to be doing quite a decent job on their own.
They don't get to make decisions. Congress adds NASA budget items with spending requirements and restrictions. See the stupid paragraph about moving a Space Shuttle to JSC in Texas. The problem is that the only one still owned by NASA is the one in Florida. These are the type of legislation that should be answered with a halfbrick in a sock...
Many landers have toppeled over trying to land in 1/6 g. Even many modern, private ones.
HLS will have the highest mass AND the worst height to width ratio of all craft having tried a moon landing so far.
Given a good part of the rest mass of propellant is located furher up,in its structure this high CG creates a real risk of HLS not being upright after landing- even if the ground holds under all 4 landing pads.
Chosing the HLS design for a moon landing was between high risk and totally idiotic.
"Chosing the HLS design for a moon landing was between high risk and totally idiotic."
Kathy Leuders got a nice cushy job out of awarding SpaceX the contract at a time when she may have been let go from NASA with the appointment of a new administrator.
I would hazard that part of that is because NASA's budget peaked around 4.5% of federal spending in the 60s, which today would be 306 billion. It's now "only" 24 billion and slated to decrease to 18 if The Orange Chump gets its way. Though to be fair of course, they spend money on SpaceX et al - NASA is no longer the only game.
Hubble and Mars Rovers were more interesting than another MotM will be. Knee jerk reactionism is not a good driver. Nobody needs to cry if an AI chatbot dies in 1 of every 20 missions. Its a lot of extra money to spend to go from 95% reliable to 99+% reliable. If you must anthropize, make it a cute robot.
"Hubble and Mars Rovers were more interesting than another MotM will be"
A big telescope on the moon might be pretty awesome. If there are regular manned missions, servicing it would be possible but what Hubble has been having issues with are the gyros used to aim it and keep it stable which wouldn't be needed on the moon (maybe moon quakes would be thing). Instruments could be upgraded as technology improves. Some hobbyist sensors are incredible value for money these days so one has to believe that there are better being used by the spies.
Mars is best surveyed with rovers, landers and satellites right now. Without nuclear propulsion that can be used to get astronauts to and from the red planet in much shorter time frames and under acceleration most of the way, humans on Mars isn't all that viable. Persistent human habitation on Mars isn't possible. The biggest spanner in the works is Nitrogen. We breath mainly Nitrogen even though our bodies use the Oxygen that comes with it on Earth. Plants use N and can't live without it. No N on Mars to speak of. Maybe someday it can be harvested from Titian, but it would need to be constantly replenished as Mars can't hold on to much of an atmosphere. I wouldn't be surprised if what it has is just a slow sublimation of the volatile inventory that its left with.
> Why not first AI on the moon?
AI? Just because it's the new shiny fad? Or do you hope it might sweet-talk the (English-speaking) lunar inhabitants? Whatever the rationale, it makes as much sense as sending a blockchain or a cloud up there... :-p
As for a robot (a completely different thing), of course it would be a better option but those movie robots don't exist yet. We're still many decades from a fully autonomous robot able to assess situations and take complex decisions based on them, all on its own, without human oversight. As for remote controlling it from Earth, latency would be too big for anything more demanding than just strolling around on fairly flat terrain.
Only a (trained) human has the know-how to asses the location (make a geological survey) so we can decide if it is suitable place for a future base. Not a chatbot.
(Didn't downvote you though.)
