/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1836948]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39463237/ns/technology_and_science-space/

>Obama, and to abandon old plans laid out by the Bush administration to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. Instead, NASA will now aim to send explorers to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s.

[Anonymous No.1836961]

China's got us scared. Good for China.

[Anonymous No.1836960]

is this a bad thing?

[Anonymous No.1836962]

Finally, something good from America :D

[Anonymous No.1836965]

>>1836948
FUCK YEAH USA #1

[Anonymous No.1836967]

>>1836948
he cuts their budget and makes goals well out of his presidency, no obama is just trying to make it LOOK like he is keeping his campaign promise, just another crooked politician making a money run for his backers. put some money into nasa and i will change my mind.

[Anonymous No.1836971]

>2025
>2030

>Implying these programs won't be cut when the next administration takes office

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1836973]

>>1836967

Obama increased NASA's budget. u mad republican bro? u mad!

Polite sage.

[Anonymous No.1836982]

>Cut plans to go to moon
>Announce plans to go to Mars

If we can't even go to the Moon without Washington cutting the whole program to fund their pet projects and illegal wars, how the hell will we get to Mars?

[Anonymous No.1836984]

>>1836973
assumes im republican

[Anonymous No.1836986]

>>1836967
Calling off outdated missions to save on further sunken costs =/= cutting NASA's budget. He's actually increased it. Maybe you should go back to /new/ where ignorance is the norm.

[Anonymous No.1836987]

>>1836948
Wasnt going to the moon the stepping point for going to mars? How are we going to get to mars if we don't go to the moon first? Smells fishy.

[Anonymous No.1836989]

>>1836967
>he cuts their budge

NASA's budget now is at $19 billion which is higher than it's ever been before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

[Anonymous No.1836997]

Typical. Destroy the last hope for american technological supremacy, the moon base, and appease the useful idiots with laughable promises of a far future mars mission that will never happen. Americans will get what they deserve, which is nothing. Meanwhile, in mother Russia.... the birthplace of rocketry will once again be the center of the space-faring world.

[Anonymous No.1837007]

>>1836997
Germany is the birthplace of rocketry

[Anonymous No.1837014]

>>1836997
America has already been to the moon. Sending men to asteroid would be far more useful.

[Anonymous No.1837013]

>>1836989
>higher than it's ever been before.
can't even read the graphs you linked to
go kill yourself

[Anonymous No.1837012]

>Mars in the 2030s

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/spacex-ceo-predicts-manned-mars-mission-by-2020.html

>My face when SpaceX beats them there.

[Anonymous No.1837016]

>>1837007
HAHAHA
Germany is the spawning ground for a few amateurs who the Americans then cultivated. Before any of them was mother Russia, and now that they have finished, mother Russia will remain.

[Anonymous No.1837019]

>>1837014
Not if we built a base on the Moon and launched a shuttle to Mars from there.

[Anonymous No.1837024]

>>1837016
>In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.

[снайпер No.1837025]

>>1836987
Obama needed some sort of "pie in the sky" objective to satisfy voters, I think.

There isn't even a point to a manned mission to mars, beyond bragging rights. We aren't going to mine anything there, it's difficult to even land on the planet, it's too far away to maintain a sustainable colony. At best we land some people there to search for microbial life a little bit faster than unmanned robotic probes can do it, at twenty times the cost.

But if the planned missions were just to near earth asteroids, the voting public would want heads to roll. They don't care that a mars mission is expensive and pointless, they want to one-up the moon missions anyways.

If we absolutely MUST have a mission to another celestial body, I'd rather it be to build an observatory and small colony to support it at one of the lunar poles. Dramatically closer, and much less expensive to reach.

[Anonymous No.1837030]

>>1836987
>Wasnt going to the moon the stepping point for going to mars? How are we going to get to mars if we don't go to the moon first? Smells fishy.

...yeah, no.

The Moon is about as similar to Mars as Antarctica is to the interior of my ass.

[Anonymous No.1837033]

>>1837014
>America has already been to the moon.
That is idiotic. Did they say, "Columbus has already been to America; lets's go to africa instead?" Having visited is not a reason to not exploit it. The moon has more exploitable minerals than any other body in the solar system and is the idea place for study of the sun's and earth's magnetosphere, the ideal place for a radiotelescope in earth's radio shadow, etc, etc, etc. There is a race on to stake out the most scientifically advantageous spots on the moon, whether most people acknowledge it or not. Any other exploration or mining of the area is going to depend completely on our moon capabilities.

[Anonymous No.1837038]

>>1837030
There's not a single reason to put a man on mars. There are many reasons for an active scientific and mining moon colony

[Anonymous No.1837041]

>>1837019
what? there's no sense in doing this. That would just narrow down the number of opportunities for us to launch something to Mars. Why go out of your way to build a base that would require more circumstances to use?

[Anonymous No.1837043]

Spoiler: There is no practical reason to go to the moon.

There is no practical reason to go to Mars, either.

Asteroid mining, on the other hand, is serious shit.

[Anonymous No.1837050]

>>1837038

But going back to the moon won't get votes.

[Anonymous No.1837053]

>>1837025
If its easier to do, technology won't be pushed as much, which is why I think Mars is worthwhile

[Anonymous No.1837054]

>>1836973
>>Implying the NASA budget is large compared to the budgets for everything else.

[Anonymous No.1837058]

>>1837024
On March 28, 1883 Tsiolkovsky demonstrated the reaction principle through experimenting with opening a cask filled with compressed gas. He discovered that movement of the cask could be regulated by alternating the pressure of the gas released from it.

Tsiolkovsky completed a draft of his first design of a reaction thrust motor on August 25, 1898. The following year, he received a grant of 470 rubles from the Academy of Science's Physics and Mathematics Department to engage in research. This work was dedicated to the establishment of scientific principles, so no actual motors were developed.

In 1903, his first article on rocketry appeared in the "Naootchnoye Obozreniye" (Scientific Review). The article was entitled "Issledovanie Mirovykh Prostransty Reaktivnymi Priborami" (Exploration Of Space With Rocket Devices).

In the article, Tsiolkovsky clearly outlined in scientific terms exactly how a reaction thrust motor could demonstrate Newton's Third Law to allow men to escape the bounds of Earth.

Also in 1903, Tsiolkovsky drafted the design of his first rocket. It was to be powered by a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which would create an explosive mixture at the narrow end of a tube. Burning of the fuels would produce condensed and heated gases.

[Anonymous No.1837064]

>>1837054
NASA gets more than Corps of Engineers, which builds levees and keeps the riverways navigable for shipping, things which are much more important to the American people

[Anonymous No.1837060]

NASAs old direction - scrap the ISS, build yet another poorly designed useless and expensive 20t rocket.

NASA new direction - extend the ISS, build a motherfucking 70-110t big shuttle derived rocket to be ready in 2016.

[Anonymous No.1837063]

>>1837038
considering that Mars has water and its own atmosphere, and was likely once habitable, there are tons of reasons to go to Mars. Enough reasons for private corporations to want to go there.

[Anonymous No.1837077]

>>1837043
Spoiler: You're full of shit.

The moon has masses of titanium.
The moon has masses of He3.
The moon has a unique observation platform for studying earth's and sun's magnetospheres, which are crucial to understanding earth's climate.
The far side of the moon has the quietest place in the solar system for a deep space radiotelescope.

Astroids have fuck all.

[Anonymous No.1837085]

>>1837063
The moon also has water, is far cheaper to get to, is far less time-constrained as to when you can come and go, and has more valuable resources, and a better platform for conducting ongoing science.

[Anonymous No.1837087]

>>1837025


>Obama needed some sort of "pie in the sky" objective to satisfy voters, I think.

>There isn't even a point to a manned mission to mars, beyond bragging rights. We aren't going to mine anything there, it's difficult to even land on the planet, it's too far away to maintain a sustainable colony. At best we land some people there to search for microbial life a little bit faster than unmanned robotic probes can do it, at twenty times the cost.


You are one dumb mother fucker.

[снайпер No.1837092]

>>1837060
I don't think it'll be a shuttle derived rocket, bro.

I hope it isn't, anyways. The SRB's, etc. are dangerous and add more complications to the launch. Not to mention re-using say, the external fuel tank as the body of the rocket is still going to mean modifying it, which will require having it re-pass all the certifications etc for safety all over again, and the shuttle parts aren't really subject to economies of scale either. I doubt it would be any less expensive than a completely brand new rocket.

Honestly the next rocket NASA makes really ought to use liquid fuel anyways, not solid.

[Anonymous No.1837093]

>>1837064

And they do a shitty job of it too. Fuck the Corps.

[Anonymous No.1837096]

>>1837058
>The Royal Arsenal's first demonstration of solid fuel rockets was in 1805. The rockets were effectively used during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Congreve published three books on rocketry.

[Anonymous No.1837102]

>>1837093
Well maybe if NASA wasn't hogging all the federal money. . and the Corps doesn't do a shitty job, Katrina was Louisiana's fault.

[Anonymous No.1837103]

actualy colonising Moon and asteroids > planting a flag on Mars

[Anonymous No.1837107]

>>1837064
You can't compare the costs of sending a rocket to space to building riverways.
The mentality is if Housing is more Important to us than Cars, the government should subsidize Housing so we get more at a cheaper price. AKA we get houses for $900 while cars would cost $1000.
Not adressing the issue on how much the individual things cost to product and carry out. Values of prices are not just made up, they go through a very rigurous process of production.

If it takes 100 dollars to produce a product, you cannot just decide to sell it for 50 dollars because its more cost effective. Items have prices for a reason.

And thus the NASA will take more of an expense due to their technology costs for future development. (Don't fucking dare and try arguing that NASA technology expenses are cheap)

[снайпер No.1837117]

>>1837077
Well, I'm not sure about the titanium, but I do know that the He3 for one, cannot even be used in any fusion reactors because we don't HAVE any fusion reactors, and for two, it's present at about 0.01ppm in the lunar dirt, which entails mining millions of tons of the dirt for a few tons of He3. This would be an enormous undertaking here on Earth, let alone across the surface of the moon.

Not to mention that extracting the He3 out of the soil requires heating the soil, which in itself will dramatically reduce the positive energy gains. Once you factor it all together, the energy costs of mining the moon for He3 are probably more than we could even get by using the He3 in fusion reactors.

The best you could hope for is to mine other material, and extract He3 from that in the process as a bonus.

Or, you could just fly a giant air scoop into Jupiter's atmosphere, and siphon off some of the He3 that's just floating around in there.

[Anonymous No.1837121]

>>1837077

SPOILER: Asteroid mining is never going to happen in our lifetime

You can't set up a free-return from an asteroid, so there's no way in hell anyone would risk a manned mission.

And if you think we can do it without men, just look at our success rating of sample return missions from any celestial body: 0%

If we can't return one fucking rock, how the hell are we supposed to return an entire asteroid?

[Anonymous No.1837127]

>>1837077
>Astroids have fuck all.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/401227.stm
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_technical_and_economic_feasibility_of_mining_the_near_earth_a
steriods.shtml

[снайпер No.1837134]

>>1837063
"Once habitable" Is meaningless.

It's not habitable right now, and it would likely take thousands of years to actively terraform.

If we send a manned mission to Mars, they will not be trying to terraform the planet. I can guarantee that. They'll most likely search for life, and conduct some geological science, maybe a little astronomy, and that'll be that. Most of the big lessons learned would be engineering ones - getting to and landing on Mars with a very large payload [which is impossible right now, but NASA's got an idea for landing a 1 ton robot which will be tested soon].

[снайпер No.1837162]

>>1837121
We already have several probes that have landed on or gotten very close to asteroids and returned to Earth.

And we have at least one hugely successful manned mission that DID return samples. Perhaps you've heard of these guys? They went to the moon.

[Anonymous No.1837160]

>>1837121
We returned lots of rocks from the moon

[Anonymous No.1837178]

>>1837117
We don't have the fusion reactors because we don't have the He3. Extracting the He3 from the dirt would be about the same task what we do in gold mines, where the gold content is about the same, except we'd just be dealing with the surface; no mines. I don't see heating as a problem considering the amount of solar energy available there.

These things are within our grasps. Shuttles making passes at the atmosphere of jupiter are not within our grasp--not to make profitable. Not in the near future

[Anonymous No.1837179]

>>1837162

Landing on the moon isn't anything like landing on an asteroid. The moon has enough gravity that you can slingshot back to earth if something goes wrong. Something goes wrong on the way to an asteroid, you're fucked.

I guess you can theoretically plan a free return without a gravity assist, but if you miss your launch-window the whole mission has to be scrubbed.

[Anonymous No.1837180]

>>1837127
compared to the moon, fuck face.

[Anonymous No.1837194]

>>1837179
Asteroids also orbit the the sun, not the earth, meaning that if you make it to your asteroid, you're going to have to be there for a very long time before you can get back. Years in most cases, I believe. This is the biggest reason why the moon makes infinitely more sense than asteroids.

[Anonymous No.1837209]

>>1836948

[Anonymous No.1837210]

>>1837178
>We don't have the fusion reactors because we don't have the He3
no, we don't have them because we don't know how to make them.

and mining He3 on the moon is fucking stupid. even crazy shit like orbital solar power is cheaper than that.

[Anonymous No.1837226]

>>1837194
>casual detected

Imagine hollowing out an asteroid through mining, setting up a base, and effectively turning it into a spaceship.

[Anonymous No.1837231]

>>1837226

Not in this lifetime.

[снайпер No.1837248]

>>1837178
We can synthesize He3. We have it, but we don't have any net energy producing fusion reactors. What fusion reactors there are, are all experimental and use more energy than they produce.

Gold content is not the same as the He3 content on the moon.

Gold on average may have the same ppm [I haven't checked] but it comes in clusters that are mined. When you mine gold, you mine a very specific area. You can even pan for it in rivers and get large gold flakes. This is not nearly the same as He3.

He3 is deposited in the lunar surface by the sun. It is a very fine distribution over the entire surface of the moon. Overall, there is probably quite a bit of He3 there. But extracting it requires essentially strip mining large portions of the moon's surface.

Also, could you please cite a fusion reactor design, currently built, that would produce net positive energy with He3?

Mining He3 on the moon will *never* happen. There isn't enough of it to be worth the cost.

[Anonymous No.1837260]

Everyone seems to be forgetting that we only sent 5 manned missions to the moon. Who the fuck knows what's buried up there.

[снайпер No.1837261]

>>1837209

[Anonymous No.1837266]

>>1837261

[Anonymous No.1837283]

>>1836967
>doesn't know about the bill that just passed.
19billion this year and have 32billion in the next three I think it is. You want some bbq or like, ranch or something? Those words are gonna be pretty flavorless otherwise.

[снайпер No.1837301]

>>1837266
I wonder if that's a golf club at his left hip there...

[Anonymous No.1837333]

There's billions of dollars worth of equipment up there. Ancient artifacts from a previous generation of explorers. Also, last time I checked, the going rate of lunar material was estimated at "priceless". In 1993, three little chunks of moon rock from Luna 16, weighing about .2g, sold for $442,500. Think about how many more 'genesis rocks' there are up there. It's a geological gold mine. And there's titanium.

The moon's literally made of money. Why in the fuck are we not going there.

[Fwibbib No.1837559]

that sounds like a nice trade off, but i've already seen a shitty movie about landing on asteroids that stars bruce willis, so i reckon all attention should be put on a trip to Mars.