To the Moon and Beyond

isorox writes "The BBC is reporting that 'Europe is considering sending humans to the Moon, Mars and beyond within the next few decades', although the UK government 'does not support human space flight and will not fund UK citizens to go through the official European astronaut training programme'. However while plans are made for the next 30 years, Rosetta is due to launch in 2 weeks time, ready to rendevous and land on a comet in 2011. Assuming it doesn't blow up on launch."

Comments

Was it just me, or was that comment ...

[UnknownSoldier]

... about it blowing up, just a tad rude. I don't see the point in critizing someone when they are trying. *shrugs*

sweetness

[schnits0r]

thats what we need. More interest in getting mankind somewhere instead of trying to kill a man of another kind.

Re:sweetness

[RicktheBrick]

Someone should figure out the odds of mankind producing a space elevator. If the odds are even somewhat good that we will eventually produce such a device than we should reduce our spending till such a device is produced. I think that every dollar spent today would produce 100 times the results if we waited until that time.

Re:What is up with the UK

[peterpi]

The British are opposed to Europe because The Sun newspaper tells usto be, and we are too stupid to think for themselves.

Nasa/Space Timeline

[UnknownSoldier]

> we should have been ready to set up a base on Mars already!

I know! I remember reading Sci-Fi [stories] about the Moon / Mars being colonized and thinking "WOW - What would it take to do that kind of terraforming?!" Its a shame that that noble goal [of living on other planets] gradually fall by the way side. Maybe in the next entury...

Speaking of terraforming, has anyone (scientists,etc) actually thought about how to [realistically/practically] terraform one of the planets, say Venus, Mars, or the Moon?

Cheers

Re:What is up with the UK

[Mike1024]

Hey,

Can someone from the UK answer this please? Is it the people or just the government that is so opposed to doing anything that involves the European Union?

Well, to many britons, the european parliment seems obscure and far away. People don't pay much attention in EU elections, often don't know who thier representatives in the european parliment are, etc. As such, people feel disconnected from the political process.

It is rare for people to hear about the european parliment making exciting, good, beneficial decisions; there are often stories about people being arrested for not using metric measures, and other buracratic rulings. Furthermore, quite often when important legal decisions are made by top courts, there is a european court that overturns the decision.

Reasons for going into Europe are typically complicated economic reasons, like no currency fluxuations helping buisness trading within europe, and suchlike. These issues are complicated and hard to understand. It is easy, on the other hand, to talk about how "there'll always be an england"; jingoistic flag-waving is easy, while teaching a population about economics is not.

So, to summarise, people feel independance stands for:

• Tradition
• Election system that people understand

While people feel integration with europe stands for:

• Unelected buracracy
• Our elected representatives being over-ruled
• Ending up getting dragged into a european super-state
• Plus the Euro has a stupid name

That's my take on it, anyway.

Michael

Re:I just don't now anymore...

[mangu]

I grew watching the all of the Mercury launches ... I see millions of homeless in America that we never tolerated before

They weren't homeless when the USA was sending men to the moon, were they?

So Why The Hell Aren't WE Going?

[E-Rock-23]

We, the US of A, were the first to land people on the moon. We shouldn't have stopped going. And now, the technology used to take us there in the first place is the near equivalent to a pocket calculator. Why the hell aren't we going back?

There are plenty of reasons. Political BS, as Congressfolk just want to line their own pockets. Bumblin' Dubyah and his wannabe wars on Terrorism (not terror, can't have a war against an emotion) and his "you tried to kill my daddy" vendetta with Saddam. Economic breakdown in the wake of Enron and company (BTW, Bushie and Cheney have their hands in that, too). Lack of interest in the Space Program (thanks to all of the above, it can't get any press).

You conspiracy theroy nuts can go to hell. We went. We have the capability to go, stay, and colonize whether you want to believe it or not. That's what we should be doing: spearheading an international effort to get to the moon and establish a permanent human presence there. Once we get there, then we can worry about Mars.

Launching to Mars from the Moon would be cheaper, since the force needed to break the moon's gravity is alot less. The benefits of sitting on the moon extend to the "collision asteroid" alarmists, since we could watch for them from a nifty vantage point. With the ISS as a jump-off point, missions to the moon would go alot smoother (in theory, anyway) than the Apollo missions went.

This is going to sound totally chichè, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the moon is someplace we should be.