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Another Small Step Before the Giant Leap

Posted by Hemos on from the a-brave-new-tomorrow dept.

Armchair Anarchist writes "Over at Futurismic, a new column proposes that NASA's plans to establish a lunar colony are an attempt to run before we can walk properly, and that developing orbital habitats first would be a wiser and more realistically attainable project. From the article: "... it seems to me that the trump card is with the orbitals; orbit is closer, cheaper and easier to get to, and offers more flexibility as a long-term outpost. Sure, let's put men back on the moon, mine it for helium-3, research its history and origins. But it makes more sense to launch missions of that type from an already-established colony in orbit.""

5 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:NASA business plan by Enoxice · · Score: 2, Informative

    NASA != profit

    http://www.space.com/news/nasa_books_020228.html

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  2. Re:Makes more sense... by jovius · · Score: 2, Informative

    It might not be NASA who puts the habitats in orbit but Bigelow Aerospace... They envision to have their own complete habitat up by 2015, and NASA actually is interested to use them too (Bigelow licensed the tech..) Virgin Galactic is the forerunner in sub-orbital flights beginning 2008-2009 whereas Space Adventures will begin trips around moon not long after that.. the people behind aforementioned companies are highly idealistic in bringing humanity to space. We are truly living the first steps of private space exploration at the moment (and it will be cheap eventually....)

  3. Self Promotion, the submitter is the Columnist... by cnelzie · · Score: 2, Informative

    At least this time it is extremely blatant and right out there in front, instead of a being a mildly blatant ruse as such things have been done in the past.

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    If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
  4. lagrane points outside of radiation belt by maddogsparky · · Score: 2, Informative

    One of the big reasons for the altitude of the ISS is radiation shielding. It is close enough to the earth that the earth's magnetic field keeps out a lot of the radiation it would encounter further out. The amount of shielding needed to bring down to acceptable levels is pretty significant. A moon base can theoretically get around this by burying the habitats under regolith. La Grange points are useful for really long-term projects like telescopes and the like. However, I do think it is time to step beyond LEO.

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    science is a religion
  5. Re:We've already been to the moon... by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Informative
    ... what 'great leap' is this? The only leap, really, is the change in vehicle. The moon is well-defined: we had the lunar prospector mission which gave us a detailed survey of the moons surface and we've been there several times in the Apollo era.

    Let's put it this way: What information we have about the Moon's surface is roughly equivalent to what Google Earth has about the land area of the US combined with a quick physical survey of an area roughly the same as your average suburban mall. We know less about (detailed) Lunar geology then we did about the geology of the continental US at the end of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
     
    The moon isn't "well-defined" by any reasonable definition of the words.