Slashdot Mirror
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."
And the Europeans would be the first to step on the Moon (according to some). Wow! That would be quite an accomplishment! :)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
How does the ESA decide which projects to pursue, how much to spend, and who will contribute what or get which contract?
Give the political tussles that go on in the United States over such things, I can only think Europe with rivalries running back centuries would be quite challenging. On the other hand -- they seem to be doing quite well!
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? I'm German and spent a good deal of my life there, and i still try to keep up to date with European politics. The UK didn't want the Euro, they don't agree with the EU when it comes to war.. What gives?
Carpe meam simiam!
Any chance they'll do a fly-by on the original moon landing site so we can STOP hearing from these types?
That WOULD be a giant leap for mankind.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It's good to see more interest in space travel and exploration. Doesn't anyone else think it's a bit stupid that nations spend so much money on weapons/military, just to cause that extra human suffering that makes life so grand... while we pass up the opportunity to explore what is undoubtedly the most fascinating and wonderful thing out there: space.
Holy crap, aren't we a dumb bunch of talking apes. There's probably some pretty neat stuff out there beyond Earth...
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!)
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 .. 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.
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.
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Credit your source.
It is supposed to be launched by a "classic" Ariane 5G which, rumor says, is not affected by whatever broke the last one (main stage nozzle cooling system, according to said rumor; this was supposed to increase the Vulcain's thrust by 20%).
But then, I'm the one who predicted this new Ariane 5 would send both the Atlas 5 and the Delta 4 back into the starting-block--and submitted the story right after its failure :-(.
As for this Aurora project, as long as the funding isn't there, I don't see how anything else than noise could come out, apart from a very cool logo--unfortunately I can't find a link: from left to right, da Vinci's "corkscrew" flying machine, a clipper sailboat, and some figurative solar sail spaceship; and the background fades also from left to right, from an old sailing map below a sky chart, to a satellite view of the Earth below the stars, the Moon and Mars.
Isn't the moon claimed as a United States territory?
In that case, the euros would have to go through customs and pay import duty fees every time they travel to the moon?
Oh, and what about smuggling out American moon rocks? Seems to me that the Euros are intending to ANNEX united states property! After all people, the moon is clearly marked by several US flags.
If we allow other claim OUR moon than the terrorists have already won.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
They weren't homeless when the USA was sending men to the moon, were they?
Actually there is pretty reliable evidence that there is at least frozen water on Mars. Large quantites of it, too.
e m/ odyssey_update_020301.html
What is unclear is whether or not it ever turns liquid. I say that the best policy is to be prepared and buy those bridges.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsyst
> if this is to be a Euro deal, well then I see your point, why does the article mention GB?
Because the ESA can't force its members to follow and pay for a program. The ESA merely coordinates the national space policies of its member states.
Some background: the ESA has 2 budgets, a mandatory budget and a discretionary budget. The mandatory budget is set in proportion roughly to each member's GDP. The discretionary budget is made up of each member's additional funding.
Projects funded under the mandatory budget have to have very broad-based benefits (and no, "mankind" doesn't count) because they take money from every member and therefore require the vote of every member. Usually, this is made possible by dividing up the industrial support base into every ESA member country, so that Germany makes control systems, France makes engines, Italy makes SW, etc. If a country's Space Minister doesn't think that his/her country will receive direct (scientific) or indirect (industrial) benefit from a project, he won't vote the the budget allocation.
If all the Space Ministers won't vote for a program, individual Ministers can do a project anyway, but pay for it themselves. Thus Italy, which has a vested industrial interest in getting its small-launcher program off the ground, is paying for the entire program on its own, using its discretionary budget. France, which has a major vested industrial interest in launchers, is fighting hard to get major launch programs on the mandatory budget, but will probably go through the discretionary budget if the other members veto.
It'll be very difficult for a ESA human-spaceflight program to be supported by all ESA members. That is why this article, which highlights England's valid objections, is so important.
But on the subject of the euro; the problem with adding the euro is much more subtle than it appears.
If the UK gets the euro, then that means that there has to be a single bank throughout europe that controls the number of euros in distribution.
It also means that central control of interest rates is essential. That means that the interest rates are controlled centrally for the good of europe (i.e. probably by the Bundesbank; which constitutionally has to act for the good of Germany, rather than the good of Britain, or even Europe; since it is by far the biggest bank).
Since the economies of Germany and UK tend to do move in rather different ways, tying them together is going to cause some issues; as well as benefits. But it is honestly unclear to most people who have studied it in detail whether the benefits or the issues are going to dominate.
And this is putting issues of sovereignty to one side... there are lots of people with very firm opinions on that, to say the least.
Personally, I think we need to go for the euro, but I'm fairly nervous about it.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Actually, several practical methods of terraforming Mars have been proposed.
So far, 2 of them seem very pragmatic, one is the melting of the polar ice caps and creating a greenhouse effect of sorts, so that the planet is warmed. The melting can be done, if we really had the initiative to set up a series of high energy solar driven equipment to do the same.
The other is a little more trickier, and involves the introduction of certain genetically modified algae into Mars, which might help increase the percentage of oxygen and other gases there.
The trouble with these kinds of terraforming methodologies is that you will end up introducing foreign elements, I mean biological elements, which you may not want to.
In fact, I think Wolf Vishniac (am not too sure about the name) had ideas about introducing complex organic chemicals into the Martian soil to aid in terraforming at a very basic level. If my memory serves me right, he was also mentioned in Carl Sagan's Cosmos as the designer of soil based bio-detection equipment, for space missions.
Building a moon-base from which to do this would not be cheaper. Launching from space would be cheaper still for launches, but again building an asteroid-processing plant to achieve space industry would by frightfully expensive, even if we could lassoo a handy earth-crossing asteroid. The big launch-cost-saving move would be to plaster over that huge first step by building a space elevator.
This is a sad thing to say, since thay're about all the USA has right now, but the other big economic step would be to shoot NASA, being careful to preserve the history it carries. It has gone from a relatively small, tightly focussed team to a self-preserving institution. The meta-planners seem to have no idea, as project after project gets 3/4 built and then canned, Fred and way-obsolete Shuttles continue to get funded but more interesting and productive things like powersats and elevators are passed over. NASA personnel, the dudes who breathe life into ancient satellites and otherwise regularly pull NASA's cojones out of the fire, would then be available to the commercial replacements.
Commerce is no silver bullet either. Safety regs with real teeth would be needed, for example.
The underlying problems are mostly social. Very few people see any return from this kind of effort, it all looks like very expensive geek toys to them. The projects which are pretty much guaranteed a return, like powersats, colonies, moon/asteroid mining and so on are all priced to cause collective sticker shock. That elevator seems to be the only useful `next step' priced at under $1T (actually $10-20G, any one of a dozen billionaires could privately fund it alone).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing