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Back to Moon in 2015?
Mistress.Erin writes "NASA has announced they may send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2015, and may build an international base once they get there. From TFA:"The next mission to land a man on the moon will take place in 2015 at the earliest, the new chief of the United States' space program said on Monday, adding the mission could be followed by the construction of a multinational space station there. But NASA has not yet decided what vehicles will be used to reach the moon, or what will succeed the aging space shuttle fleet, which is due to be retired in 2010.""
But NASA has not yet decided what vehicles will be used to reach the moon...
There's a giant Big Boy statue down the road you can use...
Send astronauts back to the moon? Doesn't that mean they would have to land on the moon a first time? :P
*insert conspiracy theory here*
Why the moon? Well, I suppose it's basically in our backyard, and for interstellar toddlers, it's a pretty good goal to start. Today the moon, tomorrow the universe, eh?
But still, is there anything on the moon that we can use/do that would be cool, other than just developing the technology used to get there?
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I've also decided to go on a huge roadtrip in 2015, but I too have no idea how I'll get there... Nor do I know what I'm going to do with my current vehicle (a 1975 Honda civic) once it is scheduled to be retired (2010 at the latest). But don't you worry, I'll manage to pull it off somehow... ;)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Kennedy: "We will go to the moon in this decade..."
NASA today: "We will go to the moon in this decade... at the earliest. Maybe. But hey, don't hold your breath."
For real, how can it possibly take longer to do it again, if we already did it before? The R&D phase is over. We know what to do.
1) Build Saturn V
2) Put spaceship on top
3) MTV Flag
What, did we lose the Saturn blueprint or something?
They must be preparing an escape plan to flee the Earth when longhorn will be out.
I'm jack's useless sig
hmm... Sounds like NASA is following Microsoft timelines... so we should return to the moon in 2020?
I've always wondered what kind of political issues could arise from sending people to new territories. After all, who owns the land of other planets? It seems that the moon is politically stable because it's really hard and expensive to actually settle a large portion of the land. It's good to see that these projects to some extent don't push national boundaries all the way into space.
see a Text Widget
CONTRACTORS!
Seriously. I recently returned from a tour in the middle east. Damn near everything is contracted out: food, showers, embarkation/debarkation. With an increasing number of viable "space" start-ups, it isn't hard to imagine that NASA hasn't announced a shuttle replacement because they're waiting for these guys (or gals) to come up with a cheap alternative that they can purchase time on.
You eliminate a large chunk of the paperwork when a sig on the dotted line passes the logistics to someone else.
Though it pains me to ask this (I'd love for us to be doing more space exploration), is building a base there really a good idea? From what I've read, the lunar dust is incredibly hard on mechanical things (gears, seals, etc)...that would make maintenance of any lunar base very difficult, and prohibitively expensive.
For all of that effort (both in the initial build, and in the launch/materials costs for maintenance)...what do we get? Not much, even in terms of science.
I'd love for us to do more space exploration, but honestly, I think a really big station at L4 or L5 would be a much better idea. Locally stable gravitiational point, but not a deep gravity well, far less dust, very low g environment, etc.
It's not as sexy as the moon, but really...L5's the place to be, not the moon.
USA to China: "Anak...err China, It's over, I've secured the higher ground."
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
So does this mean they will have a "space station" in orbit around the moon? Or ar they talking moon base. Or was the phrase "space station a mistake?"
I'd say they better start walking early tomorrow else NASA won't arrive there by 2015!
They have the only heavy lift vehicles in continuous development and operation that could make this happen. We already use their liquid fuel motors (Boeing and LockMart both licensed Russian motors in their rockets).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
To paraphrase
We don't know how we're going to get there or do what we want to do once we get there, but by god, we're going.
Great., NASA is run by PHBs.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I advocate developing space travel technology as well as building bases on Mars, but the Moon? really, we went there in the 60's and 70's, saw that there was nothing too worthhile there, and left. I just don't see the point. Maybe someone could explain to me what we could benfit from.
I just can't see the US, Europe or Japan pulling off any sort of massive moon mission with the looming retirement crisis.
So they've decided they will probably go to the moon 10-15 years from now, may or may not build something there, and have no idea how they're going to get there. Doesn't exactly inspire and encourage like the Kennedy declaration did, does it? It's too bad the public has lost most of its romantic view of space travel. What most people don't realize is that money invested in space exploration usually results in inventions that can be applied here on earth. While I think it's a good thing that Bush is pushing for space exploration, I think NASA needs a PR overhaul to entice more public support, especially in light of the Columbia disaster.
Seriously. Why?
NOTE:"because", "because it's there", "human curiosity/wonder", and other such pie-in-the-sky BS will not wash. Justifying the billions with "hey, look, we ended up with velcro last time" also doesn't cut it. Nor does "lots of people will be employed with those billions". I'm looking for clear, useful results; not pie-in-the-sky philosophical goodies and promises worthy of a campaign speech. It's a goddamn ROCK and I want to know why we should pay a LOT of money to send a bunch of egotistical people there.
I challenge thee, Space Fanboys of Slashdot.
Please help metamoderate.
I have been trapped here since 1999 you insensitive clod!
Timesprout
Commander Moonbase Alpha
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Bring your tempur pedic for the alien. http://www.tempurpedic.com/tempurcmsvb/company/nas a/
"One of these days Alice..."
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I think the average person would be more supportive of a moon base (once it was there) compared to the ISS simple because the moon base is located in a physical, identifiable, and visible location. Everyone can see the Moon and think about it and wonder about it. The ISS, on the other hand, is literally in nowhere. Also, the residents seem to be basically stuck in a can. With a Moon base, one can go out for walk and go exploring. I think subconsciously there's a greater appeal to that idea than for that of the ISS.
Man, I can't wait. Riding out that change is going to be fun.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
But isn't this alot like saying "We'll return to the moon in the next 10 minutes, at the earliest" ?
This month Scientific American ran an editorial about the new space goals. Their basic thrust was to cut the shuttle and space station, leave the science alone, and then you'd still have enough for the moon mission.
I've got mixed feelings about that viewpoint. I can't help but think the real problem is an aging, risk-adverse bureaucracy and fragmented goals. It's easy to argue all day about what is important or not. Personally, I'd like to see cost-to-orbit decreased by new technology. To me that should be the major national goal. Then the rest of these questions (which are really about money) would not be so pressing. But perhaps that is fixing the long-term problem instead of bickering over budgets today. And heck, that's no fun!
The shuttle uses Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen. They get it by spliting water. What does peak oil have to do with it?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
As *early* as 2015?
sounds like yet another attempt to pull money from outside the US for a US political dream...
Bruce Campbell in "Army of Bob".
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This whole "To the moon" thing reeks of nothing more than a plan by our good buddy Jr. Bush to:
a) Distract everybody from the fact that his economy is crumbling and he's not doing so well in a very unpopular war, and
b) Develop an excuse to justify the weaponization of space.
Mod me flamebait, but all political discussions are flame wars and this announcement is way more about politics than it is about science.
1) Put a manufacturing base on the moon.
2) Build solar powered launch catapult.
3) Build space station.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Or do you think Kofee Anon is going to preside?
Kennedy had a goal - showing that good old American capitalism could beat Russian communism. That principle was worth hiring on thousands of engineers and accelerating plans that already were in place to be met by the end of the decade. Not to mention throwing billions at the problem.
Nowadays we don't have anything to prove. There's no motivation other than science. We can't reuse the Saturn V. Remember what the Saturn V put on the moon? A little tin foil lander, and a small buggy of a car. Not much effective payload, even if you make them unmanned. We'd have to make something bigger... but again, the question is why? Pursuit of science. Which is noble, but not nearly as impressive as getting the one-up on some communists. So it's gonna take awhile...
-philski-
Honestly, I can see senior executive types shelling out the bucks just to play a few rounds of golf on the biggest golf course available.
RFID golf balls to help track them, moon buggies to get you around.
I'm not too sure how they would pull off the beer/cigarette concessions, but where there's a profit there's a way...
"Well..here I am..." - Jubal Early
I want to preface this by saying I do think NASA went to the moon... but I do think its funny to read the conspiracy theories... there's always a few. http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/moon_hoaxes _010215.html
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Well, if we are ever planning on building a space infrastructure, do you happen to know of any place closer to Earth that has 10^19 tons of building material that doesn't cost $1000/lb to put into space?
At current technology levels, that makes the moon's mass worth on the order of $10^25, or ten trillion trillion dollars. Cool, eh?
Personally, I think we ought to develop cheaper means of getting into orbit before we try anything really ambitious in space. But if we are going to use our current chemical rocket technology to build an infrastructure, we aren't going to be able to afford to send enough mass into space to build anything of a reasonable size. So why not withdraw some mass from the Moon's bank account? It's close, we know how to get there, and it has more rocks than some continents. 100 tons of building material in space is worth a lot.
I said it before and here it is again:
It's all about RE-convincing the world that we are the super power. We need to beat on our chests and wag our tool around to show that ours is bigger. Fear us because we spend huge amounts of money on useless projects. The rich folks own companies that NEED this money from the tax payers, it is nothing more.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
That would suck. Sure it's the largest golf course, but the whole thing is a sand/dust trap.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
He cut NASA spending by over 90% just like he did education spending. NASA can't afford to maintain their buildings much less build new vehicles. Bush hates science. He hates scientists and technical people. He wants to see us dead. Never forget that.
Skinner
PS: Why the new hatred of the blind policy? Those damn images are impossible for anyone with a vision handicap to see. I had to ask someone else to type-in the damn code so I could post.
Then, if stuff comes down and wipes out the Marikina City Footwear Museum, think of the international uproar.
That's why it's rocket science.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Just for the record, this product is not recommended for either indoor or outdoor use on Earth's moon.
We currently run a huge deficit. All economists tell you this isn't good for the country.
Our healthcare system is in shambles. It is shameful to hear that Cuba, that has had our economic sanctions for decades, still beats us in some specific medical fields.
Our education system is in disarray. Students are non-achievers these days. We are also un-able to attract bright students from abroad!
Out-sourcing is out of hand. We are exporting our manufacturing base. I hear that if the present rate continues, one-third of our entire defense equipment will be manufactured abroad.
Need I mention immigration? The illeagal immigrants do not pay into any social security system here. When this is going on, you then hear politicians saying that the syetem is nearly broke. Heck, it's nearly broke because not enough people are paying into the system...why?...because a good chunk of people are being payed "under the table".
Let me stop...I could go on and on. But our politicians have got their priorities wrong in my opinion. Do not be supprised to hear the following: "billions disappear at NASA!" or "NASA still dogged by technical problems despite billions"! Let's wait and see.
Wasn't 2015 supposed to be the year astronauts would go to Mars.
Come on guys, first we don't have the spaceship in 2001, then Lucas films the prequels and now this...
Going to the moon in the 70's was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Kennedy didn't give a f*ck about science. All he cared about was showing up the russians. Yes we got some science out of it, but not nearly as much as the NASA guys wanted to get. The Apollo program was cut short after we knew the point was brought home to Russia. We had 3 more Saturn V rockets sitting, waiting to be used. All we needed to do was fill 'em up and let 'em rip. But they cancelled the program. R&D >>> support staff for those missions. If they really cared about science they would have flown.
-everphilski-
The vehicles you ought to use have to have detachable cargo bay and pilot cabin. And they should be named "Eagle" with integer number attached to every one. And once you build the base, I already volunteer to take command of it. And please don't forget that we already have a name for it. It just _HAS_ to be named "Alpha" as the first human built moonbase. In general that's _brilliant_ idea! Think of the possibilities... we can f.e. safely store all that nuclear waste in a secure desolate place on the Moon...
Yours truly,
John K.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
That fine powdery moon dust turns out to be ridiculously abrasive. The moon happens to lie outside of the major influence of the Earth's magnetic field, so high energy charged particles are a big problem. Considering the setbacks to the shuttle program recently, I wonder if NASA has the budget to start new designs of this sort. Especially considering the fact that we spent enormous amounts of money sending men to the moon Kennedy style.
Even more, mention of setting up a base on the moon brings thoughts of even greater engineering, construction, and financial burdens. Sending a lander and a few go-karts to the moon is far easier than building a habitat that must withstand the dust, temperatures, and high energy particles. The maintenance required to keep things working on the ISS is tough enough, but throw it a quarter of a million miles away from the Earth on a ball of sandpaper and see how long it lasts.
This isn't to say I'm not optimistic. I truly hope that we go to the moon and begin building clusters of human life off of this rock we call home. We have all of our eggs in one basket, and the moon seems a good place to start diversifying. I just think that 2015 may be a bit overly optimistic with current budget restraints. (At least in the 60's we had some competition to try to bankrupt, and even then it took us until Reagan to finish the job)
Columbus 1492, Pilgrams 1609 it took over 100 years for the West to get an established colony, looks like the moon is taking the same path
The gun is good - Zardoz
Hey I can have a 600 yrd drive out there no wind and less gravity! Tiger eat your heart out.
It takes energy to split water. We get a lot of energy from oil. Oil scarcity will, the OP claims, make it difficult to acquire energy, and thus to acquire anything---LOX, steel, aluminum---that requires energy. Fabrication of the Shuttle also requires a great deal of energy.
I always thought people would just stop grousing about nuclear power so much once oil became prohibitively expensive, but I guess that's just me. We'll see what happens.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Lets build this then and send it up in one piece:
http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_liberty_ship.htm
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Last I heard we didn't have any funding for the Voyager probes, but we have funding to get to the moon? Maybe its just me, but I'd rather we continue funding the Voyager probes since it would take us 30 years to get satellites to the same point they are... Besides...the voyager probe IS going to be coming back shouldn't we be on its GOOD side. I, for one, welcome our new voyager overlord.
Locally stable gravitiational point, but not a deep gravity well, far less dust, very low g environment, etc.
yeah, and absolutely nothing there! Every single atom you use has to be ferried there from Earth at enormous cost. Colonies need resources to exploit. Once lunar colonies are established and doing well, then we can talk about setting up shop at one of the Lagrange points. But to start there is asinine.
I'm all for space exploration (of course this really isn't space, and its not really exploration, but anyway) but I think we should set our goals a little closer to home. According to Wikipedia Russia has a 98% literacy rating for people over 15 years old, and I'm sure ours is nowhere close to that. I won't even mention all of the people who are starving. There's a whole soapbox that can be unleashed in this topic of conversation, but I'll keep it, for now, at the literacy part. Personally I'm of the opinion that an education should be one of the top priorities. Now I'm talking about past the basic needs... children can't learn if they die from starvation, obviously, but if you educate the children, you give them an opportunity (not a promise, mind you) to achieve something better in life. Not being able to read or write won't get you very far in this capitalistic society.
And they said zombies weren't real!
I know it's off-topic but does anyone know if gravity on the Moon is enough to eliminate the problems associated with long-term zero g exposure?
Or do we just have to wait to find out?
People often leave that out of the cost benefit analysis of the space program.
Honestly, how that guy gets away with selling property on the moon is beyond me. Still, a fool and his money are easily parted.
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
"[Cuba] still beats us in some specific medical fields."
Name one field.... maybe "voodoo"?
Let me get this straight, NASA, along with the other nation-state space agencies who still can't get the International Space Station to work correctly or a regular shuttle service, now going to:
1) Develop a vehicle to get stuff back and forth from the moon, and
2) Put a permanent base on the moon?
Jehoozatz, if they can't do it in Earth orbit, how are they going to do it on the moon?
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
What if Columbus didn't return to the New World?
What if Columbus said: "Okay, so it has a lot of gold and free labor. But it's so damn far away and I have an appointement with my dentist tommorow!"
What if Queen Isabella said "Okay, so it has a lot of gold and free labor. But I'd rather spent my money waging war with the french and the english!" Granted, the moon is a place of no interest to us. So it seems. But I'd rather take my chances and go up there a second time to make sure there's *really* nothing that we could benefit from.
Maybe those invisible primitive moonmen took all the gold and stored in some dark mooncave. Maybe they are trying to make us believe that there's nothing out there by sending out subliminal messages with their giant disc-antenna's!
Tin foil hats for everyone when get up there, I say! You never know!
The biggest problem with moon exploration is convincing any reasonable and intelligent person on Earth that the entire project is not just a 'welfare for the rich' program for overspecialized engineers and defense contractors who run out of ideas for killing people who don't shop at the Baby Gap.
We have many major and serious problems on Earth now and are projected to have many more in the not-to-distant future. None of these problems are addressed by anybody's absurd space program.
I realize that this the least-receptive audience in the world for a rational discussion about the need of a Moon program, nevertheless you are all are really just going to have to used to the fact that there aren't that many people left who seriously share your vision of space exploration.
The Moon has been right above us for billions of years, and it will be there for billions of more years. It won't make any difference if we address more serious problems first and go back to the Moon in a hundred years or so from now. Nothing there is going to change.
This is not a troll; it's a serious challenge to the entire mind-set that there are valid reasons to spend billions of dollars on a Moon exploration program.
Seems to me as one of the better (long-term) reasons to re-visit the moon: establish a small 'backup' population of humans, so that humanity doesn't get totally wiped out in the event of say, a collision with a big enough comet/meteor.
Ofcourse, Murphy's law dictates that *you* wouldn't survive such an event: chances are you'd be one of the suckers left back on eart, but in case you were on the moon, the latest trajectory recalculation would show that the meteor would miss earth, and hit the moon instead (sigh). And not enough escape pods to evacuate everyone back to earth.
Besides, I could imagine other ways for humans to become extinct. Some nanotech science experiment gone horribly wrong, bringing the 'grey goo' upon us. Some new disease that spreads fast and kills everyone before a way to stop it is found. Or environmental damage that turns out to be irreversible, and leaves a planet where humans can't survive anymore. Maybe not a big chance of any of that happening, but the possibility is there.
--YAUS: Yet Another Useless Sig (tm). Get it now for only $ 34.95!Imagine a vacation spot where you can instantly lose weight and exercise in a low strain environment. Heck, just going to the moon will take 100lbs of your scale :-p
But seriously, a vacation resort. With blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the vacation resort and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!
Harald
Lunar regolith has a very high concentration (well, relativ to terrestrial rocks) of Helium3, which may well become an obscenely valuable fuel for fusion reactors in a few years(or decades? centuries? ever?). Also, if we ever want to get into asteroid mining, the moons shallower gravity well would be a nice starting point.
Commercial quantities of hydrogen are not made by 'splitting up' water, since it is much too slow a process (and energy-consuming) but rather decomposing methane.
Moreover, any process to change XXXXXX into Liquid Hydrogen uses energy. How will you produce such energy? Even if you use a non-oil-based energy source, at some point in the manufacturing process, oil will be involved. Whether it was materials, production, whatever.
Back during the apollo program, getting to the moon first was considered such a worthwhile goal that losing one in ten flights with all hands was considered acceptable risk. No way would something with a 10% chance of catastrophic failure per launch get the necessary approval today. Maybe that's sad, maybe that's good, but that's the way it is.
NASA Kennedy is 1,000 NASA employees and 15,000 contractors.
It's just a question of whether they contract out the vehicle support like they do now, or the entire vehicle.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Hey, I'm right with you on wondering why, even if the oil all vanished tomorrow, it'd be a calamity for anything apart from transportation.
Well, petroleum is used in the production of plastics, so that's important. And pretty much all the goods in the United States, at least, are transported for a good portion of their journey via diesel truck. (What do container ships use for propulsion?)
I suppose this is another reason to love the idea of electric cars---much easier to move the energy generation somewhere easier to replace than an enormous fleet of cars.
'Course, all this'd go away if we had fusion. Pfeh.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
John F. Kennedy Address at Rice University in the Space Effort September 12, 1962
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about to years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.
But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag o
adding the mission could be followed by the construction of a multinational space station there.
I am all for going back to the moon ASAP, but leave the multinational out of it. The ISS was supposed to be a big hug between US/Russia/Europe/Japan. It has turned out to be a big pissing match. Why would the US want to get into that again?
an ill wind that blows no good
We're humans, we explore, we expand, we advance. Scientific advance is the uttmost and single goal of our existence. The whole global economy is simply there to support the advance of the human race, and the increase of our knowledge database as a whole. To stop wondering, stop asking question, stop persuing new answers and frontiers is to stop being human.
Well, for a direct connection: splitting water requires electricity. Peak oil, and the resulting energy crisis likely to result, would impact (but not preclude) production of the required electricity.
A bigger concern would be that the shuttle components use petroleum products in their manufacture, and the shuttle components are transported using conventional fuels-- EG: whenever they have to land at Edwards AFB instead of in Florida. Not to mention most of the support equipment at Kennedy launch center is conventionally fueled.
The biggest concern, however, is the potential impact on the US economy in general, and the food supply in particular. Modern fertilizers are produced using fossil foods, and it's a long (diesel-fueled) truck haul from the farm to the grocery store. If gasoline prices quadruple (such as occured during the ~5% shortfall during the 1970's), this will greatly increase consumer food costs, and cut into consumer discretionary spending-- and send major shocks across the economy. With the US government already having deficit problems, that doesn't look good for funding NASA.
Alternative fuels (EG: biodiesel) appear at least in potential able to replace the failing stocks of petroleum in its role as fuel and chemical source. However, that won't happen overnight. Furthermore, production needs to generate substantially more output than it requires in operational inputs.
Barring major breakthroughs, the picture gets ugly about five to ten years after peak.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I'm not about to act like I know anything about this. I'm just curious to have someone elses opinion.
The moon orbits around the earth because it is in the earths gravitational field much like how earth is in the sun's gravitational field. If we begin building things on the moon would this not eventually lead to it's overall mass becoming greater thus giving the posibilty of the moon being pulled closer to the earth or possibly being thrown off (balance/it's axis)? I would imagine this would take a great deal of building and possibly having an actual civilization on the moon to do this. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts.
No, not that bizzare '60's TV show...
The last time a man (or human of any gender) walked on the Moon was what, 1972 or 1973? I was a teen at the time. It would be nice to see this again before I reach retirement age!
Tag lost or not installed.
Manufacturing- it costs thousands of dollars per kg to loft materials. Nice try. Medicine? We already spend 3x more than any other country per-person on health-care and have some of the worse quality-of-life indexes around; everyone else seems to be doing the whole "health care thing" on planet earth just fine. Astronomy- we have no way to build these "huge delicate structures", and compound arrays have proven far easier to construct, operate, and repair (look at how much trouble we had with lofting Hubble- two tries. You want to put a Hubble on the MOON?). Way station for future voyages. We're doing a fine job of assembling vehicles here on earth and lobbing them to the furthest reaches of our solar system just fine. I see a huge number of problems with moon assembly (the dust, for starters) of sensitive mechanisms.
Nevermind that you're using cyclical justification. We need a moon base to make building stuff/shooting it off practical. It will be practical to have a moon base if we have stuff to build there/shoot it off.
Please help metamoderate.
To get there (again) and set up a moon base, before the Chinese do.
The U.S. would never have seriously contemplated (which is all I consider this to be at the curent time, considering our huge deficits - how will we pay for this?) going back to the moon if it wren't for the Chinese working at a real space program and Lunar missions.
Heck, it took the threat of a Russian rival space program, with nightmares of orbital stations dropping nukes on us, to inspire any real interest the first time around.
And please don't say it was all Kennedy (some of it was); without the Russians to galvanize against in the cold war little, if anything, would have come of it.
Our pride and security was at stake and apparently it is again. Kind of, sort of. Which is why I'm still skeptical.
A moon base would be great, though.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
*I* want to be able to go to the moon and that is not going to happen, *ever*, through NASA.
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It's amazing what technology has and has not advanced since the late 60's. Computers are orders of magnitude faster, but we don't have flying cars.
What it comes down to is that propultion technology has not really advanced that far. Sure, it's more efficient and fine-tuned, but it's not revolutionarily different. I mean, if all you have is chemicals, all you can do is tinker with what chemicals you use. The only revolutionary change will occur when we develop propultion technology that doesn't use chemicals.
instead of wasting it on moon travel?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
They say they'll land on the moon... But they said that last time! And this time, I'm not going to be fooled, no sir!
Secondly, Mars and the moon are going to be totally different kettles of fish to colonize. Mars has an atmosphere, thin as it is, roughly 24-hour days, and a bloody cold climate. The Moon has no atmosphere whatsoever, four-week days (making it near-impossible to grow anything there), and temperatures that go from bloody cold to bloody boiling. I'm not sure how much we're going to learn about living on Mars from the Moon.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Actually, one helps solve the other. The flight from the Earth to the moon involves getting into Earth orbit and then getting to the moon. If it can be done in stages, it can be done much more efficiently. If you don't have to carry everything needed for Earth re-entry all the way to the moon and back, this is a savings.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
"I've also decided to go on a huge roadtrip in 2015, but I too have no idea how I'll get there... Nor do I know what I'm going to do with my current vehicle (a 1975 Honda civic) once it is scheduled to be retired (2010 at the latest). But don't you worry, I'll manage to pull it off somehow... ;)"
...But it's funny. NASA managed somehow back then, too.
Well back in my day, we didn't even have a Honda Civic! We had to build our Honda from the ground up! We had to smelt the parts with our BARE HANDS, little gipper! AND WALK BOTH WAYS IN THE SNOW TO ORBIT AND BACK!!!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
GWB and congress prohibited sending money to Russia. We can not even buy future rides on their rockets if we are having issues with ours.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
a lot of hot air to me. NASA couldn't get back to the moon if they wanted to. They don't have the guts or the funding, and they no longer have the technology to do it. NASA will never again send anyone to the moon, but if anyone does it will be private industry or the military, and it will be decades away. It's very likely China or India will beat them to the punch.
That reminds me..
"We explored the Earth looking for women. Even went to the Moon, just to see if there was any woman there. That's why we brought that little car, why would you bring a car, unless there's some chance of going on a date? What the hell are you doing with the car on the god-damn Moon? I never was able to figure that out. You're on the Moon!!! Isn't that far enough?!
There was no more male idea in the history of the Universe, than "Why don't we fly up to the Moon and drive around?". That is the essence of male thinking right there." - Jerry Seinfeld
Legally. In fact, you could call them laws. That's why transportation hasn't advanced hugely. Break them and you're in a whole universe of trouble.
The real killer is Newtons Law of Universal Gravitation. If only they'd repeal that one. Not that any of the guy's other laws help either, he really f*cked up from the word go with his first law.
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Yeah.. um.. anyone remember the HUBBLE? Personally, I think it's kinda neat and it should be fully serviced instead of all of this arm waving that the Whitehouse, along with its associates have been doing. Real scientific endeavours have been made with the Hubble, but it's all going to go to waste and its replacement is in jeopardy. I don't understand how one can push for a return to the moon, which has been well studied, when there is a lot of science that needs a healthy Hubble or its replacement (JWST.. and we'll see if that gets canned too.)
If this is just another flag and footprints mission, then what is the point. Let's use the money for something else. There really needs to be some sort of profit motive for this, otherwise it will be another apollo style program. Land, take bunches of pretty pictures, do a few experiments, then go away for fifty years.
My Weblog
Most of the things you suggested can be done more cheaply on earth. But there is nothing to substitute for a thrill of a space trip. More and more of the world's GDP is spent on entertainment and travel.
Dont underestimate entertainment as a tech driver. Hollywood, games, and toys are pushing many aspects of computr science.
The moon is a Harsh Mistress
One of the best books I have EVER read. You don't need to know anything else, just get to your library and thank your lucky stars you were let IN on this book.. nuff said.
Smile.
Nevermind that the moon sustains our ecosystem by creating low and high tides in the ocean...
Why international? We will just pay for all of it any way. If we need any Russian lift vehichles, we can just hire them. The International Space Station is pathetic. We would have been far better off with the original, US centric proposal.
There are two main reasons that people are not fighting over land on the Moon:
1) there are no particularly great natural resources to be found there.
2) though it may represent an "ultimate high ground," it is tactically useless so far as intra-Earth movements go. A base on the Moon designed to effect enemies on the Earth would be the equivalent of a sniper's nest on Mount Everest: you're higher than everybody else, and you may be able to see everything, but your weapon is way out of range.
A third reason may also have some bearing(i.e. that there's so much of it), but that only holds so long as number one isn't altered by the discovery of a localized deposit of something-or-other.
I don't say this to bash any particular administration, it's just the way land gets appraised governmentally.(ANY government) The theoretical benefits, large as they might be, are too far off for governments to be too gung ho about. People take risks. Small groups do too. Governments, not so much.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Don't go to the moon.
Shut Down Nasa
Put the $200 billion or so over the next decade towards paying down the debt. Have a small side effort geared towards less primitive propulsion technologies than the current ones which are fairly absurd for manned space travel.
Your eggs are done. Entropy wins. Get over this whining about keeping the human race going by expanding to another planet/solar system/galaxy. You will die. It will die. Even if you could magically become immortal, you're still hosed. Heat death of the universe. Game over. Life's a bitch and the whole universe is running down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Patrol/
I got nothin'
How? Do you plan to just pile up the bills in a stack.
What kind of bills anyway?
Dollar or unpaid bills. I.O.U.s?
Doesn't matter. This administration is not funding anything unless it can go BOOM! The president's a lame duck who's trying to fight demographics. The congress can't agree on an energy policy.
We're going nowhere unless we can take a slow boat there. (Where our tax base is going anyway along with our jobs.)
Do I sound bitter. Nah!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Glad to see there still are level headed people out there
"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low
We're fighting a war. Oil prices are hitting new highs. Our roads and schools are crap.
And when our government is not debating steroids, they're talking about spending money on going to the moon?
I guess that kind of money is a drop in the bucket when our national budget is $2.2 trillion. Then again, with so many drops in that bucket, when are we ever going to be able to cut back?
The cost per mile (and the overnight stays) even a gummint rate would be prohibitive.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Baldrson writes "Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."
Seastead this.
The moon is a great laboratory for learning how to exist in deep space. We need to learn deep space survival skills, shelter construction, how to process materials and more before even thinking about attempting a manned Mars mission. At some point we need to start learning to use whatever space resources we can. Both because an emergency may mean astronauts can't count on bringing everything in a can, and also in a larger sense that there is only a finite amount of resources available on our planet and they are only going to diminish. Also: Rest assured our (us US citizens) govenment is going pour similar money into junk weapons or into some rat hole or another anyway. As it goes, this will actually be a pretty good use of our tax dollars.
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Manufacturing- it costs thousands of dollars per kg to loft materials.
Not if you mine and refine the materials on the Moon. You do know that the Moon is basically a chunk of Earth's crust, right?
Medicine? We already spend 3x more than any other country per-person on health-care and have some of the worse quality-of-life indexes around; everyone else seems to be doing the whole "health care thing" on planet earth just fine.
Those are short-term inefficiencies. I'm thinking long-term. I have no advice on whether Lunar medicine is public, private, or a combination thereof.
And don't tell me anyone is doing "just fine." I worked in patient care for almost ten years, and have been on the research side of things for about seven years; I know as well as anyone how many people die of or are disabled by diseases and injuries whose causes we understand, but which we just can't cure with our current technology. I'm not saying low-g would be a panacea by any means, but for large numbers of cardiac, pulmonary, and orthopedic problems, it would offer huge benefits.
Astronomy- we have no way to build these "huge delicate structures", and compound arrays have proven far easier to construct, operate, and repair (look at how much trouble we had with lofting Hubble- two tries. You want to put a Hubble on the MOON?).
Right, and no engineering problem has ever been solved by the development of new technology. *snort*
Way station for future voyages. We're doing a fine job of assembling vehicles here on earth and lobbing them to the furthest reaches of our solar system just fine.
Long term. Long term. Long term. You're thinking in terms of sending unmanned probes out on one-way voyages. I'm thinking in terms of moving people and goods back and forth.
I see a huge number of problems with moon assembly (the dust, for starters) of sensitive mechanisms.
Maintain a pressurized environment (with oxygen and other gases mined on the Moon, of course) with a slight, steady bleed-out into vacuum. People work in the pressurized areas. The dust gets steadily blown outside.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Nevermind that the moon sustains our ecosystem by creating low and high tides in the ocean...
Did I say that we should completely destroy the moon? No, I did not. With our current level of technology, would such a thing even be possible? Probably not.
Besides, if ocean tides were changed or eliminated, the only organisms that wouldn't survive are the rubbish ones that couldn't adapt. Adaptation of lifeforms is the reason that we're here in the first place.
I don't suppose the mod that rated my post 'Troll' would care to reverse that by posting and telling me what was incorrect about what I said? No, I thought not.
The Moon sucks, period.
All we go to do is prove that the Mysterons are actually on Mars and they will wage war with almost industructable men. Bush will bite the bait. :P
I mean Iraq had WMD so why cant Mars have Mysterons? Build a base on the moon, send a war fleet. Marines in space suits. And Captain Scarlet leading the way!
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
I mean abrasive.
Oh good, it will be international. That means the US taxpayer gets to foot the bill, and whole world gets to use it. Maybe Russia can sell trips to it for $20 M a pop while we pay to maintain it. Yeah, that's the ticket....
moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon!!!!!!!
I fully endorse another trip to the moon.
I'd even donate money to the venture.
Pretty Pictures!
I agree with one of responses that its the cost to orbit that NASA and/or private companies should research. So, what ever happened to making a railgun, or more conventional catipult like system to fling stuff into space?? I know Arther C. Clark discussed it at some point and without rocket motors the G's needed to accelerate something from Earth's surface would SQUISH a human, but hell, it would work for supplies and raw materials. Cylinders of O2 can withstand 15 Gs. So why can't we fling some shipping containers full of sullpies up and meet them up there? I would love some answers??
I mean, if it wasn't for the librul tax-and-spend idiots at NASA, we wouldn't have satellites, so no cell phones, satellite tv or cable. Then life could be simple again, where it would be safe to walk outside without getting hassled by drug addicts and foreigners!!!!!
Oh, and all those areo-- aero-- whatsit improvments to airplanes that make them run father with less gas that NASA invented? WTF!! If g-- wanted man to fly, then g-- would've put wings on 'em, but that's for angels and stuff! Imagine man trying to be an angel! BLASPHEMERS WILL ROT IN hELL!!!!
So now you're going to say that the nwe space base will solve all kinds of problems and save money and stuff, but its all a trick!! By the libruls who want to raise our taxes!Look at how much gas costs already!I have to pay $60 a week to fill up my kids explorer because of those libruls and now they want to make BILLARY president? No way in hell is some split tail going to be the most powerful man on the planet, unless she wants to be a man, that is! Hahahah! Libruls always want to imbrace the gays, why dont they become one? As governor perry said.why don't the gays just go somewhere else where theyre welcome, like iran!!! hahahahah
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The Shuttle is scheduled to be retired after 2010, or after the next crash, whichever comes first.
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NASA doesn't even have a design ready to replace the shuttle.
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NASA's last three heavy-lifter projects all failed.
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It took 11 years, from 1970 to 1981, to build and fly the Shuttle.
So there's going to be a period after 2010 during which the US won't have a heavy launch capability. Probably a long period.NASA has announced that in 2015 monkeys "may" fly out of Jeb Bush's butt and break the sound barrier in record time. Once this is done they "may" colonize space in what "may" be termed the "butt-monkey freedom station".
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Have men already been to the moon?
- Headline: "Bush Invents Cure For Cancer". Reaction: "Nice way to make us forget the people he killed in Iraq."
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Headline: "Bush Finds Way To Rebuild WTC For Free". Reaction: "Good, because he knocked them down in the first place."
- Headline: "Bush Dissolves Army, Discovers Unlimited Energy, and Unveils Free Health Care With Raising Taxes Plan". Reaction: "Bet Halliburton will make money off this!"
I thank you for raising these important moral and philosophical issues. You may find you have picked the wrong forum for them, however.I'd certainly applaud Bush if he came up with a cure for cancer. Probably that would be the best thing he could do for his legacy right now. If he managed it, then there would actually be some debate as to whether he saved more lives than he took.
I'm not one of these "Bush was responsible for 9/11" people -- show me some evidence -- but if he was responsible (as you seem to be assuming here) then isn't that still one of the most monstrous acts ever perpetrated by a Western leader against his own people, short of Nero burning Rome? How would rebuilding the WTC erase that?
Now you're inviting a philosophical debate. Is a systemically corrupt government acceptable if it achieves noble ends? In other words, does the end justify the means?
Breakfast served all day!
2. People are afraid of nuclear.
Durn tootin' they are. Most of this fear is irrational and out of proportion. (Nuclear power is dangerous, but global warming is much, much more dangerous... and what does geenpeace concentrate on?) BUT, nuclear rockets are dangerous and need to be developed carefully. And that careful development is very expensive and it is often far cheaper to spend effort of well behaved chemical systems like hydrogen peroxide.
In the case of CEV Spiral Two, the engines would be used for pure orbital work, so there would be little to no concern of any materials reaching Earth.
This is a VERY EXPENSIVE thing to prove. And they'll have to prove it if they want to use anything nuclear... the courts will make them. Just look at the crazy stuff that happened to Cassini during its Earth flyby.
Man, I thought I'd gotten everyone around here trained in how Nuclear Thermal Rockets work. [...]Unfortunately, there was a Graphite Ablation problem from the heat
Graphite Ablation == Deadly Radioactive Cloud.
Early testing of Nuclear Thermal Rockets is a big part of why St. George Utah has such mind-bogginly high cancer rates.
but the modern TRITON engine fixes that by utilizing Tungsten cladding.
Yeah, but how do you test this system? You need to collect all of the exhaust from the rocket and scrub it for any radioactive particles. THIS IS HARD. And that's why we haven't built an NTR.
One thing that has me excited about a moon base is that it will be an ideal place to test dangerous stuff like a nuclear thermal rocket and get it to the point where the exhaust is just really, really hot hydrogen. NTR is an amazing technology that will make going to Mars much easier.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Nuclear engines *could* do constant thrust, but most aren't designed that way. Running the reactor hot enough for that long tends to wear out the components rather quickly.
:-)
Most designs require constant thrust because the fuel is used a coolant. But the thrust levels are less during the thrusting-to-avoid-meltdown phases in order to save fuel. And the components do wear out fairly quickly, and radioactive debris begins to pollute the exhaust. This is why nuclear thermal rockets aren't useful (yet).
I think you'll see Spiral Two initially consisting of nuclear rockets (since the astronauts will need to get to the moon quickly), then you'll later see Ion rockets used for cargo-only runs.
Using Nuclear thermal rockets to get to the moon is a dumb ass idea. Chemical rockets can get there in a perfectly reasonable amount of time. Compare Apollo's Earth to moon time to how long it takes a Soyuz or Shuttle to rendezvous with the ISS... 4 days vs. 2 days... perfectly reasonable.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Even if they are only planning unmanned probes, somebody in the US gov is going to have a problem with anyone else claiming a moon mission while NASA has no viable option for returning.
I mean, come on, what if they knock down Neil's flag?
These people (NASA, its suppliers and contractors, their lobbyists, and the politicians being lobbied) are pulling the wool over our eyes yet again. They are exploiting many people's belief that human space exploration is useful or desirable, and that humans must be physically present at all times. This is a magical-religious belief. It has no basis in fact, and is monstrously expensive and wasteful. Ironically, its vastly greater cost as compared to robotic space missions actually drastically reduces the amount of exploration and science that can be done. Look at the successes of the Mars and Titan missions, to name just two examples of what can be accomplished without some bozo there to turn things on and off.
The great expense of human space exploration is itself the goal, not the exploration and certainly not the science. The object of the game is to continue to channel billions of dollars to the same old defense industries that prospered during the Cold War. They are a big lobby. They became used to a roiling river of government money that lasted two generations. They have not gone away, and they are not planning on giving up and joining the ranks of the Average Joe. They want that money, and they want it now. Apparently, a hundred billion dollars a year from the "War on Terrorism" is not enough.
If exploiting the magical-religious inclinations of the general public is an efficient way to get their hands in the Federal till, then so be it. The astute reader will notice an underlying pattern being applied.
This idea of an international station is a good one - it worked out so well the last time.
This space available.
Eventually, I can see the Moon becoming a giant retirement colony, a kind of mega-Florida for old people who want to live out their days in comfort.
I dunno about that. Putting persons who sometime can't remember where or who they are, into a building with airlocks with air on one side and vacuum on the other, seems like a bad idea.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
a. McDonald's
b. Coca-Cola
c. Wal*Mart
d. Dept of Homeland Security
I suppose the point of this is to establish a weapons storage and launch system on the moon. We might be out of Iraq by then.
Why?
Few comments.
Only two reasons to go to the moon as I see it, one is to use it as a base to launch more missions, and two is to research how to exist in that sort or eniroment and produce stuff from it.
Last I read, using our current technology, a chemical rocket, using hydrogen, would not work. I read someplace that in order to get to the closest star (perhaps it was with planets), within a reasonable time (I think they used a 100 years, but half that is more likely) and not kill everyone with extreem g-forces, you would have to burn pretty much constantly all the way (accelleration, and then braking), and to do so would consume about the same about of hydrogen as our sun. Which if you think about scale, is a pretty stupid statistic.
So in short if the purpose is to use moon as a base to explore the galaxy, well we would be better served by developing technology, that would enable travel. That is, why build a base to manufacture stuff, if the only stuff we can manufacture is pretty useless for that scale (or even solar system scale).
So that pretty much kills reason number one.
The second reason to figure out how to manufacture stuff and to figure out how to live in that that enviroment, well as to my knowlege ther really hasn't been much research into either. I think I would rather figure that stuff out BEFORE we go the the moon and try to just wing it or something.
Its not like we haven't studied the moon or anything, we know what the enviroment is like. Has anyone tried to construct a mock up? or Procedures for setting of manufacting facilities? Mining? How about ore smelting? construction? How about processes for extracting Air and Water from the moon? It is way to expensive to ship crap out of earth's gravity well... Have to get stuff locally.
It just seems to me that serious though has not been put into this endevor. I mean I am an idiot shlub and I can come up with tons of stuff that could plausibly be problems or issues.
If this is going to be another, "hey guys look what I can do!" affair, be it a distraction from a domestic and or international woes or just an opiate of the masses (I can just see some dumb shit like "Suvivor MOON!" or some wierd media event when you can vote some poor bastard off the shuttle or something).
Perhaps I am just cynical, but i see this as more of a circus than a serious scienctific endevor. If that is the case, then I ask Why? I can think of many more useful (perhaps not as cool) and more important things to spend several billion on.
Just to reinforce what you wrote, the benefit is squared, not linear. A first order aproximation is that the energy needed to reach those velocities is a squared function. Escape energy from the moon to leave earth as well is probably the difference.
So... 7.6^2=58 to launch from earth to earth orbit. 13^2=169 for intrasolar.
3^2=9 to put launch from the moon to earth orbit. 169+9-11^2=57 for intrasolar stuff.
Better than launching from earth directly.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
So, we're going to go to Mars on a timetable that completely eliminates any accountability for him, while spending tremendous amounts of money on this, but we can't give NASA the funding to keep the Hubble, which will hold the title of greatest astronomical instrument ever for at least another ten years, from burning up on reentry?
Yeah, he's real dedicated to space. Mars/Moon is a boondogle designed to make Bush look like Kennedy. He wants to be a visionary without the annoying aspect of actually implementing said vision getting in his way like it did with his World of Democracy vision.
If any of the headlines you said were actually true, and not cynical half-hearted attempts to look like he's doing what you said, I'd applaud them. Instead, his energy plan consists of drilling in the ANWR and building more coal plants.
I'm willing to give credit where it is due. I hate Clinton, but I was pretty pleased when he relaxed cryptography export restrictions, just as an example So, out of curiosity, what exactly should I be giving Bush credit for?
The enemies of Democracy are
Getting a manned mission to the center of the Sun wouldn't be hard. Just get out of earth's gravity well and point them towards the Sun. Oh, you want them to return?
The dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program.
You know the old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket...
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
What about EELV? The current Delta IV "Heavy" does 50,000 lbs to LEO the equivalent Atlas IV is similar. Also with EELV we have two independent launch systems that don't share components so if one gets grounded the other can stil fly. The new Deleta and Atlasses also now have a comon payload interface so payloads can be swapped between launchers. OK 50K pounds is not a saturn but it is close to a shuttle. Both EELVs would have to be "man rated" but this has been done, remember when the Mercury and Gemini projects were launched with man rated ICBMs It should be easier this time around because both EELVs were designed with the idea that they might need to go through this process. I don't see the US needing to develope a new launch vehicle when it was two good ones already operational and launching at a relative high rate already
So what? Griffin restates the VSE goals at an Air Show in Paris.
Some examples of real news:NASA downselect for CEV was indeed announced Monday, as the article says could happen.
Photos of t-space testing a new Air Launch method for rockets.
BTW, if you want interesting human spaceflight news check HobbySpace RLV News periodically.I was the one who came up with this. But due to budget cuts, they had to change "Back to the Future" to "Back to the Moon." Otherwise, it's pretty much as is.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Check out:
http://www.subnet.com/fleet/ssn593.htm
We have lost at least one...
Are you mods braindead, or was I grossly misinformed?
THERE'S NOTHING IMPORTANT ON THE MOON.
I don't understand why everyone keeps assuming we're going to send up a bunch of astronauts to be construction workers working ludicrously short shifts.
It makes far, far more sense to send up teleoperated construction equipment (only 1 second time lag--if we can do Mars, we can do the Moon a zillion times better). Robots don't require life support, robots can be operated 24-7 by rotating shifts of geeks, robots can be scaled up or down rather than coming in just one "average adult human" size, and dropped to the surface at higher Gs. Robots can run off of a solar array or RTG.
Most importantly, much of the expensive redundancy of man-rated boosters can be avoided by sending lots of robots. Maybe only 1 in 2 (but more likely 49 in 50) of the robots will arrive, but nobody cares if the cargo explodes.
We don't even need sophisticated general purpose robotics, although it might lighten the load if we can just ship one robot with a hundred different attachments. But it's perfectly reasonable to send up specialized units for each phase of the job.
I imagine building a moon base using robots for eventual manned habitation would start by setting up the "robot base station", which would be a solar collector farm, and the robots would attach themselves via cables. Then they'd proceed to burrow into the lunar regolith, until they reach the appropriate depth for adequate radiation shielding.
Cheap, lightweight inflatable segments can be used to keep the preliminary habitat from collapsing, and once all systems are up and running and working reliably, you can send up the first manned crew to finish the interior decorating.
I wondered how long it'd take to go from +4 back down to +1. Thanks, Slashdot moderators, for the continual reminder.
Its going to be great when we get to the moon. Moreover, replacing the shuttle is a smart move.
Why the moon? There could be fuel on the moon. A more protected place to inhabit than leo. You have resources there that you do not have to launch up from the earth.
Mars is 6 months away. Just hybernate people with hydrogen sulfide. This cuts down supplies etc.
Replace the shuttle and thou shalt have money with same budget. You can always cut the bee keeper program. NASA is pretty unanimous on the direction from what I hear.
I think its doable. I'm all for the tspace crew transfer vehicle. Leaving infrastructure in space, using cargo ships and capsules for human transport is the way to go and much cheaper!
China and Japan will have completed colonization of the Moon a decade before the US gets in gear, and five years before the EU.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So, we're going to go to Mars on a timetable that completely eliminates any accountability for him, while spending tremendous amounts of money on this, but we can't give NASA the funding to keep the Hubble, which will hold the title of greatest astronomical instrument ever for at least another ten years, from burning up on reentry?
Because people actually care/cared about the Hubble Space Telescope - so obviously they can't do that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We're too scared to go back after seeing all those crystal towers, domes, castles and shit.
Nobody cares about the moon. We went, it was damn cool, and we learned a lot. Great! But it is useless to go again, until we advance in a couple areas.
Propulsion/launch systems. We need to get large chunks of stuff into orbit quickly, often, and cheaply.
Manufacturing in zero G. We need to be able to build things in orbit. Big, serious things, like space craft that are worthy of serious long distance space travel. The first big thing we need to build is a factory and housing!
Training. We will need to put large numbers of ordinary people in orbit to fill manufacturing jobs, and we need to be able to train them for such service quickly. There's no reason to have top notch fly boys turning wrenches in space.
Once we get those things figured out, we can build craft that are capable of going to the moon and back without breaking a sweat. Then perhaps we can begin mining on the moon, or on asteroids, where the low gravity will permit easier material removal. Then we can step up production of raw materials in space, which will greatly lessen the need to carry raw materials up from the Earth's surface.
Then we can build craft that can go to Mars and back without breaking a sweat. Or further. Once we can build very large craft that will never be subjected to gravity, the... uh... sky's the limit.
All this pussy footing around NASA has been doing since the space race is sickening.
just UFO's...
I'd imagine their lunar base might look a something like this.
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
I hope they check the details of the luna registry database before they start building the international base. I can see it now... Ohio Man Sues for Non-Payment of International Rent A man in Ohio is suing NASA for non-payment of rent after they built an international base on his plot of land.
We have the technology today to get back to the moon fairly quickly, if we put our minds (and dollars) to it. I don't think it will happen, though - not by NASA anyway. NASA and the rest of America have lost their stomach for manned space flight.
In the 60s it was understood that space was dangerous and that people could die. Apollo 1 proved that, but the program continued on. Columbia, sad though it was, was an accident. A statistical event. Bound to happen sooner or later, yet over two years later the shuttle fleet is still grounded whilst they wrestle with "hardly good enough" solutions for highly unlikely problems that, given the impending retirement of the fleet, will probably never occur again.
If you hide under a rock and refuse to come out until every single possible danger has been eliminated, you'll never emerge. If you try to build even a simple space ship with contingencies for every single possible failure, you'll never succeed, or you'll spend ass-loads of money and settle with something imperfect. Then, given enough flights, the one thing you didn't inclue will kill someone. That's the cost of doing business in space.
Space flight will always be dangerous. NASA, the public and the government must accept that and get their heads back into the game if we're ever to go anywhere again.
Hasn't that been done before - like 40 years ago? (I can see the reasons for going back, just not why it will take so long) Actually back then, it took LESS than 10 years, starting from scratch. Haven't we learned anything in the last half century?
But the periods on the moon can be chosen for convenience. On Mars, there isn't terribly much choice in the matter, and the intervals are *much* longer.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
*I* want to be able to go to the moon and that is not going to happen, *ever*, through NASA.
. . . act like a robot.
Tag lost or not installed.
...now the new excuse out of getting a ticket will be "these aren't the droids you're looking for".
That's funny, I heard this conversation between two NASA financial administrators the other day:
NASA Accountant: It looks like our accounts receivable supplies are wearing thin. We need to do some fundraising.
NASA P.R. dude: Hey! Let's announce again that we'll return to the moon within 10 years! That'll get us some quick cash, and nobody will figure out the ruse until it's too late!
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
I remember reading a book on the result of the roswell incident from someone in the foreign technology division. One of the things the military wanted to do then, was to build a moon base. Course it never got off the ground, other then from having plans for it. Maybe they might make it this time.
My Gawd WTF...
"We're whalers on the moon. We carry our harpoons, but there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing this whaling tune."
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Ain't that a fact - and in our back pockets too. Et ce Taco - il faut qu'il se repose un peu.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
if they can't do it in Earth orbit
They could do it - they just don't really want to.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Flamebait? Someone sure hates you, TMM. I call him Unfair.
Don't worry.
:)
I got your modbomber in metamoderation.
The abuse of the "troll" rating was properly marked "Unfair."