Author Topic: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+  (Read 2512 times)

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Offline jfelten (OP)

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Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« on: February 08, 2010, 03:45:39 PM »
Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until at Least 2020

By ANDY PASZTOR

The Obama Administration's revised manned space program doesn't envision U.S. astronauts venturing beyond Earth's orbit until at least 2020, and perhaps years later, according to the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The comments by NASA chief Charles Bolden to reporters over the weekend mark the most specific timeframe he has released so far for the forthcoming manned space program. Mr. Bolden said a new U.S. heavy-lift rocket is likely to become operational sometime within the next decade or two, though the agency hasn't yet chosen destinations and is years away from picking the technologies necessary to build such a booster.

The proposed timeline to get beyond Earth's orbit anticipates that rocket development will take years longer than many had anticipated.

Under prodding by the White House, NASA last week proposed killing its multibillion dollar Constellation program, including heavy-lift versions of the Ares rockets intended to return astronauts to the moon, and eventually take them further into the solar system. One of the major reasons for canceling Constellation, according to NASA's earlier statements, was to help accelerate development of rockets and spacecraft capable of transporting crews deeper into space.

Mr. Bolden's latest comments about the revised timeline, however, underscore uncertainties about how much faster the new family of rockets can be developed.

"Ideally," Mr. Bolden told reporters at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, NASA will be "flying a heavy-lift launch capability between 2020 and 2030." But he said it was too early to know whether future NASA chiefs will consider such hardware "ok to put humans on."

When he unveiled NASA's proposed spending package last week, Mr. Bolden stressed that the agency would rely heavily on commercial programs to nurture and perfect cutting-edge technologies enabling manned missions beyond low-earth orbit. In an interview last Tuesday, he indicated the Ares program probably didn't have many technologies to offer toward that goal. "I'm not smart enough, right now, to know what they are," he said. The NASA chief also said the White House prefers that NASA identify "brand new technologies," rather than recycle existing ones.

But over the weekend, the NASA chief partly reversed course. He told reporters "we may actually end up carving out some subsystems" from Constellation because "they are things we need to develop any heavy-lift launch system."
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2010, 04:59:56 PM »
Yay for liberal luddites.

Offline welchbloke

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Re: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2010, 06:11:43 AM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Yay for liberal luddites.
Have you seen how much it will cost just to cancel the Constellation programme?  The reported figure is 1.2 Billion USD  :shock:
Welchbloke
 

Offline Shinanygnz

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Re: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2010, 01:48:55 PM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Yay for liberal luddites.

Hello all Americans!  Did you know liberal is not an insult or in any way derogatory outside your borders?  No?  Didn't think so.  Now you do.  Well at least the small subset of you on this board.  Could someone please inform David Weber particularly though.
In fact, it's usually a good thing... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal
kthxbai
 :wink:
And as for "corporations in space", maybe we can ask the waiting Chinese to shoot them down so we don't end up with "The Company" from Aliens running space.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2010, 02:47:03 PM »
A liberal in the USA is a socialist, whereas in most of the rest of the world they are facists. ;)

Offline Journier

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Re: Manned Flights Beyond Earth's Orbit Unlikely Until 2020+
« Reply #5 on: February 20, 2010, 12:20:36 AM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
A liberal in the USA is a socialist, whereas in most of the rest of the world they are facists. ;)

+1