European Scientists Make a Case For a Return To the Moon

We're still /. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-10 12:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Please link to the actual journal submission, not some article from the Yahoo! Contributor Network...

Re:We're still /. by timothy · 2012-06-10 12:43 · Score: 3, Informative

Yeah -- sorry about that, now fixed. I'd deleted it (the Yahoo version was wrapped in a spammy wrapper), inadvertently not put in the clean version until just now.
timothy

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Re:We're still /. by Stargoat · 2012-06-10 15:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Slashdot was once the gold standard of IT information websites. The community was vibrant and rambunctious. It was interesting, funny, and frustrating. I'm not entire sure what happened. Maybe the Internet grew up around us. Like the Old West, someone fenced the cowboys away. Maybe we got rid of the goofs that were our necessary yeast. Dunno. But it's not the same Slashdot it was a decade ago.

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Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Re:We're still /. by damm0 · 2012-06-10 16:07 · Score: 3, Funny

Yeah, it's been a long time since I got a goats.cx link, and my life is better for it!

Well, then that settles it. by Lord+Kano · 2012-06-10 12:41 · Score: 5, Funny

Since "European" scientists are in board, maybe the Obama administration will agree to it.

LK

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"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano

Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 13:05 · Score: 2

Maybe the europeans can get some governments with brains that aren't enamoured with self destructive austerity and fund it themselves as a giant european wide jobs programme.
Which is basically what EADS is already, so it's just throwing more money at them.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 14:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

Borrowing money isn't fraud, and raising taxes isn't fraud. Nor is taxation theft. Taxation is agreeing that some things are best for the state to manage and paying for those from everyone.
You need to focus more on jobs, which will create wealth. Cutting spending is creating a spiral of destruction in its wake that is destroying wealth left right and centre. Without jobs there's no demand, without demand there's no production and no innovation, without which there's less demand, and less wealth.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 15:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yep, that is exactly it. Seriously. This isn't 1850. We understand a great deal more about economies than we used to, and *now* is definitely the time for massive government spending. Otherwise we'll keep wallowing around waiting for someone to try massive government spending to kick up demand. And I don't know about you but waiting for the chinese to spend their pile of 2 trillion dollars, and hoping they spend it on stuff we make, at some unknown abstract point in the future doesn't seem like a good economic plan.
It's not actually a fallacy. For an example, see Japan, because of the Tsunami their economy grew year on year about 4.7% (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/japan-raises-january-march-economic-growth-estimate-to-12-percent-amid-disaster-recovery/2012/06/07/gJQAQASYMV_story.html) Spending is spending. Considering the tsunami cost them about 2.3% of GDP, and they've seen 2.9 percent net growth mostly from reconstruction they are net ahead, and reconstruction isn't over yet. The new windows are better than the old ones so to speak. Education, health care, roads etc. have no more commercial value than that which we place on them. Space exploration is absolutely no different. EADS was largely organized and funded by government because as a commercial enterprise all of the precursor companies were wholly uncompetitive. That *investment*, which was made on the backs of taxpayers, notably rich ones, kept 100 000 direct jobs in europe, + all the spinoff jobs that would have otherwise gone to the US and boeing etc. Investing in space exploration now is probably not the most efficient stimulus plan available to europe, but it wouldn't be all that big of a stimulus plan anyway. 100 billion euros a year is probably less than a 10th of the spending they need.
Most of europe isn't drowning in debt. Quite the contrary, the only country drowning in debt is really greece, with italy a distant and not particularly serious second. Greece's debt problem is compounded because as they make cuts to government spending they're driving down the ability of those workers to spend, which is reducing private sector demand, contracting the economy, making their debt proportionally larger. They're fucked because the thing to do in this situation is either be Florida, and have a large portion of your spending be buffeted by the 'federal' (european) government, think medicare, social security etc, which wouldn't devalue just because one local area is having a bad time, or to devalue their currency to encourage a growth in exports. Europe won't go along with a federal union, and they can't devalue their currency... so they're boned. They are effectively trapped on a gold standard.
When you're drowning in debt you need to either shrink the value of that debt relative to your foreign holdings (devalue your currency), or grow your economy, or both, since one will naturally lead to the other. Since every country in the world cannot devalue against each other, and we've all devalued quite a bit against china there's not much to be done there.
When times are good and the economy is booming, that's when the government needs to lay people off. Right now, paying them to scratch their butts (lets call it unemployment) would be better than what they're currently doing. When the economy needs jobs you need to start laying them off from the public sector. When the private sector won't hire the public sector needs to, or else you start contracting the economy in a spiral.
To use another example of the broken window not actually a fallacy is how WW2 spending pulled economies out of recession. The new deal and so on in the US were essentially the same thing, a start if you will. Building a huge amount of stuff that was of no commercial value created jobs for the better part of 7 or 8 years (depending on where exactly you where), and that boom continued on well after because you had a demobilizing of public sector workers (soldiers) into the private sector as the economy grew.
Part
Re:Well, then that settles it. by The+Evil+Atheist · 2012-06-10 15:09 · Score: 2

Both theft and taxation happen with a threat of force.
What about using things that taxes pay for while refusing to pay taxes. Is that theft? If society allows you to opt out of tax, will you accept that you are forbidden to interact with society unless granted permission? Or will you force society to interact with you and force society to accept that you won't contribute anything to its maintainence? Anyone that argues taxation is "force" in effect argue everything is force, making nothing unforced and thus an absolutely useless measure of ethical worth. If taxing people is force, then people wanting to use public roads without paying for them is forcing society to foot the bill for them. Every libertarian is just a monarch waiting to happen.

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Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 15:46 · Score: 2

What would you propose it be backed by then? Gold? Land? Because if you want to know how much gold you'd need you're in for a problem. And when someone asks for gold you don't have... well. That's why you're not on the gold standard isn't it?
Money is a representation of wealth. If you actually had to have all that wealth hanging around in reserve to back up the notes it wouldn't be circulating. And someone would just find whatever your currency is backed by (or based on) and manipulate that. A gold mine in south africa would literally be making US money. And when they sell to the chinese in exchange for cell phones, shoes and computers the chinese can then flood the market with cheap worthless gold and your money is worth more being based on paper.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Runaway1956 · 2012-06-10 16:18 · Score: 2

"Jobs do not create wealth. Jobs are a cost. If you think jobs create wealth, you should be eliminating all technology and promoting a Pol Pot-style 'back to the land' movement."
You probably have the same degree in economics that the top bankers have. You know, those bankers who bankrupted the entire banking industry just a few years ago. Those bankers who are still, today, making insane gambles on derivatives and speculation.
Without jobs, there is no wealth. You breakfast wasn't produced by magic, nor was it donated to you for free because some hands out on the farms wanted to see you enjoy your breakfast. Your ignorance is astounding. Even more amazing, is the fact that so many morons in government and big business think the same way. In my post above, I mentioned that mankind has it's collective head up it's collective ass. Your statement helps to prove my own statement.

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"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 16:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.
So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.
yep. And if you don't like it, go somewhere that lets you choose whether or not you're going to pay taxes at all. Like greece. Or pakistan. Seriously. Pay off the right people and your tax bill will magically disappear.

What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.
I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc. Germany and France have thrived mostly because of their previously solid foundation before the adoption of the Euro.
yes actually, you did. France and Germany had solid foundations before the euro in part because they had large tax bases.

The US spends significantly less as a percentage of GDP on total government spending (and taxation) than anyone else and has a massive deficit which it's paying next to nothing in interest on. It also has higher unemployment than Canada or Germany (by quite a lot) despite a significantly lower tax burden, but lower unemployment than france.
Really? Because when you look at it, the US is quite high. Not as high as Europe of course but a lot higher than the places where people are looking to invest their money in such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, etc. When you look at the US tax burden you also have to look at the fact that the US taxes worldwide income if you are a US citizen which most other countries do not.
Yes, really, it's not high at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP France is at 44%, germany at 40, canada at 32, the US at 27. That's total government (so the sub national states/provinces/local governments). The US taxation on all overseas persons is inconsequentially small, as it taxes income only over 90.
Chile, Singapore and Hong Kong have much lower costs than the US, or are much closer to useful markets. The vast majority of countries with any money are higher than the US. The only notable exception is Taiwan, which collects US handouts. Chile I will point out has about 1/4 the per capita income that the US does (1/4 the per capita costs). And HK and Singapore are both cities, so don't really hold up under comparison to a full country. If you count HK as part of China (which it is) china is at 17%, and you know why everyone is moving there, and Singapore would I guess count as part of malaysia but doesn't really.

A situation where the government borrows a crap-ton of money on useless stuff? A situation where the voters expect the nanny-welfare state to take care of them all their life? Etc. The things that led Greece to this crisis isn't because they have a currency they can't control, instead they can't get out of the crisis the easy way by hyperinflating their currency (something Greece has enjoyed doing since ancient times!) and instead actually have to cut spending and get their affairs in ord
Re:Well, then that settles it. by spauldo · 2012-06-10 17:24 · Score: 2

What is your definition of wealth?
I drive highways and cross bridges that I helped pay for. I use public parks - I've got a four year old who loves the outdoors, and we've got a number of public recreation areas around that he just loves. I pay $25 a year to fish on public waters, and the state makes sure the lakes are stocked and the fish aren't diseased.
I've got a pickup truck that sits in my driveway all week while I'm away, and lo and behold, it's always there when I get home - no one steals it while I'm gone. I don't have to pay an armed guard to sit on it while I'm away from home. There's no one living in my house that's not supposed to be there.
I go to the store with absolute faith that I won't be buying poisoned food. I don't worry that my kid's toys will be painted with lead paint. I trust my water.
To me, that's real wealth, not some technical definition out of a first year economics textbook. The government creates it. They use my tax money to do so.
Now, am I forced to pay taxes? Sure. And you know, I really, really wish there was a third option besides "pay or get your wages garnished". I'm thinking something like a reservation - an area in New Mexico or something where people can go live without government. Inside the fence, you're on your own - what you have is what you can keep.
That third option isn't for me, by the way. It's so people who think they're better off without government can see what it's like. I think Locke described that sort of life best - nasty, brusish, and short.

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Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 17:36 · Score: 2

Theoretically that would work, as long as you could guarantee and indefinite demand for lunar or martian colonies. Actually you could do that, it wouldn't solve all the economic problems, but if you could guarantee funding for space research for say, the next 30 years (insofar as governments ever make guarantees), you would create jobs, spur demand which would create more jobs. Naturally the problem with this plan is that the payoff from all of that investment may never match the investment, directly or indirectly. Certainly not colonies anyway.
10 billion dollars a year though (or 10 billion euros). Or even 100. That could be reasonably guaranteed, and would put a million people to work at least, and their demand would then create a couple of million ancillary jobs (in retail, construction, automotive etc.). Granted, the Eurozone has 35 million unemployed people, 2 or 3 million would help, but they need more like a 300 or 400 billion euros in spending. 100 billion euros bailing out spanish banks would have been better spent over the last 2 years putting a half a million people per year to work in spain.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-10 17:37 · Score: 2

Also, the euro can be inflated. Germany is strongly resisting that plan, probably because they're trying to force through a fiscal union or to get greece to leave the euro. But 3-4% inflation in the eurozone would do wonders for the debt problems.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-10 21:07 · Score: 2, Informative

He's right in that jobs don't create wealth. Work creates wealth. For the generated wealth it doesn't matter if that work is done by a self-employed worker, by an employee, by a slave or by a robot. What differs is how the resulting wealth is distributed.
If jobs created wealth, the east block states would have been incredibly wealthy because there everyone had a job.
Re:Well, then that settles it. by AmiMoJo · 2012-06-11 00:18 · Score: 2

Really? So I can agree that those things aren't best for the state to manage and not pay for them?
No, I didn't think so.
Well, you can't just agree that murder isn't a crime and start killing people either, but that is the "tyranny" of democracy I'm afraid.

Jobs do not create wealth. Jobs are a cost.
Jobs do create wealth, and lack of jobs is a cost. If people have jobs they have money to spend on things, which creates a market for the goods and services businesses create. Also businesses need to employ people to generate wealth for them, and if a particular job does not generate more income that it costs to provide you are doing it wrong.
Furthermore when people are out of work they need state support, a cost to us all. Okay, you advocate no such support, but even then it will cost you because people with no wealth have little incentive not to steal yours. You could pay for private police to protect yourself, but that too is a cost.

Cutting government spending frees up money for private uses.
Only if it comes with a tax cut, and currently there is no reduction in taxation (except for millionaires, but that was purely political) because the money is needed to pay off the deficit.
Even if it were accompanied by tax cuts it would still cost you more. Lack of universal high quality healthcare means you have to pay for your own, and it will definitely cost you more. Plus if you can't pay for it and get cancer or something you will probably go bankrupt and die. Similarly if you had to pay for roads, police, the military, rubbish collection, education and all the rest of it through private for-profit schemes you would be worse off.
Also your country would be screwed as student subsidies dry up and the next generation of workers can't afford to get a good education, leaving you lacking the skills you need to create wealth.
Government spending stimulates business. That spending goes to the private sector in the form of contracts and sales, and because the government is reliable it creates confidence and a strong base to grow a business on. I'm not saying it's perfect but the alternative just doesn't work.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Well, then that settles it. by AmiMoJo · 2012-06-11 00:21 · Score: 2

Most of europe isn't drowning in debt.
Thanks for saying that. There was an interesting fact on the BBC today. If seen as a single country the EU actually has a better looking balance sheet than both the US and United Kingdom. There may be a couple of struggling states but overall the Eurozone is still doing really well, and the member states are far better off in than out.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Well, then that settles it. by virg_mattes · 2012-06-11 01:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh, here we go again with this canard. The breakdown that always seems to escape those who claim that taxation is theft is that firstly, taxes exist because the taxed population chose to create the tax load, and second, paying for what you use and only what you use is an absurdly inefficient way to run a society. Sure, you think it's fair to pay for the roads you use. But pay with what? Did you pay for the infrastructure necessary to create and secure the money you're using to buy your groceries, or do you have to work out a barter or deal with a bunch of incompatible currencies? We did that back in colonial times, and tossed it aside in favor of a central treasury because it's nightmarishly inefficient. The Interstate Highway system came into being because the "pay for what you use" concept simply didn't get the job done. There are a thousand examples of how this works, and the simple fact that virtually every society on Earth uses taxation should clue you in that it's probably not nearly as bad an idea as you'd love to believe.

I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I?
No, but you can get to the parking lot and you can enter the store without fear that it'll collapse on you and you can buy stuff with a reasonable assumption that you'll get what you're paying for and you can trust that they won't just beat you up and take the money you brought and so on and so on, all because society decided that individuals having to secure all of that personally makes for a crapsack world. If you think you can do better, there are places you can go such that you pay only for what you personally use, but they're far away from most other people and you'll find that you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy just surviving.

The current method of taxation steals from those who provide the most to society in order to pay for those who either produce nothing or produce less.
It is to laugh. Do you really think that those with the most income are necessarily the ones who contribute the most to society? If so, you're unrecoverably naive. If you think that money is the measure of value, then I'll thank you to tell me what Paris Hilton has done to earn the vast millions of dollars she has access to. If she hadn't been born into it, she'd be a waitress somewhere in middle America and we both know it. Society is full of people who create value in excess of their paycheck and people who drag in tons of money without contributing much at all, so the whole "steals from the rich" argument falls apart in that regard.

Theft is compulsory, so is taxation.
Taxation isn't compulsory. This isn't the Soviet Union. Taxes are just a requirement for being a U.S. citizen, so if you don't want to pay taxes to the U.S. government, then leave the country and renounce your citizenship, and nobody will stop you. However, if you want the benefit of being a U.S. citizen, then you have to pay taxes. As I said above, there are many places in the world where paying taxes isn't required, and you could avail yourself of any number of those places if you don't like taxation. Just don't sit here with your safe drinking water and your anti-fraud legislation and your right to ask for aid if random chance turns you into one of those "less productive" people and whine about having to pay for it. Walk the walk, and all that.

Virg

Research and Development by KermodeBear · 2012-06-10 13:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

To me, there's incentive enough to return to the moon simply because of the research and development that would occur. The space program that sent us to the moon the first time brought forth incredible advances in all kinds of areas. We should keep pushing our own boundaries and explore the unknown not simply because it's there, but because we have the opportunity to develop stronger / more efficient / less expensive / generally better tools at the same time. Make the results of the new research available to the public at large and everyone benefits.

It's a use of my tax dollars that I can support without reservation.

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Love sees no species.

Re:Research and Development by NalosLayor · 2012-06-10 13:18 · Score: 5, Interesting

We haven't "Lost the ability" -- we simply don't have factories set up to manufacture that particular rocket. The "orbital propellant depot" concept -- made viable by the "new space" companies and their radically cheaper rockets has been much denigrated by the entrenched space lobby in congress, but the simple fact is, we now have experience in assembling modular craft in orbit (ISS), and thanks to modern computers and materials, spacecraft can be appreciable lighter. Plus, thanks to those same technologies (and better lunar surveying done in the last few years), we can robotically pre-land much of the equipment needed to mount a lunar expedition. Sure, the mission profile would look different, and building the hardware to land on and return from the moon would still cost billions, but the Falcon Heavy, which is really just a falcon 9 modified, will be ready within the next few years. With a green light today and consistent funding, we could easily have a permanent lunar presence by the end of the decade. I would guess the total cost would be less than ten billion dollars, if we were able to keep the government pork under control.
Re:Research and Development by rgbrenner · 2012-06-10 13:29 · Score: 4, Informative

And that trip to the moon cost $150 billion (in 2010 dollars). OF COURSE it brought about new discoveries, inventions, tools, etc-- IT WAS $150 BILLION! Saying that we discovered new things in the process of spending that much money does not mean we should automatically do it again.
If our true motivation for a trip to the moon is to develop new things, then we have to ask: does spending that money on a trip to the moon result in more inventions than spending it on the National Institutes of Health? or the National Science Foundation? or the Department of Energy?
The NSF got $7 billion last year... the Dept of Energy got 24 billion.. and NASA got 18 billion (+ we spent another 8 billion on military space funding (GPS, etc)).
Have you seen the list of discoveries just by the NSF? Here's a short list of 587 recent discoveries. There's more for computing, engineering, math, nanoscience, physics:
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=5
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=8
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=9
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=10
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=11
and that's what they did with $7 BILLION!
Re:Research and Development by Doc+Ruby · 2012-06-10 13:36 · Score: 2

The return on that $150B investment has been many, many times that amount. How much return on the NSF investment is there in an equivalent 10 years since the money was spent?
Maybe the NSF has an even better rate of return. Even if you exclude the incomparable inspiration of the Apollo programme. All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D. Instead of on war and the banks.

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make install -not war
Re:Research and Development by rgbrenner · 2012-06-10 13:47 · Score: 2

All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D
If we have $300 billion, why should we spend half of it on a LESS productive program?
Re:Research and Development by rgbrenner · 2012-06-10 14:29 · Score: 2

No kidding. Remember the /. interview with MIT fusion researchers? They said we are about $80 billion away. So that's quite a margin of error if you budget 150b.
ITER cost 17 billion. We're going to wait a decade for work to complete on it.
It's less than 1 year of NASA's budget.
Re:Research and Development by arth1 · 2012-06-10 15:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

If we have $300 billion, why should we spend half of it on a LESS productive program?
Because the sum of returns is bigger.
If a > 0 and b > 0, then a + b > a.
Also, if you believe that doubling the funding for the currently most effective research will lead to twice the research or more, you are wrong. There is no synergy effect in research, rather the opposite - a law of diminishing returns. You want to financially back single projects instead of heap funding, because the latter gets eaten by bureaucracy - especially the kind of bureaucracy put in place by conservatives to make sure everything is done as cheaply as possible costs an awful lot of money. NASA could become more effective again if the cuts were done among the paper pushers and bean counters, and not the engineering side.
Re:Research and Development by MachineShedFred · 2012-06-11 02:27 · Score: 2

Especially since the subcontractors that actually made the important bits inside of a Saturn V (Rocketdyne, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed) are still around, and probably still have their plans for those bits. Maybe even newer versions of those bits that work on better cheaper stuff, constructed of lighter materials, as moon missions are 100% about weight first.
Bombers used to have 40-litre V-12 engines in them, but nobody other than nostalgists and collectors pine for the pre-jet era...

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Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.

If budgets matter, EU cares less than US by rgbrenner · 2012-06-10 13:08 · Score: 5, Informative

The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012

ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.

There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.

Re:If budgets matter, EU cares less than US by Dcnjoe60 · 2012-06-10 14:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012
ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.
There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.
That's why the EU is making a case to return to the moon -- so somebody else will foot the bill for them.

Anything Please by GeneralTurgidson · 2012-06-10 13:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

We need kids engaged in science and exploration, not killing terrorists or idolizing warfare. Bring back the coolness of space exploration and the meaning of the word "hero"

Re:Anything Please by Doc+Ruby · 2012-06-10 13:34 · Score: 3, Funny

Unless they get the girl. Then they're the hero.
Maybe if the scientist is a girl and gets the guy who's a fightin' astronaut. After all, we're all grown up now, right?

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make install -not war

Re:Because Earth Is Doomed by rrohbeck · 2012-06-10 13:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

I have a feeling that even a ruined Earth is still way more hospitable than Mars, let alone other places.

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thegodmovie.com - watch it

Canned Ape by KeensMustard · 2012-06-10 14:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

Unfortunately, although a good summary of possible research that could be conducted on the moon, this paper seems primarily to be a vehicle for advocating for humans to be sent back to the moon. To do this, it makes constant reference a to single paper (Crawford, 2004) which purports that human missions are superior because:

1. Mobility: humans are more mobile than probes. This ignores the fact that, for a fraction of the cost of sending a human (say 50%) a robot could be developed and sent which was far more mobile than a human. Robots also don't need to be trained or selected - astronauts have a fixed cost per unit that doesn't reduce significantly by volume - 10 astronauts cost approximately 10x as much as one astronaut. Whereas the per unit cost of a robotic probe reduces per unit at volume - building 10 probes doesn't cost 10 times as much as building a single one.

2. Presupposing that humans are better at drilling than robots. However, this fails once again to take into account that the constraint is the size of the drill - human missions require larger rockets, which coincidentally allows for a larger drill to be carried. Robotic missions launch with smaller rockets. Solution: use the big rocket. Launch a couple of probes at once, with big, capable drills. No need for the spurious meat bag attachment.

Re:Canned Ape by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · 2012-06-10 17:09 · Score: 3, Informative

The science director for the Mars rovers estimated that a trained human could do what a rover does in a day in 45 seconds.
That's three orders of magnitude improvement in productivity to set against the admittedly staggering costs of transporting and supporting humans.
Re:Canned Ape by ongelovigehond · 2012-06-10 19:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

After analyzing 1000 rocks, the chance that the 1001th rock is going to provide some new information is getting small. The only difference is that the rover takes a few years to analyze those rocks, while a trained human could do it in a few days. After that, it's probably better to send some new instruments, and look in a different place. Now compare the time and effort it would take to send a trained human to Mars, and have him survive for a few days, compared to the effort to send a small rover and have it survive for a few years. It's not so obvious the human still wins.

Platinum! by bigpat · 2012-06-10 14:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

Forget the space race, let the space rush begin! Let's mine some asteroids!

Seriously, once space exploration can be economically self sustaining, self perpetuating, then maybe we can get somewhere.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Runaway1956 · 2012-06-10 16:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, Mars. But, the moon is closer, cheaper, easier. The moon also provides a staging point from which to launch to Mars, and points beyond. Unless I am seriously mistaken, infrastructure and assets on the Moon won't degrade, or at least will degrade very slowly compared with infrastructure and assets built on earth.

The moon is a very valuable resource, and development of that real estate should commence immediately. The moon is no longer a "goal", but a "waypoint".

The only reason we don't have multiple bases on the moon now, is that mankind has it's collective head up it's collective ass. My nation, which actually put men on the moon, wastes more resources on the invasion of other nations than it would have taken to build and maintain a base capable of housing 1000 personnel. Of that much, I'm certain. I suspect that said base could be much larger, and that maybe a few satellite bases might have been built with all the money wasted in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some of our lesser actions could probably have paid for one of those small satellite bases.

Oh yeah. Read my third sentence again. Points beyond. To me, Mars should just be considered a practice mission. Plant a real colony, close to home, for practice, so that we can do the same further out. We NEED to spread out, so that a single epidemic, or a catastrophic event doesn't wipe us out!

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"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br

Space is a better first goal by gmuslera · 2012-06-10 16:40 · Score: 2

Energy gathering, asteroid mining, making materials maybe too complicated to do in a planet, or just manufacturing with the resources gathered up there, thats a more direct and shorter term return of investment, if you could do things that would please both people that care about knowledge and people that care about money, then better. And could ease things for future moon missions.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by camperdave · 2012-06-10 16:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

The moon would make a lousy staging point. Why loft things out of a gravity well, then drop them back in, only to loft them out again. It is an utter waste of time and propellant. Assemble stuff in Earth orbit, then go directly (or as directly as orbital mechanics lets you go).

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Endovior · 2012-06-10 17:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

This. The moon doesn't really have much going for it but 'fairly close'; if you want a staging point, you're far better off with a space station of some kind. That way, you're not only even closer then the moon, but you don't have that pesky gravity well imposing an additional cost.

ESA != EU by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-10 18:31 · Score: 3, Informative

ESA is not the EU's space program, it's the all-European space program.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-10 19:29 · Score: 5, Informative

But it has gravity which makes it easier for humans (less bone loss).

Underground lunar facilities would provide shielding against cosmic rays (also better for humans).

There's *stuff* on the moon we can mine & use on site (as opposed to launching it from earth).

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by MachDelta · 2012-06-10 19:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.
It would also be much more durable than an orbital station, especially if it's partially subterr.. uh, sublunar.

Basically, the argument is that it would be the better long (long) term investment that would eventually pay itself off. And heck, maybe there's an argument for doing both and baby-stepping our way into space (earth->orbit->moon->phobos->titan->???->orion slave girls!!)

Idiot turd by cheekyboy · 2012-06-10 21:28 · Score: 2

Dude, paying 2m people to build a space station/and infrastructure is way better than having 2m cafe workers, or 2m tax accountants, or 2m cops, or 2m parking insepectors, or 2m taxi drivers.

If you attempt the impossible, then you create new industries, new techs, new methods, and learn stuff.

Now go back to your C-64 and be happy with the same tech forever.

--
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by TFAFalcon · 2012-06-10 21:31 · Score: 2

What if the 'event' takes generations to pass? Or never passes at all? Sure we don't have the technology to easily survive on Mars/Moon right now, but we'll need to develop it eventually, or go back to living in log cabins once resources on Earth run out.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by TFAFalcon · 2012-06-10 22:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sure they'll run out, but it will give humanity time to figure out how to expand to the next pile of resources, AND give us experience in extracting them in non-terrestrial conditions. Or we can wait on Earth for a few hundred years, until resource depletion and resulting wars make it impossible to ever develop the technology we'd need.

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Kjella · 2012-06-10 22:15 · Score: 4, Informative

If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.

All other things equal, yes. Unfortunately heavy mining equipment usually depends on big diesel engines that need diesel and water as coolant, neither of which are easily available on the moon. So for power we'd need great fields of solar panels or something similar and without coolant dry mining would require far more frequent changes of drill heads. Then you have the same issue with smelters, they require huge amounts of energy so add more solar arrays. Then you need huge hydraulic presses to make it into sheet metal, again another power hog so add even more solar arrays. And we still only have sheet metal.

Ore mining is heavy industry, like really heavy industry. Here on earth it seems so basic, only costing a few dollars but on the moon it would actually be a very, very complicated and expensive project. It would be a great achievement if we even manged to create fuel for an empty return rocket, mining ore is extremely much harder. And even if we could do that, it wouldn't make sense to send a rocket down to the moon to bring fuel back up, only make it a bit cheaper to do a moon mission. Going directly to Mars really has few disadvantages that I can see.

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Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by TFAFalcon · 2012-06-10 22:52 · Score: 4, Interesting

Moons, asteroid belt, orbital stations. No other place to go at all. And if we get good at making those, there is no reason not to build a generation ship and start exploring the galaxy. Yes, humanity is going to end, but there is no reason not to try and make that end distant as possible.

Re:all income taxes pay bank loans, not services by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-11 02:34 · Score: 2

Um... 15 years you say? Were you in public school in 15 years? Were you *ever* in public school? The fact that the rest of the public can read this post because *they* were in public school means you benefit because you can communicate with them.

Ever had to call the police? No? Good. Because much of government is a giant insurance system. If you don't have to use it that means nothing has gone horribly wrong. Ever been invaded or bombed by a foreign power? In 15 years. Why yes, yes you have. And your military has seen fit to convey the point to anyone else that gets the same idea just what will happen to them. If someone happens to steal your stuff and run it across state lines you *can* call the police.

Lets go down the list shall we:
Parking: And you got to the parking lot how? On who's roads? Ever had to park in a different city. How did you get there?

Food: You're still alive. This means the department of agriculture is doing its job limiting the amount of toxic shit that gets in your food. Ever bought beef? How do you know it's beef? What counts as beef that can be labeled beef? Right. Government inspections and labeling. That doesn't mean they don't make some spectacular mistakes, but most of the time the system hums along.

Petrol (what you called 'gas'): And where exactly did those oil supplies come from, who had the facilities to try and clean up the mess from the deepwater horizon oil spill and where did the first round of disaster aid come from. Not BP.

Lawyers: Ooh ooh, I'm a lawyer I'll charge you 500 dollars an hour for my advice on how to get rid of your citizenship so you don't have to pay taxes. Except i'm not actually a lawyer. Who makes sure that a lawyer is actually a lawyer, and prosecutes people who fraudulently represent themselves.

Education: We covered this one already. But at a federal level education spending, paltry as it is, is mostly for backing student loans to keep interest rates down. Sure you have to pay, but you pay less under this scheme than if you were going through banks. On the other hand, this way you can get a degree in english at the same interest rate as a degree in engineering.

Medical care: Sure, you're an american. If you can live to 65 you get decent healthcare, or if you get a government job or have a spouse with a government job. If not you're fucked. Because for they money the US government spends on healthcare every civilized country in the world provides healthcare to everyone. But if you're between the ages of 18 and 65 and not a government worker, go fuck yourself. Doesn't make any sense to me either. Of course if you land in an emergency room and *can't* pay because you go bankrupt from the expense the government will have paid the bill for you through an insurance system. Otherwise all medical care would be 'cash upfront'.

Public transport: Can you sit anywhere you want on the bus? Define 'cheap'? A single ride one way on the New York subway is 2.50. Which is about 20 minutes of work at minimum wage.

Who gets the 'goodies'?
Old people... yep. they paid into the same insurance system you pay into. Live to 65 to collect.
People with children. Erm... how about children? Are you *ever* going to have kids? On average everyone has 1.005 children in the US (2.01/woman is the fertility rate). So sure, the government is subsiding that investment in the future for everyone who has a kid. Which is on average everyone.
Yep, Corporations buy their way into preferential laws. In the UK rich people have their own part of government, it's called the house of Lords. However you do it, rich people will *always* collectively influence government to their benefit, and always have.
Disabled people. yes, those poor people who had some tragic accident befall them. Feel free to get hit by a bus to collect disability. Remember that part about government being a giant insurance system, and when you don't collect it means nothing went horribly wrong? Ya, disabilit

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