US retreat leaves China leading way in race to return to Moon

Let's see:
-you linked the two missions in your previous post;
-NASA, as per current optimistic projections, needs 20 years to build a rocket;
-actually, asteroids is what NASA's interested in (but can't do anything in this regard, either).
-no follow up; USA retreated from the ExoMars mission.

You need to look up NASA's programs on building its new generation of rockets - and the time-table.

"Exploration". Aren't you fond of trying to inflate NASA sending a few probes to these planets (much like all other nations in the space game) by equating these with putting people on the moon.
Hint: it's a LOT easier to do the former.

Yes, and the americans have put a man beyond orbit and regressed to being unable to even putting a man in orbit - as opposed to the russians, chinese. Pathetic.
But I see you don't want to let facts get in the way of your feel good story.

 

So the rocket that took Curiosity to Mars started construction in 1992?

And neither can anyone else. What's your point?

Therefore, this precludes that NASA is done with Mars exploration?

No, I was responding to your claim that NASA went backward instead of forward in space exploration, when it clearly hasn't. Unless you simply don't deem planetary exploration of any value whatsoever unless a person is walking on one of those planets. And please tell me what other country has given the equivalent of the Voyager and Pioneer probes, the four NASA Mars rovers, the Cassini, Galileo, and New Horizons spacecraft, and other planet/moon/comet/asteroid explorers that NASA has sent out.

So who are all those men and women who have been manning the ISS in orbit all these years? Cubans?

 

Not sure why Edit_XYZ is comparing US manned history to other country's unmanned history and calling "fail" on the US???? Talk about the proverbial "apples and oranges".

 

I'm not sure what the build date was on the Russian RD-180 engine that sent Curiosity to Mars, but earlier this year the Russian Parliament debated cutting off our supply of them because we keep using them to launch national security payloads that are used against Russia.

At present the US doesn't have the capability to put a man into low Earth orbit, and NASA won't until about the year 2021, when it will regain the ability to put about three or four men into orbit every two years with Orion/SLS. Fortunately private firms are working with and around NASA to try and fill in the gaps.

 

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/12/17/chinas-space-ambitions-advancing-by-leaps-and-bounds/ The Jade Rabbit will trundle around, surveying the Moon’s structure and looking for natural resources. It is expected to be active for three months.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...igh-frontier-as-america-drifts-lost-in-space/ The new science fiction thriller movie “Gravity” may present a more provident three dimensional message about the future than even its producers imagined. Here we see two American astronauts cut adrift from a catastrophically damaged Space Shuttle depending upon a Russian spacecraft and a Chinese space station for survival.The U.S. already depends upon hitchhiking aboard Russian rockets at $71 million per ride to access the International Space Station we contributed handsomely to create. Meanwhile, Russia plans as many as five lunar missions – four of them landers – between 2015 and 2020. All of the landers will aim at the Moon’s South Pole, most likely to explore ways to collect and process surface resources as preparations for future Mars habitation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...s-photos-as-lunar-mission-dubbed-success.html The launch is part of China’s growing space exploration ambitions, an effort which has seen the country spend billions of dollars even as other nations cut back. The next mission, set for 2017, will involve landing a spacecraft on the moon and returning it to Earth, according to Xinhua News Agency.Chinese state media have described the space program as an element of the “Chinese Dream,” a slogan unveiled by President Xi Jinping that signifies a stronger military and improved livelihoods. China is also planning a manned mission to the moon in the coming years.

https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20131215/jade-rabbit-has-landed-china-puts-rover-moon “This is a very significant step for their space program,” says Gregory Kulacki, who studies China’s efforts in space for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s a prospecting mission, their first real chance to test whether there are mineral resources on the moon.”Much of the equipment on the rover, including a radar device that can “see” 300 feet beneath the moon’s surface, is designed to analyze rocks and identify minerals and other potentially useful elements. The prospect of mining the moon still inspires Chinese scientists as it once did American space enthusiasts, though some observers say the scientists are simply seeking justifications for their large budgets.The 1979 United Nations Moon Agreement bans national ownership of lunar resources, but neither China nor the United States has signed it.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...hinese-moon-rover-jade-science-landing-space/

China’s lunar rover comes after a decade of renewed attention paid to the moon by the world’s space agencies. The arrival of the U.S. Air Force/NASA Clementine mission to the moon in 1994 sparked much of the recent interest in the lunar surface after it reported signs of water frozen there in a radar experiment.In 2010, NASA’s LCROSS mission showed by means of two “hard” landings—deliberate impacts of the spacecraft and a companion rocket that threw up a plume of dust—that the moon hid frozen water deep in the permanentlyshaded craters on its south pole.The finding has figured in debates over the next step for the U.S. manned space program, with a U.S.-Canadian moon rover called RESOLVE considered as a lunar water prospector for future missions. Some space entrepreneurs, such as Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, have called for awarding mineral rights to spur moon colonies.

 

I'm just excited that new stuff is happening all the time. The new space telecopes are far more interesting to me than the moon/near planets since they're the closest we'll ever get to deep space exploration.

Landing on nearby planets is pretty dull unless you're into old rocks. They're not going to be colonised in any meaningful way and by that I mean a town. There will perhaps be small work-related groups (for instance mining) but that's about it. I suspect everything that can be mechanised will be.

 

I compared USA's manned program to other countries' manned program and found its present state and the regressing road that lead to it pathetic.


I compared USA's unmanned program to other countries' unmanned program and found it unexceptional.

In other news - Europe just launched the ambitious GAIA mission:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25426424

China just launched its moon rover.
India just launched its mars probe - on a budget absurdly small by comparison to NASA's.

 

While I do feel that NASA should have had a replacement manned spacecraft ready by the time the shuttles were retired, let's look at the facts, shall we.

When you say "other countries'" manned programs, you're really only referring to two countries, since only Russia and China possess manned spacecraft. And while both of them are still currently producing Soyuz and Shenzhou taxis to LEO while the US does not have a taxi at present, there are three companies contracted with NASA to produce new taxis, plus a program to build a BEO spacecraft. You may feel that's "pathetic" but I do not.

That's funny; I asked you to provide examples of other countries' equivalents to Messenger, the four Mars Rovers, the Voyagers, the Pioneers, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, Rosetta, etc. and you ignored me. Please be more specific about what you find "unexceptional" about all these.

That's because it's a small orbiter, not a car-sized rover attached to a skycrane, or a large lander built to drill deep into the Martian surface (NASA's upcoming InSight mission, if you weren't aware of it)

 

Dukhat

About unmanned missions. It's called google:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Solar_System_exploration
Be sure to also look up the missions launched by countries other than USA (as opposed to pretending they aren't there). Also be sure to look up "Planned and scheduled" missions.
And Rosetta is an EU mission.

About manned missions:
You count rockets that, at best, will be ready in a decade? You are making my point; reduced to such pathetic tactics in order to cosmetize a program that 50 years ago put humans on the moon and today can't even put one in orbit.
And about such future potential technologies - other countries are not staying put, obediently waiting for USA to catch up to them, to put some substance behind its 'manifest destiny' meme. Take Skylon, for example.

BTW, even after accounting for the size of India's probe, its budget remains ridiculously small by comparison to NASA's (for similar missions, etc - as is implicit in my last post).

PS - Dukhat, despite what you obviously think, jingoism never helped one's nation, historically speaking. For example, take nazi Germany; all empires of the past; etc.

 

You need to reread your own posts then

And NASA just launched the Maven probe to Mars.

Not seeing your point here. Seems like the U.S. has a pretty robust unmanned program. Could they spend more on robotic missions, yes, if they weren't hemorrhaging money on the SLS boondoggle. Even with that U.S. robotic missions are still on par in both quality and quantity to most other nations combined.

 

U.S. robotic missions are still on par in both quality and quantity to most other nations - period. No 'combined' is appropriate.

USA had decades of head start (when its only competitor was the poorer and stifled by the communist system Soviet Union). It did not translate this head start into any advantage even in the unmanned program, most definitely not in the manned one.
Indeed, despite other nations being in space for only ~2 decades, they have quickly closed the gap with USA in the unmanned department.
And USA's manned department is non-functional.

 

Bit of homework for you. How many BEO missions did the US launch in the last ten years and how many did other nations launch? Now how many are in the pipeline for the next ten years from the US and from other countries?

 

Already posted a relevant link with regards to unmanned exploration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Solar_System_exploration#Planned_or_scheduled
Of course, these are not all missions (the missing categories are listed in the introduction). But they are a representative sample.
And USA's participation is nowhere near "on par in both quality and quantity to most other nations combined", sojourner.

As for manned USA missions for the next 10 years. There are none.

 

Instead of answering my questions, if all you're going to do is tell me to go to Google, then my conversation with you is concluded, especially since you're trying to convince me that the US has had such a dismal track record in comparison to other countries, and yet I see whole lots of American flags in that link (and while I see a somewhat equal number of Soviet flags, the majority of their missions ended in failure).

I know what space missions have been launched, both by NASA and other countries (and I meant to say Dawn, not Rosetta), and I don't need links that don't even help you prove your own incorrect assumptions. Obviously you're either in denial about the US's successful space flight history, or you're just biased against Americans, which is your own problem and has nothing to do with this discussion.

 

Emphasis mine. The problem he's pointing out is essentially that the SLS is sucking up a whole lot of the funding for planetary missions, as those departments have their budgets raided for SLS funding, yet NASA's projected flight rate for the SLS is so low that if Apollo had only flown crewed missions as often, the crew for Apollo 17 would still be waiting for their mission to the moon, which would occur sometime around 2015.

One of the other problems is that our legacy launchers are too expensive, so that the recent SpaceX GES-8 mission was the first private US launch to geosynchronous orbit in four years, in spite of the thriving launch business for such satellites. A ride on a full up Atlas 5 is about 200 million dollars, whereas SpaceX did it for about a fourth the cost. That cost difference (the US ended up with over-priced launch services), combined with budget pressures from the SLS, means that the number of deep space missions that NASA can carry out is under severe constraints.

There's also the plutonium crisis which has left the US unable to launch any major new missions to the outer planets, but hopefully Kirk Sorensen's FLiBe energy company will rectify the shortfall.

 

So, you've somehow managed not to see the link I posted after 'Google' (a link you can find with google in all of 5 seconds), despite responding to it. lol

Here you go again. Glorious past and all that.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Curiosity's skycrane again, as this seems to be very effective at managing to convince yourself of american superiority.

Dukhat, that glorious past you wallow in was wasted by the failure of subsequent generations to build upon it. Nowadays, it's a substance free slogan.

You forgot one option (actually, several, but this one happens to be correct): you're in denial due to your need to jingoistically believe in America's superiority in space.
The validity of this option is easy to ascertain, given how your posts consist mainly of prayers on the altar of a past golden age, ignoring all information that could cause you to wake up from your dream world and simple denial.

 

gturner

Of course NASA's disastrous setbacks in manned (and serious setbacks in future unmanned) missions are due to self-destructive policy/administrative decisions.

When you have the budget and manpower NASA has, only very poor leadership decisions can cause failure on such an epic scale.

 

I've grown tired of conversing with you, since you don't actually answer my questions to you, and instead resort to personal insults (which is the hallmark of someone who has realized his arguments are invalid and must compensate with pointless subterfuge), and your obvious anti-Americanism has nothing to do with this discussion, so I'll conclude by saying I look forward to all future space missions by all countries regardless of my personal feeling and biases toward them. Too bad you can't do the same.

 

Instead of nations competeting against other in space, imagine what could be accomplished if those nations pooled all the money and resources into one pot.

 

Like to build something like the International Space Station? Nah, never happen.