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30 Years Since Last Man on the Moon
Honeydipper Dan writes "December 14 marks the 30th anniversary of the last man on the Moon . I haven't noticed any hoopla about this. Perhaps this event raises the subtext of why we haven't been back a little more than the first Moon landing's 30th anniversary did over 3 years ago. The Apollo 17 mission was a great success, however, and deserves to be remembered. It marked the first (and last) time a geologist was on the surface of the Moon. Meanwhile, NASA is commemorating the Wright brothers' flight of December 17, 1903, getting ready for next year's Centennial of Flight."
Apollo 17 represents one of the largest missed chances in American scientific history. What would have been the "science" missions in the Apollo series (18-20) were scrapped because the American TV public didn't want to tune in anymore.
Ugh. It burns me up every time I think about it.
If I remember correctly, the first and last man on the Moon were the only ones to be civilian. All the others were from the military.
:)
I find this interesting, but perhaps I'm wrong, so please correct me.
I'm not really up with the history, but wasn't your good friend and mine Richard Nixon largely responsible for cutting the program, amongst the other acts of bastardry committed in his name?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Losers keep whining about going back to the moon. To do what, take pictures of each other, play expensive golf, and bring back tons of useless rocks. We need to stop spending money on NASA period and start spending it on HUMANS. While people fuck around with billions of dollars with the useless international sex station single mothers are dying in the street homless and alone.
(simplistic but readable discussion thereof)
That's probably also how we should explore Mars: keep a control crew in orbit and only land mobile robots, controlled via telepresence from orbit.
-ISS shutdown in progress.
-Shuttle ages, replacement is where?
-budget goes to zero as perpetual war "against terrorism" kicks off and nation becomes more "secure"
-Centinial of flight!
Welcome back National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics! The future is much where you left it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There are a lot of scientific reasons to go back to the Moon - first a lot of questions about the Moon itself, and the early history of the solar system that can be learned from lunar cratering. Of most interest in this is the South Pole - Aitken basin, which is mostly on the far side; the south polar regions of this very deep basin have craters that may hold water ice and other cometary debris. But the basin material is itself of some geological interest, and a sample-return mission to this area was listed as one of the highest priorities in planetary science in the recent NRC decadal survey.
:-) Retirement to the Moon's low gravity might become a major draw as well.
Second, for science, is the potential of the Moon as a platform for observation of the rest of the universe. A lunar telescope has the same lack-of-atmosphere advantages of Hubble, but could be constructed much larger than is possible for a free-space telescope (with current technology) with use of in-situ materials. This is particularly important for infrared and ultraviolet/x-ray astronomy, for which much of the spectrum is almost completely attenuated in the Earth's atmosphere and space is the only real option. It makes a lot of sense to base the next generation of space telescopes on the Moon, though I have not seen much movement in this direction, other than some early-stage proposals.
Space solar power is considered by many to be the only long-term solution to Earth's energy needs that meets both global energy and environmental requirements over the next 50 years. Making use of lunar materials, possibly even generating the power on the Moon, is the only realistic option for building these things on the scale needed. If this globe could ever manage to get its act together and move beyond carbon-based fuels to invest in the future, the Moon has a major role to play.
Finally, space tourism has been in the news, and private companies are starting to look at orbiting hotels and lunar excursions - for those who can pay of course. With the right price, demand can be expected to be huge
So the Moon has a bright future - if we could just pay it a bit of attention with all the other distractions the world has to offer these days!
Energy: time to change the picture.
I've said it before here, and I'll say it again now: I think it's a disgrace that we've not been back to the Moon in 30 years.
I find it really annoying to read about these chicken-shit science experiments they conduct on the Shuttle or ISS about things like plant reproduction in zero gravity. Whoop-dee-do. If we had made a concerted effort to build and maintain a moon base over the past 30 years, I bet we'd have learned way more than we have so far.
The moon is there. It's an island in the sky. It's a natural satellite of our planet. It's begging to be populated.
I will be very excited the day I see another man step foot on the moon. I hope I live that long.
"the human adventure is only beginning..."
I think space will always be able to inspire humanity, on different levels as our understanding of the universe has evolved along with our technology. Powerful political and economic incentives that favor the grossly inefficient military spending worldwide are powerful to be sure (and it's not just in wealthy industrialized nations that military spending siphons off resources from other potential uses.)
Cornell economist Robert Frank draws an excellent analogy between military buildup and the prisoner's dilemma: it's better to for both countries to have low levels of armament than for both countries to have high levels of armament, but both countries would also prefer to be highly armed while their neighbor weakly armed. The outcome ends up in the worst possible situation, with resources being wasted by all parties --- both countries would be better off with a binding, enforcable arms treaty.
The key point is that we always face a choice between guns & butter (or guns & space stations, or guns and health care, etc.) If space exploration is going to inspire a new generation, it needs to be more than an extension of the arms race between countries.
annmariabell.com
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
so there's no materials there to build things out of (like radiation shielding, for which the more mass, the better, basically...)
:-)
The reason for dropping in on the Moon is because the Moon has an enormous mass of material that is in a much shallower gravity well than Earth's (and twice as shallow as Mars' as well). The only reason for using lunar resources is to provide the materials needed for long-term habitation of deep space. That means mining, and industrial activity, on the Moon. It'll happen, count on it!
And join the Moon Society if you want to be a part of it
Energy: time to change the picture.
The problem is, nobody would want to pay for such a project. Do you think a presidential candidate would win if he announced that he wanted to raise taxes for a huge space program?
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Actually, the majority of both US and international launches are by totem-pole style rockets. And it's not just because the patriarchy loves phallic symbols. Every time the Shuttle goes up it has to lift who knows how many tons of shuttle and astronaut and life-support. If all you need to do is drop a (relatively light) satelliete into its orbit, it doesn't make sense to lift all that. Remember how much it costs to lift a pound into orbit... I don't have my books here, but I worked it out once, and if you had a source of gold on Earth, for free, and all you had to do was lift it to orbit to sell it, you would lose money on fuel and non-replaceble parts. The Shuttle, by the way, costs a huge amount more per pound lifted, than say and Ariane. Its true use is not payload lifts, but orbital repair/science work/passenger runs.
The reason we can't go back to the moon is simple. Our technology has advanced so much that the very equipment that was used to fake the moon landing is now so outdated that it would look absurd! If they tried it using new technologies, people would easily see the difference.
It's like the Star Wars remakes. Technology has advanced so much that watching the two side-by-side the new ones, though cooler looking are still more unbelievable.
Flame bait? Sure, but with on ounce of truth included.
Its all just smoke and mirrors.
I was just reading about Shuttle in the Nov '02 Air International.
They approach STS from the angle of a hypersonic research vehicle, and in that reguard with over a hundred launches and recoveries, it's very succesful in gathering data.
It goes from Mach 24 to 200 kts and from orbit to a gliding landing with no power, that's pretty neat.
"What Shuttle has done for aerothermal design and verification is greater than the controbution it has made to the space program, which at best has been a disappointment to some and a digression for many. The legacy of countless simulated landings, more than 100 safe Shuttle touchdowns without a serious malfunction and countless data points across 21 years of Mach 25 atomospheric penetration, has provided an opportunity for safe and efficient aerospace transportation up to and including orbital velocity. That, and not its service as a cargo freighter, is the greatest gift to the future - one embedded in winged flight and not in weightless orbit." - Page 328 Air International Nov 2002
and the American Geophysical Union! Eugene Schumaker, comet finder extraordinaire and major player in the Apollo missions, spent his life with USGS.
:-)
Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets is a major journal on the study of the composition and geological history of the Moon and planets in our solar system.
So geology hasn't been restricted to study of the earth for quite a long time now
Energy: time to change the picture.
... to these kinds of short-sighted actions. He was going after NASA, trimming a 100K here and a 100K there, while other programs were blowing millions of dollars.
It also didn't help that the space program didn't directly benefit dairy farmers. (Proxmire was a senator for Wisconsin, IIRC.) Anything not directly giving money to dairy subsidies got attacked or otherwise "investigated" by Proxmire.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I was there for the launch of Apollo 17. Four of us piled into a Pinto (I remember that vividly - I was the smallest of the group, and had to sit in the middle of the back seat!) and drove down from upstate South Carolina to see it go up.
Apollo 17 was the first (and I believe only) night launch of a Saturn V - it went up just after midnight Florida time. There have been many Shuttle night launches, but that's not the same - the Shuttle has roughly the same thrust as the first stage of a Saturn V, but weighs much less, so by comparison it jumps off the pad.
When Apollo 17 fired up, it was like an instant sunrise, and it stayed that way while the rocket slowly clambered up the tower. It must have confused wildlife for fifty miles around.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Let's look at these 'complexeties'.
* Iran used to be a US client state until the US-backed, hated dictator the Shah was overthrown in a popular uprising
* Iraq was a US client state because it was a bullwark against Iran
* Iraq attacked Kuwait partly because it needed to rebuilld its finances after the Iran-Iraq war
* After the defeat of Iraq by the US/UN, US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, a direct provocation to islamic fundamentalists who regard Saudi sites as holy
* Bin Laden's strategy in the Middle East is expel US troops, depose the corrupt monarchial ruling families and unite the region under islamic law. This is why he is so popular in the region, he is posing as a liberator who will realise the pan-Arabic dream.
* In response the US is backing the fantastically unpopular Saudi royals as he did the Shah of Iran
* And they are preparing to invade Iraq to turn it into a democratic bulwark against Islamist rule
* And so the charade continues... except in each iteration, the players become armed with ever more devestating weapons.
These are the complexities: old mistakes are being repeated, but the guns are wastly more powerful. The consequences for the region, the US and the world may well be shattering
If more americans where like you, this world would definitively be a better place. To bad americans in general are narrow minded people who thinks Osama alone is the root of all evil. Im not saying Osama is nice, but he isn't the only one with blood on his hands after 9/11.
Yeah, maybe we should also do something about the pompus euro intellectuals who roll over and took it from Hitler and other dicks and keep making the same mistake.