It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - As NASA prepared to launch its debut mission in a program aimed at returning astronauts to the moon, a presidential panel on Wednesday began looking at alternative ways to get there and whether the United States should even go.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:12 p.m. (2112 GMT) on Thursday, is designed to map the lunar surface so NASA can find safe and scientifically interesting landing spots for future human missions.
The United States is shifting the focus of its human space program from research and technology development in low-Earth orbit with the space shuttle and International Space Station to an exploration initiative. That would culminate in the return of U.S. astronauts to the moon in 2020 -- a half-century after the pioneering Apollo lunar landings of 1969 to 1972.
Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
The Constellation program is still on the drawing board and they cannot start to retool the facilities at Cape Kennedy until the Shuttle Program is completed. Unlike the 60's, NASA is not trying to rush the program through like they did with the Apollo Program. The new vehicles are much more technologically advanced, so it will take longer to test and approve them.
Originally posted by LiquidLight
reply to post by kiwifoot
I'm not sure why it would take them eleven years to get back to the moon, but, as for remapping it, I'm sure the surface as changed significantly due to asteroid impacts.
Originally posted by kiwifoot
Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
The Constellation program is still on the drawing board and they cannot start to retool the facilities at Cape Kennedy until the Shuttle Program is completed. Unlike the 60's, NASA is not trying to rush the program through like they did with the Apollo Program. The new vehicles are much more technologically advanced, so it will take longer to test and approve them.
The Apollo program had to do everything from scratch. Everything. I don't care how much money they had, I simply cannot believe that the technology in the 1960's could deliver a man on the moon in nearly half the time, taking into account the forty years of knowledge gained. Especailly with what we already supposedly know about the moon from the Apollo missions.
Also the entire Shuttle program was delivered in 9 years!
Come on!
Originally posted by kiwifoot
1) Surely for the Apollo missions they would have mapped the surface?
2) Why will it take NASA eleven years in 2009, what it managed to do in 6 years in 1963 ( started in 1963, landed in 1969).
3) With all the technological advancement in the forty years since 1969 would it not be a quicker process.
Originally posted by jkrog08
I found it funny that NASA admitted to "losing the blueprints to the Saturn V launch system"!LOL..........Speechless on that one...
Originally posted by LiquidLight
reply to post by kiwifoot
I'm not sure why it would take them eleven years to get back to the moon, but, as for remapping it, I'm sure the surface as changed significantly due to asteroid impacts.
Originally posted by Solofront
I wasn't even aware asteroids have hit the moon, in the past 40 years, much less, any significant surface-changing asteroids anyways.