Griffin maps out NASA’s moon and Mars plans up to 2057 - NASA SpaceFlight.com

[groovychk]

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Griffin maps out NASA’s moon and Mars plans up to 2057 - NASA SpaceFlight.com
‘For the sake of argument and nothing more, let us say that in 2022 we will begin a sustained lunar program of exploration and development consisting of three manned missions (two outpost crew rotations and one sortie) and one unmanned cargo mission per year, utilizing three Orion/Ares I vehicles and four Ares V launches.

‘Present projections assume a cargo capacity of six metric tons on a lander carrying four crew members, and twenty metric tons on a cargo lander, at a marginal cost of about $750 million for a human mission and $525 million for a cargo mission. The marginal cost in Fiscal 2000 dollars for this nominal lunar program will thus be about $3 billion.’

Mars also received a mention, with the timeline of the early 2020’s being noted by Griffin, who went on to project nine Mars missions within a 20 year period, all costing less than the current shuttle program.

‘By the 2020?s we will be well positioned to begin the Mars effort in earnest. The lunar campaign will have stabilized; a human-tended outpost will be well established; we will have extensive long-duration space experience in both zero - and low - gravity conditions, and it will be time to bundle these lessons and move on to Mars - which does not imply that we will bring lunar activities to an end.

‘Quite the contrary; my prediction is that the Moon will prove to be far more interesting, and far more relevant to human affairs, than many today are prepared to believe. But by the early 2020s, it will be time to assign a stable level of support for lunar activities, and set out for Mars.

Comments

[maxomai.livejournal.com]

I hope we can pull it off. Right now I'm a lot more concerned about whether we'll be able to afford, or even manufacture, the fuel necessary to send a spacecraft to the moon. We're looking at a huge energy crisis in the coming decades, and it's going to take trillions of dollars to replace our current energy economy with renewables. My fear is that because of this, we might have either more pressing budget priorities (hundreds of billions a year for solar and wind farms) or simply not enough capacity (need to conserve fuel for essential needs).

[groovychk.livejournal.com]

I think one way to approach space is as new source of resources. The Helium-3 in abundance on the moon is a great nuclear fuel for fusion and solar-power sats another (power-wise). Both techs need development on their own but the potential payoff, especially in light of our impending crisis, is enormous.