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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.""
Actually, he didn't dismiss you. If he had, he wouldn't have bothered responding to your post at all.
What of the previous moon trip, Skylab, the russian station, ISS, the Shuttle missions?
Oh, so we've already discovered everything we're going to discover in space, then? You sound like those people who wanted to close the Patent Office in 1901 because there was 'nothing left to invent'.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I think the moon is the logical first step in any plan to go to mars. It will allow us to develop technology for long term exposure to the hazards of space. I know a lot of that can be done on the international space station, but there is a lot to be said for having a little gravity and something solid beneath you.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
And out of the room's [sic] raw materials, notably fine grey dust and grey rocks, you can make
Well, there are some folks over at the American Society of Civil Engineers woul might disagree with you there, sport.
Absolutely. Eveyone knows that mining and refining is so much easier in a hard vacuum. Not.
Nice attempt at misrepresentation, but no.
When I referred to the moon's lack of atmosphere as a plus, I was stating that launching these materials (either into lunar orbit, earth orbit, or to L5) could be accomplished much more easily (by utilizing a solar-powered linear accelerator, rather than rockets).
Hope that clears things up for you.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Sending any materials that we manage to mine from the moon back to the earth is madness. Besides their basic value, any materials that are up there have significant additional value just by virtue of them being up there...that is, not languishing at the bottom of an unreasonably deep gravity well.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Yes, but then China countered by claiming ownership of time.
^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Well, I would imagine that some small fraction of your federal income tax will go towards paying for this.
Given the choice between paying for a new moon shot and paying for the clusterfuck in Iraq, I'll shoot the moon. Given the choice between either of those two and making health insurance available to all citizens, well, it's a no brainer.