Moon Landing: Fake or Real?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Easy? Funding would only be a problem if we could build and operate the vehicles...which we cannot, and then ask an astronaut aboard, which we cannot - in good faith.

[Emphasis added by me]

The fact that we don't have currently capable designs doesn't mean that we cannot design and build them in short order. It is simply a matter of doing the work, and that means mustering the will.

[The Grand Nudger]

Whilst if we set our sights farther afield for a manned mission, technology becomes limited by the primitive state of our bodies. Love how considering space has a way of flipping things on their head as you zoom in or out.

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The fact that we don't have currently capable designs doesn't mean that we cannot design and build them in short order. It is simply a matter of doing the work, and that means mustering the will.

There we have it. So it's fair to say, by that reasoning...that even when we don't currently possess a machine or the designs for a machine, we can still claim to be capable?

The urey miller gambit of spacecraft development....

(Some people thought gemeni and apollo would be easy too..that we were "capable")

I'm not trying to give you guys any gruff, I just want to stress that trivializing a hard technical limitation and then wishfully claiming that throwing money at it will fix it does nothing to bring light to, or alleviate the technical limitation and state of disarray and neglect that was it's cause.

[Anomalocaris]

There we have it. So it's fair to say, by that reasoning...that even when we don't currently possess a machine or the designs for a machine, we can still claim to be capable?

We do most certainly possess an amply proven design for such a machine, it's just that our standards have risen and we would no longer settle for such a design and if given the option, would likely to doodle until we get something more flashy.

We are technological screw driver turn away from doing it if we decided there was imperative to prioritize it over other spending objectives. We can certainly resurrect the by now age worn design to meet the imperative, as well as substantially improve upon that design, or within 5-7 years come up with a essentially whole new design.

So we are as capable of doing it now as we are capable of doing anything that is not at the moment actually being done.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which amply proven design? Not apollo, not gemeni. We actually lost their full schems.

(NASA blames the cleaning lady for this..I shit you not - tyring to find you an interview link, Mary Roach(?) of "Packing for Mars" did on the subject)

[Anomalocaris]

Which amply proven design? Not apollo, not gemeni. We actually lost their full schems.

I don't think we would have a huge amount of trouble bridging the gaps in the schemes.

[The Grand Nudger]

..and yet here we are, still busy trying to reverse engineer them...nearly half a decade after we got them to work in the first place. It's no small problem, though I can understand how we might like to think it is. The immensity of the issue lies bare and plain in our inability to reproduce them (and we have been trying). Planning a cruise down to the detail and then -losing the boat- is a big problem. Imagine yourself on the shores of a beautiful tropical island, pockets full of money, grand plans...no dinghy.

[Cato]

NASA's Orion Spacecraft. Deep space capability is already being worked on with an unmanned test scheduled this year.

In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars. Exploration Mission-1, scheduled for 2017, will be the first mission to integrate Orion and the Space Launch System.

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/...5sXG5RdU40

[The Grand Nudger]

Orion is the command mod. The SLS is the launch. It's "still being designed". The command mod is just getting thrown low to knock out the kinks. Like driving a new car around the block, more aptly, like sitting in the interior of an unfinished car marveling at how awesome it will be......when it gets an engine.

[Anomalocaris]

..and yet here we are, still busy trying to reverse engineer them...nearly half a decade after we got them to work in the first place. It's no small problem, though I can understand how we might like to think it is. The immensity of the issue lies bare and plain in our inability to reproduce them (and we have been trying). Planning a cruise down to the detail and then -losing the boat- is a big problem. Imagine yourself on the shores of a beautiful tropical island, pockets full of money, grand plans...no dinghy.

What we are trying to do is hardly just reverse engineering Apollo. What we are trying to do is to gold plate, no, diamond plate, Apollo, while on a budget.

Also, the whole exercise of manned space flight is 85% about prestige. We would suffer the loss of a considerable amount of presitge we would otherwise gain if our manned space program is seen as nothing more than resurrecting discarded 1970s technology. So even if our budget does not stretch beyond renovating Apollo, we must be seen to have diamond plated Apollo so much that we can say with a straight face "it is state of the art".

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh I know..but

step number 1

:figure out how apollo worked.

Step 2

:figure out common issues and their workarounds

Step 3

:manufacture and test the core

Then..maybe, improve, add gadgets. Most people seem to think we're well beyond step 3, or that step 3 is at least immanent, which it demonstrably is not. We haven't even handled step 1..step 2 boggles the mind due to death and lost records.....we need stuff that money literally can't buy. Or, to put it another way, we're planning upon improving upon a design which we do not currently understand. Seems absurd, doesn't it? Cart before the horse kinda thing.