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NASA's New Mission to the Moon
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"
Yes.
-- Alastair
Will we go back to stay? not if it's for science only, IMHO it will take private companies to make space travel, including exploting the moon for it's resources, to make this 'permanent'. NASA has no where in it's mandate to do anything except research.
who cares about the MOON!
What for? Surely this is just another presidential exercise in sticking it to the Commies?
The space race is over, and America won. Now America should race to end poverty.
If we went back to the moon, I assume NASA's plan to would be to discover water so eventually the moon could be a docking station for trips to mars!
Mabye?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Though there is a certain precision and clarity to your brevity, a reason why would be helpful for the discussion. Something like: "We're messing shit up so bad here that we need a lifeboat", or "I personally would like to see what it's like to have the hiccups in low gravity". That's all.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?
What do you mean "going back"? That assumes we were there a first time.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The initial estimates are that this time around the mission is going to be far less expensive. One NASA official, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "CGI has really matured to a point where shooting a return to the moon is now viable. Instead of a sandy soundstage we'll simply have our guys in front of a greenscreen. In fact, some of the more optimistic estimates posit that by 2020 we won't even need live bodies in the studio."
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
who cares about the MOON!
The boston police?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Even in this marvelous age of whiz bang doodads and fancy flashing lights and such, Buzz recommends Orion astronauts still take a sextant with them. I wonder if a roll of duct tape might be prudent as well.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
What for? Surely this is just another presidential exercise in sticking it to the Commies?
True, but there are other benefits. Learning how to colonize space would be a biggie in my book. Besides, if we can't go to the moon, we don't stand a chance at going to Mars, Europa, Titan, or possibly beyond our solar system. The moon is the first step.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Lol. Many, many reasons.
Yes, there's the lifeboat argument.
There's doing research and rehearsals for manned exploration further out. I certainly wouldn't want to venture to Mars or the asteroids without technology tested a little closer to home first.
Raw materials -- He3 (as fusion fuel) is one possibility. As a source for raw materials (silicon, aluminum, etc) for building solar powersats is another.
Astronomical research -- lunar farside is the best place in the solar system for radio telescopes, it's shielded from Earth's noise. It's also a pretty good place for telescopes at all other wavelengths, especially if there's a manned base to swap out instruments, repair cameras, etc.
A frontier. People need one, even if only a few actually pioneer it. Earth will go crazy even faster without one.
Whole books have been written on "why", a Slashdot comment isn't going to do it justice.
-- Alastair
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
As the folks at Goddard expained it during the Moon Math student competition, "When you go camping, isn't it a good idea to try setting up the campsite in your backyard first, 600 inches away, so you can try out everything, or run back in the house if you forgot your flashlight, make sure you remember to bring everything, and *THEN* go camping for real to somewhere 600 miles away?"
That's a largely non-obvious reason for using the same basic vehicle for both mission sets.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Funny how after 30 years of listening to people say "when will we go back and who will that be?" now people are saying "Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?" How did this reversal of thinking happen?
We have a lot more information than the last 3 moon attempts. Time was the only answer you could know about right and wrong was what you could think of on your own based on what you saw in the sky and how much spare cash you had.
Now the answers for everything are downloadable. You don't need to come up with your own answers because the internet has the answers for you. The change in where our information comes from has changed our opinions.
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and leaving him safely there."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The original capsule was remarkably resilient and well-protected. I'm glad to see they're reusing the design and not trying for something brand new. If Burt Rutan wants to have new systems, he can finance them himself.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
LOL, I love how a contentless post like this gets modded up insightful. Insightful how? You haven't listed any good reasons why returning to the moon is worth it. You haven't even provided references to books, websites, or other resources which cover the topic.
Frankly, it sounds to me like just another round of pork from a President and party that has been damaged by the Iraq war. After all, much of the Republican base is located in states with NASA facilities (California and Maryland excepted).
Besides, the plan is so long-term that I'll be very surprised if it survives the next three Presidential terms.
...though, methinks that this whole "return to the moon" wouldn't even have been brought up had the Chinese not boasted about what they hope to accomplish.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
I agree completely with Prof. Hawking--We need to establish life outside of Earth.
Deep space scientific observation is nice, but until we have a self-sustaining colony off of earth, manned space technology should be our #1 priority.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
FTFA
it's hard to see the pitfalls so far ahead, but I worry that once we establish a base on the moon, we might get bogged down there.
I thought for the moment there, is he was talking back some foolhardy contemporary military adventure.
I wonder what he meant by this, how could we get "bogged" down on the moon?
Aside: Anybody know what the ROM price tag for an established moon based is compared to say the price tag for the Iraqi war?
There's an interesting article on what the space program could've look like if the Saturn V rocket program wasn't cancelled. The new program will be just a shadow in comparison.
Can somebody better acquainted with the mechanics of sending a vehicle to the Moon and back please explain why Buzz Aldrin recommends taking a sextant? Or does the tried and tested technology to be used this time involve lashing the Captain to the aerial to take the latitude while the crew pile on the solar sails?
Pining for the fjords
We got the transistor on Roswell, but we wanted more gadgets so we wen't for more and we only got the cellphone... It's time to go for the next big new tech.
I for one welcome our new time-space-warping overlords.
Ave Maria
They also had a couple of failures - and the failures/sucesses were dotted pretty evenly across the attempts. Zond was a percursor to a Soviet attempt to perform an Apollo 8 flyby to steal NASA's thunder - in fact, it was the Zond tests that lead to Apollo 8 being a lunar mission rather than a high earth orbit mission so as to steal the Russians thunder!
Before the budget cuts of 65/66 and the Fire, NASA planned on as many as *6* manned flights in LEO and an indeterminate number of lunar flights before committing to a landing attempt. Those budget cuts, the time lost after the fire, and the growing realization that the Soviets might be able to trump them forced their hand.
So much for the myth of Apollo-era NASA being the brave and bold agency they are so often portrayed as of late. Until forced, they were just as conservative as they are today.
Would it be worthwhile to launch space missions from a lunar base? It would seem to me that because of the lower gravity you would need less power to reach escape velocity - or am I incorrect in this? That could be one potential bonus of going back to the moon.
http://www.roflcat.com/images/cats/astronaut.jpg
so give it to people who are willing to work for it rather than some crappy rat hole like welfare. I'd much rather support engineers than drug addicts. With the best answer to me being "Don't fucking take my money in the first place!!!"
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I can't wait until we get the current generation of engineers out and replaced with some younger engineers and some fresh ideas.
The Moon is like Iceland - easier to get to from Europe but there's not much there besides scenery. The Mars system (Mars, Phobos, Deimos) are New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. I guess this makes Mars-Earth L1 the Hudson River?
The resources to build an entire civilization exist on/around Mars. The moon is a fossil world.
We can learn some from Luna, and probably take the first steps to colonization there, but the real action is going to be on Mars. There is a lot of planet-specific engineering that needs to be done for either location. Lunar spacesuits won't work on Mars, there will be huge differences in sealing technology and energy generation (you can burn silane as internal combustion on Mars, for instance). We can learn as much in high orbit or at a NEO about colonizing Mars as we can on the Moon. Almost all technical development for any near-term colonization is going to be developed on Earth, though.
If I had several Billion $$ right now, I'd commision a Russian-Bigelow spacecraft for a human mission to Phobos or Deimos. This is the ideal target for early development, energetically close to Earth, resource rich and within telepresence range of Mars. We can mine water and ship it back to LEO using technology we have now, or nearly. Russian companies have decades worth of human habitat experience, Bigelow would provide the main living space, custom tools purchased from best providers. The project would mine water and provide realtime control for robots throughout cis-Mars.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I made this for Mars, but I think it still answers the question.
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I never knew Popular Mechanics was such a space power.
building a colony at a Lagrangian point makes a lot more sense than going to the moon especially as a way station to Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
Yet another reason is mutually assured destruction sans fallout or germs. Someone will want to use the Moon as a base for retaliatory kinetic weapons. It wouldn't take much to launch and aim some very large rocks.... While they might take days to arrive, they could nonetheless be extremely destructive upon arrival.
Hence NASA's recent removal of "to understand and protect our home planet" from its mission statement. And possibly China's recent satellite posturing last month, just a couple of days before Bush's address and "space race" announcements.
-- IANA conspiracy theorist, but I play one on TV.
This could be considered slightly offtopic, but I would add one more benefit of NASA Moon mission: the resurrection of public interest in space science (in general) and Space Science Fiction (in particular). Did you notice that during recent decades the theme of science fiction shifted significantly from space exploration plots to fantasy and alternative history? As a big fan of space science fiction, I feel my favourite trend is neglected. The reason is obvious - the whole space research both in USA and Russia/Europe fell into stagnation and public interest was lost. Remember how excited the science fiction writers were about space technology back in 60s? They were expecting humans to fly around solar system by 2000 and to distant stars in the beginning of this new century. Where are their hopes? Ruined. Now I really hope NASA mission will bring back the long-forgotten public excitement about space exploration, and the science fiction will once again picture the starships instead of dragons and elves. I hope.
would require a bog.
If there's a bog, there's water.
If there's water, there's oxygen.
If there's oxygen, then Dan Quayle could breathe there.
Then it's not really all that mutual, now, is it?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
We were supposed have moonbase Alpha on the moon BEFORE 1999 so that the moon could get ripped out of Earth's orbit. It's too late now.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
NASA is dumb if they think so. If this is the case, say I jump from the Golden Gate bridge, the water will be nice and soft when I get down there right? Wrong. When you approach terminal velocity and make contact with water, it doesn't have time to "move" out of the way. In essence, you are hitting concrete.
The moon is the first step.
Why? Colonizing the moon is a drastically different undertaking from colonizing Mars. The moon is essentially a vacuum. It's cold. It has no useful resources to speak of (and no, He3 won't be useful any time soon). 1/6th Earth's gravity. And it's fairly close.
Meanwhile, Mars has water. And abundance of minerals. A thin atmosphere containing useful gases. A surface temperature that actually breaks the freezing point occasionally. Double the gravity of the moon. And it's so far away that getting there has proved to be a surprisingly difficult undertaking.
Honestly, the idea that colonization of the Moon will tell use anything useful about colonizing Mars is, frankly, silly. The methods that would be used for the two projects are *completely* different. Meanwhile, we can't even build a self-contained biosphere on *Earth*! Maybe we should try tackling that drastically simpler task before we start planning Moon bases.
In that case, I hope the Chinese boast more often about big, hairy, audacious space goals.
I would say that NASA's mandate, as a government agency, is whatever the people democratically choose for it to do. More tangibly, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which founded NASA, declares:
Plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities is rather open to interpretation, but exploration has always been considered an element of this. Actually, this does not counter your research point, because research involves both exploration and the development of necessary infrastructure (such as a moon base) to support it. I could detail some of the 100+ research proposals NASA has for the moon, but I'll leave it for another post
Number 3 and 4 are very relevant to your post, and also very clearly supported in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which guides much of the current development work. NASA is very open to cooperating with other friendly nations and private industry to use the systems they're developing to land additional payloads on the moon.
As far as how a permanent stay would pan out, since the article doesn't detail it, the Constellation program would conduct a handfull of missions up to two weeks in length to points of interest. One of these will likely be an already identified crater rim near one of the poles that receives almost constant sunlight. The constant sunlight simplifies many things.
NASA would then conduct several follow up missions to the same site, each one bringing more equipment. The proposed design for the lander makes the return stage as small as possible, which maximizes the amount of hardware left behind. Being modular, the lander could also fly missions to land several tons of cargo without a crew, such as prefabricated laboratories.
After 4 or 5 missions to the same location, there would be sufficient resources on the surface to support a permanent crew. From there NASA could conduct research that may really jumpstart commerical development, such as in situ resource utilization and low gravity excavation and health effects.
I'm personally more interested in seeing how far I can spit in low grav.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
When I was a kid in Jr. High School..... 1978, NASA claimed they'd launch a Mars mission by 2013. Instead
they built a shuttle and sunk all sorts of money into OLD technology. Let face it, they didn't innovate. I would have loved to
see a spacecraft that took off like a jet. So imagine, instead of a rocket liftoff you take off like a jet, accelerate into space.
Instead it's a gliding brick that' soon to be retired. Now a manned Moon mission is deemed a worthy trip again? If we were to
tunnel into the moon and build a moonbase where we could launch a spacecraft that was powered by a nuclear reaction.. man that
would be cool. I doubt I'd see a manned Mars mission in my lifetime.
How much do you want to bet there is already a Virgin Megastore there by the time NASA makes it back?
It gets modded 'insightful' because people are either not reading or choosing to ignore the moderator guidelines and because parent chimed in second.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
why can't we put a man with AIDS on the Moon? And pretty soon, we can put everyone with AIDS on the Moon." — Sarah Silverman
Firstly, unless you're a Phd wielding scientist with experience in a field related to astronautics, you should chose your words more carefully. Plenty of folks with a decent background say that there is much to be gained by making the moon an intermediate step.
Secondly, you're a Canadian, so I do not see why it concerns you. If anything you should be happy that we're not looking at using the bucks on weapons systems development (assuming that this ever sees the light of day).
Even under the most dire/optimistic scenarios a lunar facility isn't gonna be much of a viable 'lifeboat' for generations yet. Indeed if things go seriously awry it's probably the most untenable place to be for any calamity except a fast-acting/highly-virulent/fatal terrestrial biohazard, and then you'd likely just get to live somewhat longer and die a premature death of a different cause. After a terrestrial catastrophe a lunar facility likely won't contribute much to future generations but an interesting monument. Rather a planet of 6 billion with a huge biosphere has so much more in the way of odd nooks & corners for refugees & resources.
Except a lunar facility is going to be markedly different then anything space-based. Significant gravity, a surface, 2 week bright/dark cycles, huge dust & debris issues; except for lack of atmosphere they're almost entirely different problem sets. A space station is certainly the better R&D environment for spacefaring development. As to Martian R&D Earth as good, and substantially cheaper/more-amenable venue then the moon offers.
Except that asteroids are probably a far better materials supply source and can be got roboticly, with their materials easier separated, refined, and then sent on to Earth in space then from the moon. Furthermore while He3 is promising we've yet to achieve fusion that could take advantage of it and those power sats would probably do as good a job with less complexity then a lunar-fueled terrestrial fusion system anyhow.
Except any manned base is going to be fouling up the local environment and require far more support then just installing spares & alternatives for everything. Again, the moon is good, space is likely better.
Because the moon is the only possible frontier? Not our oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, arctic & antarctic regions? Not more abstract frontiers like science, technology, sociology, psychology, diplomacy, etc.?
I'm honestly not trying to be contrarian but your reasons strike me more as rationalizations. Nearly all could be done better/cheaper using unmanned systems or directly in space. I'd hate to see a lunar base become another dead end like our hopelesly compromised space station, doing expensive science of minimal import or quality.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
>The moon is the first step.
I thought it was the giant leap...? But don't quote me on that.
Outside of obvious military motives, there is no worthwhile reason to go back to the moon in this way. think about it.
2020: robotics will be much further along. Probes and robots are better and cheaper than humans and the case only gets stronger with time.
BioSphere: a failed project in habitation. More work along these lines would be a better use of money. The low gravity issues can largely be tested remotely if need be. Building a spinning space module for the space station for testing moon gravity would be cheaper.
Resources: power or material transport is an issue. robots have been encroaching on manufacturing for some time... Long term changes in mass are an issue; it may sound nuts but mankind is short sighted and willfully underestimates its' impact. One thing could be the slight change could alter a Meteor's path altering the odds of impact.
How about we look into how to cheapen space transport? (elevator?) How about we look into energy transport for space based solar power? How about we look at some clever Meteor defense plans or space JUNK?
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The idea of landing a man on the moon was initial conceived in 1960. Kennedy made his famous speech in 1961. By 1969, NASA had launched and recovered Apollo 11.
Flash forward to 2007. Presumably, we know how to get to the moon, since we've done it before. Computing and aerospace technology have both advanced considerably in the intervening 46 years. But now, instead of getting there in less than 10 years, they want to take 13?
Something is seriously wrong with this situation.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Funny, I was just wondering how large I could pee my name in the lunar "snow".
We don't have viable breakeven fusion. We're not likely to get it anytime soon. Maybe in 20 years - same as they said 20 years ago, and 20 years before that. It's not as though He-3 or lack thereof is what's stopping us from having breakeven fusion reactors. Using a mythical fuel for a mythical fusion reactor as a reason to go to the moon makes your argument sound, well, mythical. Spending trillions of dollars to stockpile the mythical fuel for the mythical day in the future that it might be needed is crazy. If it's there, it'll still be there when (if) it's needed. Do we even know that it's there? Can you point me to peer-reviewed research?
And the lunar surface is, for many reasons, a much worse place than space for telescopes of all sorts. Huge temperature extremes, not the most stable environment, lack of pointing control, you lose 50% of your observing time because your telescope is looking sunward and you have to have RPGs because the other 50% of the time you lose your solar power. We don't use a lot of RPGs, they're a pain in the butt. Heavy, expensive, launch issues, radiation issues, reliability issues and it's difficult to get as much power as you get from a solar panel. Solar power is easier and more reliable. I've worked on a couple of projects where, just for fun and to forestall objections we weren't being forward-thinking enough, we ran trades of a moon site. Space won. Putting stuff on the moon isn't any less expensive than putting it at L2 and L2 is better for a lot of other reasons.
It probably won't change your mind, but I thought it would be useful to throw out a few numbers:
NASA budget: $16.8 billion (2007)
US Military budget: $532.8 billion (2007)
I'll admit that the numbers were actually closer than I expected. OTOH, when it comes to the military, there's the budget and then there's what's actually spent. (Yes, this can be true with NASA, too, but to a much smaller extent.)
Ben Hocking
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Two part question:
1) How far would the money in the B&MGF go towards creating a permanent settlement in space (moon, Mars, etc.)?
2) Is it completely selfish to think this would be a better way to spend the money than on world health? (I say this as a relatively well off Canadian with no one I know dying from starvation or AIDS.)
Guess what would happen to your dick in the lunar vacuum.
Couple of IFs:
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
NASA is talking about going to the moon in order to open up funding streams for all of the precursor projects which will then be used for some other purpose, ostensibly a revenue generating one. Sorry to crush your moon rocks but we are not going to back to the moon this century. If anyone gets there before the year 2100 it will be India or China, if only to say YAAAAY FOR US !!!!
But manned spaceflight out of the orbit of the earth is in fact dead and over, forever, or if not, for the next 100+ years. No one wants to do it. Governments don't want to pay for it and we don't have the attention span for it. In fact I'd put money on the complete elimination of manned spaceflight by the year 2015. We will have officially spent enough money to piss everyone off by that time.
Phase 2 is the complete elimination of all space science, in space, by 2020. Expect that orbital telescopes, research satellites etc will all be defunded by then. Unless there is a commercial or military purpose for space science, it will be killed.
It was a pretty good run but now it's over. I grew up pouring over every detail, every photograph, every newscast, every lay science paper for everything associated with the Gemini and Apollo programs. I had a family member who worked in both programs. It was magic.
But by the time Skylab was discontinued it was clear that NASA was looking to get into the commercial heavy lifting business, ergo Space Shuttle. But NASA didn't bank on the expense and complexity of Space Shuttle, nor did they anticipate smaller payloads becoming the norm. So the Air Force became NASA's only paying customer. They're the only people who have a need for the capacity of Space Shuttle. So NASA is just treading water until Space Shuttle and ISS are killed off. They hope to have another heavy lifter online by then but if they don't then that's that. End of story. We'll be able to go the ESA or India, Japan, Russia or China for launch capability by then and NASA will have ceased to have a purpose.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one on slashdot is willing to disavow a Moon/Mars trip. I'm a techie with a hardon for space exploration too, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to blow all this money on a trip seriously lacking in scientific merit. Remember, it wasn't a scientist's idea to go to the Moon on the way to Mars, it was George Bush's. Also remember that NASA's real scientific programs are going to be seriously underfunded as a result of all this money going into the manned program.
In time we'll make it back to the moon and to mars, but lets not rush it. Our money is better spent on basic research, robotic missions, and problems on the home planet.
Well, let's see. 1/6th gravity might be nice for some things. It does equate to 1/6th the difficulty in managing heavy objects. Vacuum is, amazingly enough, common for many likely working environments in space. We need practice; better to do it around a developed moonbase with medical facilities, manufacturing and so on than around some asteroid that has a lot of something we want, plus vacuum. It's not necessarily "cold", by the way, it is in vacuum, which is something else entirely. There is plenty of energy falling on its surface from which heat can be gathered. And power. In any case, it isn't like you're going to lie on the surface naked. Another thing is it is closer than anything else, and once we have a base there, going other places is a lot less costly -- launching from a 1/6th gravity well is much less costly than launching from a 1G gravity well. Not just into space in general, but to Mars, to Earth orbit, moon orbit, everywhere. There have been many suggestions about how to mine the moon's resources and get worthwhile products from them. Once there and we get a little practice, I have little doubt there would be more of the same. If materials can be obtained to build spacecraft, for instance, then we're WAY better off with a moonbase. It's a great place for telescopes, too. And RF research. And vacations (I'd love to have a 1/6th G environment to practice martial arts in, or to have sex in, or even to just turn backflips in.) As for creating a self-contained biosphere, you know what they say about necessity being the mother of invention.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
NASA will have the benefit of machinery powered by radioactive-decay powerplants (or whatever). I suspect that will give them parity with those 'failed' biospheres.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It'd get bigger! Result!
Do some research first. The moon is out of the way of mars. it would take more fuel to travel to the moon then from the moon to mars as opposed to to making a straight shot to mars. There have been plenty of articles debunking this.
How about spending the money learning about earth and settling the Climate change debate rather than wasting trillions of dollars over a pipe dream.
Plenty of folks with a decent background say that there is much to be gained by making the moon an intermediate step.
And there are plenty who don't. For example, this fellow feels that "Currently, this author believes that there are few, if any, efficient reasons to use the Moon as a stepping stone for going to Mars", since "Mars is a planet with an atmosphere and resources that preclude the Moon from acting as a relevant analogue, and our current space program is quite adept at operating spacecraft in the vacuum of space for timespans that double the most modest estimate of the one-way transit time to Mars."
Perhaps you have some material which counters these points in some meaningful way, rather than simply appealing to authority?
Secondly, you're a Canadian, so I do not see why it concerns you.
Because, like it or not, the United States is our best hope for getting humanity into space. So I'd rather they didn't waste 20 years putting a man back on the moon when it is, IMHO, and the opinion of many others, a waste of time, energy, and resources.
Mod parent up. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, what are we going to do with the billions of dollars in infrastructure that supports the space shuttle, not to mention the space shuttle itself? That kind of stuff can't be sold on Ebay you know....
Every time I hear NASA refer to it as Orion, somehow I just feel cheated out of my galactic destiny as a human being.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I don't know where you got your information, but the moon has - at some point in it's orbit - the same relative velocity as the earth with regard to mars. This is unavoidable, as the moon orbits the earth, if you'll recall. Launching at the appropriate time will ensure no loss with regard to the moon's orbit. However, with 1/6th the gravity well, the same amount of energy will result in a higher velocity, or less energy the same, with regard to a trip to mars from there as compared to the earth. It's just math. And of course, there is no air resistance, no weather, and little air traffic to contend with.
How about not making the terrifically dim assumption that we can only do one of those at a time? Do you fall over when you chew gum? Sheesh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The were successful with the aid of outside input.
That's right. According to Wikipedia, the microbes in the soil depleted oxygen from the atmosphere. The resulting CO2 was then absorbed by the concrete in the structure. Sounds like a pretty important detail, right? Well, those are the kinds of things we should probably solve here, on the ground, before we start building up fantastic plans about moon cities and mars bases. After all, unless you want to be constantly shipping water, gases and food supplies to these bases, a decidedly expensive proposition, you probably want them to be at least somewhat self-sustaining.
Completely different? So you're saying that they don't both involve challenges in the production of resources and maintaining a habitable environment? I suppose they aren't both far enough away that resupply becomes a significant challenge? Long-term low gravity effects on the human body on the moon suggests nothing about long-term gravity effects on the human body on Mars? Psychological isolation on the moon is radically different from psychological isolation on Mars?
Each has unique challenges, too. Mars is about 400 times as far away at best. It takes up to 6 months to get a crew there and at a lot more expense to land the same mass. It's only reasonably accessible once every 2 years, so you don't have the option of bringing a crew back anytime circumstances might warrant it. It receives a little over 1/4 the sunlight, complicating power issues. There's weather. Still, given the overall risk, it makes little sense to try to solve these challenges and the challenges Mars basing shares with moon basing simultaneously if we can solve the latter first.
Also, no ones talking anything that might be considered a "colony" yet. The first lunar base would be quite small and manned by a handful of astronauts. It would grow or be abandoned as is determined appropriate. References to the unsuccessful biosphere projects are irrelevant. They attempted to create almost fully passive sealed environments. A Lunar or Mars base would utilize mechanical systems to maintain liveability. To call the biosphere drastically simpler is ill-considered. On some levels it is. There's little mechanically that can fail. I think there were some fans and pumps to simulate natural air and water movement, and automated sunshades to control the temperature. On other levels it's fair more complex. It attempted to create an equilibrated system with countless influencing factors (it was a particular bacteria that ended the Biosphere 2 project, btw) to replicate one that had over 4 billion years to stabilize. It also had much less interest and funding.
I agree, we should try since we have done it many times before. What I dont understand is why 13 years?
thank you, Brian M. http://www.masonfamilytree.com http://www.thefederation.us http://www.patriciaannmason.com http
I don't know where you got your information, but the moon has - at some point in it's orbit - the same relative velocity as the earth with regard to mars. This is unavoidable, as the moon orbits the earth, if you'll recall. Launching at the appropriate time will ensure no loss with regard to the moon's orbit. However, with 1/6th the gravity well, the same amount of energy will result in a higher velocity, or less energy the same, with regard to a trip to mars from there as compared to the earth. It's just math. And of course, there is no air resistance, no weather, and little air traffic to contend with.
Okay, perhaps I'm missing something, but in order to launch from the Moon to Mars, you need to get fuel to the Moon first. You can't make fuel on the Moon, after all. There's nothing to make it from. So you have to lift it out of Earth's gravity well. So, let's say you do that. So you burn a bunch of fuel to get a bunch more fuel out of Earth's gravity well and deposit it on the moon. Then, you launch from the Moon, burning yet more fuel to climb out of the Moon's gravity well, and a bunch more to make the shot to Mars.
So, tell me... where is the savings, here?
That's the beauty of doing the Moon first. A colony on the Moon is harder than on Mars in most respects. Due to the lack of an atmosphere the sand on the Moon is some of the most abrasive stuff you'll be able to find and the lack of gravity has massive implications for astronaut health and will make many tasks very tedious.
OTOH, *if* something goes really wrong, you won't have to wait for a launch window, you won't give up years and years of work and you won't need a year to get back to Earth.
Someone gets cancer? Back to Earth! No need to wait for spring. Your water supply went the way of the Dodo? Back to Earth! ...
The Moon makes such an excellent training exercise because like in just about any other exercise that's worth its money the problems you face are harder than the real thing while the risks are considerably lower. It also allows us to perfect much of the everyday equipment so it can resist the daily wear and tear and break gracefully while we wait for a better solution to get a spacecraft from here to Mars in a reasonable timeframe.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The shuttles will prolly be claimed by the commercial sector just like the old backup shuttle launch facilities out at vandenberg AFB were. The real question to ask is....why is NASA still around when a commercial entity with government ties could do it for cheaper and make a profit off of it?
Actually yes it is. The moon is far closer to Mars then the earth is.
I'd mod you up, but I can't, so instead I'll just argue the opposite.
Let's assume that all the money in the OECD spent by space agencies gets pumped into working on the aid shortfall, assuming the 0.7% GDP goal is the proper goal. That's about a $24 billion drop in a $50 billion bucket. The rest could be made up by a goodly chunk of Microsoft profit money, leaving them $10 billion. However, this is only assuming that the 0.7% is the only goal. There's also the problems of health care (that leftover $10 billion could give the 45 million uninsured Americans about $218 per year). Afterwards comes education, housing, and the impoverished in the OECD that would be overlooked by our 0.7%.
So the $24 billion would be a step in the right direction, but you forget what we buy with that money: a look over the next hill. The Chinese explored for a bit, arriving as far afield as East Africa and beginning colonies around their area of the world. They nearly dominated the East. After 30 years of this, they turned inwards and burned their fleets trying to achieved Confucian inner perfection. That insular behavior undid the progess achieved under their age of exploration. The Chinese never achieved the perfection they sought. In contrast, Europe achieved the wealth and power it sought, whether for good or ill, and now it and its transplant nations (the rest of the OECD) are the most prosperous in the world.
The $24 billion we spend wouldn't eliminate poverty if spent on poverty, but it may if it's spent on reaching upward and outward.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
Many keep saying "completely different", but they're remarkably similar in that (1) they're not the Earth and (2) their environments are going to be fatal to humans living there without 24x7 support.
Since we haven't demonstrated the ability to give that kind of 24x7 support aside from something in low-Earth orbit, surely doing trial runs on a body that's only a couple light-seconds away will be good preparation for doing it on a body 3-15 light-minutes away, rather than trying to tackle the far-away one first.
Getting material to the moon in the first place must be considered. Assembling in orbit would seem to me to be better than assembly on the moon.
Why do it ? What benefit does it bring humanity - apart from furthering lunar geological science ?
As I understand it, funds have been taken away from NASA's earth observation projects and diverted to manned space flight, which means we will have less knowledge about the state of the earth and its climate and be in a worse position to combat climate change.
Had the Chinese boasted about what they hope to accomplish - you'd have a point. But a press release from a low level bureaucrat attempting to drum up funding and support for his agency does not equate to national policy. The facts support a very different picture: The Chinese have just enough of a (manned) space program to show that they are technologically capable and in fact should be counted as a first rank nation and a superpower - and not one bit more. If nothing else - look at their flight rate.
And this is where the resources on the moon come in handy. If you could actually mine the needed metals and maybe even fuel (He3 as fuel is a long way off but not impossible) on the moon, build the craft on the moon, and *then* launch to mars, you'd be far better off then anything built on earth as far as launch costs go.
I personally doubt that will be viable for a while, but thinking long term moon launches will certainly be a "reason."
All the same, I'm personally of the opinion that mars would make better practice for the moon then the other way around. The actual exercise of getting to the moon, landing, and returning is about all that would be useful that we couldn't do in earth orbit (or in the case of biosphere *on* the earth) easier. Also mars is far more useful in and of itself (instead of just practice for something else) then the moon is in the near future. Add to that it isn't really more technically difficult to get to mars, besides transit time, and I think it would make a better first target.
So why the moon first? Because we're afraid that if we don't someone else will, and before we can get to mars (because lets face it that'll add a few years of checking calculations). That and going to the moon will probably take less money in new research, and if something goes wrong we at least have a chance of fixing it (see apollo 13... much harder to do with a 14 minute delay). Once we gain confidence (and public support with the great new images for the conspiracy theorists to compare to the originals... because lets face it one of the things to do on the moon is to reproduce the original photos with old cameras to explain why some things happen) people won't think mars is too much. And I'm willing to wait 15 years to go to mars if it means we'll do it right.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Most of Africa would kill to get what the poor in the US have.
The only people starving in the US are nuts (anorexics, bulimics, crazy street people that won't take help).
We spend millions per year on free health care for fat 'poor' people. There are no fat poor people (truly poor).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
so, ryatnrrd, how does it feel to be a dick sucking faggot?
seeing how far I can spit in low grav.
Probably about as far as the inside surface of your space helmet. Ewww.
-- Alastair
Either that's very subtle sarcasm you've got there... or you and others reading this aren't keeping track of 3 facts:
1. The moon is about 384,500 km from Earth.
2. Mars is about 55,000,000 km from Earth - at its closest.
3. Most importantly, the moon goes around the Earth all the time.
So... there are times where the moon is 384,500 km closer to Mars than the Earth is.
And there are times where the moon is 384,500 km further than Mars is.
And at best, that's six thousandths of the total straight-line distance to Mars.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Look how much energy it takes to get a space ship into space. So someone actually thinks they can fool the masses into making everyone think that they're going to have a manned mission to mars? How in the hell do they take us for? The insult is beyond belief!
If they care at all to bring back the astronauts alive, they'll have to figure out a way to get a space ship there in the right condition and with the right amount of energy in order to be able to take of from Mars, escape the orbit and then make it all the way back to earth. It's *NOT* the trip *TO* mars that's the problem, it's the trip *BACK* to *EARTH* that is the problem.
So, until they figure out a better propulsion system, or a way to carry more energy more easily, they should *NOT* waste our money on such frivulous BS money wasting trips to the Moon.
It's unfair for them to spend other people's money that way - it's PURE THEFT I tells ya.
I spy with my little eye a country that begins with "I"...
Oh wait, you're talking about something else - aren't you?
My land on the moon will gain some value.
, not in the command module.
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A lot of the development of the Ares launch vehicles is being tailored to try to reuse shuttle infrastructure and keep the shuttle workforce employed. Frankly, this is probably making the entire process much more expensive because it precludes NASA from launching with one of the ELVs already developed and in use.
You are, of course, correct in that little distance is gained if the moon was to be used as a waystation to Mars. I had read the gp to mean that the moon is closer environmentally to Mars. It is a better place to R&D the technologies we would want to take with us to Mars. Whatever habitat module, vehicle, and local resource extraction NASA comes up with for Mars, should be tested on the moon first.
We are all just people.
..to go back to the moon (farside) and discover a seroiusly beat-up Battlestar hanging there in orbit.
I claim first dibbs on Starbucks hot ass!
One time, yes you do. But you also need to do that for a shot straight from earth. So that's pretty much a wash, agreed? The problem comes from multiple moon ->mars shots.
Certainly you can, and yes there is. Think about the basics. What is a space drive, generally speaking? It is a device that expels [something] in the opposite direction from that which you desire to go. And how do we get some of the highest exhaust velocities we've ever attained? Ion drives. Electricity. Ion drives expel stuff [any stuff that will hold a charge] using electricity. And is there electricity on the moon? Think solar panels, and the answer, of course, is yes. Right now, Ion drives are limited in thrust, but they are *very* efficient. That's one useful approach, and there's nothing to say we won't improve them hugely. They're really excellent space drives because they can keep adding thrust on a continuous basis; they use less reaction mass because they can attain such a high exhaust velocity. They're low, constant thrust.
But wait... How do you get anything off the surface with a low thrust engine? You need more power than an ion drive, right? Yep. Can you do it electrically? Sure. You can use a linear accelerator. Again, purely electrical technology, and you can fling things at astounding velocities. The longer the accelerator, the more human-freindly the acceleration will be. Short tracks require high G's, and we hate that. Anyway, again, it's down to electricity and nothing else. No need to lift anything out of the earth's gravity well, once the system is running. We're doing better and better at capacitive storage, and batteries will soon fall to ultracaps, or at least, that's how it looks today. Solar panels are getting less and less expensive, and more and more efficient, and silicon... is there silicon on the moon? Yep. There is. :-)
And landing? Next, there are space elevators. We've got some really tough technical issues trying to build a space elevator on earth. The materials strength to gravity well challenge is just about at the edge of what is possible. But on the moon, this isn't at all the case. 1/6th the gravity means, pretty much anyway, 1/6th the problem. You can bring all manner of cargo up and down at absolute minimum cost and a reasonable constant energy expenditure. After all, space vessels should probably remain in space; it isn't them we want to get from here to there, it is the cargo. Space elevators are also much happier when there is no atmosphere; they just sit there. No blowing around, etc. On Mars, while the gravity is in your favor there, the atmosphere might be a little annoying. Still, it's more doable than it is here on earth.
It's like anything else. You have to spend to build the infrastructure required to get things running on their own, but once that's done, then the returns defray, and eventually eliminate, the original investment. But it doesn't have to be an infinite loop of bringing things from earth to the moon. There are plenty of creative solutions to these problems - I'm not saying they aren't problems - and in the end, there is every reason to think we can pull this off and make it work, and work well.
There are enormous amounts of natural resources out there. We should go get them. We should land and establish bases everywhere we can. We should explore, because knowledge rarely proves useless, and because a lot of us like to explore. The more resources we pull from space, the fewer we'll need to pull from the earth. Delivery of raw materials from space is pretty trivial, basically let gravity do it; the main thing, I would think, is to make them come in gently enough so as not to cook the atmosphere in the process, and avoid scattering them on impact. Water landings and gliding bodies come to mind. But that's not my area of expertise. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you live on the Moon, you don't feel that scared about complying with certain orders. After all, Earth is no longer home...
/ 2006-12-18-why-go.png
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive
Just a PS) there's the same thing about Linux usage...
- My PC went astray with some virus... bummer...
- Hey, what about trying Linux?
- Why?
- *sigh*
The earlier post was assuming you could use available material on the moon to build a rocket capable of lifting to mars. You don't really need "fuel" you need reaction mass, and enough energy to propel it at high enough velocities. Escaping the moons gravity well requires much less force, so you are not forced to use such high energy devices as the rockets you need to escape the earth. You don't need to mine combustible chemicals, you could probably just crush some rocks that are easy to ionise. Heck you could probably build a railgun launcher for the first stage.
With such a lower escape velocity you gain a large number of options that are currently impossible with a earth based launch vehicle.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Well, maybe not fuel, but you can make all the oxidizer you could ever need, and that's the more important half.
72% by weight of a typical Kerosene/LOX rocket engine is oxygen. And the soil/dust/regolith on the Moon is mostly oxygen. We just need to perfect automated methods of extracting the oxygen from the soil, but that's an engineering problem, and not a showstopper.
Not exactly. You burn some fuel to bring a small amount fuel from Earth to the Moon, and don't bother to bring oxidizer. Then you combine the fuel you brought with LOX you harvested from the surface of the Moon, and launch to Mars with that. Since you're only leaving a 1/6g gravity well, you will need far less fuel to leave the moon and go to Mars than you would to leave Earth and go to Mars, assuming you left during the launch window when the Moon has a higher orbital velocity with respect to Mars than the Earth does (which happens about once a month). All this adds up to an energy savings.
Of course, this all requires some sort of infrastructure to work, like a moonbase, and that will be expensive to build. But once the infrastructure is in place, the long-term energy savings are substantial, especially if we start doing things like harvesting objects outside the Earth's gravity well for the other half of the fuel/oxidizer ratio. There's water in comets--that's a hydrogen source. Most asteroids have the same composition as Carbonaceous chontrite meteorites, which are chock full of organic compounds--these can be cracked open to collect both hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen can be burned by itself or combined with oxygen to make hydrogen peroxide (a low-energy monopropellant used in some thrusters). Nitrogen can be combined with oxygen to form dinitrogen tetroxide (a decent rocket fuel that requires an oxidizer) or with hydrogen to form hydrazine (a high-energy monopropellant). I'm sure people with more experience in chemistry and astronomy can suggest many other possibilities as well.
The bottom line is, there's lots of fuel available out in the solar system, outside the big gravity wells, and taking advantage of launching from a small gravity well using fuel harvested from other small gravity wells will result in a substantial energy savings.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
So how do you explain the relative success of Farscape? 4 seasons and at least one movie.
Economists have a concept called 'Opportunity cost'. This means that the money that you spend on one thing can't be spent on something else. If the utility gained from spending money on something else is greater than that thing that you did spend the money on, then you have lost money.
Tech people and other Slashdaughters, however, have absolutely no sense of Economics when it comes to the concept of space and especially the Moon. So, allow to be brief....
There is NO WAY that the money spent on lunar exploration justifies its opportunity cost. ANYTHING upon which you spend the same amount of public funds will bring more benefit to society than spending it on lunar exploration.
No doubt everyone on this site disagrees with the above statement. But that doesn't change the fact that it is true.
The allocation of the public funds is a public trust. To spend billions and hundreds of billions of dollars on lunar exploration (at this time) is a betrayal of public trust. People who advocate this massive but unjustifiable expense should not and will not be taken seriously by the taxpaying public at large. In other words, techies shouldn't 'chain their bikes to the lunar-exploration signpost', because they will end up losing their bikes. You will lose whatever credibility you have by pushing this program.
Nobody in their right mind wants it. No one except the people who read Slashdot.... and the people who stand to make billions of dollars in profit from this 'lunacy'.
Thank you for taking the time to read the truth.
Have a nice day.
The only good reason to send people outside of low Earth orbit is to establish a self-sustaining continuous human presence off the Earth. We would do this for many reasons, for example expanding the economy, or insuring against global catastrophe.
The problem with Apollo was that it was focused on a different goal, that of beating the Russians to the Moon asap. It was a big success in this regard but did a very poor job of advancing the colonization goal. NASA investigated Apollo-style missions to Mars but they were frighteningly expensive and so the program died.
I believe a properly-conceived return to the Moon should focus on advancing the goal of human colonization. Most important is gaining practical experience with In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), NASA's fancy term for living off the land. If we develop good techniques to extract the water near the lunar poles it would be a huge step toward self-sufficiency, and a stepping stone for further missions (like Zubrin's ISRU-based Mars Direct concept).
Beyond ISRU, achieving real self-sufficiency will require at least two other problems to be solved: (1) How to create self-sufficient biospheres of modest size that can support human life without frequent supplies replenishment from Earth (think Biosphere 2 in space), and (2) how to generate positive economic returns from space-based activities, to fund all of the things that will need to be imported from Earth to a colony during the (possibly long) period of partial self-sufficiency.
Gee - I got no idea what to do with 10^22 kilo's
...
of lunar stuff, none at all!
But I do think that:
1. The mass used for orions emergency escape system might
be reused for a boost when it's no longer used. Perhaps
in a later design rev.
2. They should ditch the reuse concept for the capsule.
Instead sell them to museums, arcades, mall's, private
collectors. Turn them into simulation machines so us
earthlings can get a thrill. Simplifies design since
you don't have to worry about environmental wear
and tear causing rework. Also some wear and tear may be
unknown!
3. Keep the capsules in steady but slow production. Allowing
incremental mods.
4. Do a water landing with chutes. Simpler design, less
risk in heat shield. Build a couple of ships for this
purpose, allow them to be re-used for oceanographic work
in between missions.
5. Build a modular and mobile base. On first mission plant
some transponders for automated landings. Send at least
a couple of moble transporters on robotic landers. Each
module should be able to sit on top of transporters.
Make it possible to slide modules off descent stage onto
transporter. Make it possible for the transporters to
pickup and move the descent stage/module bases. Let
the transporters with pressurized modules dock with
stationary modules.
6. Allow the mobile transporters to go on manned and
unmanned away missions for weeks or longer. Useful for
exploration, material gathering,
7. Return the ascent module to near the base. Design
the module so some components survive. Especially anything
with water onboard.
6. Build descent stage so it can be reused on the moon as
either module base or as material to create other structures.
But of course, because then we can make a giant "L-a-s-e-r" and turn the moon into a death-star.
The laser of course would be named the Alan Parson's Project.
And then we could ransom the world for - one - miiilioooon dol-lars.
After that - we can get to work on the sharks.
Pfff! The moon is just big chunk of iron, titanium, oxygen, and magnesium. Nothing that could *EVER* be mined in the future at a huge profit or anything.....
Ya know, this is a giant mineral deposit that that is 3,474.206 km in diameter. Not only that, but you don't ene need to really 'dig' to get at the stuff - scoop it up, and load it into a furnace.
If they push hard at a serious colonization of the moon, there is a *lot* of money to be made.
But wait... there is probably gonna be some group of "Moon Huggers" who will want to declare the moon some kind of "preserve" or something..... definitely nothing useful for humanity.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
All true - but there is one advantage the moon has that Mars doesn't... the moon is only a few day trip back to the safety of Earth if something should go wrong. We still have a lot to learn before we undertake 2.5 year Mars missions. There will be problems. When they occur, it will be nice to know that a safe-haven is nearby.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Why is this insightful? There isn't any 'insight' in this post, just one word. Please moderators, just because you agree with someone doesn't mean the post needs modpoints.
-- Cheers!
With all those silly ideas about Moon they're gonna build a reasonable spacecraft. If only they could be stopped halfway...
"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."
k y
"Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth's surface. In millions of years their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere and themselves. They will control the climate and the solar system just as they control the Earth. They will travel beyond the limits of our planetary system; they will reach other Suns and use their fresh energy instead of the energy of their dying luminary."
"Man must at all costs overcome the Earth's gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovs
Colonizing the moon would be an excellent first step. Mars is not the only planetary body out there, and neither is Titan (Titan is going to be absurdly difficult to land on and colonize due to that 700 km thick atmosphere). Almost all of the moons in the solar system are airless. Colonizing the moon would be an excellent first step to practicing techniques for living with and protecting against solar radiation, and if they can manage to make decent dust seals that don't break down in the lunar dust, then they probably won't break down in the martian dust either, because people are going to go for walks on both. The moon would be an excellent place to practice living in a colony for extended periods (although the ISS has done that too), and will pave the way for many technologies that eventually will be needed when people finally go to places like Triton, Enceladaeus, Cassiopea or live in the asteroids (Ceres is 1000km in diameter).
Granted, machines will do almost all of that better, but people will eventually move out to the solar system, and adapt. The sooner they practice that, the easier the adaption will be.
Yes, if the lunar surface in question is Enceladus
I don't think the flaw in Apollo 13 was _fatal_. If I recall correctly, some geeks saved the day with a sock and some duck tape, and Tom Hanks made it back alive. I also believe the queen alien was killed at the end.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Er... maybe "Winona" was bigger and frickinger than "Vera"?
Or perhaps having the ship get pregnant attracted the female demographic?
No? Darn! So make that "Big fricking guns, a sonic screwdriver or Muppets" then (hey, yes, "pigs in space" did well!).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Colonizing Luna would teach us how to live on large moons, and give us the knowledge to visit and colonize all the other large moons in the solar system. Once you get past Mars it's all large moons, which would be dwarf planets if they orbited the sun, so in that regard, Luna is the first step in learning how to colonize a dwarf planet. Mars is the first step in learning how to colonize a planet. I'm guessing sometime around Mars we'll learn how to colonize asteroids as well.
What do you mean "going back"?
NASA has get their in the first place, to be able to "go back". That thing filmed in the aircraft hanger doesn't count!
Put it this way; both the European and Chinese space agencies have sent probes to photograph the entire surface of the moon, but why haven't they released photographs of the original lunar landing sites? They should still be there.
What? What have I said? So Troll me!
Yeah, my dad was in the military and has told me the same stories. Thing is, if you can go below zero (whether you can probably depends on what you're doing - e.g., having a war on "terror") then that proves that you need even more money next year!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Two Funny Cartoons About This: http://www.unripe.com/pages/cartoon%2082%202020%20 vision.html
http://www.unripe.com/pages/cartoon%2083%20growth% 20of%20bureaucracies.html
Apart from actual testing of equipment and technology, launching from the moon will be a lot easier than from earth, with it's low gravity and all. So establishing a base on the moon would be a great way to begin manned flights to Mars. Also - we need to get up there to find the stuff left over by the Appollo missions, to thwart those "we never went to the moon" kooks!
making a straight shot to mars.
nitpick: spacecrafts never fly straight. they always orbit something.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
"The Moon belongs to America, and eagerly awaits the coming of our space men!"
- chrish
I agree with everyone who says you can make fuel on the moon, but that's beside the point.
IIRC it actually takes more fuel to get from the earth to the surface of the moon than from the earth to the surface of Mars. This is because you can take advantage of Mars' atmosphere to slow you down when you get there (aerobrake) which you can't do when you go to the moon. So, even if you could get all your fuel on the moon's surface for a Mars shot, you'd already be behind...
Hillary Clinton will cancel all manned (and most unmanned) space exploration programs as soon as she get in the White House. The money will be handed out to social programs.
It's over, deal with it. You won't see another moon landing in your lifetime. You won't see a Mars mission. You'll never see the Orion fly. The Russians can't go, the Chinese can't go despite the big talk, the Europeans won't go, they're only interested in money.
Suicide now. It will be less painful.
My letter to Carolyn:
...NASA will now spend our space budget repeating a previous endeavor of questionable utility.
I just read your New York Times opinion. Congratulations on the article!
The first paragraph, though, seemed to twist and end unnaturally. The line:
After spending our space budget building things of questionable utility...
seems to cry out for a completion of:
Your next claim is that propulsion is the great challenge in exploring space. I think ground telescope crews who consistently produce good science, and those scientists for whose instruments current propulsion systems have more than adequate lift and range, would disagree.
For those missions which would benefit from greater lift, must the cost of manned spaceflight back to the Moon be the price tag? Would this not repeat the wastes you see in the shuttle program?
I am interested in the science you see from continuous (read: expensive) habitation of the moon "where sunlight is persistent and water ice may be present", apparently at the expense of other space science.
I am also curious as to why you think the competitive endeavours of several countries will share costs, when explicit cooperation on the ISS did not.
Perhaps this essay was a teaser, and answers for most scientists are coming in the next installment of your essays?
Lies about crimes
As much as I love this idea, I have to say that I'm not too optimistic: He-3 plasmas need to be insanely hot to get sufficient output from the fusion reactions and at these temperatures (around 100keV, IRC), the plasma will collapse from synchrotron + bremsstrahlung radiation. Now, suppose you've found a way around this problem. Another issue you'll have to deal with is the absence of neutrons (BTW, He-3 fusion is not really aneutronic, but that's beyond my point). Without neutrons, the heat load will be entirely on the inner surface of the reactor. No material is even remotely capable of handling such a flux. OTOH, neutrons (from D-T fusion) may be nasty for a lot of reasons, but they will distribute the heat in the metal volume (from the neutron-metal interactions), making water cooling possible.
So, in a word, D-T fusion is not there yet, but He-3 fusion is very very far away, if at all possible.
Well, it certainly killed the MISSION, and nearly killed the crew in the process. If the failure happened at any other point in the mission, they most likely wouldn't have survived. If it happened closer to the moon, they may not have had time to adjust their trajectory for a return to earth. If it happened during or after the lunar landing, they wouldn't have had any "lifeboat" to get home in.
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Defining Statistics and Social Research
If they are seriously going back to the moon, I hope they take the opportunity to do some astronomy. Wouldn't it be a good place for experiments in higher wavelength interferometry, for example? One thing I have been wondering about is whether you could line one of the smaller craters in a wire mesh and turn it into a radio telescope? A primitive Arecibo, if you will.
Perhaps we should learn how to make our own society in the US more harmonious and equitable before we start trying to build them on Earth or Mars. If you gave me a choice between universal healthcare and Mars colonization, I would choose universal healthcare. Otherwise, you would simply be creating Martian health care crisis to accompany ours here on Earth.
Most plans I've seen call for sub-terranian colonization of Luna or Mars. Some people want this to be the human "lifeboat" in case of a meteor strike. Guess what, we can dig subterranian "lifeboats" fueled by nuclear reactors for order of magnitude less. As far as colonizing available real estate, Antarctica is still relatively untaken. It is pretty cold (like Mars) but it does have the benefit of a breathable atmosphere and plentiful water supply. Again, the colonization efforts would be orders of magnitude cheaper. But who wants to live in a cold/barren landscape world like Antarctica, Mars or Luna? If you want a telescope ... build a robot. We have no need for a manned space station to take pictures, robots can do that just fine.
He3 is such a bloody red herring. Lets look at the facts here.
1) He3 can be produced here on Earth, through lithium breeding of tritium, which can decay to He3. He3 is in such short demand that the vast majority of tritium that is used is allowed to simply vent its waste gasses. We don't need to go to the moon for the stuff.
2) Sure, lithium breeding of tritum takes neutrons, and some people are strangely obsessed with using aneutronic fusion, despite the fact that by choosing what gets neutron bombardment, you can make sure it doesn't stay radioactive for long at all. But He3 fusion isn't aneutronic. Even He3-He3 fusion, because side reactions and even minor impurities can greatly increase the neutron flux. Sure, you'll have a lower neutron flux than Dt-T fusion, but aneutronic? Nope.
3) He3 is not common on the moon. Not even close. Helium-4 comes in 3-50ppm quantities. Helium-3? 4-20 ppb. At the absolute best, you're looking at mining and processing (using a huge amount of energy) fifty metric tonnes of the stuff to get a single gram of He3. Even assuming that the separation from the much more common He4 is done on Earth, the amount of wear and tear, huge labor costs, huge energy production costs, etc (everything will inherently be horribly expensive on the moon due to high import costs) make this notion obscenely expensive.
4) The succession from ITER, probably the world's best shot (as recognized by the majority of nuclear physicists) for generating fusion power, isn't expected to lead to a viable commercial powerplant until at least 2050. And this is assuming that everything goes right. Fusion He3 is an order of magnitude more difficult (and would require buildings an order of magnitude larger). And for what? A lighter neutron flux? Give me a break. Other methods for fusion, from Polywell to muon-catalyzed, are considered much longer shots. Well, NIF (inertial) isn't, but it has scaling problems as well.
It's a silly concept designed to sell people on a moon base using an unrealistic, hypothetical future. Why did they pick He3? Because the moon is so resource poor, there are no good choices of minerals to list for export. A bunch of iron, titanium, silicon, calcium, and aluminum oxides. Those will clearly never be economical to export. Perhaps never even economical to process simply for use on the moon, due to all of the import chains needed to run related refining and casting facilities. So they talk about a theoretical "Helium-3 future" that isn't realistic.
If people care about actually establishing a permanent presence off this planet, there's really only one major avenue that must be focused on: getting launch costs down. Launch costs are killing this prospect. I don't care how it happens. Metastable fuels? Sure. Nuclear thermal? Great. Scramjets? Why not. Alloy/composite breakthroughs and refined craft designs? Sounds wonderful. OTRAG-style massively staged vehicles? Woohoo. I don't care how it gets done. I just want it to be done. I want to see the huge amount of money for these "Gee, Whiz!", unsustainable manned programs routed into launch vehicle research. Multiple avenues taken at once, without any of the craft being forced to become a workhorse like the Shuttle was. The shuttle was a research craft. We learned a lot about what works and what doesn't on reusables from it. It never should have been made to become a workhorse. First-gen technology rarely is.
With all roads taken, odds are good that at least one will get us to that elusive 1k$/kg launch price. If they don't, try, try again.
Yes, this all will never happen, I know. Manned spaceflight is how NASA gets funding to work on everything else; they can't cut it. And thus, they can't divert the money into such an ambitious research program. But we can at least not encourage such waste by supporting things like the VSE.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Convince the general American populace (or at least Bush and half of congress) that terrorists are on the moon and could strike with orbiting lasers from any moment.
You'll be amazed at how fast NASA will get funding (in joint with the Air Force) and get troops up to the moon.
The sad part is that I'm only half-joking.
3000+ dead in persuit of taming Iraq, but we're too repulsed by death to have any substantial risk of 6 people going to mars. Going to moon is nice, but its kind of like setting your sights on crossing the ocean, but deciding you need to paddle across the lake out back a few times first. We should forget the moon for now, and begin finding a way to get people to mars, even if there are good chances they won't return or survive. I know there are many astronauts and scientists who would go on a one way mission if given the opportunity, even if it meant certain death. Yet we continue to waste the lives of our people in Iraq, despite congress denouncing any further deployments of troops, and despite the public ousting the Republicans from congressional power.
Its just embarassing to be part of this history. We all dreamed that 2010 would bring us into space travel and colonization of the moon and planets, but we're still killing one another on the ground in 3rd world countries over natural resources. We should at least be killing each other in space over natural resources by now!
One time, yes you do. But you also need to do that for a shot straight from earth. So that's pretty much a wash, agreed? The problem comes from multiple moon ->mars shots.
Are you saying that it takes the same amount of fuel to make a heavily-loaded fuel run to the moon, land, and then climb out of the moon's gravity well and land on mars as it does to go from the earth to mars?
Yes. I know its not that much closer to mars. It was a bit of a joke and from the looks of it a fairly bad one. But, I still think it would be easier to launch from the moon because of the lower amount of gravity would reduce the fuel consumption.
No, I agree, it takes more if you do that, no question about it. I didn't say exactly what I intended to say in that part, and you're quite right to call me on it it as written.
The thing is, if you go to the moon and build an infrastructure that eliminates the earth/fuel part of the equation, you win in the long run, instead of the short run, because you won't be doing that - you'll have propulsion where the energy is produced on the moon, not on earth, and you will only be dealing with lifting from a 1/6th gravity well. Ergo, we're better off going to the moon and building that infrastructure.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.