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/sci/ - Science & Math

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4744831 No.4744831 [Reply] [Original]

When do you think is the next manned mission to

>The Moon
>Mars
>Another star, Earth 2

What are the chances of the mission ending with the death of all the crew members on each of these missions?

What do you think of my plan securing a spot on one of these voyages by becoming 'James Cameron 2' and therefore helping NASA get all the publicity they'll ever need.

>> No.4744839

>>4744831
The next mission will be a journey to the center of the sun.

>> No.4744893

>The Moon
2050
>Mars
2100
>Another star, Earth 2
2800

>> No.4744896

If I were president
>The Moon
2015
>Mars
2030
>Another Star, Earth 2
2080

>> No.4744910

>>4744896
>Less realistic than Gingrich's stupid plan.

>> No.4744938

forget it guys, we used to think that in the year 2000 we would be riding flying cars. we'll be lucky to not have destroyed ourselves 500 years from now

>> No.4744941

Whenever the government put a good chunk of the military budget into Nasa and other sciences.
Shit will go far fast.

That's a perfect world scenario.

>The Moon
2030 at least
>Mars
2100
>Another Star, Earth 2
nigga plz, 2500 - 2700?

>> No.4744946
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4744946

>>4744893
This.
There is a good chance that I will live in an age when no body alive has walked on another word!
Imagine when the last man to walk on the moon dies!

>> No.4744948

>>4744831
>The Moon
2030, by China

>Mars
Never

>Another star, Earth 2
Never

>> No.4744953

another star?

like one dude said

2800 MAYBE

>> No.4745149

First profit made from a space venture by??

>> No.4745152

>The Moon
2025-2035
>Mars
2040-2050
>Another star
2060-2100
Once we start going between planets enough, it'll be hard to stop space-hillbillies from trying to rocket out to another system. No idea how well they'll survive out there, but at least the large number of failed attempts would provide useful data for development.
>Earth 2
2100-2300
Once we can go to other stars, it's mostly a matter of finding an Earth-like planet and taking the time to go there.

>> No.4745167

>>4745152
Between 50 and 90 years for manned travel to another star? That's crazy. Between 1969 and now, we've got no further, in terms of manned missions. It took 50 years to get nowhere. I can't see us getting to a star in another 50.

>> No.4745175

>>4745167
I forgot how to do math. *40 years to get nowhere.

>> No.4745180

>the moon
2040
>mars
2050
>another star
never

>> No.4745192

>>4745167
>>4745175
The reason we aren't getting nowhere is because there is no need (hint: war) to go there anytime soon.

When we find a way to make missions to the Moon/Mars economically lucrative then no one will stop private companies from going there.

>> No.4745196

>>4745192
>getting anywhere*

>> No.4745203

mars probably by year 2050 and we would start terraforming it by year 2300 when we have enough energy, money, and resources for that.
other star probably by 2200

>> No.4745212

The based SpaceX will dance on the fucking moon, mars or wherever the fuck they please

>> No.4745237

>>4745212
SpaceX going anywhere other than the ISS is still made of hopes and dreams at the moment. Check again in a few years, though.

>> No.4745244

If we focused attention on the space program, we could probably get to another star system in 2100, assuming we found a planet to colonize once we got there. Though politicians are never going to push for that so it will likely be in the next era of human history (like the medieval era is to the rennaissance but for space exploration)

>> No.4745254

>>4745237
>SpaceX going anywhere other than the ISS is still made of hopes and dreams at the moment. Check again in a few years, though.

people said that about falcon 9 and dragon not even 2 years ago. i wouldn't be willing to bet against Red Dragon becoming a reality.

>> No.4745275
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4745275

What about this....thing?
http://mars-one.com/

>> No.4745296

>>4745275
Laughed at by serious space enthusiasts.

>> No.4745309

>>4745296
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/

>> No.4745327

>>4745309
wtf

>> No.4745336

>>4745296
Okay, but why? They seem to have manufacturers all lined up and a testing schedule that appears reachable.
Maybe the whole "more astronauts every 2 years forever" goal is a little lofty, but this sort of thing seems at the very least possible...

>> No.4745370

>>4745336
>¿Por qué?
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29053.0;all

>> No.4745403

>What are the chances of the mission ending with the death of all the crew members on each of these missions?

>The Moon

Pretty Low, barring a colossal fuckup. The Moon is pretty easy to plan a Free Return for, as the eggheads only have to work with two bodies.

>Mars
Significantly higher. Because you have to factor in how the earth and mars are moving, it's much harder to plan a course that would allow for a free return in the case of say, an engine failure. Also, unlike Apollo 13, even if you do have a free return, it'll take months of drifting around the solar system in order to make it back home.

>Another star, Earth 2
Possibly less than Mars. If you go the traditional Generation ship method, you have to figure the whole thing would be self-sufficient, and would have the crew and supplies to survive most failures aboard the ship.

>> No.4745420

Who will be first to reenter the moon?

SpaceX or China

>> No.4745422

>>4745420
SpaceX because they don't have to follow any 5 year plans.

>> No.4745436

>>4745237

SpaceX has been locked out of BEO space exploration by SLS.

>> No.4745441

Wouldn't it take much longer than a human lifetime to reach even our nearest star? So you would need a few generations reproducing, so then you'd need a massive craft with numerous facilities on board to survive, reproduce, train the children. And then the amount of energy you would need to sustain this craft and power it all the way would just seem implausible, considering we can't even produce enough food and energy for the world at the moment

>> No.4745449

>>4745422

Human BEO exploration takes money, a lot of money, and SpaceX isn't going to be spending hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to perform stunts to satisfy the desire of childish space fans to see cool shit.

>> No.4745452

>>4745449
Do you know who the fuck Elon Musk even is?

>> No.4745458

>>4745254

SpaceX only went to the ISS because a few years ago they won money to build systems to go to ISS. There is no comparable program that SpaceX can win money to develop BEO systems.

SpaceX has been locked out of BEO space exploration by SLS.

>> No.4745463

>>4745452
IRL Tony Stark
>Billionaire
>Genius

>> No.4745462

>>4745458
>implying the SLS isn't going to be labeled as a "boondoggle pork barrel jobs program" and canceled early next year

>> No.4745464

>>4745452

Elon Musk is a moon fanatic?

If you read interviews with Musk, he always conditions his human mars plans on involvement with NASA, but he has been locked out of BEO human exploration by the SLS cabal.

Musk's ambitions exceed his capability to enact them by himself.

>> No.4745470

>>4745462

Ares 1 was only cancelled because the new president wanted to do something else. This won't repeat next round.

Obama has been co-opted by the SLS cabal. If he is relected, he continues to develop SLS on his watch.

Romney space policy has been captured by Griffin and Pace. If he wins SLS continues.

SLS continues either way. And eventually SLS finishes development, and inertia allows it to continue regardless of value in the same way the Space Shuttle sat around for decades sucking up money and opportunity.

Space Shuttle = no commercial industry to do what Shuttle did.

SLS = no commercial industry to do what SLS will do.

>> No.4745478

>>4745462
I'd really doubt it. It was a plan initiated by the senate not by NASA. Republicans learned a lot from the shit Obama took over NASA, they won't make the same mistake. In the grand scheme of things it's small potatoes. Democrats won't go after it because it will end with them being branded as anti-NASA.

In the end it's poorly thought out and lacks any kind of direction, it won't get far any time soon.

>> No.4745504

>>4745470

I hope that events will prove me wrong, and SLS will die a quick death, but my thinking on the subject always comes out realist pessimistic.

>> No.4745509

>>4745452
Do you?
Musk is more sensible than Branson. It's not some wild thrill ride. SpaceX needs to tread lightly and fall in line. There was a very big report published which said NASA should rotate commercial providers so no one company gets to fat and we end up with the same aerospace industry we had before. If they look like the vulgar sports car of an internet billionaire they will find themselves cut off from the teat of government. They already spend a huge amount on lobbying, they don't need to make that worse.

>> No.4745523

>>4745504
If SLS is cancelled and they go with commercial BEO it will be even longer before anything happens.

>> No.4745525

>>4745523

No, sorry, but you're an idiot.

>> No.4745537

>>4745523

Allow me to explain why you're an idiot.

NASA will spend ~30 billion dollars over the next ten years to develop Orion + SLS, and out of that get a lunar flyby in 2021.

For a small fraction of that sum, a billion or two or less, they can develop BEO Dragon, and launch it to L2 using the Falcon Heavy, which will debut in a year or two.

That means they can spend the remaining tens of billions on a lunar lander, and a lunar program.

Now, what accomplishes more sooner? Billions spent on a lunar lander, or no such money.

See the difference. With commercial BEO you get men on the moon, with SLS+Orion, you get picture of the moon taken by men, a feat done better by the already launched lunar orbiter probe.

>> No.4745536

>>4745525
Wow, that's a powerful argument.
We won't see commercial crew until 2016 at the earliest. It would have to be years after that before a plan could be committed to.

>> No.4745543

>yfw $500/lb to Mars via SpaceX

>> No.4745560

>>4745537
When will we see dragon crew? 2016 is the target but spaceX has already been late with most things. So NASA has to wait until after that before committing to a commercial provider for the plan. Only after that can you start making arrangements.

SLS plans for a 2019 manned flyby of the moon. So can SpaceX man-rate falcon heavy and build and test a BEO dragon crew in less than 3 years assuming dragon crew flies without delay and NASA awards funding that year? That is unlikely in my opinion.

>> No.4745568

>>4745543
I'd love for it to happen but at the moment it's nothing but a bold claim. Also considering falcon 9 is targeted for $5360 per kg to orbit I find that hard to see happening.

>> No.4745583

>>4745560

1. The purpose of space exploration isn't who can get a flyby of the moon done fastest.

2. commercial crew is its own separate track from commercial BEO. You do not have to wait until 2016 to start commercial BEO, in the same way you did not have to wait until May 2012's SpaceX ISS demo before you get started on commercial crew, with has had a few funded rounds by now.

teams can be working on BEO stuff prior to 2016.

3. money = progress. efficiently spent money = more progress.

spending money on SLS reduces the amount of money available for NASA to work on other BEO stuff. They get more out of their money if they do commercial BEO than SLS.

>> No.4745608

>>4745568
Damn wtf. I thought Falcon 9 was going at $1000/lb to LEO.

>> No.4745611

>>4745608

That's the Falcon Heavy. And dollars per pound to LEO is a relatively useless metric.

>> No.4745618

>>4745583
Everything else is unforeseeable as a hard timeline hasn't been set, and the thing you challenged was "anything happens".

It may be separate but it will either have to build on COTS or wait even longer. If it dosen't SpaceX and other COTS winners are at a massive advantage having their costs of crew developments paid for. So this means either more CCDEV and a long wait for companies to catch up or building on COTS. Option A would take longer than SLS almost certainly. Option B would have to wait for after crewed COTS flights to the ISS. You can't hand another wad of development funding to a company to develop something else before they have finished their current task. Too much money in one basket.

I agree completely that SLS will be more expensive. The very fact it was mandated that it must use shuttle derived technology locked in the suppliers who made the shuttle so very expensive. It was even more expensive than direct and that wasn't cheap.

To make my personal position clear I don't like SLS, it's fat and will soak up money until it's cancelled or destroys everything else. Unfortunately it's going to be a while until the former happens, I suspect it will end up an over budget, late abortion like constellation.
I believe commercial development will be better in the end but we need to be realistic.

>> No.4745628

>>4745611
Actually that's the eventual goal of falcon heavy, which is currently estimated at $2000 per kg. And it is not a useless metric. Rockets are rarely similar size and it's a good but basic way of checking value for money.

>> No.4745647

>>4745509
>There was a very big report published which said NASA should rotate commercial providers so no one company gets to fat and we end up with the same aerospace industry we had before.

the report said the opposite. it actually said that nasa shouldn't be funding 3-4 competitive designs, and they should take a leaf out of the DoD's book, pick one design and then have those 3-4 companies each produce a part of it

because it worked so well for everything else right?

the report was mainly down to Boeing's influence. If memory serves Boeing are building blue origin's craft and SNC's dream chaser, so effectively account for 3 out of the 4 CCDev programs. Out of those 4 only SpaceX have made any headway, and it's likely CCDev money is going to disappear in favour of COTS money, leaving boeing completely shit out of luck.

>> No.4745654

>>4745647
I don't think were talking about the same report.

>> No.4745657

>Everything else is unforeseeable as a hard timeline hasn't been set, and the thing you challenged was "anything happens".

Don't think for a second I was yeilding anything when I said moon flybys dont matter.

Commercial BEO can get a moon flyby done faster if commercial BEO is the path done rather than SLS+Orion.

>You can't hand another wad of development funding to a company to develop something else before they have finished their current task.

Yes you can. You are parroting Griffin and Pace's argument to stall commercial crew. If it were up to them, they would not give a single dollar to commercial crew development until after COTS was finished with successful test flights, and SPaceX and Orbital has racked up enough successful mission flights.

But as we saw, companies could get started on commercial crew work before COTS was finished. So their and your argument is wrong.

Companies can work on more than one thing at once if funded.

>> No.4745666

>>4745568
you're wrong here. you can buy a falcon 9 launch right now, this very second, for about $5100/kgLEO. That's a far cry from SpaceX's target of $1,000/kg, but that makes it a competitve launch platform already; Ariane 5 and Atlas V can clock in at over $10,000/kg. It might be a little more expensive than the Proton (generally considered the cheapest launch platform), but then the Proton needs a full 20T payload to be competitive, and the Falcon is only at the beginning of its life cycle, and therefore the prices should only fall.

>> No.4745680

>>4745657
Lets be clear CCDEV is very different to COTS crew or COTS-D. The sums of money awarded in CCDEV are much much smaller. The largest CCDEV award was under a hundred million, SpaceX's CRS (COTS cargo) contract is 1.6 billion with almost 300 million given before the main contract for development.

CCDEV has begun but it is not enough to fully fund development of manned vehicles.

>> No.4745688

>>4745470
>Ares 1 was only cancelled because the new president wanted to do something else.

Ares 1 was cancelled because it was going to cost $40,000,000,000 to develop and $1,400,000,000 per launch, to accomplish the same thing SpaceX managed with less than a billion dollars for development and $53m per launch. (And remember, those Ares 1 costs don't include Orion)

SLS is a product of a house and senate desperate to funnel NASA money back into their constituencies. Big defence giants stand to win big from the contracts (fourty _billion_ dollars, all to ATK and Boeing) and winning "space jobs" is a big deal for representatives, especially post-shuttle.

Nasa themselves don't even want SLS. It's flawed in all the same ways constellation was; at the projected budget levels they'll be lucky to get off one launch a year, which results in a launch cost in excess of a billion a pop (again.). It's being forced on them by the legislature. NASA learned from constellation, congress didn't.

Honestly, nasa would be fine with just buying all their orbital services from SpaceX and other off-the-shelf vendors. That way they'd be able to funnel all that cash back into the stuff they do well, planetary science and cosmology and shit.

>> No.4745696

>>4745666
You're arguing over $260 that's the amount estimates will vary by.
And no costs won't necessary fall. Atlas, Delta and Ariane all get more expensive every year as inflation in the aerospace industry is higher than baseline inflation. We should also note that before Falcon 9 is in full swing production we won't have a reliable cost. It may still rise. From it's original announcement (in 2006) estimates have doubled. Falcon 1 ended up 7-8 times it's original estimate.
Also Zenit is commonly believed to be the cheapest, slightly cheaper than Soyuz wich is cheaper than Proton.

>> No.4745711

>>4745688
First off Ares 1 launch prices were greatly contested, and the large estimate did include Orion.

Secondly NASA is not a homogeneous unit, lots of people were angry with the commercial decision. Lots of people like SLS with all it's warts.

>> No.4745721

So...when are men returning to the Moon again?

>> No.4745737

yall niggas know iran gonna blow mars up before we can get there

>> No.4745759

Moon: 2030
Mars: 2040
Exosolar: 2090(launch date)

Justification:
Both the moon and mars are capable with current technology and a program cost of less than a trillion dollars. Continued improvements in technology will reduce these costs. Getting to Mars is almost as easy as getting to the moon, the two main issues is the longer mission duration (months to years versus 3-10 days) and the additional difficulty of operating in the larger gravity well of Mars.

The launch date of the interstellar mission assumes continued rapid advancement of space flight technology, a habitable destination and a dedicated financial backer. Could be a government, a richfag or even some batshit crazy religious people who heard they'd get a planet to themselves.

>> No.4745828 [DELETED] 

>>4745436
Excuse me but what is the SLS?

No Murican here

>> No.4745849 [DELETED] 

I love how everyone here goes like this

Moon

20 years later MARS

100 years later HURP DA FUCKN DURP

Serioisly.

This is the exact same thing epople did in the 70s

MOON THIS YEAR

NEXT DECADE MARS

Then we got to the moon and poof. NO WHERE FOR 50 FUCKIGN YEARS.

>> No.4745853

>>4745828
Space Launch System. A huge multi-stage rocket akin to Saturn V.

My sister was in the crew prepping it for the first test launch :P

>> No.4745855

As much as I hate it, I still think the most probable timetable is this:
>The Moon
Never.
>Mars
Never
>Another star, Earth 2
Never.

Mars is much more difficult and costly than most people think. No one is really going to do it, doesn't matter how much they talk (TALK) about it.
Another star, well, don't even make me start about it.
The Moon could be done. But who will do it? Not the USA because they have already done it. Others are not going to do it.
Maybe China for political reasons, but it's way more expensive than they current missions, I'm not so sure they will.
Not to mention the impending economic crisis in Europe that will probably trigger a domino effect crashing most economies. That will postpone space programs for years, and while public interest wane robotics is growing up fast.
The future of space exploration is robotics, not humans.
That era is going to an end.

>> No.4745866 [DELETED] 

>>4745855
There was never a real human space exploring anyways.

No human has set foot outside our planetary system.

Yet we have robots outside our solar system.

>> No.4745870

>>4745853
SLS has yet to launch though?

>> No.4745921

>>4745866
Voyager 1 and 2. Voyager 1 is further out at 120 AU from the Sun.

Pioneer 10 is unfortunately no longer operating.

>> No.4745936

what do you guys think of this?
http://www.planetaryresources.com/

>> No.4745949

>>4745855

Utterly correct. The Space Race was public theater, for fooling two sets of republic-imperial subjects into accepting wealth concentration in the hands of their military-industrial elite as they completed their transformation into the full imperial model.

Now that the empires have won, there's no need to keep up the fiction anymore. Public money gets pipelined into the hands of the military-industrial and FIRE sectors without delivering ANYTHING for the public to use, much less enjoy.

We will never send men to the moon (again), or Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. And by the end of this century, no Human will ever again leave Earth's atmosphere. The Petroleum Age will be dead and buried, and all the high-tech and imperial nonsense that it fostered.

We stood on the edge of transforming Humanity into something that was inconceivable for all previous generations. Humans freed from GRAVITIC DESPOTISM could expand freely and push Human numbers into the trillions, controlling the wealth of the solar system. But we balked at that; the people in control of the massive capital required for the "breakout" refused to follow that vision. And once thge Age of Petroleum Starvation started around the year 2005, those capitalists were only going to refuse to do anything that doesn't secure their own lifestyles. Space access and colonization aren't required; what's required instead is SOCIAL CONTROL AND WAR. In other words, GRAVITIC DESPOTISM.

We almost made it. But "almost" isn't good enough. No wonder the sky is dark and silent from any indication of intelligence. No civilizations ever make it. No civs overcome their biological competitive drives.

>> No.4745952

>>4745870
Sorry, meant to say test fire.

>> No.4745982

>>4745949
>thinks humanity will just die the moment shit gets difficult
Looks like somebody never succeeded at anything that wasn't easy.

Also you forget about Natural Gas which is amazingly abundant and can be used for everything petroleum can be used for (including plastics and asphalts.)

>> No.4745998

>>4745982

Nothing replaces petroleum distillates (gasoline, diesel and kerosene (jet fuel)) for what they do for us: Cheap, dense, practical fuels. Natural gas can't match those 3 characteristics at once.

The end product is that physically and/or economically, most people will simply have to stop commuting with 2-ton vehicles for hours a day. It'll be like Armageddon as far as Westerners are concerned. The lack of cheap energy supplies ALONE will double U.S. unemployment, which will break the U.S. economy like a dried twig.

How can you /sci/ retards be so fucking well educated about PHYSICS and then believe in diametric opposition that stuff in your society happens without energy inputs? OH WAIT, IT'S DUE TO IDEOLOGY. Well, ideology doesn't trump physics, morons.

>> No.4746011

I kind of hope that we have an ISS 2 after the ISS goes down in the 2020s.

>> No.4746012

>>4745458
Moon= valuable minerals.
Valuable minerals= Profit
So yes, they have every reason to go.

>> No.4746014 [DELETED] 

>>4745998
Make Thorium powerplants use their high temperatures to make synthetic petroleum from Coal.

Big fuckign whoop. When shit hits the fan you'll have billionaires all over the world pouring money into innovation.

>> No.4746018

>>4745998
>The end product is that physically and/or economically, most people will simply have to stop commuting with 2-ton vehicles for hours a day. It'll be like Armageddon as far as Westerners are concerned.
I remember being 14 years old and believing things like this. Good times.

Embarassing to look back on, mind.

Oil's nice, but we're really not that dependent on it. When it comes down to it, we could run our cars on natural gas. Maybe a little less convenient, more dangerous, more expensive, but not really a big deal. Batteries keep getting better, and soon will be adequate for basic automobile energy storage. If we really felt the need, we could built a lot of big nuclear power plants, and synthesize oil from water and air. It might even be cheaper once we got the ball rolling.

You see people driving everywhere alone in clunky gas-guzzling SUVs, and you think that we'd be sunk if portable energy costs go up a little?

Think about this a little harder.

>> No.4746020

>>4745998
LPG and LNG are already common plus hybrid gas-electrics are economically viable. Tesla motors, etc.

You faggots like to talk about peak oil, but oil production has already peaked and despite the worldwide depression the economy is still growing and everybody is doing more with less.

>> No.4746041

>>4746012
I think the big thing people ignore about the moon is that we can pollute the absolute fuck out of it and not care. Not even regular chemical pollution, nuclear waste, too.

Even if it's expensive to ship stuff to the moon, you can ship stuff cheaply from the moon to Earth.

One thing we could do is build high-efficiency fission fragment generators and just dump the waste in a crater, and use the energy to manufacture solar panels to launch back to Earth.

>> No.4746077

>>4746041
This is true.

>> No.4746147

>>4746012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty

>> No.4746152

>>4746147
Thats for countries, not companies. good thing to remember

>> No.4746153

>>4746147
>In practice, it is a failed treaty since it has not been ratified by any nation which engages in self-launched manned space exploration or has plans to do so

>> No.4746192

>>4746018
> When it comes down to it, we could run our cars on natural gas. Maybe a little less convenient, more dangerous, more expensive, but not really a big deal.

Yes, it is a big deal, since much of your economy won't function anymore, so a lot of what people do now just won't be done.

You /sci/ guys are economic RETARDS. You have no idea how an economy runs.

>> No.4746202

>>4746192
>much of your economy won't function anymore, so a lot of what people do now just won't be done.
I already explained why that isn't the case, and you never made a reasonable argument for why it would be.

>> No.4747044

>>4745828
SLS is the space launch system. Basically, when Constellation was cancelled (that was NASA's program for a new fleet of rockets and capsules to go to the moon, asteroids and mars), congress got all sadface because they'd no longer be able to direct the massive amounts of money nasa get to their constituents

So, they sat down and went:
"Do you know what we need?"
"what?"
"the biggest rocket, like, EVER"
"Cool."
"But we should only build it out of old parts from the 60s"
"Cool!"
"And we should only launch it once a year so it costs more than the space shuttle per launch!"
"COOL!"
"And we should give the contracts exclusively to Boeing and ATK because they're our bros."
"So how much should we give them?"
"Oh, i don't know, $20bn?"
"Sounds good to me!"

Basically congress and elements of NASA have delusions of the 1960s. They want to rebuild the Saturn V (SLS's concept drawings all look like Saturn V), but there is no viable mission for such a rocket. Saturn V was so big because no one thought in the 1960s that launching multiple rockets and then assembling something in space was viable. We've proven it is with the ISS, so it'd make much more sense for NASA to just build a deep-space craft and send it up as cheaply as possible on rockets like SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, without wasting 30-40bn on yet another failed launch system.

>> No.4747201

Why doesn't /sci/ meet up and work on this? We can pool our money together and get some funding from the Kremlin or something and build a small colony to go live on Mars.

This world is going to shit and if we stay here we're just going to die with the rest of the capitalists and liberals.