Slashdot Mirror
Worldwide Focus On Going To The Moon
MojoT writes "There's an interesting piece over at Space.com regarding the current renewed interest in returning to the Moon. Quoting: 'Earth's scuffed up and trampled Moon is once again targeted for high- tech visitors. Robotic spacecraft from several nations, as well as NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, will be first to chalk up lunar return mileage.'"
why spend more on the moon? put more funding into asteriod detection so we can save our asses! :-)
Go Illini!!!
Hell yeah. Just what we need.
A frickin' Moon Base!
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
don't we know already that NASA never went to the moon in the first place?
Fox told me so...
Oh boy i can't wait to risk my life on a spacecraft so i can see a blue ball from far away. What a waste of energy.
Which raises an interesting question.. when will countries start claiming territory on the moon?
Man always wondered if the moon was made out of cheese.
In 1969 man landed on the moon, and found out it was not cheese.
Since then, no one has returned.
Behold the power of cheese.
Are we now going back to double check our findings?
What is the going rate for a trip to the moon these days? Anyone know of a good travel agent that hook me up?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Sagan is beaming with delight in his grave.
Conspiracy theorists say the Van Allen radiation belts pose a serious threat to human life and suggest that as one piece of reasoning that the moon trip in 1969 was faked.
Forget that. But do any of you physics/biology-knowledgeable folks care to comment on the truth/falsity of whether Van Allen radiation is a serious risk/challenge for a moon trip today?
Well.. if Russia makes going into outer space a favorite vacation trip.. why not make the moon a favorite vacation spot?
... This time when setting up the soundstage, add a little color, hell maybe even have them pixar guys whip up a couple of "aliens" ... because we all know that going to the moon and aliens are part of a governmental conspiracy ... And that the moon is just part of a "Death Star" with a giant "Laser" ... next you'll tell me there's plans to go to mars, I would argue that mars doesn't even exist!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
god damnit how many times do I have to see that fucking picture?
I would much rather see tax dollars spent on further mars research, nuclear propulsion, seti... than I would on another moon mission. Unless I can go, in which case. wooo. on a side note, this site www.mactoons.net, is really cool. it seems to be updated everyday with a new drawing and a new poem/thought.
I for one would like to see a return trip be it robot or human, just to put all the conspiracy theories to rest. I have no opinion either way, but if it were proven that it never happened, imagine what it would do to NASAs reputation. That would be one nasty "prank" to play on someone.
I for one, doubt that it could be a hoax, but at the same time, would love some hard evidence to hush up the theorists.
Hopefully a non US sponsered trip will be planned so that there will be no bias.
-= Xafloc =-
alinuxbox.com
N
Most lower forms of live learn after the first one or two times. Looks like the Hamster has you beat.
YOU=FUCKTURD
Come on. We went to the moon. We Drove a car around on the moon. We played golf on the moon. I think we've done everything pracical we can with that useless rock. And looking from the Conspiracy angle, this wouldn't have anything to do with China planning on going to the moon would it.
When I talk to people about this monster not one person I have spoken to has remembered the incident or knew it happened in the first place.
People are happy in there own worlds, Happy and safe knowing that they will be here tomorow, They don't consider that something like this couls happen.
It scares me more that people are so unaware of things like this. If people don't know of things like this, and or they don't care, no funding will be alloted to detecting things like these.
After all no politition wants to spend money, Peoples hard earned taxes, on something that will not get him back into office next term.
But which moon? ;-)
Personally, I want to see who's the first to land on our SECOND moon. IIRC, the third was proven to be space junk?
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Stevenson: I have no objection to man walking on the moon.
Narrator: By 1964, experts say man will have established twelve colonies on the moon, ideal for family vacations. Once there, you'll weigh only a small percentage of what you weigh on Earth... Slow down, tubby! You're not on the moon yet!
The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them?
Are you really that fucking stupid?
Must you create noise at +2 just to look dumb in front of the rest of us?
Do you actually have a life??
You have now qualified yourself as the stupidest user on slashdot, just slightly dumber than CmdrTaco. You fucken grotty tronce, go live in a filthy mushroom you fat-nosed honking wanking hobbit! Smelly turd bucket licker. Fucktard. Stupid worthless moon myth!!! FUCK YOU!!!!
Of course NASA wants to get a robot up there. It'll be on an important mission...
It's got to go stick a flag in the ground and stamp out some fake footprints.
And you'll probably be modded down as a troll too. :)
The conspiracy theorists are wrong. Apollo really happened. For them to be right requires to many highly intelligent, principled people involved in the missions to be either conned or coerced into lying. Not to mention the fact that the fakery would have had to fool the Russians, who at the time would have just loved to expose America's triumph as a fake and who undoubtedly tracked the position of the radio signals from the Apollo craft precisely.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Go to this link to buy an acre on the moon!
Could the Slashdot crew fix this "security hole"?
A super-long URL ending in *http://www.goatse.cx/ at the end of a URL should be detectable.
Looks like Yahoo, but really it's Google...
Curiously, vice-versa doesn't work...
--LP
Maybe they want to check if Osama is not there by any chance.
Ban the burial of *any* holy people on the moon. I don't want to risk another future "holy land" fight up there.
Even say a nutball who claims to be Jesus II. If he dies up there, send his fricken ashes back to Earth.
Table-ized A.I.
what are they talking about ... weve never been to the moon :D
-=[the machine masters the grim and the dumb]=-
Actually, only one of those spacecraft will be first. The others will lay claim to terms like 'second', 'third' and so on. In fact there are many words that are intended just for the possibility that there will several, one after the other.
Though it's nice to see a wave of missions that have the look of gearing up for future utilisation. Hope something comes of it.
Idealism has its place. Standing in front of rampant commercialism would mean that it's place will shortly be a very thin blot on the landscape. Esoteric UN pronouncements sound good, so let's hear about the reality, whall we?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Bobby!! Now put your pants back on, the world is not focusin on your ass, they're talkin about the OTHER MOON!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Yeah you are right. I shouldn't post useless comments at Socre: 2. Someone should mod that shit down. Thanks for your insight.
Regretfully Yours,
Smelly turd bucket licker
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Borg on the main page. AAAAAAAIIIIIHHHHHH!!!!!! What a day.
Well I am in favour of humans returning to the moon. Society has put so many resources into making space travel more reliable and cheaper than it was over 30 years ago, so the true cost to society isn't nearly as much as the ney-sayers claim it is. If they are looking to feed the hungry, then they can take the money from the industries that truely don't benefit mankind, like the tobacco industry, and leave our space programs to improve our knowledge of the universe.
The possibilites of a new moon shot are endless. Everything from corporate sponsorship [put your ad on the Moon first...], to scientific, to personal interest. We can have telescopes that are unhindered by earth's atmosphere, and studies done on how we can construct a successful colony on another world. We would be foolish to try first on Mars, where the chance of rescue, or delivering supplies is a pain in the butt.
Best of all, another Moon race might make people excited about space exploration again. Enterprise is great, but it is hard to imagine us ever developing warp, much less walking on the moon again when governments are setting a Mars exploration mission before a Moon one.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
That sounds like a cool idea, and thats all it is, a cool idea. Seriously now, dumping funding into asteroid detection ... and then asteroid prevention, almost sounds like a 'skin cancer detection and prevention' scheme. Every time I hear about an asteroid near miss or a meteor shower I get the impression that a group of astronomers somewhere need to pay some bills so write some report on how vulnerable we are to scrape up millions of dollars in funding to keep there jobs secure for the next 5 years. It happens in academia all the time.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
There is an error in the article (Score:0, Troll)
I guess we need some new moderation options for the semantic pedantic comedian whose humor hamster isn't quite spinning at full steam, to separate him from the K-Mart special garden variety Trolls. Like "-1: Joke, not funny"...
(* So we may yet uncover that weird black monolith under the Moon's surface. I had assumed that NASA already discovered it, but chose to tell us the Moon was a boring, desolate place to divert our interest... *)
Monoliths *are* boring.
"Interesting" would be alien chicks with 6 breasts and an attraction to geeks.
Table-ized A.I.
NASA claims to have learned from its mistakes in the 1998 Mars failures, but if we start talking about sending people far away (like the moon), we'd better make sure things are really fixed.
No quick bailout from the moon like they have on the ISS in case something goes wrong.
and if you believe that... i've got some land on the moon to sell you... err...
To say the moon landing trip nuts will ever be satisified is like saying the JFK assasination nutballs will every be satisified. But, at any rate, for anybody who has the slightest inclination to believe these nutballs here is a link to Phil Blait's badastronomy page on the moon landing 'hoax': Here.
And, just for shits and jiggles, here is a link about Buzz Aldrin punching a man who did an ambush interview claiming he never landed on the moon here, or for you lazy people here is the summary:
It certainly did with Buzz Aldrin. Mr. Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, was ambushed by Mr. Sibrel with the Bible trick. On September 9, 2002, Mr. Sibrel jumped out at Mr. Aldrin with the Bible, daring him to swear on it. told Mr. Sibrel to go away repeatedly, and even asked for the police. When Mr. Sibrel physically blocked his path, Mr. Aldrin (who is 72, 5'10" and 160 pounds) punched Mr. Sibrel (37, 6"2" and 250 pounds) in the face.
chalk up lunar surface Moonwarchalking anyone?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Maybe we can use the moon as a penal colony, to exile certain undesirables...
Any suggestions?
This space left intentionally blank.
It's about freaking time. The moon is a great place to do all sorts of stuff and it is just sitting there a few days trip from us. For thirty years no one has done anything about it. There's been no refining of technologies to get us there, the Saturn project was pretty much scrapped and the last rockets were used to send Skylab up.
If we'd kept with the game plan we could have had at least a semi-permenent base on the Moon which I think is a bit more useful than the craptacular ISS we've been wasting money on. If anything a large radio interferometer array on the far side would have a pretty damn clear view of the entire microwave spectrum, and not the relatively small window available in the New Mexico desert. H2 is a good SETI frequency by all guesses but there's plenty of other frequencies that ought to be searched as well. It makes sense a spacefaring culture would send signal on a frequency that proves they've managed to get off their Earth-like world (outside the H2 band).
The same goes for optical telescopes, you don't have the problem of atmospheric drag or ionizing influence on your imaging system. The Hubble is a great system but a couple smaller systems on the Lunar surface wouldn't be too shabby of a setup. They could be a combination stellar/solar observatories. They spend two weeks observing the stars while they're shaded and two weeks watching the Sun.
Human habitation isn't needed to use the Moon for reseach, a couple of automated systems would do nicely. That's my opinion. So nyeh.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Item: India can (has) put a tonne into geosynchronous orbit or 3 tonnes into LEO for $12M, about the same cost (according to this article) as getting one DoD microsatellite to the moon as a hitchhiker.
Item: A shuttle launch costs about $300M, representing 29 tonnes to LEO for roughly $11M/t
Conclusion: India can loft cargo for roughly 1/3 the price of the Shuttle.
Item: An unmanned return Moon mission (also ex the article) costs about $600M.
Conclusion: Estimating roughly half of this cost to be launch, if India did the launches, the missions would cost $400 apiece.
Item: The cost of putting up a space elevator has been set at $10G; a space elevator would drop launch costs (measured against the Shuttle) about a hundredfold (ie, to roughly $100k/t).
Conclusion: This would, in theory, involve a single Shuttle launch, making the $200M saving realised by having India loft it probably not worthwhile against the added complexity of a segmented load and the added flexibility of a Shuttle.
Conclusion: If instead of America doing 18 return Moon missions for $10G (or 25 missions if India lofted them), they were to put up a space elevator for $10G, they would achieve payback before the 40th mission. This is on return automated Moon missions alone. DoD could probably then toss cans at the moon for under $5M apiece.
Speculation: The additional space infrastructure which an elevator implies would probably hasten payback. The availablility of cheap ($100/kg, compare that with the price of, say, caviar - vs $10,000/kg now) steadily deliverable supplies would even further reduce the cost of manned missions. Payback from other items like solar power satellites (to say nothing of the reduction in pollution etc) would probably make an elevator worthwhile anyway.
Summary: leave the moon alone for a decade. Put up an elevator instead. Then you can have all the moon you want for a fraction of the price.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!
More than three is a waste. After all, you've only got two hands and one mouth.
The evil cult of the astronomers are already represented there.
Truly an american icon...
Considered harmful.
While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.
The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.
But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?
Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
NASA and the DOD want to "return" to the moon first, to put in the place the equipment that supposedly landed there in 1969? I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, and I'd love to be proven wrong, but I still find it kinda strange the INCREDIBLE odds that were beaten in order to land on the moon in the first place. Especially when they couldn't even be duplicated in a controlled environment. Not to mention the fact that the US is the only ones who have done it. Could be that current technology can actually get us (the US) there now, and we don't want someone beating us to it, only to prove we never actually went. Just a thought...
I really believe that statistics indicate our civilization is failing. Therefore we have to give Moon to a Foundation of scientists and librarians, who will shorten the time required to form a new civilization!
per Jackson Browne, (Right before backhanding Daryl Hanna)
LAWYERS IN LOVE
I can't keep up with what's been going on
I think my heart must just be slowing down
Among the human beings in their designer jeans
Am I the only one who hears the screams
And the strangled cries of lawyers in love
God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
They land at six o'clock and there we are, the dutiful
Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
To the mating calls of lawyers in love
Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like Russians will
Now we've got all this room, we've even got the moon
And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
After posting so many "moon first" comments in /.'s overabundance of Mars articles, my wish is finally granted!
Now, where do I sign up to be the first guy to grow "Moon Weed?"
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
You know, since Microsoft appears to be in the mood to buy out other companies, maybe they should look into buying out a privately owned space organization and get themselves out into space. I mean, shit, we could really do with some competition in the space race that doesn't depend on countries. When big corporations get involved with something, things usually move a lot faster. Ahh. Capitalism :)
LMAO that anyone replied to my sagat question. Seriously, is he dead?
Quick mental exercise: what do you suppose would have happened if the United States just rolled over and let the Soviet Union do whatever it wanted? While we were feeding the masses, educating the world, and developing propulsion systems, the Soviets would have been taking over the world--they stated that was their goal. Eventually, the peaceful U.S. would have gotten rolled over.
One can argue that by spending all that money on weapons and military, we forced the Soviet Union to spend itself into oblivion. Until someone forever rids the world of tyrannical regimes and megalomaniacs, there will always be a need for big effing guns. It's a little thing called deterrence.
So, does this qualify as "Flame Bait" or "Troll"? :)
This story is linked to by news.google.com in the sci/tech section! sweet!
Now slashdot can get slashdotted!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
You know what I would like to see done with some of those? just one out of ten even: Rather than sending it to the moon, You pack this tiny space ship with spoors of sulphur & heat loving bacteria, point them at venus, and let them go! Have it break up into smaller packets when it gets close, burning that last of it's fuel as a brake before doing so, then having each packet deploy several sets of chutes on the way down, an start releasing the spores once a certain altitude is reached. If even one strain of these microbes is able to survive in the harsh enviroment of Venus, our first terraformaion project will have begun. Sulphur will be slowly leeched out of the atmosphere, and 02 will slowly begin to ocur more often. In a few thousand years, if we have managed to not kill ourselves, we might be able to start sending in other bacteria, and maybe even lichen. Of course, the moe strains we start off with, and the more often we send them, the more likely they are to take hold and start doing work for us. Now there's an idea for colanization.. we find a suitable planet hat has no life, we just start sending packets in waves designed to auto-deploy, while we continue to fill our solar system. Whn we want to go fill up those other planets, we start building Generation Ships. By the tme humans get there, baceria & plantlife should have made the planet at least close to hospitable. Of course, my ideas require looking out or the good of our species of incredibly long periods of time that we will not live to see. I'm jus a True Survivalist: I want my desendants to be prosperous and continue to have kids forever.
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
The mission to Jupiter will be interesting. First of all the gravity is much stronger than the Earth's. Second, there are contant lightning storms throughout the entire planet like nothing we see on earth. Then there's the fact that the surface of Jupiter isn't even solid.
So I suppose, after decades of technological improvements, we COULD get someone there, but what then?
"That's one small step for... AGGHHHHAAHHHH!"
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Do you nimrod mods not understand the concept that modding down posts whose subject lines already start with "OT:" (indicating an Off Topic post) doesn't achieve anything?
Marking something Off Topic with an OT: already announces to anyone who's browsing that the content of the post is Off Topic so they don't even have to click on the link if they're not interested in reading Off Topic stuff. Moderating posts as off-topic is supposed to be a way to filter down comments that otherwise appear to be ON Topic but aren't.
It's like I just stuck up a big orange construction sign (with the little orange flashing light) that says "ROAD CLOSED". And you helpfully come along and smack a Post-It note onto the sign that says "Yeah, and ROAD CLOSED too..."
I dunno, maybe there's some people out there who haven't noticed the messageboard shorthand that's been in use for the past five fuckin years or so. Something beginning/ending with "<NT>" or "(NT)" indicates that the entire content of the message is contained in the subject line, and therefore there's "NO TEXT" in the message body. You don't see that much on /. because the lame filter doesn't let you post them. But you can see how such indications are useful because everyone who sees it knows there's nothing more to read if they click on the link, so they don't bother clicking on the link.... got it? (I don't think I'm even going to get into acronyms for laughs/smiles/NotALawyer/etc.)
People have already made counter arguments for each of the shows claims.
here
Without the Van Allen radiation belts...
Van Allen's radiation pants would fall down.
(Yeah, it's off topic, but it had to be said).
-- Terry
Why start with distant Mars, to re-learn the ropes?
The Moon and Mars are two vastly different environments, and the skills of colonizing these environments probably won't have much overlap.
Our goals on both will be very different. Going to the Moon won't teach us how build greenhouses from Martian elements, for instance, because natural light greenhouses aren't a part of Moon colonization. Looking for water ice hidden in deep crater shadows is a skill we'll try to perfect on the Moon, but on Mars we'll be drilling to find water. We'll learn different things from each environment, and we'll need different skills for each environment, so I think the argument that we should explore the Moon first so we'll be ready for Mars is based on a false premise. You could just as well say the reverse.
But don't get me wrong! There are lots of good reasons to colonize the Moon, too, including using it as a base for astronomy, or even better, for lunar solar power which can be beamed back to Earth via microwave.
If I thought we could do both simultaneously, I'd be for it. But my hunch, based on history, is that the winner takes all. And I don't think lunar exploration is politically financially sustainable. Since a Martian colony could reasonably be expected to support themselves, while a lunar colony can't, I've gotta support putting our energies into Mars first.
If anything, I think the argument works in reverse: if we have a sustained colony on Mars, we're going to be constantly being brought back into thinking about space and its possibilities, but if we have a lunar colony that goes bust, we'll be much more likely to ignore those possibilities, the same way we have been for the past 30-odd years.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
If not for technological advances (mainly by the US) mankind might not even be here today to BE hungry.
For instance, most people don't realize that Germany was close to developing the atomic bomb during WWII. They were the first with rockets, as well as Jet planes. Not to mention things like the Enigma. Had it not been for technological advancements, Eurasia would be 'Third-Reich-Land'.
In conclusion of this rant, the whole of mankind comes before any individuals.
Mars explorers should have renewable supplies, or are you so stuck in your New York-style midset that you don't remember the bio-domes?
As for rescues, forget that. We aren't going to have duplicate space-shuttles just sitting around for emergencies. Besides, this isn't a cub-scout hiking trip, rescue is not in the cars.
Do you remember reading in your history books, that Lewis & Clark had cell-phones to call for a hellicopter in case of emergencies? I sure don't.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'd deliberately cause a bunch of fake-looking stuff to occur on camera. Just for fun.
Evil is the money of root.
...rescue is not in the *cards.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Of course, the real reason they're going to the moon is to make a giant smiley face using our remaining coal resources.
Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.
The difference in this case is that Antarctica is close enough for us to send help if a disaster strikes and to set up regular supply lines, but Virginia is about as far away as the moon by comparison.
The ideal scheme for lunar colonization is to have one (or more) permanent stations in LEO acting as supply depots, one (or more) permanent stations in low Lunar orbit acting as supply depots, and a transfer network of ion tugs shuttling material back and for in a regular schedule. The lunar-orbit stations have the equipment to do a rescue or resupply or anything else needed on the ground, and if anything happens on the stations, the next ion tug will be by in half a day or so.
The lunar environment isn't hospitable, but it's no worse than space. Underground is better, as it's shielded and temperature-regulated. If a space station can operate on a more or less closed material cycle for months, so can a lunar colony.
The moon is a great place for manufacturing facilities. Its crust is aluminosilicates; you'd be amazed at how much of really large spacecraft or space station can be built out of aluminum and glass fiber cables. Launch of refined materials requires one twentieth the energy of an Earth launch, with no atmosphere to get in the way of launches on tangents, making things like magnetic launching feasible.
In short, I think the moon is an easy, relatively safe, and lucrative place to colonize, and should be colonized first.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - actor/comedian Bob Saget was found dead in his cardboard box this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to 1980s sitcoms. Truly an American icon.
Fools! I think that Bill Kaysing in his brilliant Fox documentary proved quite conclusively that not only did the US never send anyone to the moon, but that it is also technically quite impossible.
(if you didn't notice (as often happens on the internet), there is sarcasm in this post)
Or is it just gonna be like that digitally re-enhanced release of star wars with added scenes?
questionable? It is great that we might be going back to the moon in my life time but is this all smoke and mirrors? Much like the movie "Wag the Dog" to help us forget about the economy? Same with the so-called "War on Terrorism" and the possible war with Iraq?
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
from the perspective of how often people buy a new car, supposedly the average is somewhere around 4 to 6 years ... so if, on average, people waited one more year, there's the needed 10%.
Of course, if the average is shorter, each year's wait becomes more and more than just 10%.
And to put $150 BILLION in perspective, supposedly a manned mars mission could be done for $20 billion , a moonbase around $30 billion, and a space elevator $5 billion ... ergo, we (the world) could endeavor on:
FIVE missions to mars, build a moonbase and throw in 2 space elevators
EVERY YEAR
just 10% less new cars ... and no lost jobs (net)
http://www.smartcarguide.com/neworused/Page1.htm
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
Congratulations! You have been chosen to be an explorer on NASA's maiden voyage to Jupiter. All expenses paid!
Then we stick them in a ship run by WindowsXP, DRM and Trusted Computing hardware ("It looks like you're trying to replicate a sandwich. Your replicator is secure. To unlock it, please register by calling..."). If they ever do reach Jupiter, they'll be flattened and we'll be free of spam. I really put way too much thought into this.
Is it possible to have satellites orbit the Moon? I would imagine so, but I don't know if the Earth's pull would be too strong. I would also imagine that such satellites would be useful, but very costly (lots of weight to carry along, but if they bring along a crapload of rocks what's the prob?). So next time we're in the neighborhood, could we leave a couple of sats around please?
think again [warning: this link points to a huge PowerPoint file].
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Funny how the article doesn't even mention the only company to yet have actually got permission from the US Government to launch to the moon, TransOrbital Inc.
:v)
Vik
actually, after lucas saw how good nasa's special effects were in 1969, he hired them to handle star wars 7, 8 and 9.
just joking.
why is it that, other than to get air clearance to avoid crashing into planes or satalites, does anyone need to get permission from the US government (or any other government for that matter) to launch something to the moon? they don't own the moon, just like that idiot who was selling plots on the moon doesn't. there's a particular document (don't ask me, I don't remember what it's called), signed by every country in the UN, stating "no government or corporation may claim the moon for their own" (in much more than those words).
IIRC, dense secondary radiation from sparse high-energy impacts in the hull is more of a worry than direct exposure.
And if radiation does trouble you, sacrifice 1000km/hr and launch from a polar pad. Cool.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not to be nitpicking, but 4 natural moons is the consensus nowadays:
h tm l
1 The Moon
2 Asteroid 3753 Cruithne
3 Asteroid 1998 UP1
4 Asteroid 2000 PH5
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.
Get Hollywood to the Moon. They could make some badass movies there. Call Ronnie Howard - he could probably shoot a sequel to Apollo 13 there, they'd have closer to real weightlessness. And Spielberg could write this new script about Close Encounters of the Moon Kind, and maybe about attacks in the Sea of Tranquility by huge mutha sharks with laser beams on their heads. Get Hollywood to pay. We'd be better off. Mann could open a cineplex and close Grauman's. Then we could use the money where it's really needed: to take care of people on this planet who are crying out for our help.
that until there are exploitable economic resources, and permanent residents there, it's not an issue. When people try to economically exploit the moon, it will become an issue then and will be settled by normal political means (ie international treaties, popular movements, shady underhanded deals, wars...).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Sorry, but this sort of selective taxing is completely unfair (to both industry and consumers), economically ungrounded, and designed to benefit only special interest groups. The tobacco industry, as much as you may despise it, is providing the supply of a product -- on a voluntary basis -- which is in demand and always will be. Thus the tobacco industry, like it or not, does indeed "benefit mankind" -- just as the dairy industry, or the automobile industry, or the computer industry, or the cotton industry. Your opinion, no matter how widespread, will never change this. The only things that could possibly cause the tobacco industry to stop "benefiting mankind" is (1) if the demand disappears and they go out of business, or (2) if they switch to a non-voluntary (coercive, fraudulant) mode of exchange.
Taxing the hell out of the tobacco industry, or even banning tobacco outright, would not diminish the demand. Instead this would create a black market, much like the market for [aribrarily] illegal drugs, where peaceful citizens are transformed into criminals, violent crime becomes widespread, police become corrupted, the potential profit for tobacco skyrockets, murderers and rapists are let out of prison to make room for tobacco addicts and dealers, and nobody really wins except government which benefits from its new-found power.
For instance, most people don't realize that Germany was close to developing the atomic bomb during WWII.
Except it wasn't. Hitler cancelled the project because of its cost.
Had it not been for technological advancements, Eurasia would be 'Third-Reich-Land'.
Er no, that's not a very historically accurate view. If it hadn't been for the Russian winter, the cracking of the Enigma code by the Brits and the American-led invasion of Europe, then you would be right.
Sorry, but this sort of selective taxing is completely unfair (to both industry and consumers), economically ungrounded, and designed to benefit only special interest groups. The tobacco industry, as much as you may despise it, is providing the supply of an ADDICTIVE product -- on a voluntary basis TO ADDICTS -- which is in demand and always will be . Thus the tobacco industry, like it or not, does indeed "benefit mankind"^^^^^TOBACCO INDUSTRY -- just as the dairy industry, or the automobile industry, or the computer industry, or the cotton industry.
NONE OF WHICH RESULT IN ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS!
EXCEPT OF COURSE, TOBACCO!
Your opinion, no matter how widespread, will never change this. The only things that could possibly cause the tobacco industry to stop "benefiting mankind" is (1) if the demand disappears and they go out of business, or (2) if they switch to a non-voluntary (coercive, fraudulant) mode of exchange.
OR THEY ARE SUMMARILY EXECUTED FOR MASS MURDER SINCE THEY ARE PUSHING ADDICTIVE/TOXIC PRODUCTS.
Taxing the hell out of the tobacco industry, or even banning tobacco outright, would not diminish the demand. Instead this would create a black market, much like the market for [aribrarily] illegal drugs, where peaceful citizens are transformed into criminals, violent crime becomes widespread, police become corrupted, the potential profit for tobacco skyrockets, murderers and rapists are let out of prison to make room for tobacco addicts and dealers, and nobody really wins except government which benefits from its new-found power.
NICE TRY TOBBACO SHILL!
SMOKE A DOZEN PACKS FOR ME AND COUGH UP ANOTHER LUNG!
Ya know, I would be far more impressed if it weren't for all the spelling mistakes in the artical. If the author were so well researched, one would think that they would also be able to proof read too....
The difference in this case is that Antarctica is close enough for us to send help if a disaster strikes and to set up regular supply lines...
This mentality is exactly why Mars ought to be colonized first. We can't count on having the political or economic will to support regular supply lines indefinitely. The political and economic climates on Earth change rapidly. What happens when the political winds have shifted, and the Moon isn't pulling its economic weight? We cut back. Maybe, like the Russians did with Mir, we end up abandoning our investments altogether, after we've damaged them through lack of continuous maintenance.
Colonizing Mars brings with it a different mindset and different possibilities. It brings with it the mindset of self-reliance instead of trade reliance, for example. And it brings with it the possibility that even when we fail to maintain our political will, Martian colonization can survive and even grow with minimal intervention from us for long periods of time.
We had the chance to colonize the Moon once before, and we blew it. We couldn't maintain the momentum. Let's not allow ourselves to make the same mistakes again.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
First, an obligatory link to Robert Zubrin's books The Case For Mars and Entering Space. Sure, he has an agenda, but he presents some compelling facts about why the moon isn't that hot of an idea.
Secondly, I have, big surprise, lost faith with NASA (largely due to reading the above two books). The description of the cost plus accounting used by government contractors alone is enough to realize why we aren't, at least, watching The Mars Colony Channel on TV.
The best hope for opening up space is commercial exploitation or prize money. What if the government (any government) said, we have $20 billion sitting in a trust fund. The first company to send a manned crew to the moon (or mars) and back gets the money and an exclusive contract with the government?
The second best hope is that China, Japan, India, the EU, or any combination of the above starts kicking our butt and making money in space. They've already shown that they can launch satellites cheaper. When there is a Chinese space hotel or a Japanese moonbase (and especially if they are making money), there will be a new "space race". When someone makes a suborbital jet and FedEx realizes they can send packages from North America to China in a couple of hours and the Concorde crowd realizes that a few $K more will let them orbit around the earth on their business and pleasure trips (and each trip drops off a few rocket assisted satellites while they are 100 miles or so up), then we should be seeing some real effort being put into planetary exploration and colonization.
Actually, the best hope is that all of that Middle East oil money goes into the funding of the Islamic State of Luna. That would get the Americans off their ass and into space.
We are right at the 100 year anniversary of the first airplane flight and flying is now ubiquitous and commonplace. We are at the 40 year anniversary of manned space flight and there hasn't been that much improvement. Yeah, the shuttle is cool, but the fleet is old and it is waaay too expensive.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Actually, the 30th anniversary of the last visit to Moon is on December 19th this year. That's 30 years after Apollo 17 departed from Moon.
The real reason for this push is to actually get there FOR REAL this time before some other country can to plant evidence making it look as if we actually landed before. If an other country even gets close they would realize our whole Lunar Landings were staged.
Maybe I've seen one too many fox tv shows, but this looks like a conspiracy that goes pretty deep.
Its all just smoke and mirrors.
I have not looked up into the sky for a while so I may be wrong here but wasn't there a nuclear accident or something that sent the moon out of earths orbit in 1999? I saw the show a few times and last I saw it was on the space channel. Is this supposed to be some kind of rescue mission so Martin Landau can do more movies?
William Mook is offering lunar tours for $60 million apiece, starting 2007, with a planned flight rate of 4 per year. Of course the schedule may lag if demand doesn't meet expectations...
Energy: time to change the picture.
Sorry, but this sort of selective taxing is completely unfair (to both industry and consumers),
...
why, oh why should the government be "fair" to a certain industry ? Politics is, in it's very essence, the process of deciding what is worthy of the tax-payer's money and what isn't. Your notion of fairness is a notion of equality-of-industries. but some industries are beneficial, some are hurting society, why treat them equally ?
economically ungrounded,
economy is a part of the human society interplay, it is not the only metric by which an idea should be judged.
and designed to benefit only special interest groups.
so according to you:
"public health" == special interest group
"tobbaco-lords profits" != special interest group
interesting interpretation of language.
The tobacco industry, as much as you may despise it, is providing the supply of a product -- on a voluntary basis -- which is in demand and always will be. Thus the tobacco industry, like it or not, does indeed "benefit mankind"
when you are talking about consenting adults, I agree. However, tobbaco companies, indeed like their unlawful siblings, the addicting-drug industry, makes it a strategic habit to influence the weaker, more succeptible parts of society, the children and adulescents. This the pushers do in full, cynical knowledge that they need to create the addiction before a rational, adult person, able to make an informed, rational decision is formed.
Your argument for "existing demand" is therefore the moral equivalent of saying that there's an "existing need" for child prostitutes in thailand, and that therefore if the children (most of which are sold w/o understanding the consequences) do it "voluntarilly" (usually because they need to eat), so there's no moral problem in being a child pimp, and anyway, one shouldn't be unfair to the child-prostitution industry.
In my view, one of the functions of society is the need to protect it's weak parts from brutal exploiters like the companies you protect. This is why I pay my taxes, so that pushers and other children-abusers will not get access to our children, at least not before they are grown enough to stand on their own mental feet.
Now wether or not outlawing tobacco or other addicting drugs is effective, that's a different question, but saying that pushers "fulfil a need" is like saying the rapist "fulfils the need" of the child victim, which is too young to say no (so it means he/she wanted it, doesn't it ? => there exists a demand, doesn't it ? and anyway, one shouldn't be unfair to the child-mollesting industry ).
I hope this will make you reconsider your values
Working for necessity's mother.
People who talk about self-sufficiency on Mars and being able to do without supplies from Earth are either (1) living in a dream world where closed economies like Albania or North Korea are wildly successful or (2) talking about colonies of millions of people. Take a look at the data in the US Economic Census and you'll see the scope of manufacturing, agricultural production, industry, and services required to have a fully functioning modern economy. Or perhaps you think you could live on Mars with the technology of a 15th century feudal village?
Energy: time to change the picture.
TransOrbital didn't said any representatives to the next steps meeting at Los Alamos, so they get no mention. The odd way these things work in the space business (everybody ignores everybody else unless they're staring you in the face).
Energy: time to change the picture.
I don't recognize the authority of the UN. If they don't like it they can send some of their blue helmeted faggots to my house to arrest me. When was the last time you voted for your UN representative? I know I never have! What right does the UN have to overrule the sovereign government of a country? None whatsoever!
Fuck the UN!
The Constitution has yet to be amended to state that the United States is no longer a sovereign nation. We answer to no one, not even God.
a completely ignorant to the history of space exploration and even names of people (ha! countries) which done it before. that whole site is a pure man made propaganda.
Unfortunately, your argument is invalid because everybody already knows that tobacco causes health problems which eventually result in death. Today more than ever, it's nothing less than common knowledge. In fact, there is a big warning right on the cigarette pack. Thus, the tobacco industry is still providing a voluntary, non-fraudulant service to those who seek it. They supply the demand, and those who choose to smoke are entirely responsible for their own actions.
The child prostitute issue is a silly comparison because children do not have the same rights as adults. And for good reason: Children are not experienced enough in the world to make the same decisions as adults.
saying that pushers "fulfil a need" is like saying the rapist "fulfils the need" of the child victim
Sorry, but this analogy is dead wrong. A rapist conducts his business on an involuntary basis, using force, to achieve his goals. This is a violation of the most basic human right of all -- the right to be secure in your posessions (in this case, yourself). The act of dealing drugs, however distasteful or immoral you consider it, is an entirely voluntary, non-coercive practice. This is the fundamental difference between rape (an act of force on an un-consenting person) and the selling/marketing of drugs (a voluntary exchange between consenting adults).
Comments like that should get you loked into a rubber room for the rest of your life so you don't hurt anyone by thinking that to turn right you rotate the wheel left.
Armed with new data, human visitors may once again visit Earth's only natural satellite, this time to survey the scene and set up a permanent science outpost /. Just post a article about Earth having just gianed a 3rd satellite?? Would they not be "natural" since they were not put ther by man but by nature?(Or did God or Alien's do it?)
Hmm, Now that I think of it, a far off asteroid IS a good place for a "duck blind".
Um, Didnt
Crackers`n`Soup
Didn't we? or Did we? I belive that it was all hoaxed.
The example you provided my point is just what I needed to make people see how silly it is that we are not going to the moon.
You would rather have toxic substances for all than to learn what is to be found by going to the moon.
Well you can sit in your home with your cigarettes to keep you company, while you waste society's resources on selfish pursuits.
I will be exploring other worlds, and while I will still be using resources, mine will prove new points. Yours will just make you another smoking statistic.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
You know what I would like to see done with some of those? Just one out of ten even: Rather than sending it to the moon, You pack this tiny space ship with spoors of sulphur & heat loving bacteria, point them at venus, and let them go!
Have it break up into smaller packets when it gets close, burning that last of it's fuel as a brake before doing so, then having each packet deploy several sets of chutes on the way down, an start releasing the spores once a certain altitude is reached. If even one strain of these microbes is able to survive in the harsh enviroment of Venus, our first terraformaion project will have begun.
Sulphur will be slowly leeched out of the atmosphere, and 02 will slowly begin to ocur more often. In a few thousand years, if we have managed to not kill ourselves, we might be able to start sending in other bacteria, and maybe even lichen. Of course, the moe strains we start off with, and the more often we send them, the more likely they are to take hold and start doing work for us.
Now there's an idea for colanization.. we find a suitable planet hat has no life, we just start sending packets in waves designed to auto-deploy, while we continue to fill our solar system. Whn we want to go fill up those other planets, we start building Generation Ships. By the tme humans get there, baceria & plantlife should have made the planet at least close to hospitable. And we will have had lots of practice seeing how things work on venus.
Of course, my ideas require looking out or the good of our species of incredibly long periods of time that we will not live to see. I'm just a True Survivalist: I want my desendants to be prosperous and continue to have kids forever. Though the idea of slowly turning Venus into an eden is kinda nice.
and truly, this would be a perfect project to stat up while we work with the moon. Early resourcs devoted would be very minor if we ran it off of the backbone of the moon or even a mars project.
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
Two hands, two feet, a mouth, and yo DILZNICK in between two.
There clearly needs to be another tit!
Just trolling for some humorous sci-fi karma. Nothing to see here, move along.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
No, I would rather live in a society which operates according to the principle of voluntary interaction, rather than the principle of coercion. Space exploration by government is coercion; engaging in voluntary trade is not. See the difference? This is a debate over liberty, not morality.
P.S. I don't smoke.
I keep hearing about "voluntary interaction", yet it is proven that smokers do not due so voluntarily. I know many who try to quit, and yet they have an involuntary impulse to go buy more. That doesn't sound like the free economy you speak of, and which I am actually in favour of.
Space exploration is fair game, not coercion. If the space lobby is stronger than the stupid tobacco lobby, then it wins society's support, and we will be better off because of it. I'd rather choke on rocket smoke of an explorer than 2nd hand smoke from an addict.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"Robotic spacecraft from several nations"
;o
Sweet! We could have a Robot Wars on the moon!
Again, this is an entirely seperate concept. By "voluntary interaction" I am talking about the interaction between two or more people, not the "interaction" between one person and himself/herself. We are talking about social interaction here, not psychology.
Space exploration is fair game, not coercion.
Anything and everything that government does is coercion. Space exploration by government requries taxes which is a form of coercion. Politics is the "art" of deciding who gets to apply coercion and where. This will never change, because government is defined by organized coercion. I am completely in favor of space exploration/development, as long as I'm not coerced into supporting it. If I'm going to invest my savings in space exploration, I want to do it on my own will. This requires private, voluntary exchange -- not coercion.
You would have a much easier time understanding this point of view if you take a quick look at this introduction.
No. It certainly was not "cancled". Development was stopped so that funds could be dirverted elsewhere to the war effort. Given more time, they certainly would have developed it first.
Although, it's true that had Hitler made any one of a handful of decisions differently, the tide of war may certainly have turned.
Cracking the Enigma is a good example of what I'm talking about. So is radar, and US/Brittish Jet fighters.
You can claim that the Russian winter was what stopped Hitler an the Russian front, but I'd say it was mostly a matter of millions of Russians dying in opposition forces... Technology has provided a means of sustaining less casualties, with more victories.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Now we can rescue the Lonely Astronaut!
these are entirely different issues which have already been solved via lawsuit (or so I thought).
...
I belive you are naive in thinking that a lawsuit solves this. For starters, I belive you are referring to a civil (damages) suit against the tobacco industries. This suit may or may not punish the companies involved at some time in the future, but marketting to kids is done now, and should be dealt with now. Even criminal-law is not quite successful when dealing with drug pushers, let a lone a civil suit which can take decades to completion. By the time it's complete, the culprits already retired on their fat bonuses.
This is, to make an understatement, a quite poor deterence
What I'm trying to say is that tobacco is marketted to kids now. It needs to be taken care off now, and not by some lawsuit to affect distant future profits.
What I said was that selective *taxing* of certain markets is unfair and creates more problems than it solves. It weakens the foundation of the free market system, which is built upon equal opportunity (NOT equal outcome)
Again, why unfair, and against whom ?
Why shouldn't the government encourage some issues that aren't very profitable to the stock owners (like public transportation, public health, various non-profit organizations ) by tax-exemptions and even public-funding (and also public scrutiny !) ?
On the same note, why shouldn't the government discourage endevours which are very profitable to a small interest group (stock owners), but creates major health and financial damages to society as a whole ?
the way I see it, free market (ideally) brings you to fluctuations around a least-energy solution. This does not mean this solution is the best for society. Applying constraints through taxation changes profitablities, thus creating a new equilibrium. Their is, IMHO, nothing sacred about the non-constrained solutions. It is by their benefit to society that solutions should be measured.
It is true that too much constraints will bring bad, unsustainable solutions, but no constraints at all bring bad solutions as well. Witness the situation during the great depression, when american people starved, even though there was enough agricultural product for them.
Equal opportunity should be given to people, not to industries or even professions. Those should be judged on profitability as well as on the base of their contribution (pos. or neg.) to society, which is a political decision.
The child prostitute issue is a silly comparison because children do not have the same rights as adults. And for good reason: Children are not experienced enough in the world to make the same decisions as adults.
I agree children have more rights than adults, and are more vulnerable. I belive people who prey on them, with proven negative health results, should be criminally punished. This is so both for direct means (like giving a "candy" at a party) and for indirect means ( i.e. various marketting tricks specificly tailored for that audience, and used on it.)
If you believe that the tobacco industry does not target kids and adulescent, than we disagree on issue of guilt. If you believe that even if they do prey on children, than there is no such similarity with other child-abusers, we disagree on values.
Sorry, but this analogy is dead wrong. A rapist conducts his business on an involuntary basis, using force, to achieve his goals. This is a violation of the most basic human right of all -- the right to be secure in your posessions (in this case, yourself). The act of dealing drugs, however distasteful or immoral you consider it, is an entirely voluntary, non-coercive practice. This is the fundamental difference between rape (an act of force on an un-consenting person) and the selling/marketing of drugs (a voluntary exchange between consenting adults).
I repeat the point: when dealing with adults in a normal situation then I agree. Freedom cannot be guarded w/o allowing adult people to take risks. But I was refering to child-seduction case.
Working for necessity's mother.