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Space Exploration Act of 2002
orn writes "Rep. Lampson introduced a bill (pdf) (H.R. 4742) to the House on May 16th for a human space exploration initiative. I haven't heard a peep about it from the popular press, just a few articles on various space sites: SpaceRef's, the Planetary Society's, the Mars Society's. If you're interested in the sort of thing (and you live in the U.S.), contact your representative and let them know! While you're at it, figure out how to get the popular press aware of this..." On a related note is a story dicussing the controversy over whether the Moon should be developed, which seems a little premature to me.
We can get a cleanup crew to erase "CHA" off of it.
Here.
...The time to declare the Moon a scientific preserve is BEFORE there are serious vested interests trying to develop it.
We already have some litter and junk up there... it took less than thirty years for junk orbiting Earth to become a serious problem.
I am sure there are corporations reading "The Man Who Sold The Moon" right now and wondering whether Heinlein's scheme for putting a visible corporate logon on the Moon is feasable.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That's just what we need, a bunch of money-hungry real-estate magnates cutting down all the trees on the moon and polluting all the pristine streams and rivers with their construction runoff.
Not to mention all the wildlife that is displaced by this kind of thing. And why? I mean, sure, housing may be more affordable further out, but the commute is always worse...
Phil
Furthermore, to transport building materials roughly 250,000 miles has to be difficult.
Of course. That's why they wouldn't transport building materials, they would use lunar materials.
The Moon offers unique environmental characteristics (low gravity, extreme vacuum, abundant, reliable sunlight half the time, no seismic activity, no radio noise from Earth (on farside), and of course, tourism) that can be exploited in certain scientific and industrial applications. You wouldn't put a city there "just because", it would be done to take advantage of being on the moon.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
The bill is a really good idea, unfortunately, it HAS to be kept quiet to succeed. Contact your representatives, yes Get your friends to contact their representatives, yes. Shout it from the rooftops, put it in the paper, get it on the nightly news, unfortunately, no. If the screaming whining masses find out there is a bill being proposed that actually involves spending money on something OTHER than doubling their welfare check, or throw the cash down some other bottemless pit of no-returns for society, all hell will break loose. To ensure the bill passes, make sure that your congressmen and women and vile creatures only hear heaps of praise and support for this.
The Moon would make an excellent staging area for interplanetary trips.
1) The low gravity offers tons of advantages, including a way to simulate, say, the gravity on a moon of Jupiter.
2) The low gravity also allows boosters to be much smaller since they don't need to escape earth's atmosphere/gravity, and thus cheaper.
3) You can build much bigger things in 1/6 G since you've got 1/6th of the forces to deal with.
4) more volatile and thus more powerful fuels can be used because in the lack of an atmosphere, the threat of explosion is much, much lower.
Just some thoughts.
That is Bush Sr's Space Exploration Initiative? Bush Sr went to NASA and wanted to do something exciting in space. NASA came back with a hugely expensive proposal. Bush Sr *KNEW* it wouldn't get through Congress and only lukewarmly supported it. As predicted, Congress smacked NASA telling them 'uh uh no!'
We all love the idea of space exploration and colonization (or at least most of us here at slashdot do), but NASA really needs to have some fiscal and technical responsibility in order to do this.
re X-33: choosing the one with the niftiest tech and not one that had the best chances of success (MacDAC's proposal)
X-34: forcing the FastTrac engine into the program and killing it that way when the engine fell behind schedule. X-38: where NASA designed the thing and then told the contractor's 'build this now' instead of simply saying, 'We have a requirement for a vehicle to do this, that and the other. Build one and we'll buy it.'
ISS: NASA admits it doesn't have a handle on the costs here, not the least due to the fact that their accounting sucks rotten eggs.
While I would LOVE to see the NASA's logo on the Mars lander and the ole Stars and Stripes planted on Martian surface, the new administrator ahs his work cut out for him already cleaning up NASA. Throwing more money at NASA RIGHT NOW might be a bad mistake. After we see whether or not NASA has been cleaned up, oh yes indeed, go for it.
Before though might be a less than wise idea...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
If you're interested in the sort of thing (and you live in the U.S.), contact your representative and let them know!
Sure, reply & tell them NOT to consider the measure.
First of all, look at the sponsors - almost all Lampson and a bunch of other Texans looking for a pile of cash ($50 mil next year & $200 mil in 2004, if you care to read the bill) to pour into Houston, Huntsville, Canaveral et al. I can smell the pork from here.
Second, $250 mil is NOT sufficient to get us to the aims of the bill (orbit an asteroid, orbit mars, etc), so this is just the key opening the door to more expenditures. This also relies on the idea that, for whatever reason, we NEED bipeds making orbits around asteroids & Mars.
Why? If anyone can tell me what in hell a human is going to do while orbiting an asteroid or Mars, other than look out the window and say "Cool" they win a cupie doll. I believe in sending up good satellites. I believe in innovative instrumentation. What I don't believe in is risking human life and probably tens of billions of dollars in toto for a damned boondoggle while we've got terrorists bombing buildings and one in six of us without health care.
Between the stupidity in general of hurtling someone out to Mars to do things machines to do very well without him and the whif of ham drifting across the plains of Texas I'm completely against it. Looks like Houston wants to beef up the space program to make up for the loss of Enron.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
The International Space Station has two Sony FX1 DVD players in which region coding has been bypassed.
The DVD players in the ISS should have been Region 8 (in-flight aircraft entertainment and ships). Of course, it's very hard to find Region 8 disks; airlines have to enter into special licensing deals to have them made. But those are the rules. NASA may need a DMCA audit.
As far as I can tell, the argument goes like this: "Let's see...we can move our pollution problems to a lifeless rock in outer space, learn more about life in space than we've ever known before, and advance the human race....or we can keep that lifeless rock looking purty and avoid all of the former. Hmmm, what to do?"
I don't know about you, but I think the guy trying to preserve the "pristine environment" of space is completely off his rocker. Space is not pristine, and never has been. Space is dirty, cold, dead everywhere we've looked, and full of things that can destroy organic life.
Human life, in any area, almost always alters the way things were before. If we have to, let's do our dirty work in space rather than here.
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When I was a youngster, I dreamed of zooming around in spaceships and meeting aliens.
Then I turned into an Angry Young Man and felt that we must tread lightly in the cosmos, and not pollute and exploit other planets the way we've plundered terra.
And then I started thinking about starting a family, and realised that as a human, my prime motivation is actually to make more humans. And then I thought about ice ages and planet-killer asteroid impacts (which are inevitable, not fantasy) and decided that we should say "Screw the fragile cosmos!", get our species' eggs out of our one fragile little basket and damn the cost in money and lives and ruined scientific study.
Who knows what I'll think as an old man. But right now, I reckon we should declare open season on other planets and start terraforming now. Because when the next ice age or asteroid hits, it'll be way, way too late to start, and as we've already plundered all of the easily available fossil resources, we can pretty much forget bootstrapping ourselves back out of the stone age.
Am I so very unusual in thinking that we should get real worried about these things now, while we've got the resources to do something about them?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.