Before the end of the next decade, NASA astronauts will again explore the surface of the moon. And this time, we're going to stay, building outposts and paving the way for eventual journeys to Mars and beyond. There are echoes of the iconic images of the past, but it won't be your grandfather's moon shot. This journey begins soon, with development of a new spaceship. Building on the best of Apollo and shuttle technology, NASA's creating a 21st century exploration system that will be affordable, reliable, versatile, and safe.The centerpiece of this system is a new spacecraft designed to carry four astronauts to and from the moon, support up to six crewmembers on future missions to Mars, and deliver crew and supplies to the International Space Station. The new crew vehicle will be shaped like an Apollo capsule, but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time. The new spacecraft has solar panels to provide power, and both the capsule and the lunar lander use liquid methane in their engines. Why methane? NASA is thinking ahead, planning for a day when future astronauts can convert Martian atmospheric resources into methane fuel. The new ship can be reused up to 10 times.

After the craft parachutes to dry land (with a splashdown as a backup option), NASA can easily recover it, replace the heat shield and launch it again. Coupled with the new lunar lander, the system sends twice as many astronauts to the surface as Apollo, and they can stay longer, with the initial missions lasting four to seven days. And while Apollo was limited to landings along the moon's equator, the new ship carries enough propellant to land anywhere on the moon's surface. Once a lunar outpost is established, crews could remain on the lunar surface for up to six months. The spacecraft can also operate without a crew in lunar orbit, eliminating the need for one astronaut to stay behind while others explore the surface.

View: Full Article | Source: NASA

Pause for ironic laughter there ... the best of 1960s and 1970s technology*, then ...

... and you don't often see the words 'reliable and safe' in the same sentence as 'shuttle' do you ....

*Or even 1940s technology of course, as they still rely on technology developed by the Germans during the war.

yeah I agree we need a new kind of space race to get these people back to the real work

From now to 2018 there could be big technology breakthroughs that could drastically improve this new project.

What's that got to do with anything? Someone had to invent the rocket first.

The car is still based on technology from the 1800's but it doesn't make it any worse.

Throughout history inventions have long been tweaked and improved to make them better and more efficient, the technology they are based on or the time period of that technology is irrelevant so long as it is still the best method.

I think it's great they are going back to the moon to build a base, it's the next logical step in the continuation of space exploration.

Yes, but the rocket is such a woefully inefficient form of propulsion - so immensely fuel-inefficient that it needs vast supplies of fuel just to get into orbit, let alone cover interplanetary distances, and highly dangerous - cars may still use the basic technology developed a century ago, but design has moved on immeasurably. When you look at how aviation technology has developed since the war - you can't fly the Atlantic in a piston engined airliner now - development of rocket technology does seem to have stood still.

Not sure I'd quite agree with you there, the jet engine was invented well before the war (although not commonly used of course) and is still the main form of propulsion today.

I'd also argue the case that rockets are inefficient, as efficiency is a measure of wastage per fuel use rather than distance per fuel use. Sure, they use a hell of a lot to go only a few miles up compared with how far a car would go with the equivelant fuel, but they travel vertically.

How much of that fuel is actually wasted? Because as long as it's converted into vertical thrust it's not wasted and therefore not inefficient.

However, if I'm wrong, even if a rocket is inefficient in every sense of the word should we still stop space travel because of it?

Building the space elevator would be so much cheaper... I hope it gets done before 2018. Supplies will cost so little to take up then and the whole cost of space travel will drop by a lot.

Oh no, i'm not saying that we should abandon space travel altogether because of the limitations of the technology we have at the moment; just the opposite, we should be developing new forms of propulsion that would enable us to travel much further, and perhaps much quicker, than we can now - maybe make manned flight to the planets beyond Mars feasible.

Well I have no doubt someone at NASA is doing just that, I bet there's a whole division of people working on alternative space travel...

...but until then, rockets are the way forward!

....or should that be upward?

I am happy with the future of space travel, but would like we get the VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) propulsion sistem working.....we could explore quite a nice portion of our solar sistem with it. I know the reasons why we can't use it now, but if they try, I think they could do some modifications to it. What do you think?

I hadn't heard of VASIMR and just looked it up. It sounds like a high energy variant of the ion drive. It sounds perfect for putting out moderate thrust continuously, which would make a long trip in zero gravity go faster. The problem with launches from Earth is that you have to claw your way out of the gravity well, carrying your cargo and fuel with you. Unless you have a space elevator and can climb up a cable at reasonable speed, you have to accelerate very fast. If your rocket puts out just a little more thrust than its weight, you'll be blasting away for a long time as you slowly accelerate. Almost all of your fuel will go into hovering. To get something into orbit, it's most efficient to have a ship with much more thrust than weight. The only way we know how to do that is with rockets. Ion and plasma drives put out much less thrust than their weight.

I remember a sci-fi story from the 1930s or 40s. An alien civilization got into space by building a giant ferris wheel. They'd attach a ship onto one arm and a huge rock of equal weight onto the opposite arm, then start both spinning faster and faster. At the right moment, they'd release the ship and the rock at the same instant. The ship would be flung into space and the rock would slam into the ground. The space elevator doesn't seem so far-fetched now!

There was some proyect of a magnetic rail gun to put cargo in orbit (not passangers).

I read about it too, but in this version, if we were to establish a mine on a moon or somewhere they would use railguns to launch the cargo into space from the colony. It is really sci-fi looking, but one never knows, does he?

Isn't that basicly a building that goes into space? That'd have to go rediculously far...

here is an individual thought..

when we return to the moon, will we be checking out those anomalies like the Glass Domes, and tracks?...what about those lunar cities?...yeah, lets also check out Mars, and open up those pyramids and reveal finally that we have stargates in there!.....man i hate how slow our Space exploration is going

Unlikely.

Thats why I want to live hundreds or thousands of years...

I feel that we need a fair bit of time to see space exploration develop into something bigger than it is now.

I help out the mprize to allow people like you to be able to see the future

That's from Robert A. Heinlein's story "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". The moon colonists tossed cargoes of minerals and other goodies harvested from the moon using a rail gun. The cargo pod would take weeks to coast into earth orbit. After the colonists rebelled from Earth, they used it as a weapon. They lobbed cargo containers full of rock on paths that struck Earth rather than going into orbit around it. The kinetic energy of the package being pulled by Earth's gravity made the packages hit with tremedous energy.

Nope. It's an incredibly long, strong cable that hangs from something far above it. That something has to be an asteroid or other massive body orbiting at the geosynchronous point:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...r_020327-1.html

The cable will have to be 62,000 miles long!