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NASA Plan to Return to the Moon
sjoeboo writes "NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion during the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018.
The U.S. space agency now expects to roll out its lunar exploration plan to key Congressional committees on Friday and to the broader public through a news conference on Monday."
The big changes since the inception of the program have been:
IMHO, Bush's administration has done a reasonable job of making sure that we are on a viable track to returning to the moon and reaching Mars. My hope is that the next President who shows up doesn't dive in and try to change everything. The plan is good. It only needs some nursemaiding, not micromanagement from on high. Thankfully there's a great deal of pressure to replace the Space Shuttle, so the future President may be willing to just let NASA do their job.
(FYI, Wikipedia has been keeping extremely good track of CEV Development as it happens. While Wikipedia is not a news source, this particular article is a good place to go for the latest status of the project.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What happened to Mars by 2015?
With Bush set to drop $200 billion on Katrina, finding money for going to the moon is going to be difficult. However, with the Chinese headed into space again, maybe they can argue it for national security.
This is my sig.
in 20 years there will be more people claiming that we didn't go to the moon along with the false evidence. Even if it were very well covered I bet someone would think that its a special army facility.
Nice to see that with modern 21st technology, we can make it to the moon in only thirteen years, as opposed to the long eight year program it took forty years ago.
The cake is a pie
It only took us 9 damn years to get there in the first place! Now that we already have the technology to make it there, they want 13 years?! Fuck that shit. Thye should be able to get there in at most 5 years. I'll bet $100 NASA's beaten by the Chinese or Burt Rutan. Any takers?
What is your penile percentile?
That's kinda steep! I wonder which actors would be chosen this time!
Everyone knows the moon landing were faked.
Besides, I would think that $100 Billion is too much. The price of motion picture special effects has come down a lot since the 60s.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Nearly half a century to "return" to the moon... Something tells me things aren't as efficent as can be.
Congress won't fund these guys well enough to put people in low earth orbit safely, and they want to go back to the Moon?
-JDF
They have no reason for going to the moon. At least Apollo had a reason, the space race against the evil commies, but this time, not even that much. No doubt we'll go there a few times and stop again.
Moon colonies would be great, from a science fiction point of view, but without an actual practical reason that involves real colonists with real practical uses, this new moon plan will be just another short sighted waste of time and money. I'd rather that money was spent on technology that had actual uses for most people. Don't preach to me about spin-offs. There would be just as many spin-offs from orbital hotels or quiet and environmentally friendly hypersonic transports or practical electric cars with batteries to go 500 miles.
Infuriate left and right
What reason could they possibly have for spending $100B on this?
Because that is NASA's budget. IIRC, NASA's budget used to be about $14 billion per year. Bush has given the budget a few small increases since then. Yet even at the figure I gave, we're still talking about spending $168 billion on NASA over the next 12 years.
There really isn't anything new in these figures. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather see that $100 billion go into getting to the moon than into flying the Space Shuttle up and down a few more times.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
we already went there once with FAR inferior technology (or did we ?.. cue tin foil hat) ... it shouldnt take us 12 years to do it again ..
All the rockets they need are stored in the kenedy space center museums.. gettem out.. dustem off and lets go already !
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Just watch. All this will be brought to nothing by the unmanned space flight mafia. It's just too attractive politically to push for unmanned space flight where there are no risks. We're slowly becoming a race of cowards when it comes to exploring new frontiers.
The owls are not what they seem
I don't care whether you define that "this decade" as starting in the year 2000 or the year 2005... ...if NASA could do it within a decade in the 1960s, why can't they do it within a decade now?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Or finding a way to get us off oil completely.
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
Cargo Cult Star Trek.
Project Mercury began in 1958 and 11 years later Project Apollo landed on the moon.
You'd think, in this day and age, we could do it faster, cheaper, safer.
Oh... US Government... I forgot.
Sorry for the spam.
While it's good to see NASA seriously looking into returning to the Moon, I think the money would be better spend in focusing on sending robotic missions. Not only would it be more cost effective, but it could have just as great a scientific return, and would spur the development of a technology that would have huge spin off benefits here on earth.
I'm also all for a more agressive effort to explore Mars robotically. But the idea of sending humans there so soon seems very foolish to me. Why? There's little benefit to having people do the exploring, when an advanced robot could do the job better, safer, and faster.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
From the article: One of NASA's reasons for going back to the Moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially "live off the land" by using lunar resources
The only problem I see is finding a spacesuit to fit Grizzly Adams.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
NASA's newly appointed Administrator Michael Brown announced that 240,000 volunteers had applied for permanent assignment to the newly constructed Moonbase NO. NASA's prime contractor Halliburton has been awarded an open-ended construction and integration contract.
I for one welcome our new private sector overlords.
Does this mean we don't have to rebuild New Orleans? Maybe the looters can walk away with a Shuttle ticket or something.
lol what? oil from what, mooninite-osaurs?
...because Plutonians are teh suck
For those who lived in a cave for a while and haven't been here yet.
Say what you will about Bush, he deserves a lot of it (and I even voted for him), but emphasizing manned space exploration will pay off big-time for general space science in the long run.
If we can get launch costs down (the best way to do that short of a miracle breakthrough is frequent launches) and a *productive* human outpost that is capable of 'living off the land', we'll get amazing robots assembled in space that don't have these severe mass limitations we get down here. If you can assemble your rocket engine from lunar materials, of course you can build a whiz-bang robot explorer.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
If you look about halfway down, you'll see that the budget of the CEV is far outweighed by NASA's other activities, as well as being less than the amount budgeted for the Space Shuttle.
fsh
This is the only plausible Bush White House agenda item that cause them to part with more than a token amount for space exploration. L1 is more useful as a platform from which to launch missiles back at earth than it is to launch science experiments back to the Moon. This is the administration that questions the validity and the necessity for most kinds of basic research so they're not going to part with large sums of money to do that sciencey stuff.
There was never life on the Moon to have oil...
Extracting other minerals is not a bad idea if Nasa finds a way to efficiently transport it back to earth though
I thought oil came from fossils.
Bah, they'll just re-use their sets in the painted desert! If they didn't go last time, why would they go this time?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Read between the lines.
Not "to get to the moon". Not "to put humans back on the moon". But "building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to".
In 2018, NASA will have spent $100B (or about $8-10B a year, probably around half to 3/4 of its bugdet). At the end of that timeframe, NASA will have contracted out the design and production of a new spacecraft, and some new rockets.
That's it. There's no lunar mission in there. There probably isn't even the planning for a lunar mission in there.
Most likely, the new spacecraft and rockets will either continue to fly into low earth orbit to service the white elephant known as ISS.
To blue-sky for a minute - the timeframe from 2018 to 2024 will be used for planning a lunar mission. The mission will be funded for the timeframe from 2018-2030. By which time, the spacecraft and rockets developed around 2015 will be obsolete scrap.
We're going to divert a lot of funds that could be used for science (which might be OK if we were going somewhere), but the fact of the matter is - just like 30 years ago, unless you count the contracts that'll get farmed out to every Congressional district, we're not going anywhere.
I'm hoping that's it's similar to my own Fire Depression System -- a 12-pack of beer.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
NASA spends this money in part to keep sections of the National aerospace industry operating. If they back off of things like manned space, big engines, that sector would quickly shutdown and we'd lose it completely.
Besides, the Federal Government doesn't look for oil, oil companies do. If the Feds handed this out to the oil companies, it would vanish. We know where the majority of the oil is and where the majority of the oil shale and oil sands are, we don't need to explore to the tune of 100 billion dollars.
I heard Bush found WMD's and not much democracy there. Plus, it shines light at night that terrorists may benefit from.
Res publica non dominetur
Enough pouring all the money into NASA. How about putting some to use here on earth, either to help the victims of Katrina, clean up the sewage/toxic waste pumping out of New Orleans, or simply reducing the deficit?
Well, it's not going to happen in the next 20 years. Even if the Feds threw 100 billion at it, it's not going to happen.
The aviation industry, military, plastics and road building sectors all need it for various things. Throwing money at it isn't going to solve our dependancy between now and 2018.
Set a date, any date, as long as it's two or more presidencies away and you basically don't have to come through with your promises, even better, someone else will take the blame.
Basically there isn't the political will to do something like this so they kick it into the long grass and allow schedules to slide, costs to rise until it becomes too expensive and has to be cut.
They're talking 100 billion anyway. They'd be better offering a 100 million prize for an orbital vehicle, half a billion prize for a lunar orbiter, a billion or two for a lunar base etc.
Deleted
UTF-8: There and Back Again
That's what insurance companies are supposed to be for. Because I'm not an idiot and I decided to live in a central state instead I am pissed off that this much ill-spent govt money will be going to fix this stupidity. It's like the fucking poor people: pay no taxes, reap all the bennefits. Take some responsibilty! Leave when they say you're gonna die and get flooded out. Embarassing.
They might be able to recoup the cost with Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks as one of the astronauts.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Collecting moon rocks: $100 Billion
Aid to Katrina victims: $10 Billion
Having the intelligence of a moon rock, yet still duping the American public into thinking you are a compassionate, Christian conservative: PRICELESS
Liberate the Moon. It obvious that a lot of the terrorists are coming from the moon. And the craters are proof that there are WMDs there! Why, it took some really big explosions to make them after all!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
It's be done, oh, wait a minute....
Funding was cut for a NASA plan to put shuttle astronauts back on Earth...
"Ten thousand?" Luke gasped. "We could buy our own ship!"
"But who's gonna fly it, kid? You?"
"You bet I could! Ben, we don't have to take this."
No doubt there will be those of the next generation up to the task, but you just don't see the push of science and space at least as I remember when I was going through school (of course the round wheel was the big thing back then). Is becoming an astronaut or rocket scientist as cool as becoming an "American Idol" or a reality TV star?
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
This is absurd. The 100 billion price tag could be used in R&D programs of far more potential value in biotech, energy research and environmental initiatives. Or in infrastructure improvements.
NASA is living proof of many key concepts of inefficiency in systems engineering, buraucracy and Parkinson's law.
Katrina is living proof of what happens when key infrastructure goes underfunded in deference to pork barrel projects.
The time has come to put an end to this sort of waste. We just cannot afford the opportunity cost.
Yea, I concur.
Using all those resources to send humans to the Moon is foolish. A remotely controlled robotic expedition would accomplish much more, faster, and for less money.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Remember, oil isn't everything. Neither is science, but it's still important enough to spend money on.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Huh. First time it took less than 10. Are we that much more stupider? Or just that much more broke?
By 2018, we'll be setting foot on the moon.. Did it take 13 years of planning back in 1969?
or else!
Is it just me, or do robots seem a lot better suited for space exploration than humans?
1) No food = okay
2) No air = okay
3) Rechargeable energy source via solar power
4) No fatalaties, just possibility of expensive loss of equipment
5) No boredom
6) Can stay indefinitely, e.g. Mars Rovers
Humans are just not made for space. Long-term, the human body has serious problems with being in space, such as degradation of bone mass and damage from high-energy cosmic rays. And with the robotics technology of today, it is not as economical as sending a nice robot.
When I read these headline, I think that we would be better served by putting that $100 billion into robotics and satellite programs rather than trying to go back to the moon (yet again).
That's because we're not just going to the moon. The CEV was begun with manned mars missions in mind, and lunar missions are only a stepping point. Everything about the CEV has to be stepped up a little bit because of that; thus the extra time.
I'm thinking this time, that perhaps we will see some additional leaps of technology. We certainly got enough technology breakthroughs from the space program. Perhaps, even with pesky physics still requiring the same effort to launch payloads into space, we can find a way to create a system that can better sustain itself. The Shuttle failed to create the space presence we should have. This time, let's do it right. Which is what NASA is trying to do.
Sure some of the commercial ventures are making progress, but unless they get some massive capital, I can't see any of them making a serious commitment to a permanant presence in space (and the ISS does not count as a permanant presence, anymore than Skylab or any other tin cans in space would).
What we really need to do is verify if there is water on the moon. If there is, then suddenly the value of the moon skyrockets. After all, with water, you get hydrogen, and oxygen, which means that the sustainability skyrockets. But we can't find out what's really there until we can make a more complete exploration. Sure, there's risks, with abrasive rocks and with radiation. And I'm sure it'd be even better to grab an asteriod and park it in orbit around the Earth, to use as a stepping stone, but the Moon isn't a bad place to start, with a shallower gravity well, and... I don't think we'll be killing any lifeforms if we end up having toxic by products from any productions.
So let's get up there and start looking around!
Of course, my big fear is that somehow, a future president or congress will think that thre are better things to spend the money on, or that having radiation emitting objects in space is bad (bad for what, I have no clue, evidently they haven't seen the sun in a while or something). But maybe this time, we'll stick to it. Here's hoping
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Slowly?
"This is considered plagiarism."
Imagine the beo^H^H^H cluster of interferometry space telescopes you could build with 100 billion!
I'll bet $100 NASA's beaten by the Chinese or Burt Rutan. Any takers?
No bet on the Chinese. I don't think they'll do it by then, but I wouldn't put it outside their potential capabilities.
I'd take your bet on Rutan, though. The man's accomplishments are fantastic, but all he's accomplished so far are two flights to the lower edge of space, which is a whole different ballgame both technologically and financially than LEO, let alone the moon. We're talking orders of magnitude more difficult and more expensive. It remains to be seen whether Rutan's "finesse" inexpensive approach will work for orbit and reentry. I hope so, but it's unproven.
For the time being, getting to the moon requires the resources of a major government.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Its kind of funny that the original space mission in the 1950's only took them 11 years to figure out how to fly into outerspace and land on the moon safely. Now its going to take us, in 2005..13 years to land on the moon? 2 or 3 years more than it originally took us, almost 50 years ago?
I suppose it's just best not to ever even think of doing anything in space at all until every single problem on Earth is addressed forever.
"This is considered plagiarism."
What happened to Mars by 2015?
An intravenous injection of fiscal reality?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
While this is great and all, I fully expect private industry to accomplish this goal far quicker and for much less money than NASA. The number of advancements in space technology that are featured on slashdot alone, coupled with the growth in space technology/exploration/commerce in the private sector really makes you wonder how a bloated government agency can compete with agile businesses.
This guy is spot on. We're all a bunch of fucking risk-averse pussies.
Before we go to the moon again, how 'bout getting us some shuttles first? The ones we have now are past their prime.
Another point, what good does it do us to go to the moon again? What's there that we haven't already seen? I know pure research is wonderful and all, but let's get what we need before we get what we'd like.
And we need shuttles. To get those satellites up there, to fix Hubble, to take care of our orbital missions quickly and cheaply.
Forget the moon. Been there, done that. Shuttles.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Whenever NASA says they'll spend $100 billion on something you wonder where they're going to get the $99 billion they don't have. They should really be thinking in terms of $1 billion over 10 years to lobby foreign space programs to do the work. Their role should not be developing technology but influencing the direction of foreign space programs to achieve their goals.
whatever you're smoking, please pass.
We can put a man on the moon, but we can't fucking get one on Martina Navratilova.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
The waste has been being trapped in Earth's orbit ever since Apollo ended. We have been pissing away billions just to orbit the Earth, something we did over 40 years ago.
We are not going to get anywhere in space until we get out of orbit. Putting a permanent presence on the moon opens more opportunities than any orbital venture ever would. Other than distance the tech involved to live on the moon would be easier that staying in orbit.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'm always a bit pissed off when I read these words on my braille terminal, you insensitive clod !
I just with this technology were done in partnership with a Scaled Composites or Armadillo Aerospace and released to the public domain so that the technology NASA developed continues on and doesn't die in a large beuracracy like the last moon stuff
Of course $50 Billion of that will be spent on developing foam that won't fall apart.
Enlightenment is a pipe dream. So where's the pipe?
Apple, meet your good buddy, Orange.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
What a catastrophic waste of money, in a country that does not guarantee even basic healthcare provision to its people.
Even Iraq had a more civilised system of healthcare provision before America starved over 2 million Iraqi children to death with sanctions when they lost control of the dictator they installed.
I mean, come on... does the word "again" mean that this time they will use the latest and greatest technology to make fake photos? Perhaps a video with no coke bottle showing up?
... good one?
I know, I know!!
Now somebody on the set will be drinking PESI!!!
And the crosshairs in the pictures will now match the... well.. the sunlight will be going in only one direction... no wait!! the flag will not be extended thanks to the air on the moon, right?...
I mean... right?
Have a
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
Is will we be really landing on the moon or in the moon? Hate to have NASA misplace a decimal point again.
The whisper in your ghost.
You're deluding yourself if you think the amount of money spent to rebuild New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf coast over the next 12 years will not exceed $100 billion.
We don't have another $100B. For anything.
I wish we did, I want the US to go back to the Moon, especially to leverage all our science, engineering and indisputably pioneering investments. Before other, more ambitious (and less complacent) countries, like China, get up there first. And then, for example, set up giant solar power stations with technology we developed in the USA, from rocketry to photovoltaics. Solar power we'll have to buy with more money we haven't got.
But we've already spent that money. A $300B Lunar/Solar energy platform would make the US a lot safer than the terrorist cesspool we've created in Iraq. A lot more prosperous than the $TRILLIONS in taxes we're cutting on the rich, who don't seem interested in putting Americans on the Moon - not while they're staying rich enough selling us $12:barrel oil for $70.
Here's an idea: we recoup some of those unprecedented profits from American oil companies, that are underwritten by so much American expenses (dollars and military lives, just to get started). We reinvest them in the government space program to install American energy facilities on the Moon. Whoever and whenever we do that, American or otherwise, the American "oil" companies are going to wind up owning the business anyway. We might as well get ahead of the curve, and keep more for Americans. And get it done faster, so the rest of us without our own oil company don't have to suffer through $10:gallon gas before we finally are forced to do it.
--
make install -not war
BTW, It's too bad someone modd'd you as "Troll". It's a good thing /. wasn't around when Thomas Paine, D.r Rev. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, etc ... were around. Otherwise they would have been mod'ed into oblivion.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
It was supposed to read "...drinking PEPSI"
AHHHH!!!!!!
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
Just remind me again why America is going back to the moon. Did you leave something behind?
Seriously though why go back? Is it because the chinese will be able to get there soon so it's time to flex some muscle and show them who's boss?
I'm not going to whine about how the money could be better spent on feeding the poor etc etc. I firmly believe that the money should be spent on science but come on. Surely you can get more bang for you buck from other areas of research. $100 billion would build a fusion reactor. It would go a long way to producing a hydrogen economy. I could cure a number of diseases. Why fritter it away so that a couple of people can walk around on a not very interesting bit of rock.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
...
.... ROBOTS!!!!
As opposed to the moon which would be flying up, up, up to the moon, than down, down, down, back to Earth.
Don't give me that habitat and colinization crap. These missions have NOTHING to do with science they are just joy rides and pork for aerospace contractors.
BTW, I agree that the shuttle was a dumb concept. They let spacelab de-orbit in favor of a space station that could be launched and recovered.
Space exploration should be left to dedicated, life-long career profesionals
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I mean, way back in the 60s it only took 9 years, and look at how technology has advanced since then!
Geez! What's wrong with these NASA scientists these days?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
What happened to 'before this decade is out'?
-- Cheers!
$100 billion is just a small investment into a 1 trillion boondoggle to enrich the aerospace industry, and the side-effect of putting men on Mars to collect rocks.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The Chinese are certainly interested in putting men on the moon, however, as is JAXA.
The ESA , on the other hand, is looking to go directly to Mars.
We could do this in a short time frame again, but the projects that we're competing against, namely the Chinese, Japanese, and European, are all operating under longer timescales, making ours the most likely to finish first. Also, the current Lunar exploration budget has been designed to require very little in the way of extra funding. They're cutting out other programs that cost losts of money (read Space Shuttle, ISS, and some exploration missions), but the overall budget is very similar.
For these two reasons, it seems liekly that this will actually work, and that we will land men on the moon again in the very near future.
fsh
Who did you bribe to get a +1 Informative? Four sentences in to your link we see "the self- taught engineer". Do you not think that there is a reason that educated engineers are - generally - more highly regarded than uneducated one's?
Perhaps this should have given you a clue: "The cameras had no white meters", because film cameras don't have white meters.
And, incidentally, as a British amateur photographer, this was very amusing "Award winning British photographer David Persey ". The problem, of course, is that no-one appears to know who David Persey is...
This is just in the first few sentences....
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
unmanned space flight where there are no risks.
Didn't we have some kind of Mars probe that crashed or something because someone couldn't convert properly between Farenheit and Kiloliters?
And then on Cassini some bozo coder forgot the line of code to turn on one of the cameras?
I would think there is a huge risk of wasting a zillion dollars. Not to mention the risks for NASA to be the target of countless jokes on Letterman/Leno.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
So in short - I agree with 100%!!!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
You're leaning on a tired old worn out notion that even the U Chicago boys would laugh at.
Yes we CAN run out of money. Money is something real and tangible, and we are spending more of it than we've got. The irony is that the CHINESE are buying up our debt. The greater irony is that we're financing our OWN DEBT with our purchases at Wal-Mart. We'll just owe it to China at the end of the day.
We are in the STUPID economy. People don't understand the cost of destruction. They only bring up idiotic economic theories whose real purpose is justify wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
... figured out a way to get a manned probe to the moon?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
We will be lucky to get out of Iraq and back into New Orleans by 2018, who cares about the moon?
They are brutal FASCIST regime now. They've given up the pretext on caring for the welfare of their people.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
More info on Capricorn One.
Moon Resort
I for one would 100k for a week vacation where I can hit a golf ball into orbit and jump 20 feet into the air.
When I first read the subject, I thought it said "NASA Plans to Return the Moon".
What? But we beat the commies, we get to keep the moon!
The purpose of the space program was to show that we were going to be the uber-advanced space age society that would ultimately win the cold war. The space program was a pageant put on for the sake of countries sitting on the fence between dealing with the Soviets and dealing with the USA.
There is no such war now. If anything we've thrown in that towel since we now have no trouble trading outright with the worlds largest oppresor of people
We don't have to compete with China in this regard. We pretty much figured out that getting OFF the planet is so freakin expensive that you'll bankrupt youselves by doing it too much.
Yes there are resources in space. But there aren't any that are economic to harvest. Space travel is a money pit.
Now if we can get a space elevator online, that might change some of the economics. Getting OFF the planet (and returning) is really the biggest hurdle. I would rather put NASA money into develpment of techologies and materials that a space elevator would require.
In the interim, the "to the moon" plan is OK with it's phase one orbital service vehicle that makes a trip to the moon more like riding a taxi cab instead of a freight train (shuttle).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
That's the one that causes me to have the blood pressure of a morbidly obese chain smoker. Some day people are going to wake up and realize that, well, we are NOT going to solve all the problems here on Earth. Ever. We'll be lucky to solve half. We can't solve problems when society refuses to recognize the true causes, which in many cases is "people are stoooopid." We need to focus on the big ones like energy, somehow eradicating the memes that make people vote for monsters or fly planes into buildings and getting the educational system out of the hands of the ideologues, be they on the Left (feed good education) or the Right (anti-science).
Anyway, it looks like the private space sector might actually be showing some life, so f*ck NASA. I'm updating my resume to send out to Rutan's company and maybe a couple others. I'm going to be there, baby!
What saddens me most is that I don't really have much faith in them anymore. When I was growing up in the 70's, the folks at NASA were my heroes. They were the smartest, most determined, and best people anywhere in the world. I kind of wish I had that back, but at least private industry has given us a few new heroes to live vicariously through.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
why not buy some high-lift spacecraft from the Russian? It would take NASA 15 years to design a failure-prone spacecraft based on the 1970's designs. We lost the NASA engineers that could produce anything do to age, The present Politically-correct design-persons would screw up a "shit-sandwich"
Hey, you fire... Look at your life! What have you done with yourself! You're a loser and nobody will ever love you.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
If you want the experience of living on the moon, join the Navy and sign up for sub duty.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
* What's the harm in posting something that everyone should know is absurd -- especially on a tech news site?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Back in the days of the Apollo program, going to the moon was something that mankind had never done before. It was something we didn't know if we could do. Hence we were willing to accept risks. We were learning so much new stuff - it was worth it, and more importantly, the public could see that (we were gaining a lot of knowledge).
Mankind has always been willing to accept risks to explore or conquer, the unknown. A bunch of people died trying to climb Mt. Everest for example. But once it was conquered, and done safetly, then when someone died - it became a tragedy. The culture isn't any wimpier then it was back then - simply the politicians have a hard time of justifying the sacrifices to average joe - who simply knows, it was done once safetly. Why shouldn't it be 100% safe now? The general public does not hear about experiment x that went well in space anymore.
On the other hand, if it was something new and unheard of that NASA was doing - like going to another star (I assume the benefits of that would be obvious), I'm pretty sure the general public would accept the risk without much complaint.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
They probably could, but why should they?
What pressing reason is there to divert a large portion of NASA's money and manpower to rushing out a lunar vehicle? What would be gained by doing it in 9 years instead of 13? What terrible thing will happen because of that extra 4 years? Why is doing it faster important for anything other than appeasing complainers? There might be a good reason, but nobody's presented it yet.
This isn't a question of "why can't NASA do this"---it's a question of "why would NASA want to do this?"
Remember how space exploration works: "faster, better, cheaper - choose two."
(Right now, it's slated to be cheaper ---0.8% of one year's GDP vs. 8-13%---and better; if you want to swap out "cheaper" for "faster", you'll need to convince someone why it's worth the money. If you want to swap out "better" for "faster", well, just build a really, really big slingshot...)
Those bases in Antarctica are 100% supported from the outside world. Imagine how expensive a moon base would be. And then compare the cost of harvesting the same materials right here on Earth.
There is a treaty governing the withdrawal of resources from Antarctica. But that isn't the reason no one is mining there. The reason is that Antarctica is the most inhospitable climate on the planet. It is so cold in the winter that AIRPLANE FUEL will freeze in fuel lines.
If you COULD get effectively get to those resources, you could only process them a couple months a year.
Just remember that as inhospitable as Antarctica is, it's 1000 times more liveable than the moon.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Here's a seat-of-the-pants outline of prizes that achieve the goal:
$5 billion:
$5 billion
$5 billion $5 billion $5 billion $5 billion We're not even 1/3 of the way through the budget and we've got a system that can transport the mass equivalent of the Apollo missions.Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you...
Seastead this.
when I could fly there in reality?", Noodle Horse asked himself. He sat on his pile of straw and pondered the idea.
Can I, Noodle Horse, build a contraption to allow the visiting of the moon by me? Will there be female horsies on the moon waiting for me there? Maybe I will hump them all and make moon babies. Millions of them. They'll run all over the moon taking dumps in the various craters. Hell, maybe I'll train them to shit in patterns that will be visible from Earth. I'll create radio helmets for them and send each horsie instructions containing the exact location of their next defecation.
Of course, I'll need some sort of moon GPS as well, or how else is each horse going to know where to dump a load? I need to be able to radio the longitude and latitude to every horse.
While I'm thinking about it, forget the normal longitude and latitude system we use on Earth. I'm going to make a waist line around the moon instead of an equator. 40% of the Moon is above the waist line and 60% is below. There are 10 flabs north of the waist line, and 10 flabs south of the waist line. This means a southern flab is not equal to a northern flab, which I hope confuses the hell out of any aliens or gun-toting Texans planning to visit. Each flab will be named after a politician on Earth. Between each flab will be five named orifices. A penis will denote 0.5 orifices. No reason will be given for this. Each orifice will be sub-divided into twenty-three midgets. Midgets are specified in hexadecimal south of the waist-line and in octal north of the waist line. Midget measurements shall be prefixed with the word "abusing".
Longitude lines will be given in nays, numbered zero to one hundred, with the zero mark aligned with the gigantic moon pussy I plan to erect near the mouth of "the man on the moon". (Since I'll be getting plenty of tail, the man might as well suck some taco.) Each nay contains fifteen hippies, and each hippie contains twelve named hot peppers.
Back to the GPS system... I will build the GPS satellites out of materials found on the moon. Since I have already figured out how to genetically manufacture animals, I will simply design creatures to process the raw materials and assemble the satellites. My circuit board etching squeal-hound can finally be tested. The solder gun penised giraffe-a-potomis will rise to duty, ejaculating solder and humping the resistors and capacitors into place. The whole operation will be powered by products fresh from the asses of solar panel shitting walcoons.
Once the GPS system is in place, I will finally be able to radio instructions to my horsies. To avoid confusion, all transmissions will be terminated with one of the following phrases: "you bastard", "get on it", "fuck off", "tittie!", "high noon you prick", and "cacameme oooon!". All coordinates and instructions must be given in the form of entertaining or strange sentences involving the aforementioned coordinate system. A new government bureau will oversee and enforce these encoding standards. Violators will be prosecuted. Prosecutors will be violated (and like it).
The radio waves emanating from the moon will contain phrases like "Horse 52, number two for you! Hillary Clinton's anus is abusing Midget 12, no stop for hay, 50 Nays, Tittie!". Horses must be entertained so they don't mind running 4 flabs abusing a midget or two just to take a dump. Why not use entertaining jingles so the horses will remember the instructions? The jingles can also be sent to earth packaged as Madonna MP3s, subliminally inserted into breakfast cereal ads, and covertly dubbed into pornographic video soundtracks. The goal of this? Mainly to scare Texans and to create wide-spread panic and consumer anxiety among novice paint-shop technicians and insomniac heroin shooting baby-sitters.
Suddenly, people on acid will be super-normal and frogs will no longer ask to use your toilet in exchange for flap manipulation. This is my plan. Execute it or forever hold your pancreas!
Noodle E. Horse.
We would have ignored the Wright brothers if their invention to an ARMY of THOUSANDS of engineers and technicians to operate and had no practical economic or military application.
The invention of the Wright Brothers required the efforts of a few bike mechanic's spare time and some extra hands for transportation when they did their tests. It had immediate application as a "toy". And soon as a scouting vehicle for the Army.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Cause we're all getting Fucked.
What would we gain in 9 years vs 13?? The same thing we would get by doing it in the first place.
ABSOLUETLY NOTHING
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Aha! So you admit to being a member of the unmanned spaceflight mafia? :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I wish we could have spared that $70 million per year for levee upgrades in New Orleans.
I suppose though that it's all a question of prioritization. Universal Healthcare vs say
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The mafia are those who want manned space flight for the sake of it.
What would people say if Hillary had never scaled Everest? They would have said nothing because there were a hundred other crazy fools willing to risk their lives to do it off private funding. Eventually some crazy underfunded fool would have survived.
This is an issue of public priorities. Those advocating for manned space flight for it's own sake and for the sake of EVEN MORE manned space flight are the ones shaking everyone down for money. It's a RACKET!!!!
The people who REALLY think it's a racket are REAL SCIENTISTS who have SERIOUS projects that are being underfunded for the sake of all this Buck Rogers bullshit.
Probes are not sexy. But they're cheap and they do their job. Occasionally they fail and blow up. But than again, so do manned space missions. And when they happen, the cost of failure are orders of magnitude less than when you loose a 10 billion dollar orbiter on re-entry. And of course, nobody ever died from a probe failure.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I want mars, I want mars, I want, I want, I want
Screw the moon- for now; We should instead work to develop the technology to separate a brain from the body by 2020.
...
Master that trick, and you can make the moon easily. No need for showers, much less food, no hallways,
Much more compact ship, much less costly.
And the "side benefits" go about a 1,000,000x further than the side effects gained from moon trips.
Are you saying that humans sitting on rock benches with a notepad are better data collectors than seismometers with printers???
Of course robots are better data collectors. They're certainly not better scientists. But all the REAL science always happens on the ground. You don't blast people into space to analyze data and write papers.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Sorry but NASA did it faster in the 1960s! We know how to get to the moon. Why is taking longer to do it this time.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
100 000 000 000 for space travel, 0 for 47 000 000 people without healthcare.
that just seems weird that their willing to spend so much on something with so little tangible value (to the tax payer).
Going to the mooon is a waste of money, spend the money where it is needed!
Here's a good reason for ya. It may still be a long way off but I'd rather see fuel cell instead of biodesiel. Not to even mention the helium-3.
In the meantime people need to take action of themselves to lower fuel consumption. You'd probably be the first one bitching that the government was "taking your rights away" if they forced you to go biodesiel.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Any proposal that has results 12 years away is hooey. Ain't gonna happen.
Five years is a reasonable threshold- any large engineering project that has planning past that stage is just a marketing plan.
Nearly every single part in the whole design isn't manufactured anymore.
Consider a simple toggle switch used on the control board. Probably made by a company that doesn't exist anymore. There are a zillion switches available from digikey, but none of them have exactly the same size, shape, or electrical characteristics.
In anything involving human spaceflight, all the parts need to go through an incredibly expensive and time-consuming certification process. Morever, the spacecraft and every assembled module inside of it need to go through a similar process. If you change out that one switch, you need to recertify the entire board, at time, expense, etc.
Now flash from 1965 -- Saturn V design era, dawn of the electronics industry -- to 2005, which has a much more mature and entirely different electronics industry. What fraction of the components do you think have identical equivalents today? Switches, sensors, motors, actuators, displays, indicators, dials, you name it, nobody makes it anymore. And wouldn't you rather use newer, lighter components anyway? This is a problem, after all, where weight really matters.
What's true of electronics is almost as true of metals, machining, plumbing, pumping, insulation, etc.
By the time you replace missing components with modern equivalents, you've spent nearly as much in recertification as you would have to design something entirely new from scratch, and you get a vehicle that's nowhere near as efficient as it could be. There's no need for that panel to be so from the bulkhead, because the replacement computer is the size of a watch, not a washing machine. So why don't we give the astronauts more legroom, or space to store more stuff? Because we're using the Saturn V design, and changing that layout would mean yet another recertification.
The CEV and planned designs use shuttle era lifting components - engines, etc. - which is smarter because they are still in production, if old. But rockets don't change as much as electronics; it's a decent compromise. The actual crew modules will be a completely new design, which is probably the right way to go.
Slashdotters should understand the danger of overuse of legacy code. Rebuilding the Saturn V would be not too unlike trying to reuse code written in Turtle LOGO in 1983 for generating animated video on a cellphone. The API is so obsolete that it really does make sense just to use what you've learned from the old design and rewrite it from scratch.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I wonder how long it would really take? With enough effort it could probably be done in half the time.
Just open up the archives of Area 51, no not the aliens cover story, the really advanced propulsion section, the one with the new toys the rest of the world won't see for the next 50yrs. Can't forget the dark matter engines that will get you to the moon in 10sec, then you can find the original moon landing. "Oh, we're whaling on the moon"
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Of course they didn't give a RIP about the people.
The US has some election problems. And no democracy is perfect. But I can criticize my government to my heart's content without being tossed into jail. I can protest my government without being mowed down by tanks and machine guns.
I can go where I please and say whatever I like. I can read Slashdot without having to evade all the PRK firewalls.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
There can be more than one mafia. Just as in the underground there's the Yakuza, the Dolgopruadnanskaya, and the Cosa Nostra, the space movement has the unmanned space mafia and the manned space mafia. (I know the names aren't as sexy, but we're talking outspace, purview of the nerds.) Surt has admitted to being a member of the former, and now you've accused me of being a member of the latter. (Presumably for pointing out that Surt slipped and revealed his membership to the former.) Unfortunately, I am not a member of the latter - either that, or I'm not stupid enough (sorry, Surt) to admit to it!
Of course, this does raise some interesting questions. What kind of rackets do these mafias engage in? Where does the money come from? What kind of threats do they make, and how do they deliver on these threats. Enquiring minds want to know!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Apparently, you forgot the first and second rules of the Unmanned Space Flight Mafia. Not that I would know, of course. It's not my knees that are going to be broken...
P.S. Don't answer that doorbell! :o
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I thought you first have to be somewhere in order to be able to RETURN back to that place one day...
It's a COST.
NASA did NOT invent velcro. And they didn't invent hardly any other useful product or material.
There is VERY LITTLE hope that the cost of missions will lower to the point where commercial investment in space will be practical.
If it's an investment, lets set up a fund and let the private sector take care of it.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I've flown ships from here to Corrella! In the arcade. Though I suppose that problem with puking if I'm more than 2 feet of the ground IRL might be a minor problem.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
There is almost always political will to do space exploration (at least on the republican side), because the money goes to the Boeings and Lockheed-Martins. It's all a question of whether they can do it quietly enough or, as in this case, inexpensively enough, to avoid pissing off the voting public.
Half a billion dollar prize for a lunar orbiter? That simply means that whoever does it will only be $4.5 billion in debt. A couple billion dollar prize for a freakin' lunar base? That's like offering someone $10 if they'll shoot themselves in the head.
fsh
Mud, slimey, my home this is!!!!
Seriously, if the "big one" ever hits, it will be far more economical to tunnel into the earth (to wait out the storm) than try to leave for someplace like Mars.
It will cost WAY less, and you'll save WAAY more people.
Besides, why would you want to go to Mars and build terraniums when you could do the same thing here on Earth for FAR, FAR cheaper.
Yes, someday the Sun WILL burn out and I'm 100% convinced that our budgetary priorities will have ZERO effect on how humanity handles that problem millions of years from now.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I think that much more correct is first time to the moon...as many of u can now the whole first landing on the moon was a total fake... everything was staged in a studio...
NASA has been like a hammer searching for nails for quite some time.
Many of those "experiments" sent up in the shuttle could easily be performed for MILLIONS less right here on Earth. But NASA NEEDS projects to justify the space shuttles existence, so scientists creatively think of ways to make mundane projects into "space projects".
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
We're Earthlings, we should blow up Earth things!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Shuttles are small space stations that you launch and recover instead of leaving in orbit like a sane person would do.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Lunar solar power is probably the biggest reason to go to the Moon. And before you blurt out some Sim City induced nonsense about microwave towers frying cities, PLEASE educate yourself. The powerlevels involved aren't enough to do anything of the sort.
Whenever you read another Peak Oil page, remember that we could use lunar solar power to provide first world levels of energy use to everyone on the planet, while simultaneously nearly eliminating the pollution caused by coal, oil, and nuclear plants.
The question isn't "Why go?", it's "Why didn't we go sooner?"
You know... every time I hear of someone talking about the hydrogen economy, I wonder where they are getting all this hydrogen from.
Is it coming from the hydrogen fairy?
No, it's coming from two sources:
Water, cracked using a whole lot of electricity, generated by burning dead dinosaurs.
Cracking hydrocarbons directly, which are by-and-large, dead dinosaurs.
Hydrogen is not a magic energy producer, but it's a battery. You spend energy to create the hydrogen, and then you retrieve the energy spent in a fuel cell, at less efficiency than the original energy transaction.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'll ad "geopolitical threat".
We're trading with the enemy. That's what helped Rome on it's way out.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Coz it is close to us.
How ya like dat?
If we can get launch costs down (the best way to do that short of a miracle breakthrough is frequent launches) and a *productive* human outpost that is capable of 'living off the land', we'll get amazing robots assembled in space that don't have these severe mass limitations we get down here. If you can assemble your rocket engine from lunar materials, of course you can build a whiz-bang robot explorer.
This is a joke right? It's hard enough to create a "productive" human outpost on Earth. I dare you to take 1 acre of barren desert land with nearly no natural resources and try to live there indefinitely with only what you can bring on your back. That's pretty much the ratio of how much stuff you can take with you into space. On top of all that, you have to MAKE your own oxygen, water, electricity etc. and deal with your waste. Every way you look at it, it's a gigantic net loss in energy and productivity.
The real Bush plan for the moon is to fight terrorists there, to protect us here.
This is a great idea seeing as the US has all this money sitting around not doing anything.
Deficit? What deficit?
then perhaps American can ride them to the moon.
The present administration's repeated bitch slaps of all things scientific indicate their committment to such activities. At best they intend to have the BoLockMart take in billions to develop Way Cool Gizomics for no reason other than to feed their investors, and will cancel the program before it can do any damage to the retarded level of progress they obviously prefer.
Little Bush's committment to science is at least as a rational, though self-serving, opponent, as opposed to Daddy Bush who appointed Dan "There Is Oxygen On Mars" Quayle as head of the space program. That was such a slap that nobody knew how to react to it effectively.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Sir, you are absolutly right. This is the reality of modern America. Political correctness is insane. The culture of America is not what it was when it was great.
This is what happens when women have equal rights as men. Their caring nature and instinct override logic, and our country turns into metrosexuals from their influence. Even here on slashdot, even though you guys don't have girlfriends, with the exception of the parent poster, you are all a bunch of momma's boys.
It took them from 1961-1969 to get to the moon the first time. 8 years. In the freaking 60's when everyone thought -plastic- was a gift from God and micro computers were stuff from fantasy land.
But now, it's gonna take them 13 years to do the same damn thing? It's 50 years later. At this point NASA should be able to say 'We're going to the moon Next week. And we figure to have a Mars Mission launching in time to get the promo toys on the shelves before Christmas.'
2018? By that time Carmarck will be taking digital pics on Phobos to use as textures for DOOM 7.
Everytime NASA announces anything they prove that they're so far behind the curve it's laughable.
D
--
Everything is better with a Laser
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
This country is ranked something like 43rd in rate of infant mortality. That's bad. If you want national pride, how about pushing that infant mortality rate up?
Actually, the United States is ranked 36th in infant mortality. As for using that metric as a gauge of poverty, it's ludicrous. Cuba is ranked higher than the United States! Ooh, can't wait to move to Cuba so that I can live in that prosperous nation where I can finally earn a decent wage and get out of poverty.
Why can't we be better than other countries by having a lower infant mortality rate?
You just proved parent's point completely. Morons won't let anyone do anything until all of the world's problems have been solved. "What are we doing with space travel? There are babies dying. Someone think of the children!"
I'm a big tall mofo.
"We can land men on the moon, and prepare for $100 billion plans to go back there. But we cannot send help to US disaster victims, on US soil, within 2 weeks."
Are you proposing instead that our nation bestow a block grant of $100 billion given to Louisiana for K-12 education so maybe by the time there's another natural disaster there, there might be a chance that they'll have a competent governor and mayor?
And when you mention "life threatening situations," you should probably think about the consequences of keeping mankind stuck to a single planetary existence. The term is "species extinction". So yeah, for the benefit of mankind in general, I'd prefer the Feds to spend $100 billion ($336 out of my pocket) on space exploration.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
NASA has completed the set for the 2007 moon photo shoot.
Need cheap, customized, and quality bandwidth or hosting on any business scale? Visit www.ENetpresence.com
Seriously, don't we have anything concepts designed in, say, the late 1980's that we might be able to use? Why do we have to use shit we came up with 40 years ago? Build me 2 of something designed in the late 90's. Launch the first with monkeys and if they don't crash launch the second with people. I'll get on the SOB if the chimps make it. 10 years? Why not drop shipments of supplies on the moon for the next 10 years? We could open a Wal-Mart.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
First reaction: this is all wrong.
4 guys? 7 days?
I'd rather overshoot the 2020 deadline by, say, 5 years; forsake the false frugality of reusing shuttle hardware; and aim for installing a base. Think of it as the goal of installing a foreman's shack at a construction site.
Plus, it should be an international effort.
-t
Pick up the golf balls,dude!
Some settling may occur during posting.
"That's no moon it's a space station"
Doesn't anyone here even know the term "lip service"? Some healthy cynicism is called for, no wonder Bush got voted in twice. These announcements are100% political feel-good support-us-we'll-do-great-things voter manipulation. It's not going to happen. The "13 years" was determined in answer to the question of "how long will it take people to forget I made this promise", not "how long will it take to get there".
They were also systematically poisoning themselves with heavy metals (lead piping).
But than again, so are we with mercury from coal burning power plants without scrubbers. The difference is the Romans had no way of knowing better. We do.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
What happened to flying cars by 2000?
;-)
Maybe you aren't old enough to remember, but we had Flying Cars way back in 1979
An illegal war of choice : $200bn and counting
A mishandled natural disaster : $100bn
A permanent tax cut for the rich : $800bn
A trip to the moon like in the '70s : $100bn
Driving your country into bankrupcy : priceless.
As a *colony* ... as a source of raw materials ... as anything but a political flag planting which has no further goal.
... if it has no practical purpose, it is a waste of research and engineering.
Everyone keeps on coming up with all sorts of reasons for this moon mission, forgetting that their reasons do not match a single one of the reasons stated for this mission. This mission will plant a few flags and come back and have nothing to show for itself. Do you really think that planting a few flags will have any more effect this time than forty years ago?
I repeat
Infuriate left and right
Remember: China is a brutal communist regime; a man on the moon would boost its international stance, and help silence critics at home.
h tm #289
....Chungking is what New York would be if New York were a big city. We're talking forty-storey high rises that somehow don't look as dull as ours, massive highways and bridges. Every time we landed the airport turned out to have been completed four years ago, one year ago, what have you. Those cities aren't Guadalajara. They're Chicago.
...Mau croaked. You really can't rely on communists. China now appears to be doing what Taiwan did. My take is that the Communist Party figured out that Marxism was great except that it didn't work, and anyway it could bore a tax accountant into the shrieking gollywoggles, so they decided to keep the name while doing whatever worked. This is a novel concept for the West, which tends to eschew reason for organized imbecility, as for example liberalism and conservatism. Anyway, Katie bar the door. Better, open the bar....
http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/ChinaTrip.shtml
Looking For Commies In China
You'd Do Better In The Harvard Faculty Lounge
September 11, 2005
by Fred Reed
Just finished the last bag-drag back from China, jet-lagged, brain fried on caffeine, edgy groggy. Maybe I'll kill something. Or hibernate. What province am I in? Why do these Mexicans have round eyes? It's not natural. Some thoughts, barely:
I couldn't find the commies. Conservatives, who apparently preserve their minds in amber at birth, ramble on about Communist China. I guess their brains have parking brakes. Things are much less confusing if you have only one idea and stick with it. Anyway, if China is a communist country, I'm Julius Didianus. Who ever heard of a communist economy growing at nine percent? Or at all?
I grant you, the rascals used to be commies, but they've degenerated, and lost their touch. I could do it better. When I landed at Beijing, I got through passport control in about thirty seconds. They didn't even glance at my baggage. Grabbed a cab to my hotel. The driver tried to overcharge me. It looked like capitalism to me.....
The clunky Russian aircraft are gone. Now you see new stuff from Boeing and Airbus.
OK, that's the up side. The downside is lots, and smart people see real instability that could lead to an explosion. The Chinese explode well, as the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 demonstrated. One problem is that said Revolution also left a generation of jobless ex-radicals who can't read, a bit like New Orleans. You can criticize Mousy Dung all you want, but you have to give him credit for being an unconscionable ass with no concern for his people. Anyway, those kids, no longer kids, could be trouble.
Then the policy of one child per family, combined with a preference for boy children, has left huge numbers of excess males who aren't going to find wives. They too might become disagreeable. I would. Add that the new wealth isn't reaching a whole lot of people. Corruption is rife. Poverty remains horrendous in many parts. Finally, China is said to have eighty million evangelical Christians, which means that it will likely attack Iraq, as well as a lot of Moslems....
So, since you don't think that this is the greatest nation on Earth, which do you think is? I'm honestly curious about this.
--Matthew
"If the lights of Broadway blind me, I won't mind..."
How about lowering the costs of land/air/sea transport? Do you really think corporations would sell moon ore cheaper, especially since their costs are *inherently* higher (moving it *anywhere* on earth is easier than moving metric tons from lunar orbit)? Why can't we build solar panels on earth, and don't you think the money could be better spent on researching fusion down here (not this tabletop stuff, but ITER for example)? How about talking about a future where dangerous and toxic industries are obseleted? Before we start thriving across the solar system, why don't we crank up the standard of living down here a few notches first? Who cares about other star systems, I bet they look better from here anyway! "Remaining secrets of the universe," my foot; we can't understand the data we've got already! Unimaginable technology is a given - we still can't imagine how the Egyptians built the pyramids, for crying out loud!
How about we do something in the present instead of singing the praises of some imaginary future? How about it?
This President is really good at spending my money for publicity.
Before the Columbia NASA was refused a budget increase for safty upgrades. People died, bad publicity, and now there's money.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Haven't we already done this?
I've always been a big supporter of space exploration. Man is destined, some day, to explore and probably colonize other planets around other stars.
But NASA has proven that they won't be the ones leading way. Now the only sensible thing to do is shut it down. They obviously have no mission whatsoever. They are just desperately searching for some mission, something, anything, to justify their own existence. Which only proves, that there is absolutely no justification for NASA anymore.
Once it was a great organization, on the forefront of the future, now NASA is just another government black hole absorbing our tax dollars without actually accomplishing anything new. Better to give that money to real scientists, who will do real science with it, not waste it on boondoggles.
By the perception of illusion, we experience reality
OR ... we could take half of that money (as if we had it in the first place) and put humans back on the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
How about lowering the costs of land/air/sea transport?
Good idea. Convince people to accept nuclear powered merchant ships for sea, ethanol for cars, and bio-diesel for trains.
Do you really think corporations would sell moon ore cheaper, especially since their costs are *inherently* higher (moving it *anywhere* on earth is easier than moving metric tons from lunar orbit)?
Inherently? Odd. I figure that a mass driver could launch ore into orbit at fairly low costs. The metals could even be refined in orbit prior to being dropped into the ocean for pickup by ship. All in all, it could be quite competitive with earth mining. Besides, it's much more useful to mine asteroids which are far richer in ores. The energy costs in moving ore from those puppies are almost insignificant thanks to the Interplanetary Highway.
Why can't we build solar panels on earth
Because:
a) We can't deploy super-thin and inexpensive mirrors that focus on a single multi-gigawatt heat engine?
b) We don't have the space to set aside for 300 sqaure miles of solar panels per power plant?
c) 50-90% of the Sun's power is lost through the atmosphere?
d) We can place our generators in a lower solar orbit so that they can obtain more power per square meter?
e) Corrosion of panels/mirrors is not as much of a problem in space?
Shall I go on?
don't you think the money could be better spent on researching fusion down here (not this tabletop stuff, but ITER for example)?
Fusion power is only 20 years away. Just like in the 1950's.
Sorry, power positive fusion is still a pipe dream. Space-based Solar power is a technology we have today. Besides, the Sun is a FAR bigger fusion reactor than we could possibly build here on Earth!
How about talking about a future where dangerous and toxic industries are obseleted?
You need steel? Superalloys? Plastics? Graphites? Kevlar? Sorry, but materials manufacturing will always be dangerous and environmentally unfriendly.
Before we start thriving across the solar system, why don't we crank up the standard of living down here a few notches first?
We already did. Now lets crank it up even more by making use of resources that don't pollute our biosphere, shall we?
"Remaining secrets of the universe," my foot; we can't understand the data we've got already!
And we can't test our hypothesises about that data because it's too expensive to send new probes.
Unimaginable technology is a given - we still can't imagine how the Egyptians built the pyramids, for crying out loud!
Those of us with a little imagination can. Humans are amazingly ingenuitive when they want to be.
Who cares about other star systems
Who cares about your anonymous opinion?
How about we do something in the present instead of singing the praises of some imaginary future?
Okay. In the present, we are staring down the technological barrel of free energy and massive raw resources. All we need is inexpensive space access to get them. How about it?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If your going to spend 100 billion dollars, go to Mars for gods sake. Going to the moon again would befine but Mars is the real target here.
I can see some beneficial technologies coming out of the desire to return to the moon.
I don't know where the liquid hydrogen currently comes from for launching the Space Shuttle but if there is a desire to lift more cargo more often then reducing the cost of the production of liquid hydrogen may promote the transition to a hydrogen based economy. I realize that hydrogen is an energy storage technology, unlike petroleum which is an energy source. What may happen is that if hydrogen production is such that it can compete with other fuels for transportation. (Imagine a commercial airliner powered by hydrogen instead of petroleum fuels. It could happen.) Where would the energy for hydrogen production come from? I'm getting there.
NASA has been experimenting with nuclear reactors to power rockets and habitats. If this technology is developed to a point it is considered safe, economic, and otherwise practical enough for Earth-bound commercial power that could have huge implications in the cost and availability of electrical power. Nuclear power plant construction is at a near standstill because of concerns of safety. If NASA can prove a reactor safe enough to be put on a rocket that could change many people's minds, especially if combined with the increasing cost of petroleum fuels and decreasing cost of hydrogen production. If NASA is successful in constructing a nuclear rocket for interplanetary travel that would be a huge accomplishment in itself.
To me it looks like NASA is trying to rebuild an infrastructure that is being lost with the retiring of the Space Shuttle program. While replacing the Space Shuttle they are also improving capability and flexibility. I imagine the new heavy lift to orbit program will have the potential to improve the economy, not directly but indirectly by bringing new technologies to the market.
I welcome our new space faring overlords.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Looks like NAFA's at it again.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Yes, I think that filthy rich nerds will be there before 2018, making all this NASA plan pointless. And probably a private Moon trip will cost 100 million, not 100 *billion* dollars. Perhaps NASA will even give it up and start to contract the private sector to deliver their astronauts and probes. Or so I hope.
> especially since their costs are *inherently* higher
Not for orbital delivery, they're not.
Earth has a MASSIVE gravity well---for every kilo you send up to orbit, you burn about 20 of fuel. Send that kilo up from the moon, and you hardly pay a thing.
If you want to build large structures anywhere other than Earth's surface---orbital manufacturing plant, Mars colony materials, etc.---then you may well save money by setting up a mining operation outside Earth's gravity well first. Sure, it's expensive, but getting building materials into high orbit from Earth is $20,000 per kilo. Even if new ships magically give you an order of magnitude improvement on that---tricky prospect---everything you launch into orbit STILL costs five times its weight in gold.
The Saturn V rocket weighed 2,800,000kg---building something like that in orbit (such as for a trip to Mars, or an estimate of a manufacturing plant's weight) would cost $46 billion in launch costs alone. Any significant presence in space becomes much cheaper without that launch overhead.
Of course, you might question whether we even want to be in space in the first place, rather than spending our money on causes you deem more worthy, to which there are two points:
1) Yes, we do want to be in space - look at the comments in this thread.
2) If you want to spend our money on causes that you want, then the onus is on you to convince us.
Clearly, you think spending our money otherwise is a moral imperative; however, some people think spending our money on space is a moral imperative, so the mere strength of your convinctions is not sufficient. You might be right, but you'll have to be articulate and convincing to get listened to.
1) There is about a TRILLION DOLLARS of oil sitting in Alaska in ANWR at today's prices. Ergo, all we have to do is drill that out, and we have enough money to pay for Iraq, Katrina, and put a whole fricking Noah's ark on Mars.
2) There is easily 10 times that amount in natural gas off of the Carolina Coast.
3) There is easily 100 times that, according to a previous Slashdot post, sitting in Colorado oil reserves.
So we have money for the taking, but will the Dems let us get it? No.
3) George Bush does not buy products from China. You do. If you won't want Chinese imports, do not buy their products. Look for Made in America labels. I'm sure there are plenty of websites listing made in America items and brands and yes you can even find some at Walmart.
4) The economic theory that condemns US free trade with China is arguably not valid. Sure the US is a much smaller fish than China, but the UK is much smaller than the USA and trade with the UK did not wreck it.
This is my sig.
In July 1989 President George H.W. Bush proposed what came to be called the Space Exploration Initiative. Bush called for NASA to return to the Moon and send humans to Mars. NASA responded with a 34-year plan that would have established a permanent lunar base by 2001 and landed humans on Mars by 2016.
Since China plans a moon base in ten years, then NASA can visit them for a nice cup of tea. China will have a week-long orbital flight in three weeks and the Russians are visiting the space station. Americans can look up at the pretty lights in the sky, wave and cry.
Eliminate the Orbiter from the equation, and you have one uber-powerful set of boosters.
But the Orbiter contains the main engines. I think what you meant was eliminate the crew compartment and airframe. But you'd still have the weight of the main engines and their associated infrastructure, as well as the infrastructure needed to attach and enclose the payload.
Each main engine weighs about 3.2 metric tons, and there's three, so there's half your advantage over Saturn V gone right there. Throw in the engine frame and the payload compartment, and you're looking at a pretty small lifting advantage over the Saturn V.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hmm, whilst what you say is true, and commendable, I believe that the spirit of what the "Saturn Fanboys (no offence- me too)" are saying is that the SV was built simply to do what it was built to do, and did do it, 100%(!)- unlike the SST, which was a committee compromise, which worked, but was not elegant in the same way ( engineers- you know what I am trying to say, I hope :|) as the Saturn/Apollo ....
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
You keep talking about these as "flag-planting" missions, when they're explicitly just the opposite. NASA's plan is to build a sustainable human-occupied outpost on the Moon, in accordance with NASA's new directive to "extend human presence throughout the solar system". This is simply a reprioritization of their current budget; in 2018 the same amount of money will have been spent and we can either be on the Moon, or not. Which would you prefer?
Your first post expressed the idea that colonizing the Moon had nothing of practical value to offer us. Now you know that this is the farthest thing from the truth, since solar panels produced using native lunar materials have the potential to save your life and literally save the Earth itself.
At the personal level, tens of thousands of people die each year from cancers produced by radioactive coal particulates released into the atmosphere from coal-burning power plants, for example. Use of coal will skyrocket in the 21st century, and so will those cancers. One day, it could be someone in your life, someone in your family, maybe even you.
But beyond saving these lives is the potential to eliminate our contribution to global warming and climate destabilization by using an energy source that doesn't release carbon or any other pollutants into Earth's atmosphere. Katrina picked up speed this year because the Gulf of Mexico was exceptionally warm. We have a duty to do what we can to prevent a future where Katrinas become a common occurence, where climate destabilization contributes to global crop failures or species extinctions. Maybe even our own.
To get to lunar solar power, we have to make a start, and that's what we're doing. Once we've got a manned outpost on the Moon, we can begin exploring the possibilities of industrialization and manufacturing. The enterprise of manufacturing solar panels on the Moon and beaming their power to Earth is uncomplicated and obvious. The benefits are tremendous.
Do some more research and give it a second thought.
I'm trapped in a world before later on,
Where's my hovercraft?
Where's my jet pack?
Where's the font of acquired wisdom that eludes me now?
We're trapped in a world before later on,
Where's our telray?
Where's our space face?
Where are all the complications we won't see around?
From an story in Defense Industry Daily, mentioned on slashdot a few days ago:
SpaceX initially intended to follow its first vehicle development, Falcon 1, with the intermediate class Falcon 5 launch vehicle. However, in response to customer requirements for low cost enhanced launch capability, SpaceX accelerated development of an EELV-class vehicle, upgrading Falcon 5 to Falcon 9. SpaceX has sold a Falcon 9 launch to a US government customer, and still plans to make Falcon 5 available in late 2007. Their efforts are worth watching, and could affect the military satellite launch market.
With up to a 17 ft (5.2 m) diameter fairing, Falcon 9 is capable of launching approximately 21,000 lbs (9,500 kg) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in its medium configuration and 55,000 lbs (25,000 kg) to LEO in its heavy configuration, a lift capacity greater than any other launch vehicle. In the medium configuration, Falcon 9 is priced at $27 million per flight with a 12 ft (3.6 m) fairing and $35 million with a 17 ft fairing. Prices include all launch range and third party insurance costs, and SpaceX claims that this makes Falcon 9 the most cost efficient vehicle in its class worldwide.
So, Boeing's Delta IV Heavy lifts 25,000 kg for $254 million. The SpaceX Falcon 9 S9 will be able to lift the same amount for a starting price of $78 million. Wow.
Since it's based on the Falcon 5, the Falcon 9 will probably also be man-rated.
From here:
A recent study performed by the Futron Corporation, concluded that Falcon 5 was superior in design reliability to other vehicles in its class, due to engine redundancy. Falcon 9, by extension, has even higher reliability with increased propulsion redundancy.
Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 will be the world's first launch vehicles where all stages are designed for reuse. The Falcon 1 has a reusable first stage, but an expendable upper stage. Reuse is not factored into launch prices. When the economics of stage recovery and checkout are fully understood, SpaceX will make further reductions in launch prices.
Meanwhile, in the parent article, NASA has announced that it will be spending $5.5 billion on developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, $4.5 billion on the Crew Launch Vehicle, and between $5 and $10 billion on a new heavy-lift vehicle. Who wants to bet that by the time NASA's new rockets are ready, SpaceX will already have a similar rocket available at a tiny fraction of the price?
Granted, SpaceX still needs to pull off a successful launch of the Falcon I, scheduled for later this year. I wish them the best of luck.
We need to get off this rock, and every decade we lapse into introversion is a decade later that man's history of exploitation of the solar system is delayed.
The major benefits I can see are:
- ensure survival against earth killer asteroid hitting in say the next 2 centuries
- increase pressure and funding to build independent robotic mining and factories
- draw minds and effort away from fragmented religion, and towards a unified goal of conquering space
- exploit space-based power generation and develop better water extraction and conservation technologies, reducing pressures to start oil wars and water wars
- get advanced physics research off the planet's surface as soon as possible. One possibile reason for the lack of alien contact is that nature holds a booby trap (or a jackpot) that most cultures hit by accident and everything goes boom. We are already close to primordial densities in particle physics and if it is possible to use advanced space-based resources to quickly and cheaply (say with a self-organizing robotic factory) build a ring in space or on the moon that would be excellent.
- add low-noise observatories on the moon. Currently we are just starting to observe in very noisy RF bands for example.
- develop unified educational program based on integrated science and exploratory culture. A free course of study for any child on the planet, instilling a citizen of the world sense of identity, respect and practical knowledge of science, an imperative to stride beyond man's history of intolerance and enter the next phase of our civilization, develop emotional intelligence, and in general train people so that we can achieve 10 times more efficient exploitation of the world's human resources, with 10 times better health and welfare for the world, and international collaboration to develop key technologies more quickly. Sure there is more to this but obviously there is still demagoguery, genocide, famine, disaster, and demonization in the 21st century. We need to get beyond it and work together.
Many of these things can be done on the planet. But the fact is, our societies are still pretty uncivilized and we need a common project to bind politicians and peoples around the world toward the same goal. It seems that broad, continued, well funded efforts for space science and every connected area - including advances in biotech, robotics, and education for example - could be a spark that begins humanity on exponential growth and saves us from nuclear races and preoccupation with trade deficits and resource starvation. People need to have something to work towards, and we need to provide great salaries and lionize people who go into these fields and go to space.
They should use that $100 billion and create real science with it. Maybe in the field of Star ship contruction, Warp field theory, Orbital station version 2, or give me that money and I'll design their theorical warp engines.
All they have to do is stop using 100 year technology and start comming up with future technology prototypes. Thats cheap and efficient at being cheap.
Like super ion fusion chian reactor wave disprutors on near by gravity wells as main Warp drive.
Nuclear rockets would enable fast "point and shoot" missions to Mars -- 3 months outbound, 40 days on Mars, 4 months return; total mission time less than 9 months. Compared with using less powerful chemical rockets and planetary gravity assists, missions using nuclear rockets would involve lower crew radiation exposure, smaller supply and equipment requirements, and other advantages.
NuclearSpace.com has a really interesting article about a hypothetical design for a fully reusable, non-polluting nuclear rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that could lift ONE THOUSAND TONS of payload into Earth orbit -- that's a whole space hotel in one shot -- and return with an equal size cargo to a soft landing.
The design is based on a "nuclear lightbulb" reactor, consisting of a bulb of synthetic quartz enclosing a cloud of gaseous uranium such as UF6. A lighter buffer gas swirling around the inside of the bulb confines and controls the shape of the uranium cloud, which heats up to 25000C (about 7 times the melting temp of any solid core reactor). The cloud emits intense ultraviolet light, which radiates through the quartz and is absorbed by hydrogen flowing past the outside of the bulb. The hydrogen is superheated (but not irradiated), and shoots out of the rocket nozzle to provide thrust. Because the uranium is completely sealed inside the bulb there is no contamination of the exhaust.
The massive payload carrying capacity of this type of rocket (roughly 30 times that of the space shuttle) would radically change the space travel equation by making weight concerns a thing of the past. We need this technology to move into the future, and we need NASA to brave the PR implications of the word "nuclear" and move ahead with it.
be spending money on frivilous ideas like going to the moon, when there are still starving people in this world? This sucks.
I think it's more along the lines of "Someone (hopefully a Democrat) is bound to derail this if we put it far enough out, and we can blame it on them. And if they don't, then I get to take credit for all their hard work."
-Uberhund
n/t
The Admin and the Engineer