Japan Considering Moon Base, Shuttle Projects

ScentCone writes "A brief article at Newsday mentions a Monday report that JAXA, Japan's counterpart to NASA, is looking at robotic probes on the moon by 2015, and construction on a solar-powered manned research base starting there by 2025. The (very) big bump in the agency's budget will also get spent on tsunami warning technology and other terrestrial communications technology development."

Comments

Good

[Prophetic_Truth]

The more the merrier. Man Spaceflight is sorta like Chess, its no fun playing by yourself. This will foster competition and everyone wins!

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most, if not all, adolescent boys would disagree

Not once they've played with someone else...

Re:Good

[Eberlin]

Competition for the moon is a good thing? At first, yes, this will be a great thing since "competition encourages innovation" but in the end we're talking about a land-mass here. We all KNOW what competing over a land-mass has done to the human race throughout history.

Re:Good

[Rei]

57 billion is no small sum... but 57 billion every how often? I'm guessing that's a one-time increase to be phased in over the next 15 years or so.

I'm most interested in the new craft, because we need to get costs down, Before people start bashing the notion of a "shuttle-like craft", please remember that the shuttle wasn't supposed to be this way. The original shuttle would have been a titanium frame design without external boosters; however, most of the way through the design process, its budget was almost halved without a decrease in its capability requirements. A titanium frame, while more expensive up front, gives a significant payload boost (I've seen numbers at around 30-40%) and decreases maintainence costs (you need a much simpler TPS, and it doesn't fatigue like aluminum). And, of course, we know the problems that they've had with the boosters.

When it comes down to it, fuel is incredibly cheap. If a low-maintainence reusable is developed, it will clean the market up. The problem is maintainence. Some people argue instead for mass-produced disposables, but just the amount of raw materials needed and the difficulty in producing engines seems to make it unlikely that mass production costs (if you could convince governments/companies to mass produce rockets when there's not a market) could, in the long run, compete with reusable launch costs. If your costs end up being little more than your fuel costs, space travel will be incredibly cheap.

The shuttle has really been a research project (one that was forced to take an essential role, unfortunately). Many people don't realize that the cost for operating the shuttle is calculated by looking at its annualized operating costs and dividing by the number of launches; however, the operating costs of the shuttle not only include administrative overhead, but a lot of research on ways to improve reusable craft. Whoever designs the next generation will not only have the benefit of hindsight, they'll also be standing on the shoulders of giants, technologically.

Besides... if some of the new titanium manufacturing costs come online, not only will titanium be much cheaper than it is now (which is cheaper than it was in the 60s/70s), but could approach aluminum in costs. One interesting one is that they've discovered that they can do direct electrolysis on titanium oxide without having to dissolve it in a solution first.

Re:Good

[Hentai]

It'll be interesting to see how wars are conducted when both populations exist in an inhospitable wasteland that can't support their existance for more than 30 seconds without critical and easily-targeted infrastructure.

Re:What's the propertie status of the moon?

[Ed_Moyse]

Not that anyone outside of the US gives a flying fuck about UN resolutions.

PLEASE tell me you're joking!?!?! Somehow the concept of the US being the only defender of the UN (or its resolutions) is making me giggle and wince at the same time.

Interesting look into the future

[archen]

So we set up a colony on the moon, then we set up one on mars. Then the moon decides they want to be independent, so there is a bloody war that is swept under the rugs and the survivors from the moon escape past Jupiter where they find an alien weapons factory, and later attack us using giant robots.

Leave it to Japan to start something like this =)

Yay Japan

[Lord_Dweomer]

As an American, all I have to say is, "leave it to the Japanese to take massive steps towards furthering the human race while the rest of us are stuck here fighting amongst ourselves."

Re:Yay Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

The Japanese forces in Iraq are there in a self-defense capacity. Making the world a more peaceful place, and less of a haven for murderous tyrants is self defense. For all of us.

Really? What has Iraq done to you or the US? They taunted us a little, rattled their cage, and tried to look dangerous -- but failed. I'm surprised GWB fell for it -- but I guess only 1500 dead Americans and 15000 dead Iraqis isn't a big price to pay for such a "small" mistake.

And before you bring up 9-11, look what's been reported by the news media (other than the administrtions repetitive and content-free statements), the 9-11 Comissin report, and just about everything else. Iraq was harmless to us, and, after 1991, to everyone except their own people. Sending in the US military clearly isn't the way to resolve an internal dispute inside foreign, sovereign country.

I considered myself a Republican before January 2002. George Bush's War has turned me so sour on the Republican party that it will probably be decades before I can vote for a Replublican again. Too bad Kerry was a "me too" candidate and I really wish Badnarik had made a better showing.

You've been paying too much attention in school

[UnrefinedLayman]

You've been paying too much attention in school. Despite what the prophets of capitalism will say, competition does not mean everyone wins. In fact, by definition, competition means that someone will win and someone will lose.

While there may be tangible benefits from competition by nations in space exploration, there are certainly benefits from cooperation as some recent explorations have shown, particularly Cassini/Huygens. Two nations with $10 billion each can do projects together that are impossible alone.

Part of the problem with your thinking is that you seem to think that nations aren't driven to innovate in the field of space research. The main problem right now is that there isn't enough money to do what they imagine they can do; we're not short on ideas by any means, but we're short on means to be sure.

My belief is that we're not going to see significant care shown to the space programs here in America any time soon, as most politicians are too busy solidifying their power bases by exploiting whatever hot-ticket item they can. Space exploration isn't going to win over Nascar dads, but being pro-life and imprisoning American citizens without hearings because they are suspected of terror ties that cannot be proven seems to work.

Re:not to take the wind out of everyone's sails

[FleaPlus]

The UN has estimated that for 81 billion dollars a year everyone on Earth could be fed. .. ...

And how much would it cost the year after that? How about a decade later?

Re:Launch explosion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a neighbour like North Korea is also a covenient excuse for launching spy satellites ...