Winner
Diverse in Unity
I watched his speech in Florida streamed on BBC yesterday. Here's what he talked about plus my comments 
If you want to get more info, see THIS ARTICLE.
1) He wants NASA to develop a heavy-lift rockets. Design phase should end by 2015 and the rocket should fly by ~2020.
-> Well, the good thing is he recognizes the need for a HLV. What I am not so sure of is the strategy. Today, the US has a lot of systems which could be modified for use on many different HLV designs. In fact, Constellation counted with using many Shuttle technologies. If NASA terminates all that and waits 5 years until a completely new design is finalized, I think the final development costs will soar.
2) He wants to convert Orion spacecraft into a "lifeboat". It would essentially be unmanned capsule launched by normal rocket, attached to the ISS and then sit there doing nothing just in order to maintain the ability to escape the ISS in case something went wrong on American ship.
-> This was one of the
moments. What's the purpose of this - there are two Soyuz spacecraft docked to the ISS at every time. There is no need for an additional crew escape vehicle - especially a vehicle which won't be used to actually launch astronauts or do anything but block one docking port for months. Of course these will have to be regularly replaced for Gods-know how much and the benefit of having them there will be exactly ZERO.
Obama said he wants to use these capsules as technology demonstrators, which sounds pretty funny to me - what will the demonstrate? The ability to stay docked to the space station of a year?
I think he got scared by the backlash against his initial proposal, so he's trying to sell this as a continuation of the Constellation Orion. That's ridiculous because if I understand this correctly, this new ship will be a castrated, gutted version of Orion which will be totally useless and the Americans will still have to rely on the Russians for crew transport (unless some commercial company magically fills the gap in just few years).
3) He said that around 2025, there will be first deep space (=beyond the Moon) missions, possibly to an asteroid.
-> Sounds good. Unfortunately, I am pretty sceptical about the value of going to NEOs (near-Earth objects). Sure, we want to know what the asteroids are made of, what's their internal structure, how they behave, all sorts of things, but I suspect this is not why they were chosen as a destination. The real reason is, most probably, that they're pretty easy to reach from Earth orbit. The delta-V requirements are very low so you can get to them without any new, fancy propulsion systems.
Still, such a mission will take many months and the crew will suffer of prolonged weightlessness and radiation. I guess these crews will be guinea pigs - used to test technologies allowing deep space travel.
4) He dashed all hopes of returning to the Moon. He actually used the phrase "we've already been [there]".
-> This is insane. He could just as well have said "we won't get back to the Moon, not because we can't, but because it's hard." It's pretty short-sighted not just because he'll essentially be leaving the Moon to others (whoever comes first to take advantage of it), but because practically all of the "deep space" technologies can be tested on the Moon - which is far closer to the Earth and offers short to mid-term tangible benefits for further space travel (I explained these benefits in other threads).
5) He wants the first Mars-orbit mission in around 2035.
-> Clarification: this won't include landing on Mars. In other words, few people will spend about 8 months in space travelling to Mars, spending some time in orbit around it enjoying the view and then suffer another 8 month trip back home. I wonder what the scientific value in this is supposed to be.
When I watched news this morning, the journalists as usual misinterpreted this and said that Obama wants people on Mars by 2035. That's not true - he clearly said that actual landing won't happen until after 2035, without being more specific about when this could happen. Could be 2036, could be 2066, nobody knows.
6) He didn't say a word about international involvement and cooperation with other agencies, nothing, nada, nichts. On the other hand, he ended the speech with "God bless America".
-> I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad Americans could stop deluding themselves and reach out to other agencies and together forge a real and ambitious plan for space exploration. Instead, they want to do everything alone with limited resources and expect the others to blindly follow their lead regardless of their own plans and interests.
----
Well, as I said before, I'll be glad if I live long enough to see human landing on Mars. My personal guess is that it won't happen until after 2040, probably after 2050. By then the Earth's civilization will be collapsing due to overpopulation and complete environmental exhaustion, so I hope the visitors place some kind of time capsule there in order to let the potential extraterrestrial visitors know that we've actually managed to crawl out of the cradle before we died.
If you want to get more info, see THIS ARTICLE.1) He wants NASA to develop a heavy-lift rockets. Design phase should end by 2015 and the rocket should fly by ~2020.
-> Well, the good thing is he recognizes the need for a HLV. What I am not so sure of is the strategy. Today, the US has a lot of systems which could be modified for use on many different HLV designs. In fact, Constellation counted with using many Shuttle technologies. If NASA terminates all that and waits 5 years until a completely new design is finalized, I think the final development costs will soar.
2) He wants to convert Orion spacecraft into a "lifeboat". It would essentially be unmanned capsule launched by normal rocket, attached to the ISS and then sit there doing nothing just in order to maintain the ability to escape the ISS in case something went wrong on American ship.
-> This was one of the
moments. What's the purpose of this - there are two Soyuz spacecraft docked to the ISS at every time. There is no need for an additional crew escape vehicle - especially a vehicle which won't be used to actually launch astronauts or do anything but block one docking port for months. Of course these will have to be regularly replaced for Gods-know how much and the benefit of having them there will be exactly ZERO.Obama said he wants to use these capsules as technology demonstrators, which sounds pretty funny to me - what will the demonstrate? The ability to stay docked to the space station of a year?
I think he got scared by the backlash against his initial proposal, so he's trying to sell this as a continuation of the Constellation Orion. That's ridiculous because if I understand this correctly, this new ship will be a castrated, gutted version of Orion which will be totally useless and the Americans will still have to rely on the Russians for crew transport (unless some commercial company magically fills the gap in just few years).
3) He said that around 2025, there will be first deep space (=beyond the Moon) missions, possibly to an asteroid.
-> Sounds good. Unfortunately, I am pretty sceptical about the value of going to NEOs (near-Earth objects). Sure, we want to know what the asteroids are made of, what's their internal structure, how they behave, all sorts of things, but I suspect this is not why they were chosen as a destination. The real reason is, most probably, that they're pretty easy to reach from Earth orbit. The delta-V requirements are very low so you can get to them without any new, fancy propulsion systems.
Still, such a mission will take many months and the crew will suffer of prolonged weightlessness and radiation. I guess these crews will be guinea pigs - used to test technologies allowing deep space travel.
4) He dashed all hopes of returning to the Moon. He actually used the phrase "we've already been [there]".
-> This is insane. He could just as well have said "we won't get back to the Moon, not because we can't, but because it's hard." It's pretty short-sighted not just because he'll essentially be leaving the Moon to others (whoever comes first to take advantage of it), but because practically all of the "deep space" technologies can be tested on the Moon - which is far closer to the Earth and offers short to mid-term tangible benefits for further space travel (I explained these benefits in other threads).
5) He wants the first Mars-orbit mission in around 2035.
-> Clarification: this won't include landing on Mars. In other words, few people will spend about 8 months in space travelling to Mars, spending some time in orbit around it enjoying the view and then suffer another 8 month trip back home. I wonder what the scientific value in this is supposed to be.
When I watched news this morning, the journalists as usual misinterpreted this and said that Obama wants people on Mars by 2035. That's not true - he clearly said that actual landing won't happen until after 2035, without being more specific about when this could happen. Could be 2036, could be 2066, nobody knows.
6) He didn't say a word about international involvement and cooperation with other agencies, nothing, nada, nichts. On the other hand, he ended the speech with "God bless America".
-> I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad
Americans could stop deluding themselves and reach out to other agencies and together forge a real and ambitious plan for space exploration. Instead, they want to do everything alone with limited resources and expect the others to blindly follow their lead regardless of their own plans and interests.----
Well, as I said before, I'll be glad if I live long enough to see human landing on Mars. My personal guess is that it won't happen until after 2040, probably after 2050. By then the Earth's civilization will be collapsing due to overpopulation and complete environmental exhaustion, so I hope the visitors place some kind of time capsule there in order to let the potential extraterrestrial visitors know that we've actually managed to crawl out of the cradle before we died.
.
