How is it that 35 years ago, we landed a man on the moon, but now we are proposing that we will return to the moon in 2015 and on Mars in 2020. Shouldn't we have accomplished these goals by now? After taking a look at some science fiction books half a century ago, there were pictures of flying cars, space colonies, and many other fantastic things that were thought could be possible. Is it just me, or are we nearing the pinnacle of our civilization. Maybe the development of intelligent civilizations slows down with increasing time instead of accelerating. I'm thinking now that even getting someone to Mars is a difficult task to achieve. Surely we can send space probes, but what about manned expeditions. Are the worth the money and risk? What do you guys think about this?

Money talks.

Freddo gave it a short, simple answer, methinks!

Long answer: Too many things to take into consideration...

• The cold war was on, and competition with the USSR was at the front of everything. It was politically sound then.
• The Saturn V is not a very good system for such a purpose today, and a better system has to be designed.
• There's too much spending on other matters, like anti-terrorism, whether justified or not.
• There was political will back in the 60s and 70s for going out into space. Remember JFK's challenge?
• There's no political will for such now.

And that list is not exhaustive!

Hmm, perhaps you're right. Let me rephrase:

1. Money Talks
2. Politics Walks (or wanders)
3. A person is smart, people are stupid (or at least forgetful).

That and technology has advanced to the point where we can do quite a bit with unmanned probes. Why risk humans on a project we can do cheaper and safer with robots?

Plus we'd have to retrain the astronaut corps for what could be a three-year mission to Mars. That's a long time to be away from home.

Here's a copy of a posting I made to the Self Service Science Forum, covering sort of the same topic. Think of it as an essay on the topic.

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Probably mostly because the level of funding is nowhere near what it was back in the 1960s. And because it's going to be done more safely than it was then.

Why is "If" in inverted commas? Do you think the USA faked it back then? If so, that's incorrect.

The thing about the old plans is that they were very expedient, and produced a booster and two spacecraft which weren't as safe as, say, the Space Shuttle is. That might sound strange, seeing as two of the five space shuttles have been destroyed with loss of life, while only one crew was lost in all the Apollo spacecraft (Apollo 1). But the big difference is that each of the Space Shuttles have been used many times, and provide a far more pleasant operating environment.

The Lunar Module has been described as the most functional manned spacecraft ever designed; its designers took full advantage of where it was to operate. But it was an unnerving experience for some of the astronauts who used it. The aluminium pressure skin of the Lunar Module was thinner than that of a soft drink can, and when it was pressurised, the hatch visibly bulged outwards.

Many of the components used in the spacecraft have been replaced by more modern technology, and many component manfacturers have changed production lines or gone out of business. Even for these reasons it would be necessary to revise the spacecraft and booster from the ground up. Having gone that far, you might as well start from scratch.

Also, why not take advantage of today's technology? Use light composite materials instead of metal. Replace wiring with circuit boards. But what do you do with the weight savings? Increase safety, increase payload or increase consumables?

The one big advantage available to today's designers from looking at the old plans is knowing what's possible and what's necessary.

Because in a propaganda war, coming second looks silly. It's better to say you weren't ever trying.

In reality, the Soviets made several efforts to stage a come-from-behind win in the race to the Moon. They had a two-man spacecraft (Soyuz) capable of going to the Moon. They had a one man lunar module designed and built. And late in 1968 they sent an unmanned Soyuz around the Moon and back to the Earth, carrying a crew of tortoises.

Finally, hours before Apollo 11 lifted off, they tried to trump the Americans by staging an unmanned sample retrieval mission. If it had succeeded, there would have been a minor propaganda success for returning the first samples from the Moon to the Earth, and without risking the lives of any cosmonauts. However, the spacecraft crashed on the Moon. Three similar missions succeeded during the first half of the 1970s. And by keeping secret their own plans for a manned mission, the Soviets made the claim that they had never intended to send cosmonauts to the Moon.

[pedant]Well, the last mission was actually in 1972.[/pedant]

Seriously though, there hasn't been the political will. NASA's budget since the mid-1970s has been a small fraction (less than a third, possibly less) than it was at the peak of Apollo. With the reduced budget, it couldn't afford to keep Apollo going, and still conduct other missions.

It could also be argued that NASA played the political and publicity game quite poorly.

The public was willing to support NASA to achieve Kennedy's goal. But once the goal was achieved, a common question was, "What's the point in going back?" Therefore, without a strong, achievable vision of what NASA could turn to after Apollo, the public instead concentrated on the cost of the project, and where else the money could be spent.

NASA's Administrator in the 1960s, Jim Webb, was a clever Washington insider. He maintained NASA's funding during this time because he knew the location of a few skeletons in the closets of influential Congressmen. However, this supply was limited, and Webb's successors weren't nearly as good at the political game as he was. Therefore, from the 1970s onwards, critics of NASA (like Walter Mondale) got the upper hand in Congress and cut its budget to the bone.

Finally, NASA's post-Apollo vision was way too optimistic given the public and political climate. It was written by engineers for their benefit (okay, maybe a bit harsh), and wasn't very adaptable. In the end, all that was left of it was the Space Shuttle. And even the Shuttle was an over-optimistic compromise lacking its original purpose (building a long-term space station).

I forgive your blasphemy!

The Saturn V could have allowed much better launch of really large payloads than anything we have today. A space station the size of ISS could have been launched by just two Saturn Vs.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Why do people travel to distant countries when they could watch them cheaper and safer in movies and photographs of very good quality?

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Yes and no. The big problem with the Saturn V is that it is 30 years old and where exactly do you get all that obsolete tech to rebuild them? It would be as easy to just start from scratch.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Short answer, failure of will. We could have done much more, "we" decided not to. It is not a demonstration that we are at the peak of our civilization, at least in a technical sense.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

The basic problem is money. NASA gets does not get close to the funding it got in the 1960's which was anywhere from 2-5.5%. If NASA even had 1% of the federal budget, it would be getting 22 billion or so instead of the 16 billion it getting this year. NASA also suffered under the Clinton years. The Solar System Exploration Office was disbanded and the budget was cut by 40 billion during his years.

I'd bet that if the US were to double NASA's budget to 32 billion and then increase it with inflation yearly, it wouldn't take to long to get to the moon.

Much as I admire the achievements of Project Apollo, I wonder sometimes if it was one of the worst things that could have happened to manned space exploration. What we got was:

Earth orbiters (Mercury) -> advanced Earth orbiters (Gemini) -> dead end program to land men on the Moon (Apollo) -> no way of topping that without spending a whole lot more money -> 35 years of limited accomplishments.

What should have happened was more like:

Earth orbiters (Mercury) -> advanced Earth orbiters (Gemini) -> permanent manned presence in space (space station) -> cheaper ways of getting people into space (space shuttle, but better, one hopes) -> deep space missions facilitated by the existence of and experience with a space station.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

That's not really a valid argument though, nor a valid comparison. We're talking a huge change in scale in both safety and cost between sending an unmanned mission and a manned mission to the Moon or Mars in comparison to me flying to Germany instead of watching a Rick Steve's special on Germany.

If we can retrieve the same information more quickly (robots don't have to be trained), more cheaply (you don't have to feed them or supply them with oxygen), and more safely (if we lose a robot at the most you lose money and possibly information, that's it) then the decision is obvious.

Replying to ToSeek's posting:

That was what von Braun had in mind and was another reason why he was not so enthusiastic about LOR. He knew, LOR would bring us just to the moon, while EOR would open up the solar system for us.

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

The Saturn V is dead. That is irrelevant. Had it not been killed, it could have done a great job.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Unfortunately, EOR probably would not have worked within Kennedy's timeframe.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Manned exploration will always occur, regardless of our prowess at sending surrogate machinery. Exploring is not exactly the same as data acquisition. The former is a human activity not just because human intuition helps it work but also because exploration in person satisfies something in the human experience.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Robots don't have to be trained? No, but they do have to be programmed - which takes not only a team of developers but also the engineers and scientists to figure out what to program - and they need a team to tell them what to do even then.

For example, suppose Spirit's cameras see something interesting 50 meters away. The image gets to JPL several minutes later, the strategy team eventually prioritizes the image, the tactical team plans the maneuver, the engineers break it down into the appropriate commands, the controllers prepare the load and send it out, and the rover slowly trundles to the target over a day or two.

An astronaut-scientist sees something interesting 50 meters away. He walks over, and two minutes later is reaching for his rock hammer.

True. Robotic missions will always be cheaper.

This argument always irritates me. Of course, the death of explorers is tragic, and life safety is - quite properly - one of the huge cost drivers in manned missions. But the people who go quite deliberately choose these risks. We're not strapping draftees into those vehicles. To me, the risk-to-life argument is a sanctimonious decoy designed to deny these explorers their choice to go in the first place - and our choice to send them with our hopes and dreams.

It's quite obvious to me - a deliberate program integrating human and robotic exploration and settlement is the way to go.