Back to the future...

[jay]

I'm dubious of the latest plan... abandoning the shuttle in a couple of years, reverting to a capsule architecture to go back to the Moon by 2013. But at least they have the rationale for the Moon (correctly, IMO) being to prepare to go to Mars by 2020. Otherwise, the Moon itself is close enough that we can easily explore it with telerobotics at much lower cost. Mars, on the other hand, needs humans there because of the transmission lags to Earth.

Now, for the details... what I've heard of the plan thus far sounds like it was written by the JSC old-guard.

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

But all of the astronomy missions are (more or less) in earth orbit. The ones I work on, Planck and Herschel, will go to L2, which isn't orbit, but I doubt many bean counters will notice the difference.

This seems far too much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If NASA science is to become lunar and martian science only, I don't see any way the programme can be supported. I also don't see any way that international partners will support it since they're going to have other joint screwed over by this. It too a long time for ESA to trust NASA again after the whole CRAF/Cassini debacle. This could be that again multiplied several fold.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Astronomy... is probably safe. Earth observing probably isn't. That's as much as I've heard, no specifics. Keep in mind that the White House isn't going to differentiate much between astrophysics, deep structures, and lunar/martian science... to them, it's all "out there", just as on one of those logarithmically-compressed novelty maps.

And one interesting thing with international partners is... how would ESA, NASDA and the Russians divide the space station up after 2013?

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

If Mars and cosmology both count as 'out there' then I'd expect the currently funded missions to be safe - good for me on Planck and Herschel. However, I'd expect that funding for future missions would be much more tightly focussed on the Mars landings. There wasn't much space astronomy in the Apollo era, as I recall. This is bad for the future of astronomy in the UWS since its the large NASA missions that keep a lot of it funded.

Using Mars as an excuse to cancel Earth Observation is, frankly, criminal, but is entirely in keeping with the Bush mob's attitude towards the environment. Indeed, this may be the reason behind the whole Mars hoopla (excepting, of course, the electoral boost he hopes it will bring). I could quite easily see NASA rejiggng their budgets to eliminate Earth Observation missions and transfer this money into Mars, and then Congress balks at the cost of the Mars programme and cancels the lot. Space astronomy might continue in this scheme, but the slimmer NASA that would result would have no environmental programme, and precious little else apart from the 'out there' stuff that wasn't Mars.