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Japan's 20-Year Plan for Space
rwven writes "Japan has just released information on their new space plan which will take them through the year 2025. Included in their plan are robots and nanotechnology for moon surveys as well as an eventual hydrogen powered mach-5 capable plane, a mach-2 capable passenger airliner and a manned mission to the moon. They will consider missions to mars and other planets after 2025. Space.com is also carrying this story."
All this Japanese talk of the moon and beyond is great -- and welcome, but I think Japan should concentrate on simply putting a human above 62.5 miles safely first...without cancelling the program.
They have obviously run out of places to put hidden giant-mecha hangers, and are looking for room to build more.
Robotic moon surveyors, indeed!
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Why should Asian space efforts go for "manned" space flights?
I love Star Trek as much as anybody but the human body is a very difficult payload to sustain. If Japan is going to do serious planetary exploration (...and I wish them well at this...) then the first step should be to define goals and discard things with a low payoff
Apart from publicity stunts and tourism (... which should be self-funding ...), what goals are served by putting humans on the moon or in cislunar space?
Robots can explore far more cheaply than humans, so for any particular amount of money, we can do more exploration with robots than with humans.
The idea that humans can make on-site decisions better than robots can is simply an artifact of time-scale. That is, while there is some necessary time-lag between a robot noticing a funny rock on Mars or Titan, reporting back to Mission Control on Earth, and then acting on directions ... so what? The robot is patient, doesn't sleep, and if properly powered doesn't have to worry about food supplies.
Like I said, I love Star Trek but until we get really, really serious advances in technology, lunar and cislunar exploration is more sensibly done with robots.
But I'd be interested in contrary views.
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To say we don't have a plan is pretty ignorant. Go look at http://exploration.nasa.gov/ and you'll see it in great detail. I think what you mean to say is that you don't agree with it -- so say that instead. And going to Mars is a very small, far off part of that plan.
Finally, most of your six points are part of that plan -- except for the maglift sci-fi you propose.
Respectfully, it looks like you have some reading to do.
"there are far bigger problems we need to resolve on earth, such as oil dependency. if these countries dumped this money into a "alternative fuel race" instead of a space race, we would have more expendable income because we would be free from the harness of oil. lets worry about this planet first before we start wasting tax money again."
No problem is two dimensional. In the real world, society is intertwined, you change one part of society, you can and usually will change it all. It's in part reflected in the law of unintended consequences. It is unreasonable to look at the worlds problems from a purely utilitarian point of view. It doesn't reflect the fact that yes we are humans and as such there are no simple answers.
This kind of reasoning is the same kind of reasoning that leads to people cutting funding for theoretical scientific work because there is no practical use for it, as you clearly are suggesting. How to use knowledge typically is not obvious when it is discovered.
I suggest you examine the possibility that people can tackle multiple problems at the same time. It is also worth considering that attacking problems from a two dimension point of view will end up causing new problems and is not the most efficient way of running a human society.
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