Pence: “America Will Return to the Moon–and Go Beyond”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/10/05/vice-president-mike-pence-america-will-return-moon%E2%80%94and-go-beyond

by thedevil • 9 years ago

45 68 9 years ago

whitehouse.gov

scrumper2• 9 years ago

Para 1: revives NSC. A good thing, I think.

Para 2: China etc. threatening our military dominance... Uh oh, hope this isn't going to a bad place.

Para 3: "We will refocus America’s space program toward human exploration and discovery."

Yes, robots are more effective, but this is good, exciting, inspirational stuff. If it happens. And at least he didn't say "We will refocus our efforts towards military control of near-Earth orbit."

cgore• 9 years ago

"We will refocus our efforts towards military control of near-Earth orbit."

The US Space Corps is in the budget for 2018.

NegativeLatency3• 9 years ago

That's no joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Corps

52-6F-622• 9 years ago

Where can I see this? Do they seriously want to slip the 'star wars' back in?

edit: Thanks for the Wikipedia link. Those slippery weasels! That's the wrong direction.

Apparently Russia's was reformed in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Space_Forces

You've got to be kidding me.

edit again: Apparently this includes the US Space Command

"HR2810 FY18 could re-establish the United States Space Command as a subordinate unified command under the United States Strategic Command not later than January 1, 2019. This bill also includes the creation of the United States Space Corps."

scrumper2• 9 years ago

Separate agency to NASA though I think, which has always been sort of related to but not a part of the military.

NegativeLatency3• 9 years ago

It could just be from all the sci-fi I've consumed in my life, but I always thought the Navy would be a more natural fit to be the space corps.

(I'm imagining a Battlestar Galactica / space marine future I suppose.)

zghst4• 9 years ago

Very rarely do people on the ground really understand the severity and threats of what really plagues America. We are so caught up in day to day living not dealing with the tough decisions that keep America operational.

RikNieu2• 9 years ago

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Every president since Bush said something to this effect. My eyebrows will raise when NASAs budget does.

jackmott• 9 years ago

yup

alehul6• 9 years ago

I wouldn't characterize America's space industry by NASA's budget anymore.

What about support of the privatized space industry, instead? It seems to be progressing faster than NASA did.

NegativeLatency3• 9 years ago

I don't understand what point you're trying to make?

Right now we have much more advanced tech than was available during the space race, and a lot of the pioneering work has already been done.

Comparing NASA from the 60's - 70's to current space companies is not useful.

lutorm• 9 years ago

NASA is supporting the privatized space industry, though. Remember that Dragon were/is developed because NASA gave SpaceX a contract for ISS support. Falcon 9 development also got NASA support.

valuearb4• 9 years ago

NASA wants to spend over $2B per launch on a super heavy lift system called the SLS, that can only lift about twice as much as a Falcon Heavy that costs around $120M a launch.

Maybe it's not NASA's budget, but how it's spent?

nsxwolf• 9 years ago

I don't have a good idea about how this scales. What would something with twice the lift of the Falcon Heavy cost?

vanattab• 9 years ago

What about the extra range/energy that could be delivered to a falcon heavy size payload?

RikNieu2• 9 years ago

My comment was more aimed at the political rather than technical side of the current state of the American space program.

I was more thinking about politicians not just continuing exhaling hot air through their vocal cords in front of cameras, but having them actually make concrete commitments by actually putting their money where their mouth is.

If they doubled NASAs budget and chucked that 50% increase to private contractors like SpaceX, great, that would probably have incredible results. But seriously, stop talking big and actually commit to these dreams, dammit!

zghst4• 9 years ago

I think we can be keen in recognizing that the Trump admin maintains interest in science as much as the previous admins.

mud_dauber• 9 years ago

No chance if driven by a government entity. None.

emodendroket• 9 years ago

There's plenty of chance, if the government is headed by people willing to fund it.

jbooth• 9 years ago

Are you aware of how we got there the first time?

Consultant32452• 9 years ago

They hired Stanley Kubrick to fake a moon landing but he was such a stickler for detail that he demanded they do it on location.

zghst4• 9 years ago

No corporation would ever give up their competitive advantage of being on the moon. Imagine a company that gains a competitive advantage and sits on it for 45 years.

If a company would sit on a capability for 45 years without expanding and improving it. The government does things like this, it doesn't have market pressures or complete focus. If a new politician of a popular party gets elected and decides to reallocate the funds, they can do that at the snap of their fingers.

The problem with the government is that they are managing the immediate needs of the electorate while balancing long term goals which are volatile. A healthy company is more narrow, more nimble, and more committed to a goal. A business is resource-time bound, a government not so much. A business must respond to the market/pressures much more so than a government. An unpopular business doesn't last long, whereas entire functions of government hold historic unpopularity, yet is free of anxiety. A great business caters to the individual in all of us, while the government caters to clashing interest groups.

excalibur• 9 years ago

Under President Trump, America will lead in space again.

We need to get Trump to lead the way to the moon personally. I heard Kim Jong Un said he doesn't have what it takes.

craftyguy• 9 years ago

Why stop him at the moon? I heard the Oort cloud has great golf courses.

outside1234• 9 years ago

I heard that he also said that President Trump was too chicken to spend 10 years on the moon too.

synicalx• 9 years ago

So you can get President Pence instead? Country-wide pray-away-the-gay camps are going to be fun I bet /s

thedevil• 9 years ago

While this came out today, Pence also made similar statements in the summer.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/vice-president-pence-visi...

Nonetheless, I think him repeating the claims a second time signals more commitment.

mhneu• 9 years ago

Slight issue:

Far more than past administrations, a huge number of things that come out of Pence's mouth are straight-up lies.

He and the rest of the administration have demonstrated they will lie with abandon to serve their own ends. We've long passed the point where we should take anything at face value this administration (and this GOP congress as well) says.

Mike Pence has a growing credibility problem: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/18/vi...

It's not just the Russia scandal, Pence lies about health care too: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/its-not-just-the-rus...

How can Mike Pence get away with outrageous lies about the health care bill? https://www.salon.com/2017/07/17/how-can-mike-pence-get-away...

All False statements by Mike Pence http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mike-pence/statement...

zghst4• 9 years ago

Also note that all of your sources are quite biased. This content all seems to be written by people who describe themselves as opposition to the administration and Pence. Salon of all of them is especially unreliable.

donald123• 9 years ago

we should just send Trump to the moon and be the president of the whole planet.

codecamper2• 9 years ago

I was thinking he'd be perfect to be the first on Mars.

yohann305• 9 years ago

well, easy to state lapalissades now that we have Elon Musk working on it.

(lapalissade is an actual word. Came in handy today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapalissade)

bmcusick3• 9 years ago

It means establishing a renewed American presence on the moon... And from the foundation of the moon...

This is potentially bad news for SLS/Orion. They have no ability to land on the Moon. SLS doesn't do retro-propulsion and Orion can only land on Earth's ocean using heat shields and parachutes.

That's why NASA has pushed for asteroid missions and building a space station around the Moon. Those are things that SLS can do.

Of course if the intention is to land on the moon this is very good news for SpaceX and Blue Origin, both of whom have working retro-propulsion landings under their belt. Arguably, Blue Origin is in an ever better position than SpaceX since their New Shepard is about the right size for a moon lander. SpaceX would have to develop one.

(Dragon 2 was originally supposed to do retro-propulsion landing, but NASA nixed the idea of landing legs that extended from a heat shield, so the idea was dropped. They would either have to develop a lander version of Dragon 2, or wait until the BFS is available)

lwansbrough• 9 years ago

Fortunately, SpaceX begins production of their moon lander in 6-9 months!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQ0jBKH36Y

Edit: realized you were probably referring to this when you said BFS.

bmcusick3• 9 years ago

Yup, that's what I meant. I don't know how reliable those Elonian schedules are though. :-p

simonh• 9 years ago

New Shepard far too big, with far too much delta V for a moon lander. It’s design parameters are all wrong. Also SpaceX has a perfectly suitable propulsion system in the SuperDracos.

The truth is none of the existing or currently planned systems, other than BFR, would make any sense as lunar landers. They’re just not designed for it. Dragon and Orion are Apollo Command Module replacements, not LEM replacements. For lunar landings and excursions we’d need a new vehicle along the lines of the LEM. Lightweight, vacuum only, reusable and refuelable with an ‘infinitely’ restartable engine. SLS would be perfectly capable of launching such a vehicle, in fact that’s exactly the sort of thing it’s designed for.

randyrand• 9 years ago

Why not just use the Saturn V designs? Are they that bad?

bmcusick3• 9 years ago

You mistook my point. Not that New Shepherd can be used "as is", but merely that Blue Origin and SpaceX have developed propulsion-based landing technology and NASA/Boeing have not. There's a much shorter development path from New Shepherd/Dragon 2-->LEM, than from Orion.

And of course SLS could launch a LEM. The problem there is that it costs $2 billion/launch. That's "just a bit" of a price premium relative to Falcon Heavy, or whatever the fully reusable generation of rockets is going to cost.

codecamper2• 9 years ago

And America will go there with the help of a certain South African.

yammajr• 9 years ago

The original op-ed actually addresses this. Sounds like the plan is to get SpaceX, Blue Origin, et al. involved.

To achieve these goals, the National Space Council will look beyond the halls of government for insight and expertise. In the coming weeks, President Trump and I will assemble a Users’ Advisory Group partly composed of leaders from America’s burgeoning commercial space industry. Business is leading the way on space technology, and we intend to draw from the bottomless well of innovation to solve the challenges ahead.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-will-return-to-the-moon...

moomin• 9 years ago

No-one in their right mind would put paragraphs two and three next to one another. The literal interpretation is "Our enemies are working to defeat us, but we're going to completely ignore that".

In practice, I suspect that a policy around 2 is much more likely, but it seems unlikely the money for that will be showing up in NASA's budgets.

This is proper Kremlinology stuff. What does it really mean? Could be anything or nothing. Only those inside the loop know for sure. And that's subject to change.

Animats• 9 years ago

Sending a lunar rover to the Tranquility landing site for the 50th anniversary of the manned moon landing would be a nice touch.

techdragon• 9 years ago

You know what would be better, sending people back. Back to anywhere on the moon at all.

eesmith3• 9 years ago

Quoting Charlie Stross, teller of lies for money and HN user, from http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/09/bread-an... :

I don't often make exact predictions about the future; that's not an SF writer's job, and it's really easy to get egg on your face. Howver, here's a prediction:
If Donald Trump is still president, US astronauts will return to circumlunar space around July 16th, 2019 ...
I'm making this a prediction, however, because the POTUS factor.
July 2019 lies within the term in office of Donald Trump (or Mike Pence, depending whether impeachment/removal has happened first then). Trump is nothing if not an egomaniac, and offering him the opportunity to make a historic phone call to lunar orbit in front of the TV cameras is a guaranteed ego-stroke. Trump is of an age to have young-adult memories of Apollo and I can't see the idea not appealing to him if he can take credit for it.

Pence: “America Will Return to the Moon–and Go Beyond”

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