China's Moon Plans
China is Now Positioned to Dominate the Moon, Paul Spudis
“The complexity of the Chang’E 5 mission profile is somewhat curious, since it would be much simpler to make a direct ascent from the lunar surface and head straight back to Earth (like the Soviet Luna sample return missions of the 1970s). The fact that China is adding the step of rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit is significant, as this step is a critical milestone for the certification of an architecture for human missions to the Moon. China’s choice of this mission profile for Chang’E 5 is a clear indication that they are planning such missions.”
Earlier post on China
Meanwhile, we mustn’t invite them to participate in the *cough* International *cough* Space Station. They might learn Important Space Secrets!
It was joining the ISS program, not going to the moon, that was China’s original goal. Not to prove they dominate the world, but to show they have “joined the club” of the world’s leading nations.
But thanks to Congressman Frank Wolf NASA isn’t even allowed to say the word Ch–a. Or to eat off plates made of china. Chinese graduate students who work at NASA facilities are arrested without charge. OK, the part about the plates is an exaggeration.
No space toilet technology transfer on MY watch, buster!
Time for NASA to perform a similar mission.
Don’t worry Paul, once Orion is ready in about 10 years, we will restart lunar orbit missions. We are waiting for the current Administration, which shot itself in the proverbial foot by poo-pooing the moon, to leave office in 2 years and then we can change directions. Not much else makes sense since Orion is a lunar mission capsule. It cannot do deep-space or Mars missions without a significant redesign.
Once Orion is completed, we will start on a lander, which, giving a 15 year development period, like Orion, ought to be ready no later than 2035. Then we can repeat Apollo.
Or, since this doesn’t make sense at the cost of an Orion flight, we may see the end of NASA human space flight, in which case we will be dependent on Space-X.
Just a few years until we decide what direction in which to head.
The current administration did not poo-poo the moon, they killed a fake moon program that would never have reached the moon due to both technical difficulties and flawed planning that was doomed to failure. The truth is that the current NASA bureaucracy would require an increase in the HSF budget of 500% or more to get back to the moon by 2025. This country spends too much money on the military to do anything worthwile technically. Add to that the fact that anti-science religious zealots seem to be coming into the mainstream in the US and I wouldn’t expect NASA to be around in another 10 or 15 years.
The current administration did say, “We aren’t going back to the moon because we have been there before.” I would call that poo-pooing the moon.
I agree that CxP was mismanaged and needed to be restructured but the Augustine commission said that NASA only needed $3 Billion extra a year to get it back on track. That is a less than 50% increase, nowhere near 500%.
Actually the military budget is falling as a percentage of the federal budget (although there is waste there). The real driver of our money problems is entitlements blowing up without being reformed.
And Congress jumped at the chance to increase NASA by 3 billion to goto Luna?
They might have if the President hadn’t been so bent on cancelling CxP.
Then please explain why Bush was unable to increase the NASA budget to pay for Constellation when he initiated it. None of the Republican candidates have suggested that they will increase the NASA budget since Newt Gingrich in 2012, who was laughed at. Rand Paul, the only candidate to release a detailed budget plan, has proposed a 25% cut in the NASA budget.
I don’t recall mentioning Bush or the Republicans in my comment. That said I think Bush made a mistake by not pushing more forcefully for funding.
It is still pretty early this cycle. Rand Paul is not going to get my vote in the primary precisely because of what you mentioned. There are other potential Republican candidates (ex. Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee) who are pro-NASA.
The whole point of the Vision for Space Exploration was to use what the Natiion had and no monster rockets.
True but I do think people recognized that we needed a HLV. Even Musk recognizes that. That said I think we would have been better off going with the available Delta IV Heavy instead of Ares I.
There is a huge difference between what Musk will spend for a heavy lift… you know .. SANE costs versus a taxpayer funded “monster” rocket to nowhere that will kill exploration because it is nothing but a makework program.
It will launch and send astronauts to space way before Musk’s BFR will. I don’t believe in canceling the one HLV we are working on right now and breaking the back and morale of NASA because Musk says he may have one someday. I hope he does. More capability is good!
Maybe ,, but what is the opportunity costs of pouring 3 billion a year down the rathole for another decade.
No arguments here. With that money NASA could take on a lot of projects that will actually be useful.
The morale of NASA should depend on its ability to produce sustainable advances in science and technology that provide practical benefits for our nation.
As you know the ESAS proved conclusively that the Orion could not be launched on the Delta. Wait a minute, they’re about to do it!
That’s a guess and a partisan guess at that.
How so? The Congress then was completely controlled by the Democrats. If Obama had wanted to save CxP they would have lined up behind him.
WOW you are really going to drag out that urban myth that the Democrats controled congress? That lie has been put to bed a long time ago.
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What this shows is is that there were only two time periods during the 111th Congress when the Democrats had a 60 seat majority:
From July 7. 2009 (when Al Franken was officially seated as the Senator from Minnesota after the last of Norm Coleman’s challenges came to an end) to August 25, 2009 (when Ted Kennedy died, although Kennedy’s illness had kept him from voting for several weeks before that date at least); and
From September 25, 2009 (when Paul Kirk was appointed to replace Kennedy) to February 4, 2010 (when Scott Brown took office after defeating Martha Coakley);
For one day in September 2009, Republicans lacked 40 votes due to the resignation of Mel Martinez, who was replaced the next day by George LeMieux”
The Republicans in the house went on vacation all summer too .. Talk about losing crediblity trotting out this dead horse.
http://www.outsidethebeltwa…
Wow talk about losing credibility by not understanding civics. The Democrats had control of both houses of Congress in 2010. While it is true that they only had a 60 vote majority for a shorter time period you don’t need a 60 vote majority to do everything and that is not the measure of being, “in control.”
If anything is related to the budget at all they can pass it with 51 votes using a process called reconciliation. That is what they used to pass the “fixes” to Obamacare after Scott Brown was elected.
The Democrats had complete control over the budgetary process in 2010. That was my point.
Mitch McConnelll shattering the fillibuster record with HUNDREDS of them… 5 tiimes more than any previous president and a 80 republican members in the house who signed a freakin’ pledge to refuse to work with THIS president and pledged to vote no on EVERYTHING proposed by this president tells the EXACT opposite of what you are trying to sell.
talk about fantasy land .. The party of NO has did that down the line for six years.
For the record I never mentioned the Republicans at all in my first comment but go on ahead with your diatribe that the Republicans are to blame for everything. I was making a point about who was in control of the budgetary process and what their motivations were in 2010.
The Republicans control the house, the house controls the checkbook.
They control it now. They didn’t in 2010. That was the point I was trying to make.
I do not suggest the Republicans are to blame for everything, only that there is little chance a Republican administration will provide the substantial increase in the NASA budget that would be needed to carry out human exploration of the Moon or Mars with SLS/Orion technology.
In addition to Vladislaw’s comments below, when have the Democrats in the last 6 years walked in lock-step with the president? It’s not been a certainty. It’s well known and well documented that one major difference between the two parties is that the Democrats lack the unity that the Republican party has (or at least had).
Obamacare for one. All the Democrats in the Senate and a majority in the House voted for it. It has only been recently that more than a few Democrats have started to back away from the President.
That said my only point was that back in 2010 at least it was at the President’s discretion whether to cancel CxP or not. If he had chosen to keep it the program would have kept going.
The Presidential budget is a non binding proposal, a bi partisan congress refused to fund the constellation program. The President signed the congressional appropriations bill. The President did not want SLS either .. congress authorized and appropriated funding for SLS and the President signed it. THIS President has not influenced the republican house on anything from day one and the republican house writes the checks. The republicans have not wanted to fund a lunar program. Just fund a keep everyone moving program.
Again the President’s party was in control of Congress at that point. They didn’t want to do anything to antagonize him. Leadership in terms of the space program has traditionally been recognized as the President’s domain.
CxP was endorsed by both Democrat and Republican Congresses before the current President was elected.
It is also important to note that a lot of Democrats and Republicans pulled together to keep a semblance of the program alive because of the outcry from their districts.
Bush’s budget proposals never requested the additional 1 billion in funding for VSE and congress never funded what he did ask for. We wee basically trying to do in on the existing budget while flying out Shuttle.
“is it worth it?” .. gosh you are right, it’s not worth it … we are all going to pack it up now and go home.
An increase of three billion a year, every year, for an indefinite period. That would be a hard sell, particularly with the global economy tanking at the time.
An increase from $18 Billion to $21 Billion a year. Not an increase of $3 Billion a year every year (i.e. 18 to 21 to 24 and so on)
Also the current President and the then Congress had no problem spending a trillion dollars on a stimulus package in a tanking economy. They could have put $3 Billion or even $30 Billion in for NASA and it would have been chump change.
Where is the public clamoring for more NASA funding? I tell you where: nowhere. There is no mass public outcry for NASA funding. There was a huge public outcry for something to be done about an economy that was crashing in the US. Hell, the whole world economy crashed. Given the rancor that went along with finding possible solutions to right the economy after the crash, there was no way that additional funding was going to be added for NASA.
No one but a handful of politicians, a handful of companies, and a minority of the electorate is clamoring for more NASA funding. Find the solution to that and you’ll find a path toward increasing that funding.
Just because there isn’t massive public outcry for it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. I don’t seem to recall massive public outcry for commercial crew but we did it anyway (and it was the right call).
I would argue that giving NASA a cut of the stimulus money would have been a boost to the economy. NASA doesn’t operate in a vacuum. The money spent on NASA is spent here on Earth.
Should means nothing when the majority of the politicians determining where money goes weren’t interested in or even thinking about NASA funding.
When the economy crashed NASA was on very few radar screens around the country. Claiming that something should have been done doesn’t change what happened and won’t change what happens in the future unless a way is found to motivate the electorate, the politicians, the lobbyists, and the other influence peddlers.
Joe, if you could have NASA lunar researchers on the moon, getting there as commercial customers ..
OR
Congress, through NASA funds the design, development, testing and contracting with FAR for the hardware builds and then handle launch operations, but .. would not have the funds to get reseachers on the moon …
which would you chose?
NASA give up design, development, building and operations of lunar launches but actually gets personal on the moon .. if there is only funding for one option, which option would you choose?
The problem is Vlad that first option is not possible at this point and time. Will it be so in the future? Probably. In fact I think we are getting very close to the point where that idea will work in LEO.
I think there are ways to fix the NASA contracting structure without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I am a fan of fixed price contracts. What I am not a fan of is canceling a program that is cutting metal and will get us back to lunar orbit at least in exchange for nebulous promises of commercial space that are way down the road.
If we are going to go anywhere beyond LEO the budget will have to increase. In fact if commercial crew is going to make it through the early years we will need the budget to increase to keep it and its reason for being (ISS) up there.
If you cancel SLS/Orion the support of most of the politicians for the budget goes caput and we lose ISS and CC too. I don’t want that to happen.
The stimulus was 787 billion. There was 275 billion in tax cuts, and 288 billion in tax incentives. So it is not true there was a trillion dollars in spending. The real crime was the lack of real infrastructure spending.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
They put in about a billion. Midway between the House and Senate plans.
Very approximately 1/3 of the total stimulus packages went to extension of benefits, 1/3 to various tax incentives, and 1/3 to various gov projects. The “adjusted” share that NASA “should” have gotten was somewhere near 1.4B, in the neighborhood of the Senate package.
I agree with you Joe. Getting there is part of exploration. When obama made the above statement at KSC I knew he didn’t know what he was talking about.
The driver of our money problems is the massive tax cuts that were passed under Bush just before a massive increase in military spending, and made permanent under Obama. These tax cuts put US tax rates far below what was accepted by wealthy Americans during Project Apollo. These cuts were unrealistic and have resulted in long-term deficits.
Going back to the moon is not financially feasible. $3 billion extra per year would have put CxP back on a track to nowhere. They couldn’t even get crew back to orbit with Ares I on the budget they had, and forget about developing the Ares V, and forget about developing the TLI stage, and forget about developing the lander and forget about developing the surface equipment. And then there’s those pesky operational costs on top of all that development. The Augustine commossion also said that if Santa Clause had given us CxP for Christmas, our first action would have to be to cancel it because we couldn’t afford to operate it on the projected budget. Cancelling it before it did irreparable harm was the right thing to do. NASA HSF gets about $3.5 billion per year but would need about $20 billion per year to do all that development and concurrent operations within a single generation.
$20 Billion a year? I don’t know where you are getting your numbers. The TLI stage for SLS Block IB is being developed right now. It will be ready for Em-2.
I agree that Ares I was the weak link and we probably should have gone with Delta IV Heavy to start with. CxP wasn’t perfect but I think more would have been gained if it had been restructured rather than canceled.
A reasonably capable Lunar Architecture could have been devised if Ares 1 & 5 had been sacrificed for improved EELV launchers. It was estimated that more than $50 Billion dollars would be needed to develop the Ares brothers!! No reason two or three manned lunar missions per year couldn’t have been done with 4x EELV launches per monthly lunar launch window – Delta IV-H and Atlas V-H each lifting 35 tons would do; 1x cryogenic Earth Departure Stage and 1x spacecraft linking in L.E.O. then off to TLI. Or the standard variety EELV rockets if coupled with a rudimentary Propellant Depot at L-1: the spacecraft fill up there and then head to the Moon.
This would be a good start for Lander vehicle re-usability, too. Or if they HAD to keep the Shuttle infrastructure; the ‘Not Shuttle C’ shown during the Augustine Commission would have given a LOT of capability.
Orion and Altair were too large, too bloated as designed. Lighter weight and smaller Command/Service Modules and lunar landers could have sufficed for 2x Astronauts. They still would have been larger and more capable than the Apollo LM and with a Common Descent Stage; Cargo Lander and Hab Module carrying versions could also be implemented. A pair of surface Habitats could have hosted 4x Astronauts at a time via 2x landers – much as 2x Soyuz at ISS are used now. Also; the lunar cargo and transportation infrastructure could be competed out to Commercial Space after the pioneering missions from NASA and it’s International partners.
Don’t believe me anyone? Just ask Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo…
Thanks for this.
I recall Musk Joking About how his planned Mars transportation system could be used for Lunar base. Seems to me we need smart low cost robot first human exploration moon program to explore fuel mining on the moon.
NEW FLASH!
SLS will be used to hunt for bugs on a moon of Jupiter!
🙁
Cool as that is…more wasted opportunity.
I make my numbers up, just like NASA. Except I tend to be more pessimistic. I may be exaggerating to make my point, which is that NASA needs significantly more money to successfully return to the moon in a what anyone would consider a reasonable amount of time. Orion has been in development for nearly 10 years and we are just now ready to test fly a qual unit. You have to look at our track record of gross underestimation of both cost and schedule. And I mean off by several factors on cost and off by years on schedule. I will be absolutely shocked if EM-1 launches before 2020. Maybe we can manage a lunar fly-by mission by the 60th anniversary of Apollo 11.
“The real driver of our money problems is entitlements blowing up without being reformed.”
Politically-oriented nonsense.
Actually it is fact oriented sense. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look up the numbers and the long term trends for yourself. If entitlements aren’t reformed they (and the interest on the debt) will eventually crowd out discretionary spending.
I’m pretty sure the next human footprints in the moon dust will leave a treadmark the same as my cheapo waffle stomper trail boots…” Made In China”.
IMHO we disrespect China’s space technology and programs at our own risk. They are conducting ever more respectable missions, some with very complex profiles, and it may be that the pace of their work is accelerating.
As to Moon versus Mars, the Moon makes sense as an intermediate step and as a testing ground. Even Elon Musk, whose main goal is Mars, is on record as saying that there will probably be a presence on the Moon as part of a Mars-oriented strategy. And with ISRU, that presence could become permanent.
The primary problem I see with the US space program is that it’s a political football, part jobs program, part national symbol, and part budgetary and ideological target. NASA has come up with many good mission suggestions in the last forty years, but almost all have been crushed by Congress as soon as an administration or NASA brought them forward.
NASA will have one foot nailed to the Earth as long as every element of its space program has to pass financial, ideological, political, or anti-scientific litmus tests.
Notably, China does not seem to suffer from these handicaps.
“Notably, China does not seem to suffer from these handicaps.”
That is correct. China does not have the handicap of an elected body of representatives deciding on what to spend taxpayer money on. China doesn’t have the handicap of answering to a free people or having the constraints of a free market dictate the feasibility of what the government can and cannot afford to do. China has a totalitarian dictatorship that can spend the treasure of it’s people however the party bosses like, no matter how many 100’s of million of it’s own citizens are living in poverty or working for near slave wages in support of it’s ‘westernized’ marketplace. I’m sure those that died in protest at Tiananmen Square would be thrilled with the Chinese space program.
In contrast, I’m proud of the American space program, ‘handicaps’ and all, when compared to China, or Russia, for that matter.
Damn right
China, NASA, SpaceX, India, Iran or whichever other country or entity, I don’t care. As long as anyone is making serious and sustained steps to expand human presence into space, I am happy.
China is Late for 50 years than USA.
Looks cramped in that thing.
not if you are 2-5 kg of lunar regolith
The Chinese will go to the Moon in their own sweet time. They have no possible reason to race America there. If they lost such a race, they would look incompetent. If they won, they would irritate their biggest customer. As a Chinese scientist once said, “If you want to race to the Moon, go ahead. We will not race with you. You will be racing by yourself.”
I agree 100%. The Chinese are making very steady progress with their space program. And they are very purposeful with their steps, as opposed to the U.S. which gets pulled in different directions each time a new president comes into office.
Eventually the Chinese could pass the U.S. in space capabilities, maybe around 2050.
The only hope for the U.S. is to fix it’s enormous debt problem, though I think it’s so big it’s probably pass the point of no return. The latter part of this century is going to be vastly different than today.
the exact same thing happens in china, as managers said to ex Administrator Griffin while he was there “how to you manage to keep getting funding for human spaceflight…
the Chinese … the chinese are not even close to the pace that Russia and the US set when we were where they are now… Their plans are a space station .. that is what is getting the big funding .. they have launched about 2 space shuttles of people so far…
It may not be the exact same thing as the U.S. the Chinese are slowly and steadily increasing their space program. They don’t have to worry about a new president coming in and throwing away tens of billions of dollars and starting another sure to fail program.
China 2050: Slow and Steady won the race.
So far, *it hasn’t*. Look at the timeline for this mission — launched 10/23, returned to Earth 10/31. Not until someone wrote an article 6 days later did it garner much of any attention. Yes, there are articles out there about the launch, return, and so on, but they are relegated to back-page bottom-of-the-comic-section status.
And as far as the article.. a bit weak. It didn’t even mention that there was a secondary payload consisting of German and Spanish instruments managed by LuxSpace! Chinese “dominance” indeed.
Nice to see some country on this planet has a practical affordable plan to get to and develop another celestial body in our solar system.
According to a discussion started on longbet.com, China might use a moon claim as a political bargaining chip over the South China Sea (and the poles) for resource exploitation.
According to a discussion started on longbet.com, China might use a moon claim as a political bargaining chip over the South China Sea (and the poles) for resource exploitation.