The latest, after last week’s space-policy turmoil.
I think that Bridenstine (and Scott Pace) feel compelled to publicly support it, in the hope of maintaining Congressional support for NASA budgets in general, but I’m not sure it’s a great strategy.
[Update a while later]
Welcome to the new moon race.
Politico seems to be doing a fiftieth anniversary issue.
No problem putting a manned space station in orbit around the moon first, then sending manned landers down, all by 2024. After all, the unmanned James West Space Telescope (JWST), when initially proposed in 1997, was going to be launched in 2007 for only $0.5 billion. We’ve made considerable progress since then. In 2019, it is now scheduled to be launched in 2022; three years instead of 10! Of course, the cost has gone up a little. $9.9 billion, IIRC.
So there should be no problem with the Gateway return to the Moon….
Sorry, James Webb. They just call it JW[E]ST.
In a rational world, it would be.
Competition is bad and nothing ever good came of it! I think the actual things the Trump administration has said don’t support this line of attack and neither does it being an international project.
It was nice to see Zubrin, the underpants gnome of space cadets, make an appearance.
The article was a good run down of the criticisms and if calling Gateway Trump’s centerpiece is a persuasion tactic to get SLS get cancelled, that’s great. It is really just a continuation of what the Obama administration was doing, which was a continuation of what the Bush administration started. And people say NASA can’t get anything done because their programs keep getting cancelled…
I think the real centerpiece is the non-Gateway lunar landing plan. It is an actual Trump administration creation and is flying under the radar.
Is there anybody who can explain what advantage this “near-rectilinear halo orbit” would have over L-1?
Yes. It is the only lunar orbit that the SLS can actually put an Orion capsule into. All the other libration points, low lunar orbits, etc. are too energetic to be accessible to SLS/Orion.
The worst part is there *are* some useful things a station at low lunar orbit, L1 or L2 could do. A 3/8 g gravity lab. An ISRU processing node. A sample fuel depot. A testbed for building and operating spacecraft in the interplanetary environment with relatively nearby and accessible abort options. But Gateway, as conceived, can do none of these things.
As Mitchell Burnside Clapp said, it is to accommodate SLS/Orion and the dual objectives of lunar and Martian operations. The question should be, is there a better orbit that allows Gateway to meet its objectives? Otherwise its just being unhappy with the existence of a Gateway, which is just fine but a totally different argument to make.
I doubt it makes anyone feel better but the orbit for Gateway isn’t permanent. It can always be changed and NASA has mentioned changing it for different purposes.
Yes. I caught Dave Lee in the parking lot on the way home tonight, the guy who came up with the 9:2 resonance variant.
1. Lower mission propellant cost.
2. Less unstable.
3. Lower transit time for the Ascent Element.
I don’t know how L1 is regarding eclipses, but the point of the 9:2 resonance is to protect the solar arrays from eclipses that in some candidate orbits can last several hours.
Calling Gateway “the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s promised plan to go to the moon” steps well over the line into fake news territory. The implication is that Gateway is a creation of the Trump administration instead of a pointless holdover from Obama’s erstwhile Asteroid Redirect Mission. Far from being any sort of “centerpiece” of the Trump administration’s plan, Gateway has been scaled back as much as is apparently politically feasible to a two-module locker room in space where astronauts can change spacesuits going to or returning from the Moon.
Typical. The agency that can’t get to space is now telling us they can get to lunar orbit. With what? A rocket that flies? No, SLS. How will they supply it with people and stuff, like food, O2, H2O, x-box consoles, and other necessities. They can’t even pull off a two-woman space walk. In low earth orbit. With russian rockets and modules. NASA has no infrastructure to support even LEO operations. None. Now we should believe they can support a manned station a quarter-million miles from here. With what? How will they repair any unplanned damage? How will they evacuate in an emergency? And to where? How long will it take? Do they plan to have 6 to 8 months of emergency supplies held in a damage-proof capsule for these situations? If SLS can only fly a couple times a year, with a few astronauts on each trip, with equipment re-used from a system (shuttle) that could not even get to where the ISS is now orbiting, then how can it get to near-lunar orbit? Better NASA should develop a LEO infrastructure that can support people and businesses that want to use low gravity advantages for a while, than fail at another idea they say they can’t do.