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Site for Moon Base Determined
Deinhard writes "Going hand-in-hand with the recent discussion on Moon Bases, Space.com is reporting that the perfect spot for a moon base has been found. According to the article, 'the best spot to settle on the Moon may be on the northern rim of Peary crater, close to the north pole.' What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C)."
We are Mooninites from the inner core of the Moon. Our race is hundreds of years behind yours. Some would say that the Earth is our moon, but that would belittle the name of our moon, which is The Moon.
For one thing, the Moon has one third less gravity than your Earth. I don't know if you can understand that, but our vertical leap is beyond all measurement.
On the Moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with Moonrocks.
Fine, I'll build my own moon base! With blackjack...and hookers...in fact, forget the base!
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
is make sure that no one owns that parcel;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
They can build the Alan Parsons Project.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Record debt and deficits, and the Senate is right now discussing removing the Estate Tax. There is no money for this in your lifetime, it is scifi.
So I suppose you'd be a good person to ask who wrote "The Moon Rulez" on my car with a key.
I was expecting this as Slashdot was looking for volonteers.
I own that bit of the moon, i have a certificate to prove it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
"But Keptin, this is the Garden spot of Ceti Alpha 6"
"What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit"
;)
Even during a lunar eclipse?
Martin Piper
Owner - ReplicaNet and RNLobby
...we've had the technology for years as Robert Zubrin points out in his book. The moon is just a big rock, and we've been there before.
;) )
(Seriously, read the book, and if you're not convinced, well, you should be.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
I bet it was all triggerd by our poll
Wouldn't solar radiation be a hazard from the constant light?
This is going to be interesting to see how the man that "laid claim" to the moon is going to handle people that he's sold property to. I wonder how he will respond to the government building a base on "his" territory.. Hmmm wonder if this will turn into a court battle?
The Technomancer
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-
Hey, I lived in Wisconsin, and up nort', it did get this cold in the winter, and people were fine. Just that little problem of lack of atmosphere. Eh, the flannel shirt's will do.
--sig fault--
Up at camp in the mountains in Feb. couple of years ago it was -40 in the daytime. Which is almost bearable if the wind isnt blowing... so as long as the wind isnt blowing on the moon... hmmmm well then there ya go:) no wind blowing on the moon
-50 isn't so bad. Almost tolerable. To penguins or something. Maybe we could make a penguin farm on the moon.
Copernicus Research Center
I think that's the same place as seen in the images, if I'm not mistaking my lunar craters.
-msb
...that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C)."
Wow, you think they'll have cruise ships there? I'm checking Orbitz now...
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
One proposal for a moon base I found interesting was using lava
tubes as pre-built bases. It provided radiation as well as
meteorite protection. They actually did a bunch of research in
lave caves in Oregon some time ago.
http://www.oregonl5.org/lbrt/l5ombrr1.html
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
What's the purpose of a moon base? Bush said he wants to use it as a stepping stone for Mars... but are there really any savings gained? Earth is where the ship manufacturing takes place... and (at the moment) is the source of fuel. Any materials obtained here would still need to be sent to the moon, and then to Mars.
Does it have something to do with the moon's lower gravity making it easier to blast off a ship?
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Wouldn't putting a moonbase so close to the Moon's limb will cause line of sight communication problems during parts of the month due to lunar libration?
Possible solutions:
1) very tall antenna
2) relay satellite
and the location will be Lot 7 at Paramount studios where they filmed the moon landings.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Wow, I didn't realize that the moon was going to be so dangerous, what with water ice lurking in the inky blackness and all.
Kinda reminds me of playing Xcom2: Terror from the Deep...
An eclipse lasts a few minutes. It would take at least that long for the heat trapped in the rocks to be released into space. Eclipses would be an inconvience (necessitating battery storage and running the base at minumum power)
Free MacMini
According to Google, they're still hiring for Copernicus on the moon. Only about two years till that lab opens-- will the two be near each other?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
11 years for the data to be analyzed.
In another equally insightful phrase...
"That fits in neatly with the White House vision of using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars."
No wonder.
I thought it would be a HELL of a lot colder than -50, more like -150, so that's cool. Anyone want to ski the moon?
========
77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
You know, the monsters that inhabit the lava caves? How do you deal with them?
Google lunar job
Now that we have 'official' private space launches, I implore all those zillonaires-with-more-money-than -they-know-what-to-do-with, to come up and sponsor a x-prize like prize for the first moonbase!
It's important to me that my moon base have all 4 seasons.
Will I get that there?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
EH? What fscking environment? There's nothing there but fine dust!
Congratulations Starfleet Cadet on a mission accomplished! Chalk one up for the Federation and report back to your room in your parents house.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Well, he'd better have those units in the Northern Rim repaired by midday, or there'll be hell to pay.
Maybe they will find the Lunarians from Final Fantasy II. Meteo!!
http://nerdfortress.com/
Unless we actually announced a second rate spot on purpose to fool others
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Was the crater that moonbase Alpha was in....
n base/Alpha1.jpg
http://www.smallartworks.ca/PS/Space1999/AlphaMoo
Or was that Clavius from 2001 a space oddesy?
Well, whenever we actually get the base built, I guarantee there will already be three Starbucks, a gas station, 2 24-hr drug stores, a McDonalds, 2 pawn shops, a tattoo parlor, and a cell phone outlet.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
You've got it backwards. Take a look at the numbers. The maximum possible number of lunar eclipses per year is three.
What you're thinking is that when there is an eclipse, it's visible everywhere on earth, I think. Solar eclipses are only visible in certain places.
The alternative is that you're thinking of solar eclipses, and just completely wrong. The maximum possible number of solar eclipses visible from ANYWHERE on earth in the same year is five (also worth noting that if there are five solar eclipses, there can only be two lunar eclipses).
Furthurmore, of those maximum of three eclipses per year, not all of them are total. The north or south pole sometimes escapes them. If the north rim of the moon is visible, then the north pole station will remain lit.
Now, when there is a lunar eclipse, the maximum length is two hours for a partial eclipse, and 1 hour 42 minutes for a total eclipse.
In the worst possible case scenario, a north polar base on the moon will have to run without solar power for a total of six hours a year, broken into three two-hour blocks.
*BZZT!* Wrong! Thanks for playing!
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon is in the umbra or penumbra ("shadow" for you laypeople) of the EARTH.
A SOLAR eclipse occurs when the moon gets between the earth and the sun.
Solar eclipses are more common (once every 2 years, offhand), than lunar eclipses (once every 4 years).
hot english chicks( saying "Ego one, Ego one, come in!" (Hey, I'm an American so "Eagle" spoken by really hot english chicks sounds like "ego")
There do seem to be a few lapses in the 'facts' here don't there. I want to know how time will be measured there. Will they use whatever earth time zone the moon is currently over or make up a whole new system? For complexities sake, I am sure they will make up a new one. Didn't Bush already state that the moon observed Texas time (;-)? Perhaps during the eclipse(s) they will observe Moon daylight savings time, lol?
Obviously it is the temperature of the vacuum.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Growing up in Alaska, I've been outside in -60F weather, and it's not so bad (you can always put on more insulation). You just have to keep every part of your body covered, including wearing a face mask. Once you solved the problem of a total lack of oxygen, solving the problem of keeping warm should be trivial.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Nice. I bet my Real Estate on the moon just went up!
the best spot to settle on the Moon
The commute would be an awful bitch. One could always telecommute, but the ping delays would be a serious drag.
Seeing as how the site is always facing the sun, it would be kinda nice to have large kick ass solar panels to power a moon computer archive...... Wait a minute, the earth has a magnetic field to prevent solar radiation from cooking a lot of things. Even if we lived on the moon in a bubble, what would the long term effect of solar radiation (particle to create electrical disturbances and high energy radiation such as x rays) have on the equipment and/or body?
Any materials obtained here would still need to be sent to the moon, and then to Mars.
Except the tons and tons of hydrogen, oxygen, and water that you are going to extract from the ice frozen in the ice caps in the poles. In addition, they might be thinking of mining the ice, which would involve tunneling. To me this makes a lot of sense, as several meters of rock is wonderful protection from high speed rocks, is wonderful insulation to help maintain a constant tempature, and is a cheap way to add to the size of the space station without having to build entire new modules. The moon would be a good place to put a telescope, since it is massive enough to be stable, unlike an inhabited orbital platform, and could be the start of a massive Very Long Baseline array for looking at really distant objects. Plus, it could be the start of permanent off world colonies. Mars is a good idea, but it's kind of a long first trip. Plus, It will give us extra time, as invading aliens will probably stop to level the moonbase before attacking earth.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
No, that's a solar eclipse.
A lunar eclipse is when Earth is between the Sun and the Moon. If you see a lunar eclipse on Earth, if you were on the moon at that same time, the whole thing would be dark.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
I think the ideal base would be something mobile. On the planet Nkllon, there was a mining colony called Nomad City that was built on top of old AT-AT walkers, and it was able to stay in front of the intense heat of the sunny-side of a planet.
While there's no need for a mobile base in regards to safety, being able to explore with all hands aboard a base, or even just move to a place with new resources, could prove valuable.
Space is very cold, in deep space not much above absolute zero. You might think that the problem facing designers of space suits and space craft is keeping warm. However while space is not an "absolute vacuum" the gas is so incredibly thin that it will not conduct much heat away. So getting rid of the heat generated by the human body is a major problem.
Within the solar system you have hugely fluctuating amounts of inbound solar (e.g. IR) radiation as well to complicate things, as mentioned in the article. Picking a spot with a constant temperature and light level is an advantage as it makes the thermal design easier. However, I suspect picking the relatively warm -50C spot is not that helpful and that a colder spot of constant temperature and light levels would in fact be slightly better.
I also suspect that being on the moon makes things easier than in orbit, while there is still no atmosphere worth talking about there is at least a big chunk of rock you can exchange heat with.
Another interesting factoid is that the visors on space suits have to respond to changes in light levels _very_ quickly compared to the photochromatic lenses in our sunglasses. Otherwise if the poor astronaut looks from the dark towards the sun without the benefit of an atmosphere he is in big trouble! I guess having a constant light level will help with any "windows" for a moon base as well.
A lunar eclipse is veiwed from the earth when the moon gets between the sun and the earth.
Um...no. That's a solar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is when Earth gets in between the Sun and the Moon.
When part of the moon gets in its own shadow, that corresponds with what we call "night" here on earth.
Huh??? How exactly does the moon get 'in its own shadow'??? What sort of wierd non-euclidian reality are you from?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
My old navy pressurized jumpsuit. ;-)
Now that the Chinese, Indian and Japanese all profess an interest in colonizing the moon.. the question is, will the first nation who reach the site claim its entirety, and how valid would that claim be?
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
No, a lunar eclipse is when the shadow of the earth falls on the moon. A solar eclipse is when the shadow of the moon falls on the earth. So, what is viewed from the earth as a lunar eclipse would be seen from the moon as a solar eclipse, i.e. their view of the sun is obscured.
If IKEA is furnishing the moon base, cancel the invasion order.
Property is like SOO overvalued on the Northern Rim anyway, and its almost impossible to break into that market unless you've got a trust-fund of space-creds.
It makes so much more sense to follow the space-artists and convert one of the older moon manufacturing bases on the southern rim into funky loft habitat-bubbles and catch a commuter tank into the Northern Rim for work.
Besides, all the cool authentic space coffee shops are on the Southern Rim. Nothern Rim just has the same old crappy StarStarbucks on every module hub.
:::: the insomniac's digest
Now if thats not enough to get funding (private/texas...whatever) for the base, then what is ?
Ooops! Sorry, they picked the wrong side for the base!
You've got it all wrong. The Bush administration is planning on sending "unlawful combatants" to the moon after Guantanamo fills up. They'll have to find their own way home when they're released...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
However, the space.com site has some unusual phrasing that makes me wonder whether this is a real site or a prank ... "Where the Sun shines and where it doesn't" ... "the sun's belly" ...
Of course on the Moon, the lunar overlords welcome you.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Great idea. Oregon would be an ideal place to build a moon base. Not only could we use the lava tubes for potection against solar radiation, but the logistics would be much simpler and cheaper. Putting everything on rockets and sending it a quarter million (or so) miles to the moon would be really difficult and expensive. It would so much easier to just have it delivered to Oregon in the first place. UPS and Fedex even go there, already.
Morons.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You and your 3 dimensions, how cute. We have 5, uh, 5000 dimensions. Don't question it!
I'm sure you've all heard of it by now, but if not, the Artemis Project has been planning moon colonization by private citizens for years, using a business model to pay for and sustain operations, rather than just sucking tax money out of the system.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
*BZZT!* Wrong! Thanks for playing!
Lunar eclipses are in fact more common, happening twice (sometimes three times) a year.
will have the seasons of:
Extreme Winter (-60c)
Very Cold Winter (-55c)
Freezing Cold Winter (-50c)
Nippy Out There Winter (-45c)
Reservations are now being accepted.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Lunar eclipses are visble everywhere on Earth that one could see (eclipsed portion of) the Moon. I.e., from approximately (actually a bit more than) half the Earth.
Similarly, Solar eclipses are visible everywhere on the Moon that one could see the eclipsed portion of the Earth (again, about half the Moon). :)
Of course, those living on the Moon might refer to Lunar eclipses as Solar eclipses and Solar eclipses as Terran eclipses.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
For one thing, the Moon has one third less gravity than your Earth. I don't know if you can understand that, but our vertical leap is beyond all measurement.
5/6ths, actually. I bow to your superior hang time.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I think you'll find it's made of cheese.
I have it on good authority...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Record debt and deficits, and the Senate is right now discussing removing the Estate Tax. There is no money for this in your lifetime, it is scifi.
...
Ah, but you assume they actually intend to pay for it.
We all know that Moon Base Alpha will be paid for with money borrowed by China.
After all, it's not like they have a space program
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Won't the light go out one day a month?
Unless I am mistaken, when there is a new moon, there is no light on the moon at all. For that matter, won't it be dark about half of the time due to the phases of the moon? It seems taht even the center of the part of the moon we can see would be dark quite often.
Everyone laughed at me when I bought that location for $50K last year! Now, when they go to build, I can take them to the cleaners! I'm so glad I kept my receipt as proof...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Hey somebody with mad google skills and a calculator, give me the cost of running an airbase in iraq over the next three years versus the cost of establishing a permanent moon base within three years?
Then they will find the Lunarains from Final Fantasy 4! Take that you spoony bard!
click me
Oh, Oh Take me, Take me! I am a pale, skinny nerd who has no muscle tone, bad vision and throws up on the kiddy rides!
But my mom always said that I'd make a great Astronaut!
"It's not rocket science, Smithers! It's only brain surgery!" --Mr. Burns
You DO get taxed on birthday presents if they are bove a certain level.
And estate taxes prevent riches from piling up ad infinitum in one family. You shouldn't have an unassailable advantage over everyone else just because your parents are richer than everyone else.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Researchers have identified what may be the perfect place for a Moon base...
Who are these mysterious "researchers" led by someone named Bussey? Are they with NASA? Well, that would be news if NASA picked a site. We have no idea though since the article doesn't identify them.
A researcher is anyone who does research, which is simply learning about something new. That could be anyone. As written this is a total non-story, about as newsworthy as "Local Pub Regulars Confirm U.S. Will Revisit Moon by 2007".
Have lower taxes ever kept politicians from spending money they don't have?
Especially considering the current administration is spending money like a drunken democrat?
Congress just has to write a check. They'll let someone else (i.e. the American taxpayers) figure out how to pay for it.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The main requirement for a trip to Mars are volatiles for fuel and life support, and the moon has almost none of those.
Sure, there is lots of metal oxide laying around on the moon for building an empty ship out of ; but even then, the standard processes we have for making steel or aluminum require large amounts of carbon (to reduce the oxides) and water (to cool down the molten metals afterwards). Again, the moon just doesn't have those.
If we could find a Near-Earth asteroid with abundant volatiles like water ice and ammonia ice, it'd make more sense to build a base there than on the moon.
>;k
Realistically, until they get a plant set up to manufacture photovoltaic cells locally, it would be too expensive to get all their power from PV cells and batteries ferried up from Earth. You would need nuclear power to jump-start the industries (mining, refining, manufacturing) needed to make the PV cells and storage batteries locally.
Nothing gives you more kilowatts per kilogram than a nuclear reactor, and mass is the single MOST important factor in getting stuff to the Moon in the first place.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Hello, beloved earthlings.
We have been observing your earthworld with moonminds vast and merry for many moonyears. You earthtechnological earthachievements are moonimpressive to our moonminds.
Unfortunately, we mooninites are fighting a civil moonwar. Moonsibling is killing moonsibling. As Moonheir to the Moonthrone, I am trusted with protecting the ample Moontreasury.
Fellow sapients, the Moon needs your earthhelp. I need to transfer the equivalent of $50,000 USD to two thousand and one Earth banking accounts. In order to do so, my moonsubterfuge moonskills will have to deceive the earthbankers.
I plead with you on my moonknees.
Please let me transfer $50,000 USD to your earthaccount. The moonmoney will have to stay earthhidden for at least pi earthdecades. I trust you will earthsafeguard it from the moonpretenders to the Moonthrone.
We will moonreward all earthhumans moongenerously.
In order for me to transfer $50,000 to you, I need an initial earthmoney fund to earthbribe the earthbankers. Please send me $500 now, and I will moonreimburse you in the transfer.
The Moon cries out for your earthhelp as the moonpretenders moonrape, moonravage, and moonraze their way to my moonpalace. Please take my $50,000.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
Actually, these things are important because they mean a constant source of energy (from solar cells) and a relatively constant energy requirement (for heating the place.) If you don't have to keep a lot of energy storage around then you can build a smaller cheaper moonbase. Save a billion here, a billion there and it might actually get built.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
The moon's about 3000 miles wide, so for the sake of simplicity let's say it's 9000 miles around (for the next two minutes, we live in a make believe world where pi==3). To put a solar collector opposite your base requies 4500 miles of cable to carry the electricity.
That's a lot of cable to lay down to begin with, and once it's there, that's a lot of cable to fail. Not to mention that you're effectively building TWO bases with four thousand miles of cable strung out between them. 4500 miles is a conservative estimate, too. I rounded pi down to 3, and I assumed it could be laid down in a straight line. It would have to meander around mountains and craters a bit along the way.
Now, alternately, we can build one base with everything it needs in one place. One set of solar collectors (they'd have to pivot, since at the lunar north pole, the sun would march around the horizon every month) with somewhat less than four thousand miles of cable connecting them to the base.
Think about it - greath swaths of lifeless desolation! Huge ugly strip mines, like some sort of crater you'd see on the moon!
Oh... never mind.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
TFA claims there are no constantly sunlit spots near the south pole, but remembering an article I saw a few years ago, I looked up Malapert Mountain, also in a space.com article. Same story..constantly lit, on a crater rim, and the inside of the crater is constantly dark, so it would be perfect for an optical telescope with a short cable run to the moon base at the crater rim. They even suspect strongly that there's water ice in the crater there. So, what gives? Is the previous article wrong or are the people in the current article suffering from amnesia/not-discovered-here? They seem to both be using data from Clementine. Here's another, more informative site on Malapert with lots of pretty pictures.
Should have checked my numbers - it's closer to 2000 miles, so we have a 6000 mile circumference, and 3000 miles of cable between our primary base and its backup solar collector.
Rest of the points still stand - 3000 miles of cable is a lot to build and a lot to break.
I think what he means is that one side of the Earth is always in darkness (facing away from the sun). What he doesn't realize is that only about 85% of the shpere is in darkness, and that both the very top and bottom (perpendicular to the light travel) always stay lit.
In a case like the Earth where our axis of rotation is tilted, one pole (switches depeding on time of year) is always daylight. Check out the Xplanet program if you have *nix. Right now it's the north pole that always has light.
The moon rotates around the exact same axis as it revolves around the Earth, and at the same rate. So we alwys see the same side of the moon. At the north pole of the Moon there is always light, year round. Similar to how the north pole of Earth has continous light right now (for the season anyway).
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
My god just what are they thinking didn't they watch space 1999? If they do it they'll just end up setting off a fuel dump blowing the moon out of orbit and trapping the moon crew on some unkown trek into the universe with no way back. Stop it stop it now! Ok so it's more like Space 2007 but it could still happen..... Come on you know it could don't deny it.....#)
On a serious note who wouldn't have guessed the moon base site wouldn't have been at the pole were all the preccious water is supposed to be.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
and at 14 cents a square mile, it's dirt cheap.
I'll be prospecting for gold, of course.
And selling frozen water found during the process to the people who own the land but forgot anyone can file for mining rights.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
To stick to the theme: *BZZT* Wrong yet again
Solar eclipses ARE more common. Lunar eclipses do happen as many as three times a year, but solar eclipses happen up to five times a year.
That the first permanent base on the Moon will be built by the Chinese?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Not "off-topic". I was responding to a post remarking on our inability to pay for a moonbase because we are spending and taxcutting ourselves broke.
It is EXACTLY on topic. Not being able to pay for jack-all is the critical block to the US space program. Tax cuts and revenue diversion into military ventures to conquer other countries IS gutting the space program. NO MONEY, NO SPACE.
The Verizon Wireless Mooninarium.
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
Get ready for Moon golf.
Not counting eclipses, there are actually more than one. At the north and south poles, you're always at the terminator between night and day, and the sun is always at the horizon. The north pole is more convenient, since the crater mentioned in the article provides an elevated area at its rim very close to the pole, which will raise the base out of the long shadows that would be cast by other crater rims and mountains around the pole. As long as the earth isn't blocking the sun, it will always be at least partially above the horizon.
The south pole is a bit less convenient, since, while there is a crater there, the pole is in the interior of the crater instead of near the rim, and is instead permanantly dark. The rim of the crater is raised above, but it's also some distance away from the rim.
...mainly since this is all one big pipe dream anyhow. I still doubt that we'll see any sort of permanent 'base' in space for at least another 100 years.
-Cnik
Some (but not all, depends on the type) can be diverted by making a big maginet under the lunar base. Charged particles enter the magnetic field and deflect away from the base.
It has been suggested (in other posts, I have no knowledge of this) that there are concentrations of iron in the area where this base is proposed. So we just need to build a robot to mine and refine iron (all using solar power) until there is enough iron for a maginet under the base. Then charge the magnet (easy, since we now have solar power for an electromagnet) and build your base on top of it.
For extra credit build a linear/super collider instead, and when radiation isn't a problem you can use maginets to for science, then when radiation is an issue align all the maginets and protect the base. (I wonder if this could/would work...)
This doesn't do anything about UV, but it solves some problems anyway.
Wouldn't sending materials from the Earth to the Moon cause an imbalance in the energy cycle that governs our planet? I've always thought our earth is a closed energy system and removing energy from it could cause an imbalance.
That's a nice idea, with a huge problem: how do you cool that reactor?!?!?!? Subs use the cold seawater, utilities use lakes, rivers, and cooling towers. What do you use on the moon?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Landing at such a high latitude will be harder. The Apollo missions were limited to landing within a broad band of +/- 40 degrees of the Lunar equator - the Saturn 5 just didn't have the payload to allow the Lunar Modules to carry enough propellent to land at higher latitudes. Future missions are also going to have similar weight constraints which will keep mission planners awake at night.
This site isn't perfect. It still has minus's that must be weighted against the plus's
How many times must my henchmen and I move?
After hollowing out the volcanic core of skull mountain, relocating the henchmen, the cadre of doom and baroness pain, reinstalling the death ray and the sub pen those yuppies opened a club med on the beach. A freakin' club med! I wouldn't mind so much as good test subjects are hard to come by, but the crew for the boat that brings them and their families back home knowing where they went... bad news. I already had to exterminate the construction crew for the skull island project to keep that secret. Last time I leave a job to the Evil Scouts. That's for sure.
So I relocated everything to the top few floors of a corporate tower. Lets see those yuppies open a resort THERE...hahaha. One note for the aspiring supervillain: do not sublease from the MPAA. For one thing, they poached half the cadre of doom for their paramilitary litigation division. What's up with that? It took years to comb the henchman ranks for decent CoD recruits. And that doesn't even figure in the millions I spent in genetic engineering and cybernetics. Jerks. And it's fairly hard to blackmail the Senate from your secret lair when they all hang out in your building to collect their bribes. Some secret.
So yeah, we've been running shop from the moon for a couple years and these guys are right. It is a fine crater. It'll be a shame having to move again. After building a subterranian bullet train to get cargo to the equatorial launch facility and micrgravitational nookie with baroness pain. I sure will miss the place. I mean, the death ray mk2 orbiting the earth was a nice perk and I'd hate to give up the helium 3 fusion power facility.
I don't even want to think about it. Who knows where we'll have to move now. Good lairs are hard to come by.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Just my personal version of common sense, but I doubt there is oxygen shortage on the moon. And air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, right?
Mining any hypothetical water for its oxygen seems like a total waste. You're looking for water because you're looking for hydrogen.
We've had the technology since George Washington!! We should have been there 20 decades ago!
Not mentioned in TFA; bases near the [Lunar] poles are significantly more difficult to reach (in terms of fuel needed). Estimates I've seen bandied about are in the 25% greater fuel range, which means about a 45% decrease in cargo capacity.
For one thing, the Moon has one third less gravity than your Earth.
Is that in imperial units? You should consider switching to metric units. Then you will have 1/6th the earth's gravity.
... but now there's only love in the dark? sorry. It started running through my head upon reading your message. Now it's running through yours too! Nyaa-nyaa! -pm
I completed my university degree at Lakehead University. We had -40C -45C days on a farly regular basis in the winter time.
Does this qualify me to work on the moon base?
The Bush administration is planning on sending "unlawful combatants" to the moon after Guantanamo fills up.
:P
A penal colony! If it works for Australia, it can work for the moon. All we need now is a mutiny on the Inteternational Space Station to get things started.
So what do you call it when you get caught between the Moon and New York City?
Transistors and Beer!!
As for cooling, they mentioned that the ambient temperature at the proposed site is around -50C. The "waste" heat from a nuclear reactor is going to be very valuable.
You'll still need some way of moving that heat around, which means bringing some kind of coolant with you from Earth. Your colony is going to need lots of water anyway, so you might as well use that. If you still have more heat than you need, you can get rid of it with passive radiant cooling or by using the lunar rock as a heat sink.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I might be remembering wrong, but I thought the moon's gravity was 1/6th of the Earth's grav, which is why working under water provides a similar environment.
-What have you contributed lately?
with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C).
My math shows -50 C = -122 F. Please tell me I was doing something wrong or that NASA did NOT write that estimate.
Used the formula: F = C(9/5) + 32
-What have you contributed lately?
The Moon has about 1/6 Earth Gravity
Mars has about 1/3 Earth Gravity.
Assuming a 6-foot man can jump 6 feet on Earth, he could jump about 1/(1/6)*3 + 3 feet for a total of 21 feet on The Moon, 1/(1/3)*3 +3 for a total of 12 feet on Mars. Keep in mind when a 6-foot man jumps 6 feet here on Earth he is only lifting his CENTER of gravity 3 feet with a starting height of 3 feet for it.
Letter To Iran
Will they call the religious zealots that will inevitably go there "Earthies?"
Redundant? before I started typing in this post, I checked to see what was already posted.
At that point, there was only 1 reply, and it had nothing to do with what I sent. If you look, 5 minutes before the date stamp of my post, there was a post that also contained the word eclipse. I think I made a fair effort to make sure I was not REDUNDANT prior to sending my post.
Am I wrong?
I have a bumber sticker in my cubicle that says
It only has to be on the opposite side not the opposite hemisphere. Since this base would be at the north pole then the other base only has to be an equal distance on the other side of the pole not the other side of the south pole. If the bases are 100 miles either side of the pole then you only need 200 miles of cable rather than 4500. Much more economical considering the shipping costs.
And if I remember correctly, because the moon doesn't have an atmosphere the terminator is a sharp line that is literally the difference between night and day. That being the case the bases might only need to be a few miles apart.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
AllYorBaseAreBelongtoUs
Sounds like me in high school.
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
... when all we have to do is call TLC's "While You Were Out" and have them touch up Dr. Evil's Moooon Base.
Does it really make sense to strip mine the moon of an incredibly rare and scientificly interesting geological feature? If it exists at all the icy soil areas are small and still pretty dry. It is likely that tons of regolith would have to be processed to extract even a small amount of water. There are lots of abundant and useful resources on the moon. Water is not among them.
an ill wind that blows no good
I hope somebody told them that there's no Santa Claus on the moon. I'd hate to think they picked this spot for the wrong reasons.
What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C).
So if the moon has no atmosphere, where's the humidity coming from? Tripped up in their big lie, again!
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
you sure wouldn't want to stick it where the sun don't shine.
P.S. - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
"That's funny so maybe your a good person to ask who wrote the moon rules #1 on my car with a key?"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
-58F isn't too bad... I'm suspecting the first moon pilgrims will be from middle of Minnesota...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The formula is right. And you're not.
:)
But don't worry. Getting the sign wrong is a bit like mixing up left and right. It's not a sign of stupidity
Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
In 1979, using a Harris S-100 (not confused with the S100 bus for microcomputers) I saw this message whenever I typed "HS" at the Opcom.
So do I win?
While I was in school, using Vulcan, I discovered how to attach an LFN to a PDN which represented the Opcom. I was then able to write an operator command into the opcom followed by an ETX. (Yes, I said etx, not carriage return linefeed.) Then after waiting four seconds I could use other codes (don't remember the precise details this many years later) I could "read" back the screen of the opcom back to my private terminal.
I wrote this program in assembly language. Suitably restricted, the people in charge at our facility found it very useful. Later, I gave a copy to Lynn Macy (I think that was his name) at Harris. Years later, when visiting faculty at my school, I was delighted to learn that a very similar program, but less convenient to use, was a standard feature in Vulcan.
On a side note, I went to a nearby girls college and got access to a Decwriter (yuk!) that was connected to a Harris system 30 miles away. I applied for and received an account. After adapting my assembly language program to properly echo back the opcom to a decwriter,and making it as short as possible, myself and friends typed that program in and ran it. I couldn't believe it, we had the ability to run commands on that system's opcom. We created a new user account. Tried it. Logged out and went back to our dorm elated.
Next week, the account we had created was gone. The account I had acquired from which the above shenenigans were performed was still active. I never used it again.
During my years of school there, rumors of what "someone" had done had reached my school's faculty. They made sure that I knew that they knew. It was clear that they wern't making any accusations, but were sure that they knew who was the one person who could have done this in 1980.
What city did I attend school in?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
it's cooold out there on the Moon.
No WiFi for miles.
Maybe I'll stay here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Speaking of Austrialia... see User Friendly.
What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C)."
The surface will be -50C because of the angle the light hits it, but surley any station built there will receive exactly the same amount of sunlight as a base on the lunar equator - ie, it'll still get very very hot.
2040 days since leaving earth orbit
than life in Northern Canada. -50C is standard in the winter, except it's permanently dark. I wonder what kind of tax/salary incentives governments would be handing out to attract doctors and teachers to the Moon. Maybe they should try hard so send all the lawyers there, too.
- If you could get oxygen from the Moon and deliver it cheaply to LEO (in steel or aluminum tanks, aerobraked using heat shields of foamed lunar rock) you might get some cost reductions for a large and on-going Mars program. The cost you get is a large increase in risk; if your lunar fuel operation has problems, your transport shuts down.
- If you can get enough lunar iron (say, by going over the regolith with magnetic robots and extracting the bits left over from billions of years of bombardment by nickel-iron asteroids) you could build the chassis of an Orion. This could be launched from the Moon without contaminating the Earth, and would require relatively little in the way of material shipped up; the nuclear material would amount to a few tons.
But as for anything else... forget it.Sustainability and energy independence essay
on building the base on the OUTSIDE of the crater.
As always with real estate, the main issue is Location, Location, Location. I personally think they need to correct the problems they have here before spreading our ways to other planets. (in Spock voice) Humans are illogical. P.S. All your base are belong to us!!!!!! Lol, surprised no one has said this yet. Maybe its that whole "old and corny" thing associated with saying it. But then again, this is Slashdot, so I'm definitely surprised no one has said it, lol. Kinda hypocritical coming from the guy quoting Star Trek, but oh well.
You might be looking for oil too, because beside hydrogen shortage, there'll be carbon shortage.
But seriously, if you're really going to find any water, the local air might be a nice place to store some of the waste oxygen.
Um, if my feet start at zero, and my CG is at 3, and my feet end up at 6, then my CG will also end up at 3+6 == 9.
Not accounting for bending of the knees of course.
The biggest problem of any Lunar undertaking is water, or more appropriately, hydrogen, as there's loads of Oxygen.
Now, what if there just isn't that much ice in those lunar polar craters. AFAIK, there's only speculation that there may be ice there, but nothing has been proven, has it? The data is inconclusive at the moment. And even if there is ice there, there seems to be good amount of evidence that it will not be all that much, ranging from one small lake to a "sea" the size of Connecticut.
A lot of industrial processes need water in large quantities and this may prove to be exhaustive of what little lunar ice there may be. In other words, lunar industry for water and rocket fuel might just deplete the moon's natural resources as fast as our need for oil does.
If this worst case scenario turns out to be true, what would possible solutions be? Would it be realistic to smash an ice asteroid into the moon? I don't think we are quite capable of that just yet.
What about artificially creating hydrogen as a by product of nuclear fission or some such process that strips a proton off an atom? According to a quick Google search, it is quite possible with today's technology and there seems to be quite a lot of Uranium on the moon as opposed to hydrogen.
I think that artificially generating hydrogen might actually make a lunar base more flexible with respect to positioning, although placing the base in a polar crater might help to shield it from Solar eruptions and meteor impacts.
Is you want to be damn careful with who gets there first. After all, the moon is full of rocks. Big rocks. And they can throw those big rocks at us.
Where's Mike when you need him?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
If you're planning on a base near the poles, you need the ability to communicate on the other side of the Moon. This isn't a particularly onerous burden, but it is neccessary since otherwise a landing which is off by some amount might leave the astronauts just out of line of sight of Earth and more or less out of radio contact.
I don't think there's ever been a single thread I've read on slashdot more worthy of the phrase, "My god, what a bunch of nerds," than this one.
It may be possible to get your head to 9 foot, but to clear a 6 foot bar you have to get your body horizontal. This is actually a simplification as it also involves kicking while in flight to move your body over the bar in a a coordianted fashion.
Thanks for playing
Letter To Iran
While you didn't mention it, a number of sites do mention that the moon has significant amounts of uranium. Mining that and using fission reactors to artificially create the missing hydrogen as a byproduct of the fission process might be a better and more flexible alternative to mining ice that may or may not be there in sufficient quantities.
The space station has to have shielding carried up via rockets. One of the huge advantages of the moon is you have large amounts of material (dust, sand, rocks, etc.) on the moon that you can just mound on top of your facility. If you pile enough stuff on top of the facility you'll block the radation. Now we just need to get someone to figure out exactly how much material you'd have to pile on top of the base to accomplish this.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
what if you can use a different technology to leave from the moon then when you leave earth?
You could bring up fissionable material(a little at a time) then launch nuclear powered vehicals from the moon. Ships with Vast ion drives, for instance.
Or best case scenerio, use H3 from the moon to create the propultion for those vehicals.
Also you could assembly larger ships on the moon then you could on earth, with more room for storage.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, since he used the phrase "everywhere on earth", I'm fairly certain he wasn't talking from a Moon reference point - unless you're referring to some other "he". And yes, what we on Earth would call a lunar eclipse would be a total solar eclipse on the Moon, which is exactly what my last sentence was alluding to, if in somewhat a confusing manner. And what I referred to as a terran eclipse (or what you call an Earth eclipse) would simply be an umbra surrounded by a penumbra traveling across the Earth's surface. I think this might even be a cooler looking eclipse than the kind we get here on Earth!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Isn't some country sending a mission to the sun...I heard they are going to land on the sun at night since it is cooler. :)
hahahaha, you jump high, dumb ass, wait'l you fall from 21 feet high!!
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Even if it were subterranean (or, seeing that it's not earth, sublunarean?), how much force are we talking, and how can it be accomodated?
NASA astronauts train underwater because their buoyancy can be adjusted to completely counteract their the force of gravity. Effectively, they are "weightless". It has nothing to do with 1/6 gravity of the lunar environment. Training for that is done in a counterbalaced harness much like the flying wires used by actors (Beyond Thunderdome) or a child's Jolly Jumper. NASA probably hasn't done any of that sort of training for thirty years, or more.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
For thousands of years, man thought the moon was made of cheese.
Then we went there and found out it was made of rock.
We haven't been back since.
Behold the power of Cheese.
Yes, you get the four Canadian seasons
Almost winter
Winter
Still winter
Mosquitoes
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
They're going to move in, wreck the ecosystem, and drive native species extinct.
If America puts a base there, you mark my words: it will soon be a desolate wasteland where NOTHING grows any longer. Hell, you probably won't even be able to go outside and breathe the air.
-Styopa
Flamebait? What mentally damaged fuckup moderated this. Funny, maybe. Insightful - definitely. Actions of rocket scientists being dictated by one of the dumbest people who should have been put in prison for the shit he's done? This retarded fuck is giving direction for NASA - I laughed uncontrollably when I heard this on the news. I guess the people on CNN are fanning the flames as well? Or maybe this moderator is is the one on fire with a fat dick coming out of his ass?
yes, the plan needs to be re-evaluated. Thankfully, I will personally send all the religious morons in this country to join their maker (Jesus - the mexican guy bringing me my coffee) before the next election, so we won't repeat our mistakes the next time around.
I'm not sure where you're getting your equations, but clearly the man will be able to jump six times as high on the moon as on the earth, and three times as high on Mars.
When you jump, you provide kinetic energy to your body. As you rise, the kinetic energy gets transformed to potential energy. At the top of your jump, all the kinetic energy has been converted to potential energy and you come to a stop. The potential energy then gets reconverted to kinetic energy as you fall. The potenial energy is determined by the equation u=mgh, where u is energy, m is mass of jumper, g is the gravitational force, and h is height. Or rearranged, the equation would be h=u/(mg), or height is inversely proportional to gravity.
So, assuming the mass of the jumper and the energy put into the jump remains the same, the jump on the moon would be six times the height as on the earth.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
want. A population suffering from obescity epidmic living in a 1/6 gravity environment
A high jumper on Earth is only lifting his center of gravity 3 Feet. It (the center of gravity) is also starting at 3 Feet.
3 + 3 == 6 Foot jump on Earth
On the Moon 3*6 + 3 = 21. This fits your equations. Another poster countered the jumper on Earth should equal 9 feet, 6 foot man plus 3 foot start. But this is not how a jump is measured, it is measured by how far your entire body can clear a bar, the body being horizontal at the top of it trajectory.
Clearly this also assumes no space suit and doesn't take into the mechanics of how the jump would differ given the radically different timing, but should be close.
Letter To Iran
They're lunatics, I tell you.
Sheer lunacy.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
..great, all I see coming of this is the first 24 hour tanning salon not on the planet earth.
Either that, or they could use an RTG and not worry about a rotating solar collector or kilometers of cable.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
For long jumping the record is 24 feet and a straight multiplication of the inverse of the fractional gravity probably works, so a 144 foot long jump in distance might be possible on the Moon. I have never heard a commentator talk about so huge a number for a lunar jump, so I assume they like I would be referring to a vertical jump measured in the only way vertical jumps are measured (clearing a bar), but they, unlike myself, usually get it wrong.
Letter To Iran
And the blackjack!
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I wonder if they considered Crater Parry.
You should forward this to an astrologist and watch her head explode.
We have a massive amount of sats/weather sats/mapping sats everything around earth, yet NOTHING thats permanent around the moon, and yet we have 3 around MARS.
Are nasa people just utterly stupid, or are they hiding stuff for the pentagon/DoD and their secret current moon bases? (budgets of $4 trillion in 10 years has to yeild more than NASAs results). Are they conditioned to think the moon is dull and boring? Do the upper managers kiss butt to DoD and their area-51 buddies? (remember a lot of nasa astranoughts are ex-military pilots).
It would not have been hard to build a good sat/comm/mapper for the moon to be permanently orbiting it. $250m, + launch, bingo its done.
They could make a 10inch mapper, since there is no atmosphere it could orbit closer and how hard is it to make good zoom scopes any way. Its close enough to transmit at real high speeds 10mbit/100mbit.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The only way for the US to build a base there is if we discover water AND oil under the polar soil. Then who knows...suicide bombing loonies?
Like pre 1900, zero income tax can be done.
Well, we can still tax the $500k+ people, they wont miss 20% really.
How can we afford this? well, not now, because of debt, you will notice that debt interest paid out (around $360b/quarter) is the same as income tax collected.
So they can do 0% income tax, though you would still be left with SS, and sales taxes and perhaps state taxes.
But its too late, everyones been made into a tax/inflation slave.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Ah, screw the whole thing.
You can't handle the truth.
I think you misunderstand...
To be able to jump 6 feet means your feet are 6 feet off the ground. Your center of gravity is about 3 feet above your feet.
So, when you jump 6 feet, your center of gravity is 9 feet up.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I could see it now.
Too much bud on 4th july.
Commander: Bob, I dare you to run onto the moon for 5 seconds and roll around in the dust, and run back in , ehhehhe
Bob: ok dude, here i go, "Ksheeeeeshhh"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I am sure 11.g would work on the moon.
For longer distances, just use a custom made microwave link, cables are for the 19th century.
But dont they hae a radar/elavation map of the moon? cant they run a sim to find out whats 100% lit?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I personally don't want to see the development of a new noble class based on the ability to pass down accumulated wealth indefinitely. If this were the case in the US, Bill Gates' knighthood would be the real deal and we would all have to bow down before him and refer to him as "Your Excellency." The estate tax is as you say the primary method that US society uses to prevent this. The framers of the Constitution had seen the evils perpetrated by the feudal/noble system and wanted to make sure that this would never happen in the United States.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
I can't wait - my Golf handicap will go way down... Do you think they'll let me transfer my handycap home with me???
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed (SK)
Ur - "Jumping is... useless."
Sigs are for the weak.
[a few seconds later]
Err: Oh man, it looks like he gave you the finger first.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Actually, they still do.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
People don't jump heights that way.
Any sportsman who does a X feet jump does it in an arc where he is nearly horisontal, arched, his weight of gravity is about X feet max. In the middle of the jump, his waist is slightly over the pole, and feet and arms are slightly lower than X feet.
If you have the ability to get your center of gravity 9 feet up, then you can jump over a 9 feet pole.
If what you say it's true about oxygen, (although I didn't check), it should be easy. You just bring one ton of hydrogen and you've got yourself 9 tons of water. (although it might not be so easy transporitg it, maybe scooping it in Earth's upper atmosphere would be a solution) Nuclear fission is out of the question. You've got to put a lot of energy into some atoms to make them split to hydrogen. If you manage to get hydrogen as a byproduct by fissioning larger atoms it will you will have a very low mass percentage. It's not worth fissioning 200 tons of uranium to get 1 ton of hydrogen even if it were possible. Also I don't think there's gonna be much industry on the moon, and maybe you'll be able to go by without much water. How much water have you got on the space station anyway?
Like changing the rules in the middle of the game, eh? If you'd stated "in a 6 foot Olympic high-jump" up front, you could have saved us all some typing.
Have a day.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I know NASA does neutral buoyancy spacewalk training, but I don't think that they do the 1/6 gravity lunar excursion training anymore.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The space station doesn't need to generate its own rocket fuel from the water it holds.
alas, but there is a gift tax. So long as you give less than, I believe it is $11,000 per person per year to a mazimum of $1 million over your life time, I think it is possible to avoid the gift tax.
Beyond that... you must pay (i forget how much).
I'm only about 95% certain I'm right... if I get bored this afternoon I'll look it up
- Your investment is determined by the size of the load to be launched; if you want to launch a big honkin' load like a full-up ship, you need a huge investment.
- You can only hit the trajectories which are reachable with a single impulse along the line of your rail from the Moon... and at the exact time of the month that the alignment allows you to hit them.
Good deal for launching a lot of little loads to the same place. Lousy idea for heavy objects or varied destinations.Sustainability and energy independence essay
Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust and friendship.
Then consider that you're still limited to one impulse; you can't get onto any trajectory that doesn't pass by the Earth (most interesting and useful trajectories do not; you need at least one more impulse, perhaps a big one).
The Orion is a general-purpose heavy-lift spacecraft with a very high delta-V. Mass drivers are special-purpose high-volume devices. They satisfy very different needs.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
From the US Treasury website:
In 1916 Congress for the first time levied a tax upon the transfer of a decedent's net estate. The Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives explained that a new type of tax was needed, because the "consumption taxes" in effect at that time bore most heavily upon those least able to pay them. The Committee further explained that the revenue system should be more evenly and equitably balanced and "a larger portion of our necessary revenues collected from the incomes and inheritances of those deriving the most benefit and protection from the Government."
The Committee recommended an estate tax rather than an inheritance tax because many states already imposed inheritance taxes. It felt that the estate tax helped to form a well-balanced system of inheritance taxation between the Federal Government and the various states and that an estate tax could be readily administered with less conflict than a tax based upon inherited shares.
Various changes in the estate tax provisions of law, as well as their repeal, have been proposed over the years, but the principle has been retained. Our office has available an excerpt from the Ways and Means Committee's report on the Revenue Act of 1935. The report reproduces a June 19, 1935, message from President Roosevelt to Congress advocating an inheritance tax, in addition to the estate tax. Although the inheritance tax proposal was not adopted, the message provides information on why the taxation of individuals' estates was considered appropriate.
From the National Conference of State Legislatures:
Since 1826, death taxes traditionally had been an area of state jurisdiction. Federal death taxes were levied intermittently from 1797 through 1915, but only to serve as a supplementary revenue source during wartime. In 1916, however, the federal government imposed a permanent estate tax. A controversy arose as the states felt that the federal government was infringing upon one of their traditional tax bases. The controversy heightened in the 1920s when state government finances became stressed. As the opposition increased, the federal government was forced to act.
In 1924, Congress offered a compromise. The federal estate tax rates were increased, but Congress provided for a credit of up to 25 percent against the federal tax for death taxes paid to the states. Under the Federal Estate Tax Act of 1926, the maximum credit increased from 25 percent to 80 percent. Today this credit is commonly referred to as a "pick-up" tax. As discussed earlier, the total tax liability for the beneficiaries does not increase and all states currently impose this tax up to the allowable federal credit.
The U.S. Tax Reform Act (TRA) of 1976 and The Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981 brought about major changes in the administration of the pick-up tax. The end result was fewer estates being subject to the tax and sharply reduced taxes for those that were. This, in turn, resulted in less state revenue collected because state pick-up taxes are levied as a specified percentage of the federal estate tax. Most recently, The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 changed the federal estate tax law. The current $600,000 estate tax exemption will increase gradually to $1 million by the year 2006, again resulting in less state revenue collected under the pick-up tax.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Obviously, that is why some of them wanted to establish an estate or inheritance tax. Here is some info from responsiblewealth.org:
.. History informs us that the son of Solomon was a fool." "To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second . . . is an insult and an imposition on posterity."
Thomas Paine
"God gave the Earth as an inheritance for all God's children."
Thomas Paine sparked the first bestseller in American history - a fiery pamphlet entitled, Common Sense (1776), which sold over 120,000 copies in its first few months of publication and successfully encouraged a declaration of independence from England. The heart of Paine's famous pamphlet contains a withering criticism of hereditary government. This critique extends through all his works. "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny." "Hereditary succession . . . is in its nature an absurdity, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary . .
Later in life, Paine extended this critique of inherited political power to a critique of inherited economic power. It is important to remember that Paine distrusted governments, disliked taxes, and heartily approved of late night tea parties in Boston Harbor! He opens Common Sense with an attack not only on monarchy, but also on government itself. "Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil."
Modern libertarians tend to adopt Paine as their patron saint, stressing his description of government as evil while forgetting the modifier, "necessary." Paine, unlike modern libertarians, never viewed "the government" and "the people" as mortal enemies. As he says, "Government and the people do not in America constitute distinct bodies." His love of liberty was tempered by a commitment to the common good. Ironically for a revolutionary, he wrote an entire pamphlet, The Necessity of Taxation (1782), arguing that taxation is the "criterion of public spirit."
In two works, The Rights of Man (1791) and Agrarian Justice (1797), Paine argues for the adoption of an inheritance tax in England to balance out the unfair distribution of "landed property." For Paine it is common sense that God gave "the Earth as an inheritance" to all of God's children. Therefore, he proposed an inheritance tax to create a national fund that (1) would give the sum of 15 pounds sterling to everyone turning 21 years old as a compensation for the loss of their "natural inheritance," and (2) would give a sum of 10 pounds a year to every person over the age of 50 as an early version of Social Security.
Paine viewed democracy as a sensible middle ground between aristocracy and socialism. He was not an enemy of private property (far from it), but a fierce critic of inherited privilege. In the Rights of Man he justifies the inheritance tax as being a derivative of the existing luxury tax. As he says, "an overgrown estate is a luxury at all times, and as such is the proper object of taxation."
At least one founding father was in favor of an inheritance tax.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."