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20 comments so far ( Post your own )

20 On Feb 24, 2009 06:27:05 AM  angel girl  wrote: 

I loved all the rocket's and blogs games and photos ,sleeping on the moon. Are you going to write any more because I would like to read them? from zoe dawn Hall your fan

19 On Feb 19, 2009 08:46:33 AM  deniselapensee  wrote: 

it is great to discuver whats going on out there .i love to learn about all off space.thank you

18 On Feb 18, 2009 05:48:56 AM  Matthew Black  wrote: 

If I understand your question correctly -- are you suggesting Uranium-235 as a fuel source, as in a nuclear thermal rocket?! I'm afraid nuclear rockets are very expensive and politically unpopular to contemplate in this day and age. The political will and GUTS to go with developing that technology is sadly lacking now. If the U.S. had found the money, political and public will to continue with the 1960s and 70's atomic rocket programs: the U.S. might ALREADY have bases on the Moon, Mars and Asteroids. Probably.

But in an era when someone is ostracised for driving a big, gas-guzzling pickup truck -- let alone a rocket with nuclear fire in its tail... Well, you can figure it out!! (wink)

17 On Feb 17, 2009 12:11:51 AM  guest  wrote: 

Its a great plan. I like the design of the ship. Is there any other way to reduce the fuel consemption? ie fuel/U32 power source

16 On Feb 05, 2009 07:26:21 PM  Jens Knudsen  wrote: 

If you want to have a sustained presence on the Moon, and to go to Mars, you need to find a way to ship large quantities of fuel around in the Earth-Moon and Mars systems. People in space need to travel fast, fuel and many other supplies do not. So ship the fuel using ion engines or solar sails hauling around the big tanks, and use small, fast spaceships for getting the people around. To me, the Aries 1/Orion spaceship looks like an excellent way to start. It could stay in use for a long time.

15 On Feb 01, 2009 12:32:26 AM  Matt Black  wrote: 

The Shuttles are too big, heavy and fragile to fly to the Moon: they were designed to be Earth Orbiters ONLY. To send a Shuttle to the Moon, slow it into lunar orbit, then send it back to Earth later would require hundreds of tons of fuel -- more than any rocket around now or in the future, could carry all the way into space. And returning the Shuttle to Earth could only be done two ways, both virtually impossible: Even hundreds MORE tons of fuel would be needed to slow a Shuttle back down into Earth orbit, OR: attempting to fly a Shuttle back into Earth's atmosphere at about 40,000kph (25,000 mph) which is the velocity you come back from the Moon at -- this speed would be too much for the Shuttle's heatshielding tiles to endure, about twice the load it normally has to cope with. Also, at that kind of speed and forces, the Shuttle's big wings would simply be torn off.

The crew of "Columbia" sadly lost their lives when their ship had to deal with a damaged condition causing stresses much *LESS* than what returning from the Moon would do. So you see, using the Space Shuttle Orbiters for the Moon is out of the question -- that's why NASA is designing new vehicles, based on shapes and concepts we know from past experience will work.

14 On Jan 29, 2009 07:14:08 PM  murray  wrote: 

has nasa thought of using the shuttle in space as a ferry
between the space station and the moon the cargo bay
would get lunar base equipment there in bulk saving
time good luck with years missions kiwikid says bye

13 On Jan 23, 2009 01:19:49 PM  brianna  wrote: 

I think this page is just the koolest write 2 my aol

12 On Jan 22, 2009 07:19:03 PM  guest  wrote: 

This looks good to me. Just keep looking further into the future as well when planning, as I am sure you do. Example: Further down the road, wouldn't it be cheaper to operate a reusable lunar lander? Or, what if (God forbid!) the Cape gets flooded?

11 On Jan 23, 2009 04:37:32 AM  Matthew Black  wrote: 

Yes, I've read Dr Griffin's speech before I made my post?! It's been the assertion from Lockheed and Boeing individuals that creating Ares 1 in the first place is a needless duplication of effort and resources, and they're not just saying this because of their own products and 'not invented here' syndrome. These are people who in some cases have been designing and building space launcher hardware for *decades*. What makes them wrong and Dr Griffin (who I respect mightily, by the way) right?

Look, I'm NOT an engineer, nor do I have qualifications that even come close to all the gentlemen I've mentioned. But I'm a 40-year observer of Space technology, design and history. And I respect their learned, earned opinions when they say that NASA's launcher concept -- a large, solid first stage that isn't even truly Shuttle-derived anymore, beyond the steel segments -- they say the Shuttle SRBs should be left alone; they work fine as they are and they should *ONLY* be used in their original context, or close to it. Anything else is a huge expenditure and duplication of effort over existing EELV derivatives. Solid boosters beyond a 4-Segment configuration are too heavy, too low a specific impulse, and too polluting to use for too many more years.

Finally, no I'm NOT cheerleading for the 'Direct' guys here, in case you wonder about my agenda -- though I admire their spirit. I think that a side-mounted 'Shuttle-B' concept would be quicker and cheaper to implement than Jupiter/Direct, even though it would be less-capable than their inline or Ares V.

10 On Jan 20, 2009 04:52:20 PM  guest  wrote: 

Hello, June

I read the STA speech you mentioned. It was an excellent speech. I just wanted to know if I was correct in my interpretation.

Thanks much -- guest, comment #5

P.S. Matthew Black. See link for speech I'm talking about:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=30355

9 On Jan 17, 2009 05:05:48 PM  guest  wrote: 

Will the missions be called Constellation or Ares?
As in "Constellation 11", or "Ares 8 will be next to land
on the Moon since Apollo 17 1972"?
Also, do i get to tag along? Please?

8 On Jan 16, 2009 06:53:47 AM  Matthew Black  wrote: 

Gosh: how can I put the following succintly -- though I'll try:

I have some *extreme* reservations about the affordability and sustainability of Ares 1 & V. Operating such an immense booster as the Ares V: *HOW* will NASA be able to afford to sustain multiple missions of the largest rocket booster in History, let alone get the funds for it in the first place?!

How can NASA even afford to develop Ares 1, which itself is a very challenging project that threatens to duplicate already-existing capabilities of the already-flying Delta IV Heavy and the on-the-drawing board Atlas V Heavy? Oh, I know that senior Constellation managers insist that EELVs would need expensive, time-consuming modifications for Orion. But I've spoken to EELV engineers who insist this is flatly WRONG, that proper, independant analysis -- beyond the Constellation in-house -- were scarcely allowed. Upgrades to the Delta IV Heavy's RS-68 engines and a new upper stage are *already* in progress or in advanced planning stages. And these vehicles have plenty of margin and no need to mitigate Thrust Oscillation in the first place.

Although I have faith that the talented NASA engineers and contractors could eventually fix most or all of Ares 1's problems, with everything we now know: why bother anymore, when there are other alternatives that would save time, money and all these headaches? Look, I want to see a huge, magnificent Ares V fly as much as the next guy; but I have little faith lawmakers will fork out for it at all. Why not just split all the payload for a Lunar mission equally, among two more modest, identical launchers on a genuine, Two-Launch Architecture?

7 On Jan 15, 2009 02:27:57 PM  June Malone  wrote: 

Hi, this is a response for guest, comment #5:

Ares has consistently met all of its milestones on plan, including four major acquisitions (ATK, Pratt and Whitney/Rocketdyne, Boeing USPC, and Boeing IUA) and multiple reviews which include the systems requirements review, systems design review and preliminary design review for the Ares 1 project, and the critical design review for the J2X engine. Ares is on track to meet all of its future milestone requirements as given to the project by NASA's Constellation program. As to budget, Ares has stayed within budget each year since its inception in September 2005. Additionally the Ares project was recently selected to receive the NASA Earned Value Management Award of Excellence which is a key indicator of a project's integrated cost and schedule progress toward meeting milestones.

That said, due to changes in annually appropriated funding and three continuing resolutions, the Constellation program has had to adjust its milestones, shifting many to the right on the schedule, while still meeting NASA's 2015 commitment to accommodate reductions in available funding. As NASA's administrator stated in his speech last week to the Space Transportation Association, "The programmatic implementation of the Constellation architecture fits within NASA's budget projections. Further, it is designed to accommodate funding reductions -- which have totaled nearly $12 billion future dollars over just the last four years -- by slipping schedule rather than by making technical compromises with which our successors would have to cope for decades. If we learn nothing else from the history of the Space Shuttle development compromises that were forced by budgetary considerations, I hope it is this: 'late' is ugly until you launch, but 'wrong' is ugly forever."

6 On Jan 15, 2009 02:09:29 PM  guest  wrote: 

Thank you for sharing this information.

5 On Jan 13, 2009 11:02:24 AM  guest  wrote: 

Some people state that Ares is over budget and behind schedule? Is this true?

4 On Jan 12, 2009 04:42:50 PM  guest  wrote: 

I noticed that there was no data or mention of the heavy lift capablity of the new generation of rockets. Are we to assume that we will be depending on the Russions heavy lift vehicles for any near future missions?

3 On Jan 12, 2009 09:37:52 AM  Michael Mealling  wrote: 

Many of us out here would like to see the assumptions that those vehicle decisions were based on since, at least from out here, it looks as though the cislunar architecture was chosen based on the vehicle as opposed to the other way around. In Mike Griffin's STA speech the other morning there was no mention at all of on-orbit assembly or refueling components of a cislunar architecture that would mitigate many of the perceived "requirements" that Constellation seems to be engineered for. If you could mitigate those mass requirements for a fully fueled Orion or get rid of Ares 1 all together you could have a much more sustainable program that may not have had such a significant gap.

The 2008 NASA Authorization Act contains language about NASA allowing "participatory exploration". One way of adhering to that language is for NASA to actually release those "previous and ongoing studies". Especially being explicit about the assumptions behind the architecture chosen and the work done by those experts to determine the best match. I'm not one for conspiracies but when all of those studies and experts come to the _exact_ same conclusion that the new Administrator came to at the Planetary Society, then it seems as though someone fiddled with the inputs (the assumptions) in a way to guarantee a particular outcome.

2 On Jan 10, 2009 06:14:21 AM  guest  wrote: 

The things that I understand plus the topic makes sense are the Number 1. The things that don't make sense are the number 0.

0 flexibility
1 clean sheet designs
1 J-2x EDS
0 dedicated heavy-lift
1 hard data
0 SSME
0 Devel oping New J-2x
1 small crew missions

I guess If I understood it all then I would probably work for NASA.

1 On Jan 11, 2009 11:34:27 AM  PHILLIP GEORGE  wrote: 

Good Article,

But what the blog fails to point out to the reader, is that the architecture that came out on top just happened to match the one advocated by the administrator before he came to NASA and just happened to be the one that provides NASA an in-house, 50 billion dollar development program that will support the agency and its big centers for at least a decade and a half. The selection process was so transparent that NASA will not release the ESAS Appendixes 6A-6F so that the american people can see what assumptions were made in the selection process.

One of the major points of this blog is that it fails to show the cost of Constellation. Contestellation is meant to cost over $30b over the next 10 years and that does not even include operational costs. If NASA thought that shuttle and Apollo was expensive, NASA's plan for 4 missions to the moon will cost over 50% of its budget. Apollo was cancelled after how many flights? How many flights do you feel Apollo II will have? Constellation is meant to be shuttle dervived---please show me the parts that come from the shuttle. Even the SRB for Ares I and Ares V are completely differant. The SRB may look on the outside to be the same, but a closer look inside shows they are completely differant.

I want to go to the moon. Getting to the moon has to be in a substainble way.

I now the men and woman of NASA are doing the best and producing great work. If anyone can get Ares to fly, these are the people. NASA is at a crossroad just like in 1969. The shuttle was picked and the compromises started. The american public was promised 50 flights a year, we were luckly if we got an average of six flights a year. Yes, space is hard but we have a chance to do so much better. I support NASA, but NASA just has to do better than sending 16 astronuats annually to the moon for the money that it cost.

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