Manned mission to the moon 2018?

I read somewhere over the last couple of days that there is a planned NASA manned mission to the moon either by 2018 or in 2018.

I'm just wondering if what i read was out of date or if indeed there still is a planned mission to the moon by/or in 2018.

It said the mission would be to establish a feasible way for manned missions to Mars.

Sounds great buti cant help but think what i read was out of date. I mean the shuttle program is gonna be terminated in 2010 and so far there aint no sight of a replacement program (well nothing solid).

Anyone know anything more about this?

Cheers
Paul

Vaguely; you can see more of the details on NASAs website. Its effectively a repeat of the Apollo missions, as NASA isn't being given any new money
to do this, just "mandated' to do so by Bush.

The plan is to use the Ares transport, and a new CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle). See
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/cev.html

If it looks familiar, they've taken a lot of the old Apollo plans and scaled them up. Literally: it saves money redoing wind tunnel experiments for
the reentry vehicle if they keep all the angles the same ...

BTW, If you haven't seen it, I _highly_ recommend
Bill Stones talk at TED on the subject:
www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/141

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/index.html

Thanks for the links...i'll read them all. I'm such a numbnuts that i didnt even THINK to read the NASA site. I mean if anyone knows.................they do.

LOL.

It would be SPECTACULAR to witness a manned moon mission in MY lifetime .

With technology today....the astronauts i'm sure would have cams mounted on their helmets and we would see what they see pretty much as soon as they see it.

What would be the time delay in live images from the moon to earth?

What would be the time delay in live images from the moon to earth?

Average distance between earth and moon is 384,403,000 m
The speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s

So it should take 1.28seconds for light to travel from the Moon to the Earth.
Standard Definition TV requires between 1 and 4Mb per second
Digiweb's Satellite Broadband has a bandwidth of 1Mbps.
So on that basis, anywhere from 1.28 secs to approx 5.2 secs

If my sums are wrong, it's because I need sleep :shock:
Darragh

So on that basis, anywhere from 1.28 secs to approx 5.2 secs


Thanks Darragh. I was thinking about 5 seconds MAX myself.

Now................another question is:

Would those images (with the delay) be shown LIVE or would the whole mission be "classified" by NASA and we would only see the edited images at a later time?

I dont know if the original Apollo mission images were broadcast LIVE cuz i wasnt born.