America to the Moon

Changing horses when crossing a rivers then shooting the other horse to feed the one your riding is also detrimental.

>> invention
I couldn't give a damn about the inventions, all I care about is the science.
>> science behind that statment
Citation needed motherfucker

youtu.be/U9wDxktPx4k

I'm all for sending men to the Moon -- starting with Trump.
When the MFer gets Congress to pony up some $$$ for the project , THEN maybe I'll believe he has goals other than money and pussy.

Until then it's just self-aggrandization, like everything else he's ever done.

Waste of money.

Stupid stunt to hide bad optics.

Pathetic.

Glad people are finally going to the moon.

Hope it's made of delicious cheese.

>Oh and they cancelled the nuclear reactor to power said europa mission, which would have been pretty goddamn useful

Wrong, Kilopower reactor development is alive and well.

>They are going to take money away from actual science just so we can see some meatbags plant a flag on the moon and leave.

Developing technology to colonize space is much more important and interesting than looking at some dead rocks.

NASA does not have what it takes to go to Mars

Maybe Elon will land people on Mars but for NASA it is either Moon or nothing, and even that is barely doable under current budgets

That's a totally different project. I'm talking about Project Prometheus:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus
It got cancelled because more funding was needed for Bush's constellation program to go back to the Moon.

Project Prometheus was to have a power output of 200 KW electrical, kilopower is only going to be like 10 KW electrical max.

>Kilopower
For Megathrust an Gigaspeed?

>Thoughts?

I thought of this.

Why not take a balloon to the Moon and save big $$$

Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, was a metalized balloon satellite acting as a passive reflector of microwave signals. Communication signals were bounced off them from one point on Earth to another.[1]

Echo 1A (commonly referred to as just Echo 1) was put successfully into a 944-to-1,048-mile (1,519 to 1,687 km) orbit
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. ... The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km (205 and 270 mi) - Wikipedia

blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-a-balloon-fly-in-outer-space/

scienceabc.com/nature/universe/what-would-happen-if-you-popped-a-balloon-in-space.html

Image: The U.S. Post office issued a postage stamp commemorating Project Echo on December 15, 1960.

I would argue that extremely limited funding is also detrimental. There's a happy medium in there somewhere. Whether we're above or below it is a different issue.

>kilopower is only going to be like 10 KW electrical max.

Can be scaled much higher.

>This new technology could provide kilowatts and can eventually be evolved to provide hundreds of kilowatts, or even megawatts of power."

world-nuclear-news.org/ON-NASA-to-test-prototype-Kilopower-reactor-1711174.html

Obama said we were going to mars, did Trump puss out and go for the bargain bin?

That went a long, slow way to then post a retarded calculation.

>Until then it's just self-aggrandization, like everything else he's ever done.

To be fair, most Presidents announce a "space vision thing" that they neither fund nor, in most cases, ever mention again.

>Why not take a balloon to the Moon and save big $$$

Swans are cheaper. Worked for Gonsales.

The 30.5-metre (100 ft) diameter balloon was made of 0.5-mil-thick (12.7 µm) metalized 0.2-micrometre-thick (0.00787-mil) biaxially oriented PET film ("Mylar") material, and it was used to redirect transcontinental and intercontinental telephone, radio, and television signals.
Project Echo - Wikipedia

blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-a-balloon-fly-in-outer-space/

nasa.gov/centers/langley/about/project-echo.html

Sums it up. Elon and bezos are the only ones who can afford it

True.
But other presidents have accomplished SOMETHING useful while in office.

If he's so "Private Enterprise can do Anything", why not just offer 5 billion dollar X-prize? Land two humans on Moon and return them safely to Earth, then give us the ship and the plans.

Gonsales wasn't happy. Moon wasn't where he wanted to go.

The orange clown talks about this shit every time his ratings hit a new low or if he needs to distract from another failure. It's getting a lame joke now.

youtu.be/oM5fKcU5ClI

...

More than $52 million a day?

>implying they went there in the first place
also moon has literally nothing

every serious space watcher saw this coming. we also know that its largely meaningless. nasa has found a way to wriggle outside the control of congress so they will be doing their own thing (going to the moon) until someone stops them. trump is just trying to lay claim to their hard work.

pic related.

Nice CGI picture
It doesn't actually exist.
planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2017/20170925-solar-sail-dsg.html

Space balloon technology exists and has been successfully tested and implemented.

It had a further orbit than the iss.

Take the space balloons to the Moon and Mars.

space balloons are pointless tho, stop spamming thread pls

Cancel SLS and Orion and give SpaceX $4 billion per year for a Moon colony.

Heck, even ULA has a much better plan, using a lunar lander derived from ACES upper stage, Bigelow modules, distributed launch etc.

NASA aint going anywhere under current budgets and incompetent management, and even if they manage to land people on the Moon it will be in a small tin can.

Pic related, this is how a 21st century space program ought to look like.

You re wrong.
It s not pointless. It s the ideal way to travel through space. Compare travel speed with Apollo 11.

Look up the cost of mylar.

The 30.5-metre (100 ft) diameter balloon was made of 0.5-mil-thick (12.7 μm) metalized 0.2-micrometre-thick (0.00787-mil) biaxially oriented PET film ("Mylar") material...

During ground inflation tests, 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of air were needed to fill the balloon, but while in orbit, several pounds of gas were all that was required to fill the sphere. At launch the balloon weighed 156.995 pounds (71.212 kg) which included 33.34 pounds (15.12 kg) of sublimating powders of two types.[2] The first weighing 10 pounds (4.5 kg) with a very high vapor pressure, the second with a much lower vapor pressure.[2] According to NASA, "To keep the sphere inflated in spite of meteorite punctures and skin permeability, a make-up gas system using evaporating liquid or crystals of a subliming solid were incorporated inside the satellite."[3]
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

globalplasticsheeting.com/thickness-of-plastic-sheeting

youtu.be/BK-uatwOOeA

>It s not pointless. It s the ideal way to travel through space.

It is a primitive comm satellite, it does not travel anywhere.

youtu.be/s8QC5sbKnF0

It went further than the ISS

youtu.be/3ha1V6wR8_E

cant you read? it was put into this orbit by a rocket

the balloon itself has no propulsion, it is just a passive reflector for radio beams

a pointless thing

it is a waste of money, we already have people in space, going a bit further and landing is

a, dangerous
b, expensive

as if we will discover something new, when we have telescopes. me thinks this idiot thinks he's jfk or he just didnt think it thru. OR its a test to force nasa to produce results or defund them.

if thats the case, he's wasting a shit ton of money and potentially lives. stupid idea from a stupid man, not surprised. and it's not like nasa will say no, they will just line their pockets, who cares about lives lost, or millions wasted, as long as the higher ups get their share.

Maybe NASA can launch trump into the sun.

It just sounds good, but without some ideological competitor (like the soviet union) to beat on the world stage it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Bush said we'd go to the moon (and mars) -- we didn't go, Obama said we'd go to the moon (and mars) -- we didn't go, Trump said we'd go to the moon -- _____________________ (fill in the blank).

He also cut funding to NASA in the same breath he used to say he was going to put us on the moon again. God, he's such a fucking idiot.

M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E
M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E M O O N B A S E

I can read. Can you?
You forgot your citation.

Start of mission
Launch date 13:59:04, January 25, 1964
End of mission
Decay date June 7, 1969
Of note is that both the Echo 1A and Echo 2 experienced a solar sail effect due to their large size and low mass.[8]
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km (205 and 270 mi) by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft. It completes 15.54 orbits per day.[15]
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

NASA budget is roughly constant ever since the end of Apollo, same holds true this year

there are no funding cuts, if anything Trump transferred some money from science to manned spaceflight

newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vacuum#Examples

youtu.be/zYLJGXthzpE

>both the Echo 1A and Echo 2 experienced a solar sail effect

A very small solar sail effect. It is no way to actually travel anywhere.

ISS is in lower orbit and experiences a lot more drag.

>Oh boy let's change the course of NASA again without providing any more funding! They are going to take money away from actual science just so we can see some meatbags plant a flag on the moon and leave.
God, this reeks of smug academic-rooted careerist with nothing significant to contribute. NASA doesn't need more funding. They're getting oodles of money. They could pay for SpaceX's whole BFR development program twice over every year. And a manned moon program would be more important and worthwhile than anything NASA is currently doing.

The problem is that NASA has a split personality. On the one hand, it's supposed to be this uber-elite high-performance organization that has the most talented people that can get shit done. On the other hand, it's supposed to be this big government employer where once you get in, you're set for life, and the perfect setting for diversity hiring and pork distribution. It can't be both. If it's the latter, and it currently *is* the latter, it can't be the former. They've become an organization that can't repeat its actions of half a century ago, despite mind-boggling progress in relevant technology.

Basically, for NASA to actually start doing shit again, 90% of the people currently working there need to be fired, just for starters. It needs focus, direction, and a total commitment to getting the job done over all other considerations.

aeiou est pst cst mst est pst cst mst john madden

4 billion is nearly 21% of nasa's budget, that will never happen.

this guy is correct

>They could pay for SpaceX's whole BFR development program twice over every year.

Only like half of NASA budget goes to manned spaceflight, so once every year. Still a damning figure. NASA is inefficient as fuck, and that is before all the political meddling that just turns this inefficiency up to 11.

A huge balloon in space successfully orbiting Earth without rockets or thrusters, at 3x the distance of the ISS.

nasa.gov/centers/langley/about/project-echo.html

We haven t even gotten to Echo 2 yet.

Change the material composition or structure and the solar sail effect could be increased.

Doing shit?

Haven't they been working on that Climate Change thing or did I just imagine that

cancel SLS and Orion pork barrels and you save more than $4 billion per year

NASA already pays SpaceX hundreds of millions for station resupply, this would be a mere quantitative increase.

Spacex's BFR "program" is nothing more than marketing to attract customers to their existing rockets.

If you actually believe a private company can conjure LV of that size and in the time frame they promise, then you are absolutely insane.

If it were that easy it would have been done already all over the world.

Lets keep things real so we don't cause even more harm to space exploration - a probe or two might not seem that big of a deal until you lose even that after pooling the resources into something ridiculous.

youtu.be/BK-uatwOOeA

youtu.be/E7BD6ujljzk

youtu.be/uWjdnvYok4I

>If you actually believe a private company can conjure LV of that size and in the time frame they promise, then you are absolutely insane.

They did conjure Falcon 9 and it only took a few years and $ hundreds of millions. BFR for $10 billion is entirely realistic.

newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vacuum#Examples

youtu.be/zYLJGXthzpE

>>They could pay for SpaceX's whole BFR development program twice over every year.
>Only like half of NASA budget goes to manned spaceflight, so once every year.
I'm saying with their whole budget, not with their current distribution of spending, which is all kinds of fucked up.

The current major problem with spaceflight is launch cost, and cost of reaching extraterrestrial destinations of interest. NASA's number one priority, therefore, should be reducing these costs. In practical terms here and now, that means making sure SpaceX has a customer for high-volume launch services, as it lowers prices until it establishes a private market, and in the longer term, helping alternatives to SpaceX establish a competitive position.

NASA needs to reorganize around high-frequency, high-mass launch. That means affordable payloads, which means building multiples of things, which means versatile spacecraft, buses, and modules, preferably built by commercial companies. This means it needs to become an entirely different organization from the one it currently is, which is organized around high-cost, low-frequency, low-mass launch, so effort can be lavished on each payload.

They need to start planning around the capabilities they'll have with Falcon Heavy and BFR. They need to build a LEO station which is not just an experiment, but is for practical work, where probes and satellites can be taken outside and tested and brought back in again, iterating the test-modify cycle multiple times per day. They need to plan on building a moon base supporting indefinite stays with the capability of ranging over the entire lunar surface and drilling deep under the surface to find the varied resources concealed beneath a surface that has been homogenized by meteor bombardment and baking in the sun.

NASA can make a 100 ft diameter balloon that can orbit/travel faster than the ISS, out of the same material that balloons for birthday parties are made out of.

Self sealing from meteorite impacts.
Self guiding, no propulsion once in orbit.

Proven science.

The program has and is moving in the wrong direction.

youtu.be/rSEFPb7GiHY

There's nothing special about a rocket being big. Saturn V flew barely a decade after the first orbital launch ever, and only 5 years after the design concept was finalized. Rockets want to be big. There are many benefits to scaling up, such as reduced relative aerodynamic factors, and being able to more easily afford elaborate surface treatments (such as anti-corrosion, insulation, and thermal protection) of the tanks and exterior due to the square-cube law.

The construction and launchpad cost goes up roughly linearly with the size, so with expendable rockets, you really don't want to fly a rocket that's ten times as big as you need. That means you need to develop small rockets anyway, and the large expendable rockets suffer from low demand. A large, efficiently-reusable rocket, however, is a different matter. Much of the development cost for reusability is scale-invariant, and the performance advantages of large rockets makes efficient reusability easier to achieve.

One benefit of larger rockets is increased payload fraction. Especially important for reusable rockets because reusability decreases payload fraction.

A mature fully reusable launch system such as BFR or New Glenn should be able to cheaply put thousands of tons of cargo into orbit every year. 1-2 orders of magnitude more than current rockets.

You can just balloon the balloon up.
Low cost.
Proven science and technology that exists.
youtu.be/hK_kWN0BsKs

...

...

Moon base is way more achievable than a Mars base so it's not a bad decision.

SLS may be obsolete by the time it gets to do anything anyway, but at least having some lunar missions would give it a little bit of purpose. It might cost more but it does have one advantage in being able to carry large volume payloads like habitat modules.

Even Falcon Heavy with reusable boosters should be able to put up 1,000 tons per year for $1 billion.

That's two ISSes per year. Put that together with stuff like the B330, which would provide one third of the ISS habitable volume at one twentieth the mass, and the reusable Dragon 2 capsule which can launch on the even cheaper Falcon 9, and the situation will be radically changed within the next couple of years.

Only a few pounds of gas needed to inflate the Echo satellite because there was no external resistance.
But you can't live inside it at that pressure.

What are you doing here anyway?
There's another thread devoted to this.

>dat trend line, tho

Balloon-fag is to Veeky Forums what BB-fag and Gliderfag is to /k/

The trend is pretty stable since Apollo ended. Apollo was a big exception because of the cold war, the only reason it got funded was to beat the Soviets.

He's talking about the "percent of federal budget", as opposed to "inflation-adjusted funding".

It's one of the more disgusting arguments for more NASA funding (rather than the NASA reform that's needed, to stop it wasting most of the money it gets): whenever the government grows and becomes more inefficient and a heavier burden, NASA bureaucracy should be allowed to grow with it.

>Rob Skiba
>famous

Why would you take space balloons to the Moon or Mars? They don't have any propulsion system. And unlike solar sails they can't thrust in a desired direction using light pressure because they're round.
Woop-de-fucking do. Lots of satellites orbit higher than the ISS. The balloon was put into orbit with a rocket. Heck it wasn't even orbiting in geo.
>>orbit faster than the ISS
Orbital mechanics does not work that way. Please read up on orbital mechanics before you post again.

Reminds me of another infamous poster too. I wonder what kind of autism produces people like them.

There will be no more moon landings, by the US or any other country. Sad!

Come on, guys. If one person is shitting up a thread with blatantly absurd, off-topic trolling garbage, don't reply, report. If you reply, now two people are shitting up the thread.

Fastest way to get there: SpaceX builds a 5.2-meter-diameter, 1-Raptor upper stage for Falcon Heavy, with the construction techniques and some features planned for BFR, particularly the orbital propellant transfer capability and the propulsive landing capability (though this would be based more on the propulsive landing which had been under development for Dragon 2, since smaller landing thrusters than Raptor would be needed).

A single Earth departure on the mini-BFS would require 5 Falcon Heavy launches, with reusable boosters, which should cost

The mentality of them fascinate me, though. Just like Flatheads, Moonhoaxers and so on.

Why would you take space balloons to the Moon or Mars? They don't have any propulsion system. And unlike solar sails they can't thrust in a desired direction using light pressure because they're round.

You can make balloons any shape you want.

Of note is that both the Echo 1A and Echo 2 experienced a solar sail effect due to their large size and low mass.[8]
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

Add thrusters.

It s the most inexpensive and proven way to travel outside of low Earth orbit.
Like I said compare Echo 1 balloon speed to Apollo 11 going to the Moon.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

>Woop-de-fucking do. Lots of satellites orbit higher than the ISS. The balloon was put into orbit with a rocket. Heck it wasn't even orbiting in geo.

Yes, the 0.5 mm thick, 100 ft diameter balloonwas put into successful orbit by a rocket 1000 miles into space.

Post a link(s) to satellites that aren't made out of the same material as emergency blankets and balloons, that can out perform the Echo 1 balloon.

>>>orbit faster than the ISS
Orbital mechanics does not work that way. Please read up on orbital mechanics before you post again.

I'm familiar with them. You forgot your citation to what your exactly your refering too.

I ve posted both their orbit details.
What that balloon can do is remarkable.

How will the BFR land on unprepared terrain? I've seen F9 that danced on the barge and even though it was wavy and wet it would still be better than moon or martian landing in some crater filled rocks and dust.

youtu.be/mq64QfTCRt0
What is the vacuum level of space?
Vacuum or pressure is quantified in terms of bar or torr. 1 bar or 760 torr is roughly one atmosphere and in terms of vacuum measurement 1 mili-bar is taken as almost equal to 1 torr. at 1 bar pressure and at room temperature the number of atoms per cc is ~ 2 × 10 19 .Jun 8, 2016
pressure - Space vacuum power - Physics Stack Exchange

youtu.be/PxIUVbwN3jk

On top of that, this would pave the way for far more efficient travel to and from the moon, since the mini-BFS would be a useful incremental step toward development of the full-size, fully-reusable BFS, which is likely to reduce costs by another factor of ten or more.

Propellant can certainly be produced on the moon, by electrolysis of common regolith into oxygen and metals which can burn in oxygen. Once there's polar water extraction, then more efficient hydrogen/oxygen or silane/oxygen propulsion can be used. There may also be large subsurface deposits of hydrocarbons and nitrogen compounds, similar to carbonaceous asteroids. Nuclear thermal rockets using oxygen or water propellant could also be an option, as could catapult launch assist and similarly exotic possibilities. When a moon base is established, practical experimentation with a moon-native shuttle and its necessary infrastructure can begin.

Lunar propellant production would reduce the delta-v requirement for round trips by reusable vehicles from nearly 9 km/s to roughly 4 km/s, since the Earth-departure stage would only need to reach low lunar orbit before it could be refuelled, requiring a propellant mass fraction around 70% rather than over 90%. This would enable total reusability on the Earth-moon route, and the potential for drastic cost reduction and volume of traffic increase, such that the moon could be colonized.

youtu.be/JnX-D4kkPOQ

nasa.gov/centers/langley/about/project-echo.html

youtu.be/BK-uatwOOeA

Donald Roy Pettit (born April 20, 1955) is an American chemical engineer and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station, one space shuttle mission and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica. As of 2017, at age 62, he is NASA's oldest active astronaut.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Pettit

The BFS or mini-BFS would be much stubbier than the F9 booster. Lunar landing legs would not need to be very strong, and could give it a broad base for stability. On the moon, it would likely land on thrusters rather than using the Raptor main engine. There's be no wind to contend with, the landing surface wouldn't be moving, the landing thrusters would be capable of a hover (the Falcon 9 boosters have to land fast, with no second chances, because even one engine throttled down to the minimum produces more thrust than the mass of the vehicle at landing), and the low lunar gravity would give the system a lot more ttime to react.

Anyway, one of the top priorities should be to prepare a landing pad. When a rocket lands on the moon, it kicks up a lot of abrasive dust and small rocks, making it a hazard to any previously-landed nearby assets. The lunar regolith can be smoothed out and sintered into a hard, glassy substance to form a landing/launch pad. Basically, you can use a magnetron from a microwave oven for this.

A rover/paver/tow-truck robot, with solar panels to deploy for a recharging or tethered operations station, would make an excellent first payload. Remember, you can put 20 tons down, there doesn't need to be any scientific instrumentation, and it can be remote controlled with only a few seconds' round-trip delay, so it won't need to be some anemic thing like the ~1 ton Curiosity rover. You can even send a little multilayer-foil insulated garage with a radioisotope thermal generator to keep it snug and warm through the lunar night.

Later, the astronauts can use it for transportation and do no-lag remote control stuff.

>When a rocket lands on the moon, it kicks up a lot of abrasive dust and small rocks, making it a hazard to any previously-landed nearby assets

True. See this Apollo 17 footage to verify
youtu.be/sj6a0Wrrh1g

youtu.be/OmcwW-8CC6E

> successfully orbiting Earth without rockets or thrusters

do you even understand how orbits work?

you don't need thrusters to stay in orbit (unless you're doing a very long term mission, in which case you need to reboost every six months or so). The rocket didn't get into orbit all on its own. it was put there by a rocket.

>at 3x the distance of the ISS.

you seem to think that this makes it more improbable? It being 3x the height of the ISS makes it easier to stay in orbit without thrusters. less atmosphere = less drag.

Launch date 09:39:43, August 12, 1960
Decay date May 24, 1968
Echo 1A (commonly referred to as just Echo 1) was put successfully into a 944-to-1,048-mile (1,519 to 1,687 km) orbit by another Thor-Delta,[4][5]
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

The balloon can function 1000 miles out in space.
Send it up by balloon with the astronauts. "It had a total mass of 180 kilograms (397 lb)". Lighter than this NASA launch...
youtu.be/hK_kWN0BsKs
The success of BRRISON could point the way to a new planetary mission option. “Balloon missions are low-cost alternatives that may offer quick response options to other planetary science targets,” says Tibor Kremic, BRRISON project executive at Glenn. “Such a platform could be an important alternative tool for future scientific investigations.”
nasa.gov/content/brrison-a-planetary-science-balloon-mission