House bill seeks to gut NASA’s Artemis plan, resurrect Journey to Mars

Lawmakers also appear to like cost-plus contracts.

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[theradicalmoderate]

Just so damn disappointing. I really hope the House Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Technology puts some serious red ink all over this.

Given that the chairwoman of that committee is who introduced the bill, and it was co-sponsored by a bipartisan set of members on the committee, that's a bit dubious.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

Despite the fact that Boeing is the 500-lb lobbying gorilla, I can't quite figure out why the Democrats would go this way for their first crack at writing an authorization bill since they came to power.

While Boeing aircraft is largely a blue state operation, Boeing space stuff is mostly in the South, which is solid red state territory. If we start from the premise that Congress thinks that the space program is merely a conduit for rewarding your friends with pork and punishing your enemies by denying it, this bill doesn't do that.

Instead, it deemphasizes commercial operations, which would be mostly manufactured in California and Washington, in favor of more Boeing stuff in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It further reduces launch rates, which doesn't help a region of Florida that's sorta-kinda blue, and where even marginal gains could make a big difference this November.

There's a case to be made that House members care more about campaign contributions than they do about actual constituencies, and Boeing can deliver the cash more effectively than the lobbying newbs at SpaceX and BO. There's also a case to be made that the leadership cares more about giving Trump the finger than they do about consolidating voting blocs for the upcoming election. But that would make the Democrats stupid, which...

Oh.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

theradicalmoderate

Oh.

https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc ... 01_xml.pdf

Ms. KENDRA S. HORN of Oklahoma (for herself, Mr. BABIN, Ms. JOHNSON of Texas, and Mr. LUCAS) introduced the following bill

Two Dems and two Rs. Bipartisan sponsorship.

Yeah, I'm not sure that means that much, other than the people on the committee know on which side Boeing butters their bread. It may have escaped your attention, but the Democratic leadership's been kinda busy in the past few weeks, and might not have been paying huge amounts of attention to stuff coming out of the House Science committees.

It may be that Kendra gets herself pulled aside for a quick lesson in national electoral strategy in the next few days. And if she doesn't, she may find herself amended to death when this puppy comes to the floor.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

The insane abrasiveness of lunar dust is the biggest thing that proponents of lunar resource utilization tend to completely gloss over. On top of that, many particles of lunar dust are microscopic. Any sort of machinery without the best of seals is going to wear out the moving bits in short order. I'm not sure there is a good terrestrial analog for this as such a thing would most definitely be classified as an extremely hazardous material (silicosis anyone?).

I spent a lot of years working on the Space Station for Boeing. At one point, a number of us were tasked with looking at using space-station type modules on the Moon. The basic reason was our Space Station project would eventually run out of hardware to deliver, and the management wanted sell more of them on another project.

Turns out we didn't have to modify the modules much to use them on the Moon. We built and tested them on Earth in 1g, and were designed to work in 0-g, so 1/6g was not a problem. We rated lunar dust as the #1 problem that needed to be worked on. We came up with a number of possible approaches, but NASA wasn't going to pay us to actually do the R&D and figure out which ones would work best. Off the top of my head, they included:

* Paving landing pads and roads using concentrated sunlight to melt the lunar soil

* Lunar dust has a lot of glassy bits formed during impacts. Those bits hold an electrostatic charge, which is why the dust sticks to everything. Vacuum and dry soil allow static build-up from walking and driving. Even exposure to the Sun can charge up soil particles, which then repel each other (floating dust). So one approach is electrostatic wands, "lightning rods" and grounding wires, to dissipate the charges.

* A pre-airlock that you can pressurize a little and add humidity so the static charges can leak off, then blowers and suction to clean off the suits and equipment

* Suit-hatches (actually in current plans). The EVA suit never comes inside. You back up to a hatch interface, lock in, then climb out of a hatch in the back of the suit.

There are probably more ideas I can't remember any more, it was many years ago.

There was a recent blurb about a coating that could drain off static charge pretty efficiently, rendering the dust neutral. That doesn't eliminate the problem but it sure makes it a lot better.