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Send the ISS To the Moon
jmichaelg writes "Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it in low earth orbit. (While we're at it, we should re-brand it as the 'International Space Ship.') He points out that it's already designed to be moved periodically to higher orbits so instead of just boosting it a few miles, strap on some ion engines and put it in orbit around the moon instead of the earth. That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans. Benson concludes: 'Let's begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.'"
I like this idea on he face of it, but we are talking about a lot of work. The ISS, as presently configured, is in no way designed to stand on its own without regular re-supply... and we are a very long way from the moon in the sense of the energy it takes to keep punting supplies out to a lunar orbit.
Right now, in LEO, getting a new toilet up there is still an effort that can take quite a bit of time and co-ordination. Food and other sundries depend upon lifting resources that cannot be generalized into getting a lot further out of our gravity well; we'd need a new generation of lifters to get that done (and, I suspect, more efficient and hopefully at least somewhat less polluting and poisonous propulsion methods.)
Think over the ISS-related news of the last few years. The oxygen generator failure. The toilet failure. The bad elbow joint on the arm. The computer failures. Solar panel problems. All of these, and more, would have been that much more serious at lunar distances and energy requirements.
Honestly, I get the very strong impression that the ISS is a piecemeal effort, not up to the quality required to exist at a significant distance from resupply and service; more than once there has been talk of having to abandon it. And that doesn't even factor in the dithering support at the political level — at lunar distances, we're talking huge increases in costs, and that will tend to amplify the politician's waffling in support, if indeed one could gain it in the first place.
I would much rather see a serious effort put into a large enough work that it would have some chance at self-sustaining operation; a large hollow globe with cultivation, running water, and a manufacturing base. It'd be hugely expensive, but the vast majority of that would come up front, thus reducing the vulnerability to failed re-supply or loss of political support to kill it outright.
Sadly, I don't see us doing that. We're a lot more likely to commit a trillion dollars or two (of our descendant;s money and interest) to reducing Iran to rubble than we are to seriously attempt to create a viable lunar space station.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see us actually get the heck off this planet and start populating the solar system, but the realities aren't just daunting, they're outright Godzilla-like.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Send that POS into the sun. Good riddance.
My quick Wikipedia-based calculations are that the ISS could match orbits with the moon in 9.2 years if its solar panels were entirely devoted to powering ion engines.
(They wouldn't be, of course, and my other major omission is the need to orbit the moon -- I have no idea how the moon's gravity would perturb the ISS as it approached, I suppose it would increase or decrease orbital transfer efficiency but I don't know which.)
Sources:
Low-thrust transfer - "going from one circular orbit to another by gradually changing the radius costs a delta-v of simply the absolute value of the difference between the two speeds"
Ion engine comparisons - 25 kW can produce 1 N thrust
ISS Solar Arrays - 4 pairs of "wings" to be installed on ISS, totalling 262 kW (I think; might be half that if I misunderstood "wing"); ISS weighs 1 million pounds
Moon's orbital velocity = 1.0 km/sec, ISS's orbital velocity = 7.7 km/sec
Google says: 9.2 years
In various science-fiction novels, such as Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars , old booster rockets are put up into orbit and linked to form space stations instead of just being throw away. Why has NASA never realized that idea? We'd have all the infrastructure in orbit we wanted, and for a very low cost.
And does he have the sufficent knowledge to be making and backing up these crazy suggestions?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
Actually, I thought this was a cool proposal until I started thinking about it..., these are the ones that came into my head immediately:
* The ISS may be designed to be boosted into a higher orbit, but this is not the same as the stresses involved with a Trans-Lunar injection boost. It would have to have the entire structural integrity improved which would be VERY expensive.
* Yes, solar panels would work at the moon but the whole directional system would have to be redesigned and the number of panels probably increased.
* The resupply craft are not designed to go to the moon nor is there a booster (currently) available that could take them there. We'd need a whole new booster built to even get them close.
* Our current proposal is to put a base ON the moon. There's really not much to be gained by creating, or moving, a space station into lunar orbit. You certainly couldn't land the ISS on the moon (well you *could* I guess but it'd take some serious engineering!).
1. Rename it from "ISS" to "Alice".
2. Bang! Zoom!
3. Straight to the moon
4. Profit!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
We better move quick, the Chinese are going to do this in 2010 if I recall.
Why don't we just rename the ISS 'Alice'. Then Jackie Gleason can send it there.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Bad idea. The Moon has a lumpy gravitational field. This makes it very difficult to keep anything in a stable orbit. Look up lunar mascons.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Jackie Gleason's dead, you insensitive clod!
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
FTFA:
"The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at least potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are technicalities."
On that basis my house, next-door's cat and G.W.Bush's arse are also "potentially" interplanetary spacecraft. It's only "technicalities" that prevent them from being so.
One major problem that the author ignores is cosmic rays. In Low Earth Orbit, the ISS is protected from cosmic rays and the solar wind by the Van Allen belts. If you move it out to the moon it won't have this protection any more and the occupants would be exposed to high energy particls much more so than in low earth orbit. I'm not sure of the level of shielding on the ISS but it's probably insufficient to protect the crew.
We've already been to the moon.
Careful... There might be a few around here that disagree with that :)
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
The ISS should be left where it is. It should outfitted so that it can serve as a "dry dock" for building the manned Mars mission.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
One thing that I've wondered is why can't the space shuttles be refit for moon missions? I know they are designed only for low orbit. Put extra fuel tanks in the cargo bay as well as several landers. With extra payload capacity of a shuttle and larger crew several places could be explored on the same mission.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
(quoted/end of article);
"All the billions already spent on the space station would pay off -- spectacularly -- if this product of human ingenuity actually went somewhere and did something. But it would also serve as a compelling demonstration that we're one species, living on one planet, and that we're as capable of cooperating peacefully as we are at competing militaristically. Let's begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly."
Not to say that i dislike optimist's.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
once you get out of LEO you're not going to fair very well in the van Allen radiation without someone serious design modification. this article is so stupid... perfect for a slashdot debate.
POW, right in the kisser!
"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." --Isaac Asimov
This is most likely impossible because the ISS structure was never designed to take the kind of thrust this would require; massive reinforcement of the module connections would be required at the very least. Even if ion engines could be used in a low-impulse manner (assuming they are built, configured, etc.) to escape LEO, the deceleration burn for lunar orbit insertion would be more abrupt and jarring.
Bush Lies On the Record.
And while we're at it, we can replace the space shuttle with ordinary airplanes by FLYING HIGHER. How come noone has ever thought of this before?
It's obvious we never went to the moon. The whole budget went to building movie studios to fake the moon landings. Why the expense? To simulate lower gravity, they had to film it on Mars.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
One top of the problems enumerated by other poster (time to reach the moon, resupply), Mr Benson seems ignorant of the fact that the ISS lacks radiation shielding - like every other craft in LEO it depends on the Earth's magnetic field to shield it from radiation. The radiation level in the belts, let alone that beyond them, would fry the electronics onboard the ISS and far exceed that considered safe for long term occupation.
That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans.
That's right: Its new purpose would be the pointless study of the effects of cosmic radiation and solar storms on humans who would enjoy neither the deflection of the earth's magnetosphere nor the shelter of a layer of moon dirt.
That or they could just fake this one too!
The first thing that popped into my head is the docking scene from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Granted the IIS isn't dual ringed, nor does it spin. But could it not be utilised for the same purpose... i.e. a trans-Moon transfer station? Or even trans-Mars?
ACK NAK RST
That is false.
It is a VERY different trip out of the deep gravity hole, filled with atmosphere that we call earth than it is within space.
The best reason to stop in space is to SWITCH crafts.
Specifically, you need a high G (3 or , aerodynamically sound, craft to get out of the atmosphere.
Once you get out there, you generally want a low G (actually, One G would be perfect), space ship, and you don't care that much about shape. (radiation becoems important however).
We generally deal with this now either two ways:
1. Put a smaller ship inside a throw-away one,
2. give a high initial thrust, and plan it out so that it goes where we want it to without any additional thrust.
These ideas are rather primitive, cheap, and silly. A better idea is to launch ship components up to the space station, build them there, then launch the second ship from there. This gets rid of the size constraint of the method 1, and allows powered flight for much quicker delivery, negating the huge disadvantage of method 2. Yes, this will be more expensive, but it lets us do things we could not at all using the current methods.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The main problem we have is getting mass from into space which takes a whole lot of energy. That's why it's so important that we do the right thing with every molecule we have put up there.
The next logical step for the ISS is develop the capability for it to repair itself. That means being able to fabricate replacement parts, repair what breaks, and to build new things by intelligently scrapping and remodeling the old and useless. Convert those labs into mini-factories. They'll definitely need one of these.
bad news, The ISS is made to work in low earth orbit under the Van Allen belts. the radiation is to much outside of the VA belt. Great idea but the ISS is forever stuck in LEO.
Sending the ISS to the moon, if experiments are still to be its purpose, instantly makes it more expensive to conduct research there. Flinging material out to the moon requires a lot more fuel than to LEO. It significantly raises the cost to do anything, which probably means that even less research will be accomplished. Is there more valuable research that can be done in lunar orbit that can't be done in low-earth orbit?
Also, if something were to go wrong on the station, there isn't a way for the crew to get home quickly. Apollo took 3-4 days to transit between the Earth and Moon, and hit the atmosphere at 38,000 kph. We don't yet have a crew "escape capsule" that can accommodate the full crew, nor one that is designed to travel so far and support people for so long, nor one that can survive reentry from anything other than LEO.
I wonder if a very high earth post geosynchronous orbit wouldn't be an even better "second life" for the ISS. First it would be less complexe than getting it into a moon orbit. Second, I could prove to be more useful there. As well as being a relay for lunar (or where ever) missions, it could be used as a platform to service (or remove) satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
There are so many problems with this proposals it's ridiculous.
First of all, the ISS is very carefully designed to operate in low earth orbit in it's present inclination. One good reasons is thermal issues: rejecting waste heat and ensuring it doesn't get too hot or cold is important. If you were to build a space station to go into a different orbit, you would have to redesign the entire space station accordingly.
Not to mention that there are very good reasons why the station is in low earth orbit. LEO is relatively cheap to get to (launching to higher orbits costs more), not to mention the fact that the magnetosphere still shields the astronauts from much of the radiation from the solar wind, cosmic rays from elsewhere, etc.
Lots of useful science can be done in its present orbit. While the current inclination doesn't give good coverage of Earth's poles, it's still better than nothing.
There's another reason why moving the ISS would be impractical: the amount of delta-V required to get the thing into lunar orbit would be phenomenal. Not to mention the expense and complexity of resupplying the station in lunar orbit.
I can think of several valid reasons why moving the ISS to lunar orbit is a horrible idea. This is merely one of the little ones. The current routine for disposing of trash and waste on ISS is to load it into an empty Progress resupply module then deorbit it and let it burn up in the atmosphere or return it to Earth on the Shuttle. Since the Moon has no atmosphere, doing the same thing there might very well bring down several tons of empty MRE wrappers and busted toilet parts onto some very unhappy taikonaut's head on the Moon.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
We've already been to the moon.
Careful... There might be a few around here that disagree with that :)
And yet others suggest there is an alien base on the other side of the moon, and we don't like to go there.
While I belong to neither camp, I still haven't really digested this video, where many credible and sane looking people debate that and similar topics.
Here's a shorter one, specifically on the moon.
I know it can all be crap, but what if it isn't!
That was the first thing I thought of too, it's even a sound-alike.
"One of these days eye ess ess! One of these days! BANG! ZOOM!"
"Oh yeah, you're goin' somewhere eye ess ess, TO THE MOON!"
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
No no, too late. We already signed the paperwork to have it burn up in the atmosphere on March 3, 2018 3:44am GMT. The deadline for idea proposals has already passed and it is too late to submit a SOPX-1452B form in triplicate to the NASBE office.
here are a list of problems with this plan:
1. It will travel out side the radiation belts, which will cause all sorts of problems with the electronics, and crew.
2. It's too heavy, and likely not structurally sound enough for sufficient thrust. (i.e. in less than 9.2 years)
3. The US doesn't own it. Other countries own it too.
If we want to use it to explore the solar system, use it as an orbital construction platform. You can provide a place for astronauts to live and work as they build a vessel that is better suited for the mission.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I like its boldness. Outside of a host of technical problems and issues, however, I don't think it's going to be possible.
As the largest debtor nation on earth, the US has been insolvent for quite some time. I believe that high energy costs will usher in a new era of financial turmoil for the US and any such project, as much as I'd like to see it happen, just isn't going to happen. When the dust settles I'd be surprised to see NASA survive.
Ok. Let's say the ISS is in lunar orbit. What happens when the fit hits the shan? Right now, the crew moseys into the soyuz and comes back home.
That certainly won't work from lunar orbit. The equivalent of the soyuz for that scenario would be an Apollo command and service module. One for every 3 ISS residents, in fact. Complete with fuel, food, O2, etc. Permanently in place with the hope that they're never used.
That's before you even consider the stuff that would need to make the trip on a routine basis. Food, O2, fuel for the station keeping rockets, people going up and coming down... All of it equivalent in scale to a single Apollo mission.
If we had a fleet of Eagles, then I'd say it would be practical.
Here are some issues I see :
The ISS needs frequent resupply, so there would have to be some sort of lunar ferry. Thus doesn't exist now and would have to be created.
The ISS is not rated to protect astronauts against solar flares. There would need to be a on-board shielded bunker for them.
A fast boost would stress the system. A slow boost would put astronauts in the Van Allen belts for extended periods, which dangerous to astronauts and probably also to onboard electronics. If the slow boost is manned, there is danger, if unmanned, there would be no one to fix any problems.
Oh, and the inclined orbit for the ISS is not the same as the inclination of the Lunar orbit, so it will take more energy to get the ISS there than a simple 2-D calculation would indicate.
Here is an idea - get the Russians to build another MIR, updated of course, and boost it to Lunar orbit. At the same time, work on an Lunar ferry. The Soviets discussed putting a MIR into Lunar Orbit, so why not do it, except from French Guiana (the Arianne launch site) or the Kenyan Proton launch site (to save energy by having a low latitude launch site).
Send the ISS To the Moon
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 15, @03:45PM
from the one-of-these-days-alice dept
He's dead, Jim.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
By the way, what are we going to do with the ISS when we're done with it? That's a lot of hardware up there. Is there a plan to safely de-orbit it without dropping lots of metal on some poor unsuspecting city?
According to the Wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Benson), he's an writer and filmmaker. The closest thing he has to a qualification is a book of reprocessed images from space probes.
Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes.
Yes, I'm sure it's the same guy. Both the article and this wiki page cite the same book. Also, the Wiki page says he's "living in Slovenia", and the article includes a .si email address.
You could send the ISS or Mir to a NEA - some are easier to reach energetically than the Moon. I am not quite sure what you would do with it once you got there, but it would be cool.
Andy
Besides, who is he calling "we?" I haven't been there! Did Niel Armstrong submit this story?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
They should at least dismantle it & use the spare parts for something.
Just don't fall in.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
astrobill wrote:
As a space physicist and engineer, I praise Mr. Benson's enthusiasm for space exploration. However, I feel compelled to explain to him and the millions of Post readers he was allowed to mislead why his idea to send the International Space Station (ISS) on interplanetary jaunts is wholly unrealistic, and frankly, impossible.
For one thing, the shielding, wall thicknesses, and many other design aspects of the ISS were chosen to protect crews from the worst-case radiation environment known to exist throughout its present orbital environment. The ISS spends its entire time wholly within the protective cocoon of the Earth's magnetosphere, a complex electromagnetic structure generated within the Earth which also happens to protect the Earth from most forms of high energy cosmic rays and other ionizing particles. The ISS design is wholly unsuitable for long-duration jaunts outside this region and could not easily or practically be changed at this point to accommodate a different environment.
Secondly, Mr. Benson's proposal to simply connect engines to the ISS and launch it away from Earth and onto interplanetary trajectories completely ignores the fact that every source of propulsion he cites would impart accelerations, even small ones for certain scenarios, that the ISS structure, joints, and arrays simply cannot accommodate -- the structure would simply exceed design tolerances under any source of thrust sufficient to launch it out of Earth orbit and on a transfer trajectory around the Sun to another Solar System body. Moreover, even the low-thrust ion engines Mr. Benson cites (actually, low "specific impulse," but that's another lesson...) would be unable to launch the ISS onto a transfer orbit to another solar system body, and certainly not on any reasonable timescale. It would be, perhaps, years before Mr. Benson's hypothetically-suitable ion engines could impart enough added velocity ("delta-V" to engineers) to move the ISS into an appreciably higher orbit, much less on a suitable trajectory to another planet in our Solar System. The ISS would require thousands of miles per hour of additional velocity to be placed onto such an orbit, regardless of the engine type used.
Thirdly, Mr. Benson's essay completely ignores the fundamental fact that even the most efficient transfer orbit between Earth and, say, Mars, requires at least 8-9 months each way, not to mention the time spent actually DOING anything once there. The ISS is simply unable to hold enough food, water, air, and other "consumables" for any sized crew for the duration of any mission of the type Mr. Benson has in mind. And "direct" trajectory missions that ignore the more efficient transfer trajectories require so much acceleration that the ISS would simply flex and buckle were an attempt made.
Forth, the amount of power the ISS solar arrays can generate is fundamentally tied to the solar energy received on their surfaces. Some of the interplanetary bodies Mr. Benson proposes visiting are at locations too far from the Sun for the arrays to generate enough power to operate systems on board. For example, the ISS solar arrays at Mars would receive only about half as much solar energy per square meter as they do at Earth. The ISS simply cannot accommodate hanging enough "extra" solar panels on its structure to make up for the difference, and wiring in new, additional power sources would require wholesale redesign of the ISS.
There are about a dozen other significant reasons why sending the ISS on interplanetary missions is completely unfeasible from a technical perspective, and which time an space prohibit me from addressing here.
Mr. Benson's claim that "...there are good answers to all these objections..." and his attempt at preemptive criticism of "skeptics" -- as well his claim that NASA is not "particularly welcoming to outside ideas" -- does not obviate the laws of physics, engineering limitations, much less the laws of astrodynamics and the hostile environment of our solar system.
And contrary
Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it low earth orbit
Apart from being ridiculous nonsense by all practial standards, this preposterous suggestion conveniently ignores the fact that the ISS isn't just NASA's property, toy and command target. The other participants of the international space station would hopefully refuse to tolerate such follies.
so that they can build a ship with a gravity drive, which will disappear into Hell, thus allowing Sam Neill to tear his eyeballs out.
While sending the ISS to the moon solves one problem, there is still the issue of resupplying. Most supply ships are designed for a space station in Earth orbit. To go to the moon these space ships would need more fuel and would need to take more time to get there.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
That's no moon....
It's the space station!
Anybody want my mod points?
Maybe the ISS is best where it is but maybe, iff a lunar orbit station would be usefull as a step towards the future lunar base this might be a good method for getting it there. Build a space station that is better designed for lunar orbit in earth orbit, use this method to get it to lunar orbit after completion. Leave the ISS where it is. That is, if a lunar orbit station is even usefull and if the lumpy gravity issue that another postor mentioend isn't a total deal breaker.
Was the ISS designed to tolerate the Van Allen radiation belts (potentially for an extended duration)? Since travel to the moon probably wasn't on the requirements list, it probably wasn't.
That, along with the already mentioned servicing logistics make this little more than a pie-in-the-sky idea.
XeoMage
Mr. Benson is also probably the type to build a house and move in before the carpets are laid or the plumbing is connected. 'Cause hell, the floor is going to get dirty anyways and there's a hole in the bathroom floor you can shit through. "The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at least potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are technicalities." (From Article) Perhaps he doesn't grasp the concept that just because something is able to be maintained operational in orbit, doesn't mean that you can strap a rocket on it's ass and expect the same level of reliability while moving it further away from it's maintenance source. Alot more spare parts would have to be packed, alot more food stored on it as well as much greater volumes of water. The logistics of getting those things to something in low earth orbit are much easier than pushing it out to the moon so you would have to ensure resonable reserves. While he's making comments like, that he might as well say you can stick a snorkel on it and turn it into a submarine. After all, it's likely water tight.
I don't buy it that we have run out of scientific uses for the space station. I've known a number of physicists who sent experiments to the space station. One as looking at high energy particles, and sent up glass to be etched by particles passing through. This was considered more cost effective than building expensive accelerators on this planet. Anyway, the point it, I don't buy it. There are still plenty of scientific uses for the space station.
What could possibly go wrong?
I would rather see them take what we have learned from the ISS and previous Lunar missions to build an orbiting station around Luna that is actually designed to be there. Two things would be very important: a way to get home in an emergency and sufficient storage that resupplies wouldn't have to be quite so often. You'd probably want a bit more in the way of living space as well but that's negotiable.
Currently the ISS spends about half its time in the Earth's shadow. The Moon is only in the Earth's shadow during lunar eclipses.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Why not take a page from all those sci-fi books and put it in a Lagrange Point?
(according to Wikipedia, several missions are planned there already)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
we are a very long way from the moon in the sense of the energy it takes to keep punting supplies out to a lunar orbit.
We don't have the capability because we've never, ever, had a reason to develop it. Start planning to stick the ISS in a lunar orbit (or hell, even a lagrange point) and you can bet the booster technology - having been given the necessary incentive - will rapidly rise to the task.
Rocketry's stuck where it is because we as a species haven't aspired to do anything that'll push it along.
And really, if we wind up abandoning the thing anyway, better to retire it into a parking orbit around the moon than to de-orbit it into the ocean.
he's so far outside the box on this one, I doubt that it's exerting any gravity on him at all!
I recall that the Russian modules are hardened for radiation. From articles I've read in the past, in the event of radiation, the crew would goto the Russian modules.
There could be some type of shield on one side of the station. Such that, the station would orient this shield towards the sun with its gyros. Or spread open this shield when planetary weather observations indicate that there is a solar storm happening.
The ion booster sounds like a great idea. Slowly move to the destination.
Ya, supplies would have to be accelerated. But the point is most of the craft has to be accelerated just once. Not every time.
If the moon's gravity field is so lumpy then why are we sending anyone there in the first place? Of course, the ion thruster might be able to iron things out.
Or when the ISS is to be decommission, take the parts that can be used for interplanetary travel. Its in orbit and has intrinsic value.
Still the ISS is valuable as an in orbit manned construction center. Complicated assembly can take place there. Robot arms etc. can be used multiple times for different assemblies.
For some reason I thought you meant ISS in the context of the software application that allows all the PCs on a network simultaneous access to the Internet through a single connection and ISP ...
www.intel.com/products/glossary/body.htm
Too bad. That would have been fun to banish to another planet.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
Hey Mr journalist with an English major. Leave the thinking to someone who understands basic stuff like gravity, energy etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"I'm going to punch you in the face!" (laughter)
Bow-ties are cool.
I agree that it would be difficult and a waste of money. We need to either make a concerted effort aimed directly and getting life on the moon if we are going to do it successfully.
I don't agree that populating the solar system is a good idea. We are lacking a lot of information to make that leap.
Lets look at colonizing Mars for example. Consider the limited resources here on earth. It would take a tremendous amount of resources to make Mars even remotely viable for humans. What kind of expense is that to life on Earth? Do we have the resources to sustain two planets long enough for Mars to become habitable? If we push off to Mars some quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, that limits those resources here. We blame global warming on what amounts to miniscule changes in the concentration of those gases. How do we know that offloading those gases to Mars won't have some other negative impact here, perhaps to the vegetation at the base of our food chain? How do we know that that significant displacement won't in some way affect Earth's orbit or rotation? Or that the developing atmosphere won't have an effect on the orbit or rotation of Mars? When it comes to space, I've always found it funny that we tend to hear and consider only the positives with little regard for the larger impact.
Count me as one of them, on the basis of "Who the hell is 'we'?" Does we include me? I don't remember visiting the moon.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I just don't think you retask space equipment like that. The stresses involved from acceleration/deceleration, even if the thruster were attached to the trusses would probably cause all sorts of havoc. A better idea is to make it into a gas station/wharehouse. Put a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhab transhab up there decked out for room and storage. Then use the shuttle (or the Russians or private space companies) to bring up large quantities of water or fuel or other supplies. Then when the mission goes up they can resupply in orbit and won't have to take everything with them from the ground on one trip. You could even send the astronauts separately in a known and tested vehicle so the Aries wouldn't need to be man-rated for the launch itself. That would save time and money.
Oooooh! How about: My father was a misogynist astronaut, you insensitive clod!
This is all too like "common" sense - NASA have yet to figure out a safe and sane way to achieve orbit.... Yes it would be nice to "just" boost the ISS and its already more than 1/2 way there already, but lets face it if it was really international china would be helping getting it to the moon...
there are thousands of windows applications that don't work on Linux - thankfully
The solution is to take ion engines up on the rocket from earth, and use them (with solar power) to get the payloads into moon orbit. It even makes decelerating the payload back to earth orbit feasible so that the ion engines can be reused for the next payload, and potentially letting the payload capsule reenter the earth atmosphere for reuse.
Just getting the ISS into moon orbit would probably have to be done with ion engines or similar, otherwise the cost of lifting enough fuel to push the ISS into moon orbit would be as expensive as just launching the entire thing from the ground right to the moon (although technically the cost could be split with several shipments of rocket fuel, the total cost would be approximately the same, if not more, for multiple trips).
Even Jules Verne got it part right. The ISS would be at its fastest near Earth at its closest point to Earth, ditto for the moon, and at its slowest at the point in between where the gravities cancel each other out. In each direction of travel, it starts to accelerate as soon as one gravity is stronger than the other.
Infuriate left and right
Why? Much easier to built a new, smaller station in lunar orbit with the Ares V once it's operational. Off hand I can't remember the weight of an ISS module, but the Ares will be able to put something roughly equivilent to a large ISS module (think Zvezda) in lunar orbit with a single shot. If we develop wet tank techniques we could have, with a single launch, a new station equivelent to a modern Skylab in lunar orbit. I really don't see the future of space station to be ISS like collections of small modules, but a reutn to the Skylab/Salyut style monolithic spacecraft with a single launch. Additional modules can always be added, but large scale on orbit assembly is really no justified unless the launch costs are significantly lower than one large rocket (which they are not, and will not be with anything being seriously developed now).
There is a reason why the ISS has his I in front. Whicht stands for INTERNATIONAL. Meaning, countries around the world are paying for it. Space Agencies around the world are owning this piece of science together. Why propose NASA to do something with this?!
Who gave NASA sole leadership to this?! This kind of ignorace makes me really angry.
SpaceShip Three can ferry high-paying tourists to and from the ISS.
IIRC the final columbia mission was a science mission whos purpose was mostly to conduct a series of microgravity experiments. Aside from tossing and repairing massive satellites on orbit I've always asumed microgravity experiments have always been the staple of shuttle missions.
Is there really no need for this sort of platform for microgravity experimentation the ISS provides? Are there not industries who very much still need access to space to perform microgravity experiments?
This line of thinking is very similiar to those spending billions constructing massive particle accelerators to work theoretical problems who have little direct bearing on reality.
Your average Joe doesn't see a direct correlation to a cost/benefit and confuse that with a default assumption of no benefit.
At *least* ISS is being used for *something*
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/Expedition.html
More to the point, even if we just pushed the ISS out to a stable lunar orbit and had to leave it there for a few years (decades even) its a better plan than letting it crash into the Earth. We spent billions putting that stuff up there, the last thing we need to do is waste that effort by letting it fall down again.
A lunar orbiting ISS would, even if we can't use it today, be an investment in the future.
Thank you for pointing this out plainly. One of the aspects of space exploration/development that always seems to get pushed to the side is concept of recycling. The sheer expense of getting mass out of our gravity well, even if not very far out, seems to dictate to me that once it's there we should be making every effort to keep it there.
I don't necessarily agree that the ISS belongs in Lunar orbit. I think we are still a lot further out from doing anything useful on the moon than it's politically expedient for anyone involved with the space program or running for office to admit. Talk of a Lunar base is quite frankly silly at this point. When we can actually build and run a self-sustaining habitat or at least one that is nearly so, that's when it becomes time to look at a lunar base. In the mean time though, I can see the ISS still being put to other uses that would be preferable to just mothballing it because it has fulfilled its original mission.
How many satellites are currently in orbit that have ceased functioning? How many are allowed or even directed to re-enter the atmosphere to burn or crash? Even if the only thing that they are useful for is raw materials, it seems downright wasteful to me to expend the resources to get them into orbit only to later let them indefinitely lie dormant or be destroyed. I think a better use than moving the ISS to a Lunar orbit would be to re-purpose it as a management base for a satellite graveyard/repair station.
One of the key factors to progress in space exploration and development, at least in my opinion, is to make it profitable at least a lot less expensive. Make it feasible for technicians to not just make minor repairs but outright rebuilt satellites already in orbit. Once again the concept of recycling becomes key, but at some point the ROI of sending a team of engineers up to work in a satellite repair station exceeds that of simply throwing more material at the sky.
I'm sure I'll get flamed now over my ignorance of the actual intricacies of what I am suggesting and I'll admit a distinct lack of hard information regarding the costs and probably many of the secondary and tertiary issues as well. What I do know for certain though is that any significant space development will involve recycling and re-use on a level that we don't even approach right now and that being able to actually manufacture things in space will be fundamental.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
What amount & type of radiation shielding did Apollo have?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
This is one of the stupidest ideas I've read. I don't know how it made it to be news.
The ISS is designed for one thing, to float around the earth.
It isn't designed for radiation. It's doubtful if the electronics or the crew would survive through the Van Allen belt.
It isn't designed for sustained flight. It's designed to be bumped around very (very) slowly between orbital altitudes, not pushed for long distances.
It isn't designed for long term flight. It doesn't carry sufficient supplies to have a crew that far away.
In an emergency, they'd be screwed. Their evacuation plan involves the Russian resupply modules, which are fine to drop from the ISS in orbit, not push out from the moon and pray. Their reentry velocity would be WAY over what it is coming from the ISS, since they'd be falling towards the earth the whole way. The resupply modules don't carry enough fuel to do the complicated maneuvers that would be required to decrease their velocity enough to survive.
Resupply would be virtually impossible. Sure, we send things up to the ISS now. The ISS flies at between 278km to 425km. The iner Van Allen belt extends from 700km to 10,000km from the earth's surface. The outer Van Allen belt extends from 20,000km to 65,000km. The moon is at approximately 384,000km (average) from the earth's surface . So, the resupply ships would be flying 1000x the distance.
With the moon landings, they targeted an object 3,400km wide. To resupply, they'd be targeting an object 58 meters wide. While I'm not going to suggest it's impossible, it's just not within the abilities of the infrastructure that we have right now. By the time we had just the resupply infrastructure built, the ISS would be ready to retire (or have already been retired).
And lets not forget pesky things like solar flares. The ISS does over 15 orbits of the earth per day. With a little good solar forecasting, they can put the earth between the ISS and the sun to avoid the radiation burst. Lounging around between the earth and the sun on a direct course for the moon, they don't have that luxury.
All the ISS navigation is done based on it's gyroscopes and earth based telemetry. If you're not near the earth, all of the Earth based stuff is pretty much worthless. They'd need to establish moon based tracking systems.
I'm sure I missed a few finer points there. I'm not an astronaut, nor do I work for NASA. I've just been paying a lot of attention for the last 30 years or so. It's something about being able to see launches from the front door of my house that may have gotten my attention.
I like the idea as something to do in the future. They *SHOULD* put a platform in a wide orbit around the earth and moon, which would be a significantly better way to not only move crew and supplies between the earth and moon, but give a nice neutral launch site mid trip for further exploration. The platform should have a much higher mass, better shielding, room to process sustainable supplies (plants to grow food and process air), and enough mass so it could tote along other craft, rather than being pushed long by other ships on occasion.
A future platform would be an awesome (like invoking awe, not like totally rad) feat, which would help guide us towards future longer range space travel.
Unfortunately, I don't see that ever happening. All the space agencies are a politically wrapped money pit, that spend more money talking, and less time doing. A well focused, unburdened effort would do us wonders. And yes, I volunteer to run NASA, if they can specifically block it from ALL political and government intervention. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
A Dyson Sphere?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm a Moonian you insensitive clod!
You had me at "Dick Tracy". I think you lost me again at "planette" though. I was going to cut you some slack because English clearly isn't your first language, but then I saw your username.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
They can land the ISS on a pole of the Moon when its lifetime will come to an end.
It can be our ace up sleeve in some future unexpected emergency. Or they could recycle it in some other way.
Crashing it in the Ocean will be a waste of the energy used to lift it.
"Slap some big engines on it and you got yourself a spaceship" certainly sounds like typical Branson logic.
GET YOUR ISS TO MARS!
Maybe what we really need, is to get the price of shipping stuff to orbit in line with other shipping destinations.
And the 'killer app' for jumpstarting a heavy-lift industry is Space Based Solar Power...
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Get Strong Bad to take it...
"Hold on tight, The Cheat -- we're blastin' offa TO THE MOOOOOOOON!"
It's called "Spirals" and was published in his mid-80s compilation, Limits, Great story.
I hope that this idea takes off, no pun intended, because I think that it's a great way to usher in our interest in the last frontier.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
What a grand way to get something useful out of the ISS! If it gets us really out and up into space, I say let's do it.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The original idea was to name FORTH "FOURTH" since the designers considered it a "fourth generation" language. However file name length limits reduced this to "FORTH".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How about sending the ISS to L1, just between the earth and the moon? It would be close enough to send supplies and OUTSIDE the Van Allen belts. Yes, at the very least we have to study the long term effects of radiation on equipment and when we develop some kind of shield for humans to live in space we have to test it SOMEWHERE!
The ISS lives in low Earth orbit protected from solar high energy particle radiation by the Earth's Van Allen Belts. A slow move out using ION drives and a long duration stay in lunar orbit would expose the occupants to deadly radiation doses.
Granted, any future trip to Mars also must solve this extremely difficult problem, however the current thinking for Lunar missions is a repeat of the short duration trips much like those of the Apollo years. Even then, a Lunar outpost could be made radiation safe by digging into the regolith (lunar soil).
As for building a shelter for the ISS, the sheer weight of a water jacket or plastic particle shield could double the mass of the station.
Aside from extreme cost, lack of Earth support, lack of magnetosphere, and no real good reason for it to be there, there is one really good reason why this is a stupid idea: gravitational anomalies.
See, the moon is not a perfect sphere, nor is it homogeneous. There are wild variations in the strength of gravity at different points along its surface. The consequence of this is nothing can stay in orbit for very long. We'd have to manhandle the ISS with thrusters every few MONTHS to keep it from slamming into the Moon.
Also, who the hell is Michael Benson?
It wasn't designed for that purpose, but even if we send it there we will still need one around Earth (and of course we will need a way to finance it and service it, while we know that we face great difficulties servicing ISS around Earth right now...), so it's better to build a second station specifically for the Moon rather than contemplating sending ISS there.
We've already been to the moon.
Careful... There might be a few around here that disagree with that :)
I haven't been to the moon.
Have you been to the moon?
I suspect you are using "we" in a way that is just delusional. (If you mean earthlings have been to the moon, i'm ok with that.)
The station is currently boosted via chemical reaction engines which provide a high thrust for a short period of time. ION engines would produce a much lower amount of thrust, but over a very long period of time.
This proposal is a very interesting idea (and probably a lot more useful than the current ISS purpose). Other weaknesses such as the radiation problem are addressable and will have to be solved anyway.
The most expensive part of space exploration is getting into LEO. We have 500 tonnes there already, lets not waste it. Who knows, in the future, fabrication may be possible and the whole thing remelted down into something else.
One of the early ideas was to boost the shuttle external tank into orbit (only requiring a few seconds more of burn) and then turning them into habitable structures. That always seemed like an interesting and feasible engineering effort as was dissappointed nothing ever came of it.
Okay, I though of that too, but I didn't blab my dumb-ass, half-baked idea in the Washington Post. Why not push the thing all the way to Pluto?
As long as no one minds that there's no chance of using the Soyuz to escape to Earth if it catches fire, or whatever.
And crews have to stay there for years instead of months. Same thing waiting for missions to tart it up, bring up more toilet paper, or whatever.
I'd like to see it happen, but if a boondoggle at the edge of space costs say (for the sake of argument)$100000/day, then one in orbit around the moon will cost $one gahillion/minute.
While the idea is half-baked, the astronauts won't be, especially in the coming solar activity maximum.
This is slashdot and I think it's safe to assume he's joking, now the general population though would raise that as a valid question. Just look at the movie "Mission to Mars" (or don't, it blows). Lets just say that if the writers knew a little about physics they would have known that one of the main characters didn't have to die...
After all, if someone was tumbling in space and you accelerated to start to catch up to them, the moment you start to close the gap you are already going faster than them and will close the gap (and even overtake them!) in due time. God, I want that hour and a half of my life back...
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
You don't have to look far to see critics of the Shuttle and ISS say things like "we've been going no where" or "we've spend 25+ years going around in circles." Statements like these seem to indicate that spacecraft are not useful unless they get out of the Earth's gravity well. I couldn't disagree more.
Weather satellites are an obvious example. Also, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have made tremendous discoveries. The fact that HST is in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) allows the spacecraft to be repaired and upgraded. The next and last servicing mission is schedule for October.
Thinking that the ISS needs to go beyond LEO to be useful is like thinking that the 9.2 meter telescope at McDonald Observatory is of no value unless it is orbiting the moon. Each is a tool designed for a specific purpose.
The ISS was not designed to go to a destination. The ISS is the destination for a class of researchers. Certainly the process of building and operating it is an interesting experiment, but it is also a facility designed to be utilized by researchers to conduct experiments. If you don't like the science that is currently being done, get funding for science that takes advantage of it's unique capabilities - hard vacuum, micro-gravity environment, observation platform (up to the sky or down to the Earth), long duration, human tended. The human tended part is interesting in that the humans can be subjects of experiments, or they can be part of the research team.
Debates of "should we have built ISS" are not useful at this point. The decision to build ISS was made long ago, and now the facility is here. My point is that discussions about how to use the ISS in the way it was designed are more productive than proposing far fetched ideas.
Great, now the moon has been sucked into Microsoft's proprietary grip. When will these interstellar managers learn? They should have gone with a LAMP setup.
After all, if someone was tumbling in space and you accelerated to start to catch up to them, the moment you start to close the gap you are already going faster than them and will close the gap (and even overtake them!) in due time. God, I want that hour and a half of my life back...
If someone is hurling in space TOWARDS A PLANET, you need to get them a correcting thrust as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more thrust you have to have. If you have a finite amount of thrust, then you have a finite amount of time. And anyone planning that kind of crazy exercise would have the whole time-set worked out, like their main character did.
Mission to Mars sucked for all kinds of other reasons, but the physics of that particular effect scene weren't one of them. The PLOTTING of that scene, however... well, that's why we don't have good movies about Mars today.
Since when does NASA own the ISS to make such bold statements?
A typical random ad-hominem attack from a narcy. Someone needs to govern that horizontal ace between your cheeks from venting more frustration, silly git. You are not Great Brittain, so abandon your homepage and leave to America where you are welcome.
I think it is quite admirable that some people want to get into space exploration ASAP but using the ISS as a ship may not be the best way.
I see many ideas for exploration right now but a lack of future ideas for where we are going. Using the ISS as a ship is one such idea.
I find it destressing that NASA should think of the ISS as a waste and want to drop it fast. On a short term basis the ISS may not be too handy in LEO. But a mission to Mars would be much longer then anything we have done so far and the ISS is the perfect place to test long term ideas so that the first people to Mars do not have to go with equipment that has never been field tested.
If we leave the ISS right where it is, what could it be used for? How could it be of real benefit?
For one, it could be used to test long term habitats so that future missions don't have to go with nothing but prototypes. Another thing it could be used for is if a construction apparatus was added to it, we could make large structures such as telescopes or large solar arrays that we would never be able to make and launch in one peace.
And then there is my favrate: A real Space Ship. Large enough to be of some size, (bigger then would fit on a single rocket)we could make a combination solid and ion engine craft that was bare basic (perhaps it could be computer controlled) and could be tested on the moon that would be later capable of long missions to Mars and beyond. If the craft was autonomous, had a power plant, engines and frame work, we could add modules to it to carry people and have it take equipment to Mars and beyond. Being fully reusable it could go to the moon and back, Mars and back and so on.
The ISS has it's advantages right where it is.
No no, they filmed it in the hollow Earth. Since there's mass all around you, gravity is lower there.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
we should direct ALL space junk to the moon. the cost involved getting those rare raw materials up there was high enough, no need to send them up again when we finally populate the moon. just crash land the buggers there. i guess the recycle message hasn't made it into space yet.
I believe it was more like this. (Translation: "That's one small step for man..."/"Heh, like I'm gonna believe this. You're shooting this a studio."/"...one giant leap for mankind.")
Ezekiel 23:20
first, there are other ways of shielding.
gas plasmas can created a "shield". there's even
a probe design, that would create a plasma, which
in turn creates a electro-magnetic-field, which
gets "pushed" on by the solar winds. kindda like a solarsail,
just without a REAL sail.
it's like creating your own earth-like
electro-magnetic shield, just smaller.
if the ISS isn't big enough to hold supplies
to go to mars, how will a smaller spacecraft
like the orion be able to hold enough supplies then?
the stresses involved to get the ISS to the moon are probably
LESS the the stresses involved getting the ISS parts from
earth surface into orbit, which they obviously survived doing.
as for the long trip times involved and the bone
marrow loss problem, wouldn't there be less
loss, if the cosmonauts were diving the whole trip, meaning immersed in water for high percentage of the trip?
obviously, doing space-science isn't like hacking together ...
some car or computer parts, so probably using the ISS
for a ferry won't work
but what is important about the article is the fact, ...
that having a real spaceship that can do mulitple
trips to moon and mars and ? is smarten then having
to junk the whole thing in earth athmonsphere after
each trip
I forgot about that. Hmmm. If we used that same technique, I imagine we could get the ISS to the moon really cheap.
Being in orbit around the moon is a bumpy ride. The Apollo astronauts noted that the moons gravity was not 'smooth' and the orbiting spacecraft would 'bounce' around as their orbit carried them around the moon. The moon probably doesn't have a well defined center of mass, so it's gravity field is not a smooth sphere as the earth's is.
1. build a spacestation out of the shuttle with the multiple logistics modules in its bays. Three of the shuttles are tied together at L1.
2. allow Chinese access to the ISS, growing it a little.
3. build seperate space station at moons south pole
4. Focus only on lagrange points for space stations after the ISS is finished.
Offer a free week of using the facility, but require that the user get there via their own means. That should boost creativity and competition.
Has NASA hired Bjork?
The whole concept of manned space flight is one of romantic appeal. There's no compelling reason other than that for us being out there. Probes, landers, and rovers can do the science bit far more cheaply than sending a manned mission. The concept of an off planet outpost so that humanity can survive the next planet killer asteroid/comet strike is laughable. We can't even get a stable artificial biosphere happening on our own planet. The only reason for us being in space is to prove to ourselves that we can.
Having said that, the ISS should have been tasked as an assembly facility from the start. It is, in my opinion, a major planning flaw that it cannot serve that function. As was mentioned elsewhere, the ISS has the Dextre robotic arms, the capability for EVA, and a fairly roomy plain clothes environment. All it's missing is floodlights.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Even if we do not do anything else useful with the ISS and other satelites, what about dumping all of them in some convienent location on the Moon? Say an area of 20-100 sq miles. Then 50-1000 years from now when we are looking for some metal for our underground lab/fortress, we have some just sitting on the surface waiting to be melted down and reused. We can just send Wall-E to go get it for us.
It's got to be cheaper then digging it up on the Moon, refining it and then doing something with it. And way cheaper then shipping it up from Earth.
So what are you trying to say, short of judice? I'ld appreciate some information other than the implication that you art posting in this discussion while somehow moderating to the tune of "cut you some slack..." What are you implying to this Slashdot user ID that reproves what I've written? Is it not a second language to what has been learned? You may as well have posted AC as the one that harassed your post. Perhaps I can humor you that whatever you think is mispelled is assertively my patent to decide the meaning of that legistlated text, in similar fassion that US. CONGRESS created "status" through acts of licentiousness at the conclusion of the alleged Civil War and their fraudulent 14th Amendment. Even U.S. Congress undefined "plane", so if that doesn't put a smile ion your face then I don't know what does.
Have you seen any of the entertainment titled "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon" or "Astro' Gone Wild?" False science does more to bar the poor and unqualified interpretation of information with recursion, than a blatant declaration without proof. Flat Earth Society and Kenneth Copeland's ministries do quite a bit to prove this with a manner of truth, and without dishonour.
M. Gregory Thomas(tm).
without prejudice
No, the ISS has merely been stabilizing its first orbit. In LEO's you experience some atmospheric drag. Here is a chart over the height
http://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx
A while back, all I saw was gradual decrease in height.
Nothing wrong with your spelling, the spell checker you're using is clearly working perfectly. It's everything else which is throwing me. I mean, I'm not sure you're using the words you intend to, or in the right order.
As for the moon hoax stuff, I gobbled it up as a teenager, but then I started to learn about science and it fell apart before my eyes.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There was a survey done a few years back where they went to some public places like the shopping mall and asked the "man on the street" science related quetions. One was "If NASA wanted to go to the moon do you think it would be cost effective to simply fly the shuttle to the moon.?" Lots of people thought that was a great idea and would save money. Half the people they talked with saw no problem with simply driving to shuttel to the moon.
I think we have the same rather un-informed idea here. Yes we might be able to push ISS there but (1) Maybe radiation would kill the people inside. the Earth's magnetic field does not extend all the way to the moon and (2) How would you get food and water to a lunar orbiting ISS?
That said. I don't see how people can get to the moon or Mars without something like ISS in lunar or Mars orbit if NASA keeps their current policy of not sending people to places were there is no "lifeboat". That policy will have to change or going to those places will be even more expensive
I'm not a large island off mainland Europe? Thank goodness!
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Should we repeal the 17th Amendment? You are in favor of less democracy why, exactly, in an age of hyperconnectedness to information?
+++ATH0
It's one of those not-so-well-thought-out ideas that looks great on paper, but is incredibly impractical to implement. I read some of the earlier posts, and frankly, there's no economical way for this scheme to work until we've established space-based commerce. It's going to be a while before that happens. Possibly another 40 years of trying before we get a viable market in something produced in space. The costs for sending the ISS to the moon and keeping it maintained would be more than the Earth's current budget for all space missions across all nations. Let's not forget that the ISS would probably not survive such a mission as it was designed for Earth orbit and has had numerous problems keeping operational (and intact) in Earth orbit as it is.
Nice dream, but reality bites this one. Maybe another station in another 20 years (or so).
Thanks for the pointer. I'm somewhat on English as a second and third language, base construct and perspective; so, I seem to get a littly sloshy on sentance structure: typical of having to wade through "courts" and "Courts." I'm not into the Moon Hoax or any regard of it other than as a theatrical form; what is given to the public is not the original perspective, and inconsistent. It doesn't mean the events didn't happen, only the documentation given by NASA is clearly been modified and inferior reenactments and representations. Flat-Earth material is quite a gas too.
Consider how long its been since you may have seen the first version of it, because every year or so someone with a differing drawl repeats the same in a better format; this time, someone with a PHD as so a computer image analyst, Dr. David Groves.
Congratulaions on your feat to a PHD though. I'm not much a subscriber, because they don't carry well over Borders.
M. Gregory Thomas(tm)
without prejudice
but the ba-330 should be used around the moon and perhaps as a transfer vehicle between the earth and the moon. The ISS NEEDS to remain where it is. Not only can we not move it, but we need it for testing purposes. Before any new part of the life support/electrical/waste/etc systems be used elsewhere, it should be tested in the low grav of the ISS as well as on earth.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Put it at L1 in the Earth-Moon system and have a bail-out for any future lunanauts.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yeah, the "faked documentation" thing is still a pretty intriguing theory, although I've yet to see anything particularly convincing. The whole "didn't go to the moon" thing rubs me up the wrong way though, as you can probably tell! Thanks, by the way.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?