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Back to the Moon
starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA's planned trip back to the Moon isn't without a significant amount of science and technological innovation. Simply 'sponging off Apollo' won't do it. Among the issues: safer human spaceflight, lunar ice, sustainability, robotic scouting missions and more. This won't be easy."
"The Apollo program cost $25 billion, equivalent to about $125 billion in today's dollars."
[Source: http://www.waltercunningham.com/op_ed_0204.htm%5D
Didn't they stick a mirror up there for astronomers to be able to reflect off of to get a very accurate distance between the earth/moon? And the flag?
IIRC, the evidence is visible by the naked eye with a telescope. Not that that doesn't stop trolls from blabbing about it being a fake.
A Funny thing happened on the way to the Moon
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
They actually put 3 reflective mirrors for the LLRE (Laser Lunar Ranging Experiment), during Apollo 11, 14 and 15. The mirrors are still in use today.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Well... the thing is, yes, technology has advanced. It hasn't advanced by the leaps and bounds that we would like it to have advanced by, however, and that is the crux of the problem. The Apollo program cost $135B in modern dollars. Even if we consider the overall effect of technology advancements to have doubled our access to space for the same dollar, the concept of a lunar base will require at least double the landing and liftoff payload (in addition to regular trips). Probably much more. It'll take serious money.
The public tolerates out of control spending on wars because the rhetoric is so heated on it - it's either an abomination or essential to the survival of our way of life, depending on which side you listen to. The level of discourse for space missions just isn't that extreme, and so people look a lot closer at the financial aspect. Apollo-level funding just isn't politically realistic. That's why they're stretching this out over the long run. The longer it takes, the less blatant it is that we're spending as much money as we are on this single program.
Lastly, something that I should mention: CEV design is not going well 2. I agree with Jeff Bell, who's been very critical of the whole proposal.
I tore these out of your symbol, and they turned into paper.
Sadly not, while space is "considered" quite cold the only way to cool is through heat radiation, which is pretty fucking inefficient, especially in near-vacuum. That's why satellites are usually shielded against heat: they can't dissipate it.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
No, in fact the second generation of the Mercury program (Mercury Atlas) was based off of the Atlas ballistic missile. And after that, Gemini was based off of the Titan ballistic missile. Apollo of course came next, and AFAIK no major sections of the Saturn rocket were based off of any ICBM designs.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
That's some nice fuzzy logic.
.1$ was spent on R&D then for each 1$ of NASA R&D you get 90$.
.9$ ends up doing, and it says nothing about what else you could have spent the money on. I don't think that spending such money on new cars would create 90$ in economic benefit.
If 1$ into NASA = 9$ back from R&D and only
However, this tells you nothing of what the other
PS: Most government waste = someone's profit which is why most people want to privatize government so they can profit from such waste. It costs the economy just about nothing to have the government give Bowing 1 million dollars. The only time you have economic loss is when some resource is consumed without benefit. AKA: A house burning down, someone getting sick, or an auto accident. The only things which create long term economic gain are that which increase economic efficiency such as R&D, Education or Infrastructure because they prevent waste.
It's called a corner reflector: three mirror surfaces mutually perpendicular. It has the interesting property that light striking it from any direction will wind up going back exactly the way it came -- after reflecting off one, two or three surfaces depending on where it hits first.
Make it from sheet metal and it works for radio waves...hang one from the mast of your sailboat and vessels with radar will see you as easily as they can see the Love Boat.
rj
Last I heard they'd only use 486s. But this was in 2000.
r s/Ch4-3.html or http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shut ref/orbiter/avionics/dps/gpc.html or even
No, not 486s. The CPUs in the 5 shuttle computers are AP-101S, which are upgrades from the AP-101B. iirc, the upgrades were circa 1991.
This CPU has its lineage in IBM 360 mainframes. See http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/compute
Helium-3 is a good reason to return to the moon .
6 30.html
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r ia_and_candidates_for_terrestrial_reactions
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It is theorized that there are over 1 million cubic tons,
with oil over $50 a barrel, and helium-3 then being worth
about 8 billion USD a ton, the total worth equalling 8,000 trillion USD .
It could smash the US deficit with 7,991 trillion USD to spare .
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Also keep in mind most of the "other" moons have this as well .
Here are some photos of the reactor at the University of Wisconsin :
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/GeneralOpPics.htm
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/GeneralOpPicsII.htm
25 tons could power the US electrical needs for a year :
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000
I don't need to tell anyone that the US is the largest user of electricity on
the planet at present, and slated for massive growth .
The current immmigration bill sets aside for 100 - 200 million new citizens .
Kulcinski adds that, if it sold for $4 billion a metric ton, helium-3 would still be a
good energy value: "That's the equivalent of paying $28 a barrel for oil."
It will be a cold day in hell before we see oil at $28 a barrel again
So adjust the math accordingly
It becomes more viable with every passing day .
If we can make solar mining robots for the moon to process the soil, and
then use a mass driver to fling a projectile canister into lunar orbit for pick up.
Then a lunar orbit robotic satellite mass driver to fire it into earth geo-sync orbit .
Then have either a new space station, shuttle, or satellite prep it for re-entry
into the ocean for pick up much like the apollo capsules .
The robotic equipment could be tested here on earth prior to deployment on the moon .
It might be possible to make robots that could build it all via remote control, but
most likely we would initially need ppl to go to the moon to build the mass driver
and support facilities .
Building some or all of the support facilities underground would protect it to some
degree versus leaving it exposed on the surface .
At some future point 3HE+3HE fusion will be achieved and it will have zero nuetron emissions
and thus be truly clean as per the following link .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Crite
Hope for the future
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
The crew of Soyuz 11 died while attempting to return from the Salyut 1 space station. A faulty valve led to the loss of all their air just prior to re-entry when the service module was separated from the descent module. They had fired the de-orbit burn, so they were not technically in orbit, but they died in space proper rather than the upper atmosphere like the crew of Columbia.
I would like to point out, I said for every $1 paid into NASA, $9 worth of economic growth came out. That was NOT just R&D, though, I suspect, that is where the vast majority of the money came from. Sorry, I wish that I had the exact numbers, etc. It was a while ago.
I am not a socialist, which I think the above poster made it sound. I DO think that PURE research, like this, is more likely to be government funded. Pure research is a good thing.
Under currently mainstream economic theories, those things add to the economy. Rebuilding a house, needing medical care, repairing a car - that's consumption, which means production, which means a higher GDP!
This sounds like the Broken Window Fallacy. Clearly, the economy is poorer by one house - the fallacy is in ignoring what else the money would have been spent on.
Which also relates back to the idea of getting research out of NASA - it ignores the possibility of spending money on research directly (it's kind of like when people say wars are good for the economy because they create jobs and encourage research - although obviously I'd rather have space travel than wars).