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Back To the Moon — In Four Years
braindrainbahrain writes "Gene Grush, a former division chief at NASA Johnson, has written a series of articles on how the U.S. can return to the Moon in four years. He says not only can we land there, but we can actually build a base on the Moon as well. How is this feasible? A public/private partnership between NASA and a private space company. Quoting: 'The biggest obstacle is the lack of a rocket, called a super heavy launch vehicle, to lift it off the planet. NASA is working on one, called the Space Launch System, but the agency is constrained by its budget and the likelihood of it flying in that time frame is slim. But there’s an interim solution: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which will have its maiden flight this year and can supposedly launch up to 53 metric tons into orbit.'
'[I]f NASA makes lowering launch costs its highest priority, escaping the bonds that hold us to Earth will be financially feasible. We don’t do this by controlling the design so much as the frequency -- we are the customer, after all.' 'The development of a lunar base could be a catalyst for lowering our launch cost to space and accelerating the development of automation and robotics. ... If America doesn’t step up to the plate, China’s ambitions for the moon may establish it as the “go-to” nation for space exploration. Many nations of the world privately say they want the moon to be the next step in space exploration -- but they can’t get there on their own. They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead.'"
'[I]f NASA makes lowering launch costs its highest priority, escaping the bonds that hold us to Earth will be financially feasible. We don’t do this by controlling the design so much as the frequency -- we are the customer, after all.' 'The development of a lunar base could be a catalyst for lowering our launch cost to space and accelerating the development of automation and robotics. ... If America doesn’t step up to the plate, China’s ambitions for the moon may establish it as the “go-to” nation for space exploration. Many nations of the world privately say they want the moon to be the next step in space exploration -- but they can’t get there on their own. They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead.'"
Except FH isn't launching this year. It might make it to the pad, but I wouldn't even count on that.
I won't claim that NASA isn't serving as a conduit between the dollar printing engine and SpaceX and providing some land facilities, but aside from that, NASA hasn't been able to get back to the moon in 40 years. Assuming there's a good reason to do so (H3 is good enough for me, even if it's a bit soon) SpaceX can conceivably raise the funds on their own and find a jurisdiction friendly to their launch requirements. Even if NASA weren't interested, SpaceX would still get to the moon in relatively short order - even if only as a testbed for Mars landings.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
China being the lead in space isn't just an economic advantage, it is a military one. Just a satellite with metal rods in a high orbit can do more damage by tossing them to earth than most nuclear warheads can.
Plus, if China gets a moon presence established and then causes the Kessler syndrome to manifest, they would have the ultimate high ground for communication for centuries (only nation that would have reliable communications and GPS after the satellites get shredded.)
You know just 1% of our military budget diverted to NASA could do amazing things.. imagine if we diverted half of that budget!
The moon is a symbol, but there's no *practical* reason to go there, establish a base, a colony, or a really good restaurant. Near earth orbital stations, in contrast, might be developed profitably for power stations, zero G manufacturing of exotic materials, ubiquitous satellite-based internet, and so on.
The focus on the moon and Mars is just cold war era, retro silliness. We have limited resources to throw at space. This is the time to throw them at something that will give us some return.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'm happy to work for free towards this goal. Already doing a bit of NASA stuff on the side, if they want my full time attention, they can have it, I can live off royalties for a bit. Space stuff is awesome.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Wouldn't a collaboration between ESA NASA JPL CSPA Roscosmos be more fruitful? Space race is so last century. - Folken
Look, this is great and all, but if I see some ugly polyester costumes, 1970s hair, and giant pneumatic tubes that carry people to and fro on that base, i'm going to seriously consider researching sustainable and well-lit subterranean shelter to ride out the impending lunar nuclear disaster.
This sig no verb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCd1Vfj8HOM
It's not the fuel that's expensive, it's the thing you put it in. And that rocket has to function perfectly, 100% of the time, across a giant temperature, pressure and acceleration gradient. And it has to be "man-rated," in other words, made survivable in case of a failed launch and prepared for atmospheric re-entry, which are some of the most extreme conditions known to mankind. Most of the costs that are being complained about are due to the absolutely necessary safety culture built into the manufacturing of these vehicles, stacked on top of amortized R&D (hint: SpaceX didn't need to do nearly as much R&D as they did to get the Saturn V off the ground).
I'm working my ass off just to support my family. I already can't afford to save up for my kids' college, and our medical bills are extensive.
Ask my how much I want to be taxed to send someone to the moon right now.
He gave a reason in the article. It would be "inspiring." Can someone explain why it would be so inspiring to go back? If people cannot get adequately jazzed over the stunning achievements of putting rovers on Mars then watching people sit in a tiny capsule on the moon with nothing productive to do is certainly not the answer.
How can they do a moon landing again? There are too many spy satellites that will spot their sets in New Mexico, everyone will know.
Can you imagine some idiot with too much time on his hands (it's *ALWAYS* a "him") finding the "lunar" rover on Google Maps and the furor it would cause?
Plus, I don't think Buzz Aldrin has enough spit and vinegar left to go clobbering the whole Internet when it comes to light.
GLWT.
"They need a technically savvy and resourceful country to lead."
That leaves us (USA) out, sadly. Unless it can pull in advertising revenue, it ain't happening. I hope China does well with their moon exploration.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Not at all. They're the champions of Democrats-are-wrong, and since a Democrat administration isn't spending money on NASA, that must be wrong.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I've seen enough spy movies to know that a guy with a name like Hugo Drax, err, Elon Musk, is secretly planning to kill off everyone on Earth and repopulate with carefully selected eugenically perfect specimens.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
a lot of things. It is worth more than a tiny bit of our defense budget, and there would actually be some carry-over with the technology.
NASA's budget is so small that even doing something as drastic as doubling or tripling it wouldn't make a big impact on our national budget. We get good return on the budget in technology, in world leadership, and in restoring some national pride.
Do it!
This is about a partnership with a space company.
"We need taxpayers to pave the way to the moon, and once benefits start, we privatise the hell out of it"
Fox does whatever it takes to get viewers/readers, including playing both sides of the issue. This was vividly demonstrated to me a few years ago when a guy I knew in high school and is a Facebook friend was posting some anti-vaccine nut job article to support his view. He posted a link to an article on Fox News from a NY pediatrician who was warning parents that the flu vaccine (this when during the flu scare of a few years ago when the government recommended getting children immunized against the flu) was likely to lead to autism and all kinds of nasty things. At the exact same time there was a different article written by Fox New's own Dr. Manny touting the benefits of the flu vaccine for everybody, including children.
It's not a waste if it means beating the Sov- err, the Chinese.
The moon is rich in valuable resources (water: hydrogen, oxygen) that are hard to find elsewhere in Earth orbit. These resources are much cheaper (in an asymptotic sense) to get from the moon than from Earth due to the weaker gravity. The moon will be a practical location for a base for as long as demand for fuel, air, and water in Earth orbit remains high.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Space exploration isn't a dick measuring contest. We shouldn't rely on the private sector for this either.
The US and China and even Europe should regroup their budgets and efforts under one single project and make a fucking base on the moon for the greater good of humanity as whole.
We are so childish, *facepalm*
but there's no *practical* reason to go there
Helium-3. Well, once we figure out fusion, which is always just ten years off.
Most current space ships have to lift the fuel out of the earth's gravity well, which means they have practically none left to go anywhere at speed. instead they drift along without any engine providing thrust.
So yes there ARE practical reasons to go to the moon.
P.S. Your argument itself is flawed. People said the same thing about the Louisiana purchase, California, Alaska, etc. It is only after we actually go places and spend time there that we discover the many many resources that make going there worthwhile.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I say we go to Saturn and build a base there!
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Agree. The moon's dust problem alone makes it problematic. I'd argue for L4 or L5 before the moon. There's still some dust at L4 & L5, but the sheer amount of it is much lower, and the gravity well to get there (and leave again) is much lower. It's not as inpsiring to say "we're on L4!", but it's also a first-person-gets-it kinda situation...you can have multiple moon bases, but really only one at L4 or L5.
We are really hopeful
I agree with you on the most part as long as we are thinking of things in the sense of economic/investment value.
Think of anything really and ask yourself whether it makes more sense to build/do such in space or down in another gravity well.
But for raw science, I would hope that we start deploying (very) large telescopes on the far side of the moon.
Links please. The tone of the articles are paramount. If the first was an expose, it's not quite what you paint. Even if it's as you portray, that's preferable to say, CNN, which has points of view it *never* airs because it's against their political agenda.
Even if it's as you portray, that's preferable to say, CNN, which has points of view it *never* airs because it's against their political agenda.
Proof please.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
"three- or four-day notice of a missile strike off the moon"
Sorry but I really doubt that the moon is a useful military platform. As he mentions, you would get a three or four day notice of an attack; on the other hand an ICBM launched from a nuclear sub on a depressed trajectory has a flight time measured in MINUTES. The cost (and difficulty, and danger) of lugging a nuclear tipped missile (capable of crossing cislunar space) all the way to the moon (and maintaining it and protecting it against solar flares, cosmic rays, temperature extremes, and meteorites) would be enormous. His own estimates contend it would cost $300M just to put 8 tons on the lunar surface. Presumably the missiles wouldn't just lie around on the surface but would have to be dug in (excavation equipment, power requirements). And don't even solid fueled ICBMs need regular topping up of some critical elements? (batteries need to be replaced, tritium in nuclear triggers decays). So a supply chain stretching to EARTH must be maintained or the value of this deterrent (there's no way it could be used for a first strike, even today we've imaged the entire lunar surface to a meter resolution) goes away.
Unless he's proposing that the Chinese build an entire lunar colony with the industrial capacity to build robust launch systems, this is wildly impractical. On the other hand if the Chinese can manage to put a serious industrial infrastructure (creating solid fuels from lunar dust? mining uranium ore?) on the moon in a few decades then the U.S. will have a lot more to worry about than getting nuked by china. (Nuclear Bombs are the only practical weapon for something costing this much, "rods from god" are great when compared to chemical explosives but with E=MC2 a nuclear warhead has millions of times more energy per kg).
It would be great to see NASA use Space X's Falcon heavy instead of their own heavy lift launcher which seems like a huge waste of taxpayer money (and that's if it even gets built). Unfortunately, after reading his outlandish (jingoistic?) fears about China, I have to question the rest of his reasoning. No wonder why Fox News is publishing this.
It's a lot easier to get water from earth, then it is to launch a rocket to the moon, gather up sparsely distributed water or elements that make up water, and get it back to earth. Even desalination of sea water would be many times more efficient than going to the moon to get water. There's a lot of water on earth, the problem is that it's badly distributed.
I would say that it's entirely likely that the amount of water you could get from a single rocket trip to the moon, would be less than that which you could get from the rocket fuel itself, which is just hydrogen and oxygen anyway.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
H
And lastly, give this generation something to shoot for. Something other than the newest Angry Birds or social media app. Something to shoot for, to make history, to inspire a new generation like JFK's speech on going to the moon. It will happen. The question is, will they speak Chinese or American?
... We have limited resources to throw at space. This is the time to throw them at something that will give us some return.
We have limited resources to throw at space because we have limited resources down here - but I know a place with ~limitless resources and it's called space. True, it's full of mostly nothing, but where there is something there tends to be a whooooooole lot of something.
What's on the moon anyhow? Rocks? Are you sure that's all? We can't really be sure unless we look.
This is just pork-grabbing move to pull in more money for the Rocket To Nowhere (Space Launch System or SLS) and continue to rob the Science Directorate of funds it needs for real science missions such as the Europa mission or Mars Sample Return. Going back to the moon is just a stunt to continue pointless manned missions.
Helium 3 *might* be useful if fusion research goes the way that many people expect it to. But considering that a lot of those same people expected us to have a useful fusion reactor by 1990, I don't put a ton of stock into their opinions.
You might have missed it in the newspapers, but people went to the moon repeatedly in the late 60s and early 70s. They brought back a ton of rocks for analysis. That analysis showed that the moon contained a bunch of worthless rocks that were very similar to the worthless rocks right here on Earth.
It was the Grail mission to study gravity anomalies. It was a successful and cheap and scientifically meaningful mission, unlike the proposed manned pork-laden mission.
I assume...
It takes roughly an order of magnitude more energy to get water into space from the Earth than it does from the moon.
I said "in an asymptotic sense". If you're not familiar with asymptotic analysis, then the response you were looking for was "*whoosh*". Nobody's talking about a single rocket trip to the moon.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
So basically, we just need to get Obama to adopt all the very worst right-wing policies, and Fox News will push left-wing policies in response, and all the "conservatives" will become leftists? Maybe if we can get Obama to do another about-face on gay marriage, and come out against it, Fox News and its conservative viewers will all suddenly be all for gay marriage.
The moon is a symbol, but there's no *practical* reason to go there, establish a base, a colony, or a really good restaurant.
Colonies are the reason. We need to get some of our eggs out of this Earth-shaped basket. Having a colony in Earth orbit is the easiest place to start, and the Moon is the easiest place in Earth orbit. It has gravity, so there's no need to tether everything like there is on ISS, and it has ground, which is a good source of building materials and momentum. Digging out a decently-sized lunar colony (robotically, or course) would be far easier than crafting the same size colony in free space.
Near earth orbital stations, in contrast, might be developed profitably for power stations, zero G manufacturing of exotic materials, ubiquitous satellite-based internet, and so on.
These are all short-term goals. They can (and arguably should) all be done right now, at small scale, on the ISS. They don't do anything to get us into space though; in fact they'd probably be better if all the humans involved stay on the ground.
The focus on the moon and Mars is just cold war era, retro silliness. We have limited resources to throw at space. This is the time to throw them at something that will give us some return.
We have limited resources *on Earth*. Space has its own resources. Some of them might be dropped down to Earth, but they're more useful up there.
Or are you so used to setting up strawmen and burning them that you got carried away?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Actually, since this article is really advocating privitizing space missions, in this case to the moon, it fits in very nicely with Fox News modus operandi. I cannot think of a more appropriate stance from the really. Although it is a bit weird that they are sounding pro space travel, but after hearing so much about drilling in asteroids I am sure they are thinking there is money in it, and the idea of taking money into the private sector - whatever the cost - before the gov can get their hands on it is what they are all about.
I'm assuming you meant He3, but it is worthless without a working fusion reactor, of which we have none. The only value of a lunar base would be as an intermediate port for assembling large ships for longer journeys. Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
The moon consists of a large amount of helium 3
Well... relatively. It would still take processing hundreds of tons of lunar rock to get useful amounts of He3, which in turn means hundreds of tons of equipment, fuel, etc, especially since you're going to want lots and lots of the stuff, not just a sample.
a wonderful fuel source that can easily be used to go pretty much everywhere else in the solar system.
Easily? You know we do have He3 here on Earth right and we still aren't at the point of firing up a fusion reactor with it. Granted, if there were a large and steady supply it would certainly lead to more research into He3 reactors (right now He3 reactors simply can't be economically feasible), but you're still talking a few decades of research and development for a reactor on the ground, let alone putting one in space which would require miniaturizing and automating the first generation by orders of magnitude.
Most current space ships have to lift the fuel out of the earth's gravity well, which means they have practically none left to go anywhere at speed. instead they drift along without any engine providing thrust.
There's reasons for this that go beyond fuel, VASMIR engines combined with orbital refueling with more run of the mill propellents and energy sources for example. We don't do it though, not because it's impossible, but because it's expensive and high risk. Not nearly as expensive and high risk as trying to jump start a He3 economy based on the moon.
Aren't they usually the champion of smaller government
No, they're the champions of Republicans who have little interest in 'smaller government.'
It'll work just fine in baloons though.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Assuming there's a good reason to do
A moon base means learning how to survive without a magnetosphere.
You are now aware that we are over 500000 years OVERDUE for our magnetosphere to falter, disappear, and be rebuilt in the opposing polarity. Saving the fucking world should be enough reason for any sentient race to seek self sustaining off-world colonization. In fact, if ending the assured threat of extinction by making sure all your eggs aren't in one basket isn't your #1 priority as a species, then are you really sentient, or just a bunch of damn dirty apes?
And for doing the funny voice.
This is the time to throw them at something that will give us some return.
Did you brush your teeth with toothpaste? How about have some clean sanitized water from the tap or to bathe in? Look, I can run down a list of hundreds of other NASA creations that benefit all of the world in your every day lives, but I don't have the time. Google exists. Stop being a fucking idiot.
I'm normally one to scoff at privatization of things like space exploration, but frankly finding the best ways to lower costs is precisely the kind of thing the private sector does best. Let 30 little companies work on the problem. There's plenty of a market in satellite launches to finance this. The ones with ideas that don't pan out will go belly-up, and the one or two that hit on good solutions will survive. There's no possible way a single organization (eg: NASA) can do that job properly.
NASA needs to be working on things that we just flat out don't know how to do, or it would be totally impractical for more than one group to attempt.
So...on those treasured occasions when Fox presents both sides of an issue, that's Bad? This must be coming from the same set of squirrel-reasoning critics who are responsible for the recent amazing reversal of leftist support for company commuter buses.
Trying to get governments to fund a measure that is that kind of VERY long-term is difficult when so many are facing much more immediate problems. It's sort of like the heat-death of the universe. Sure, we know it's coming, but my kids need to eat TODAY.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
very cheap solution
I assume this is a bad attempt at trolling, but we don't need to bring water to Earth, we want water as fuel for space ships and if that fuels is easier to get from the Moon, then it'll lower costs.
Step1) Launch ship into space
Step2) Refuel from the Moon
Step3) To infinity and beyond!
Nice try. In the event that Obama were to adopt far right-wing policies, they would just go even *farther* to the right. We've already seen it on national security. Obama adopts the far-right position on national security, and Fox responds that he hasn't gone far enough.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I thought this discussion would be full of people denying we ever went to the moon. I guess my brother doesn't read /.
NASA announced today a competition to find the best epitaphs to go on the tombstones of future astronauts. Current frontrunners are YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR and THIS MEMORIAL ALSO PURCHASED FROM THE LOWEST BIDDER.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
You don't really think that toothpaste and running water were invented by NASA, do you?
He3 is fuel for reactors we don't even know how to build yet. The moon is a very useful place to have a base scientifically (Great for astronomy in all bands) but commercially, not much use. There's no money in it. The ore isn't good enough to pay for the cost of getting it, communications and earth science are better done in more-affordable earth orbit, it's too far to transmit power. It could serve as a good waypoint for longer journeys, manufacturing fuel in the shallow gravity well, but there's no commercial possibility further out either. Lofty dreams of colonising space don't pay the bills.
We'll probably still be saying that when the meteor hits.
The moon is a symbol, but there's no *practical* reason to go there, establish a base, a colony, or a really good restaurant. Near earth orbital stations, in contrast, might be developed profitably for power stations, zero G manufacturing of exotic materials, ubiquitous satellite-based internet, and so on.
The focus on the moon and Mars is just cold war era, retro silliness. We have limited resources to throw at space. This is the time to throw them at something that will give us some return.
It's relatively close, placing a colony underground is cheap and easy radiation protection, the presence of gravity will reduce the amount of required exercise (and avoid the other issues with zero-g environments), it would be inspiring in ways that robotic explorers are not, and it will provide us with experience extracting resources from and growing food on other planets, which is critical for humans to become a space-faring species. And this is something we can do with today's technology. Sure, at some point in the near future we will have developed improved radiation protection and centripetal acceleration-based artificial gravity, thereby making space stations a better environment in the long-term (assuming the food issue is solved), but we haven't done those things yet.
Call that "space nuttery" if you will...I accept that establishing a Moon colony isn't cost-effective at the moment, but establishing a permanent, self-sufficient colony outside of Earth is something we as a species need to do at some point. Since there are still so many ways humanity can be destroyed, taking steps toward that goal sooner would be better than later.
Unless I'm much mistaken, helium-3 is useful only for nuclear fusion. As controllable cold fusion is *still* "40 years away", and as hot fusion (aka nuclear warheads) are still banned in space under international law (and of unproven use as a propulsion method anyway), then there's still no reason to go to the moon (yet).
IF we ever get cold fusion working, and IF the method of cold fusion we get working could usefully use helium-3, and IF mining the stuff from the moon is cheaper than making use of earth-bound sources, then it might start to look like a good idea.
Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
You mean on the far site.
Uh, the moon has significant quantities of iron, water, and radioactive isotopes. All in a significantly smaller gravity well than the earth.
Those are the raw materials for creating a sustainable environment outside of the earth. A fission based robotic/industrial base on the moon would be the ideal location to build the structural elements and fuel for future large scale space projects (space stations, interplanetary expeditions/etc).
Then you only have to boost fairly lightweight items out of the earths gravity well (electronics, dried food, etc).
country. And you say that diverting 1% is going to leave us open to attack?
I don't see why you can't have more than one. It's a big region. You'd just need a way to keep them from being attracted to each other, but that's not hard: Park them a hundred meters apart and put a big metal pole between them.
Well advocating pro-space-exploration positions isn't a right-wing move.
When you have one, then you can go back to the moon and play. But until you build a decent replacement for oil, I don't want to hear about going outside.
Today's NASA is too busy honoring muslim achievements and promoting wealth redistribution to get involved with a new moon project.
A moon base means learning how to survive without a magnetosphere.
Except that we already know how to do that: use shielding.
What we don't know how to do is deal with the social and economic consequences. But a moon base would provide no useful information for that.
I like how the majority of the replies to you is about how they can spend your money better than you can. They need your money for what they want, not your family or your kids education. Why would they care if your kids go to college when there is other stuff for them to spend your money on.
The US has really become rotten.
The Defense Budget *IS* underfunded already.
Would it not work better in permanently dark craters at the poles?
True, everyone needs to eat today. But if we soon won't leave this planet then we won't have to. Every science should work for this goal.
Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
You mean on the far site.
Or perhaps he means in a crater near one of the poles, like Shackleton crater. These are known as "craters of eternal darkness," by the way, which obviously sounds way cooler than "the dark side of the Moon."
You are now aware that we are over 500000 years OVERDUE for our magnetosphere to falter, disappear, and be rebuilt in the opposing polarity.
Nobody knows how long that will take. Could be minutes, days, weeks, months, years. If it's years, sure, we're in some trouble. Otherwise, probably not so much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Article writer stole his timeline from a popular anime titled 'Uchuu Kyoudai' or 'Space Brothers'. In that show, NASA starts construction of a moonbase sometime in 2018 or 2019, and finishes it in 2026, when the protagonist's younger brother makes his first trip to the moon.
Why go to the huge expense of a base on the moon? We've spent untold tens of billions on keeping one in low earth orbit and what good has it done us? Not much. The only difference with a moon base is that it'll be more costly.
For the foreseeable future, robotics is the way to explore space.
Build an asteroid base instead.
Seriously: they're big enough for it, launch costs are basically 0 from them, a lot of them have water and we have not explored them nearly as much as we should have. It'd kill a whole lot of birds in one go - we'd get to do some geology on the leftover materials from the early solar system and pin down planet formation more, we'd get to the mining geology for resources from asteroids, we'd get to test a whole lot of technology for rendeavouz, exploration, sampling and redirect missions.
Don't forget fuel depot - I believe there are at least a handful of scientifically vetted plans for mining and refining chemical fuel on the Moon, which could then be delivered to Earth or Lunar orbit for a fraction of the cost of fuel lifted from the Earth' surface, enabling far more sophisticated orbital space programs, even if we were never to go beyond Earth's local space.
And for longer-range flights there's the fact that the vast mass of the material leaving Earth's orbit would be fuel, so reducing the mass lifted from Earth would drastically reduce costs. Not to mention that, thanks to the low rotation rate and near-total lack of atmosphere, a low-G tumbling-cable skyhook only a few hundred km long could be operated around the moon capable of grabbing payloads directly from the surface and hurling them onto Hohmann transfer orbits to Mars or Venus. That's one hell of an stepping-stone into the solar system, and something that could be built relatively easily from current materials. Far easier than the multi-G, skyhook thousands of km long necessary to rendezvous with payloads in Earth's upper atmosphere, and much of the engineering experience gained would be transferable once we're ready to tackle that more challenging project.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Back to the Moon in 4 years.
Back to the Moon and back, 17 years.
magnetosphere to falter, disappear, and be rebuilt in the opposing polarity
It will not disappear - it will become more complex and less effective at blocking solar radiation. But that shouldn't matter to those of us on the ground, since we have the atmosphere to protect us. The folks in the space station might have a problem, however.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
" 'The development of a lunar base could be a catalyst for lowering our launch cost to space and accelerating the development of automation and robotics." So, we're going to make things eventually cheaper by spending a whole lot of money we can't actually afford now ....
Yeah, I bet a lot of people have ingenious plans for doing that, but it's a tough sell today.
I recall a certain Candidate Newt Gingrich wanted us to build a colony on the moon. I nomintate him to start the construction personally.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It would make a great platform for space observatories. Imagine a grid of radio telescopes on the dark side. It would also probably be a good place for a gravity wave detector.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
This time we will send an African. And we shall call it "Black to the Moon".
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If you can't build a base without people, then you're not ready yet and you're just wasting your money.
Uh, the moon has significant quantities of iron, water, and radioactive isotopes. All in a significantly smaller gravity well than the earth.
That'll be great in conjunction with getting a mining and manufacturing center into space, but that is decades if not centuries off. Mater of the fact is that useful space research for industrial uses and exploration is in deep space habitation. That means the ISS or other things like it. If we were to be serious about going to Mars, we'd have to increase research at the ISS, probably build another one to test construction methods, and then another test vehicle which we might send around the Moon on a long trip (and we might land since we're in the neighbodhood and to test new landing tech). Still, all that would need to be done before we could even attempt to mine the moon and that is all decades or centuries away.
NASA hasn't been able to get back to the moon in 40 years
It's not like NASA has been trying to get back to the moon and has been failing. NASA hasn't been back to the moon in 40 years due to political reasons, not technical ones.
The fallacy is in assuming [conservative group] doesn't like liberal ideas because of Obama. Or that [conservative group] doesn't like Obama because of liberal ideas.
In reality, the #1 reason [conservative group] doesn't like liberal ideas or Obama is because they're on the other team. Likewise, [liberal group] doesn't like conservative ideas or G. W. Bush for the same reason.
And probably the real truth is that conservative and liberal politicians like each other just fine, they just want to be on opposite teams so that they control the entire game.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The difference is location.
Mining the moon to bring the material back to Earth is asinine.
Mining the moon to build things on the moon or in Earth orbit has a huge potential in cost savings.
The economic question really is do we have enough demand for manufactured good is Earth orbit or on/orbiting the moon to justify the R&D expense of lunar mining and manufacturing.
In the long run the answer is probably "yes", but it's a hard sell to the short sighted general public because the majority of the benefits will not directly improve life on Earth (more cost effective satellite programs will be cool but not that big a practical benefit). Instead they'll benefit the future society that spans more than juts Earth.
Grush's plan is sound as far as back-of-the-envelope estimates go. But there is more to this than money. Roughly half of NASA's HSF budget goes to projects that exist only to spend money. As in, you could cancel the projects, reduce NASA's budget by that amount, and you would still get the same amount of space exploration done. Unfortunately, when the budget crunch comes, those projects are never the first ones cancelled. So I think the key to effective long-term space exploration is to establish incremental and self-sustaining capabilities while resisting cost growth in the pork projects.
So, yeah, someday we can send astronauts to the moon. But first we need to figure out how to send people to orbit for "free". And we need to expose the pork projects for what they are while preventing infrastructure from being built around them. You can help! Don't buy the BS that NASA is going to send humans to Mars for 0.5% of the federal budget. When your Science Committee congress-person comes up for re-election, reward responsible oversight and not "vision".
look where it got them.
... Well, that and you could make some badass telescopes on the dark side.
Despite what some progressive rock bands would have you believe there is no dark side of the Moon. There is however, a far side which gets no more darkness than the near side.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
He posted a link to an article on Fox News from a NY pediatrician who was warning parents that the flu vaccine... ...was likely to lead to autism and all kinds of nasty things. At the exact same time there was a different article written by Fox New's own Dr. Manny touting the benefits of the flu vaccine for everybody, including children.
So what you are saying is that they actually are "Fair & Balanced"? I'm confused.
Every politician, every army, every greedy banker and all the weaponry of war.. Send them all to the moon, and don't come back.
NASA could have put us on the moon any time they wanted to over the last 40 years. But funding dried up because the PEOPLE didn't care any more. If people don't care, they don't deserve to go to the moon.
I'll believe the so called spending cuts when I can look at historical data and the amount spend has actually gone down.
sofar all proposed 'cuts', military or otherwise are really 'cuts in the rate of increase',
i.e. instead of spending 100 billion more then last year, we only spend 80 billion more, see we cut 20 billion,
except of course you really fuckin did the exact opposit (yes numbers pulled out of my arse, but it illustrates the reality)
the US is like one of those muslebound body builders, with plenty of muscle but almost no fat
so cutting in the fat is problematic and cutting into the muscle isn't
The far side of the moon is indeed the dark side. Just not in the visible spectrum.
Earth gives off a fantastic glow in a certain (large) band of frequencies due to our love for omnidirectional RF transmissions. If your eyes could see 3m wavelength, you'd be arguing that it really is the dark side of the moon.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
but there's no *practical* reason to go there
Helium-3. Well, once we figure out fusion, which is always just ten years off.
Naah. In the 1950s, with Project Sherwood, it was ten years off. By the 1970s it was 25 years off. Currently the earliest conceivable date for a prototype power plant (that actually produces electricity) is about 2047, twenty years after the Iter project is projected to start burning tritium (2027), so it is currently 33 years off. That the "time to the first fusion power plant" appears to be a monotonically increasing function of time is not encouraging.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
'The biggest obstacle is the lack of a rocket, called a super heavy launch vehicle, to lift it off the planet
That's a little bit like saying I could go to the bottom of the sea... except I just need a submarine!
A telescope a the pole only ever gives you a view of the same half of the sky. A 'scope on the far side can cover the whole sky (except for where the sun is) every month, and each month the sun will seem in a different place.
However for an optical telescope there's no need to base it on the far side, since it's pretty easy to shade against optical wavelengths. The far side is an ideal place for radio telescopes though, because you're shielded from the RF-noisy Earth by 2000 miles of moon rock.
The permanantly-shaded polar craters are fantastic places for IR telescopes, being so cold.
On the moon all the materials you can find on earth will be available. Water, minerals, lots of sunlight, microgravity.
By burying the habitats you can defend from micro meteor impacts and most radiation.
You can manufacture space ships for interplanetary travel once you have manufacturing capacity and then launch them using a space elevator into orbit for extremely low cost. The poles of the moon can serve as a much better research/space telescope area than anywhere in orbit.
There's a million and one reasons to put a base on the moon for manufacturing capability.
Orbit needs lots of shielding, has no raw materials, is 100% dependent on the earth for resources. It makes 0 sense for manufacturing. For a staging area it makes sense, but the moon can do that and so much more.
It takes roughly an order of magnitude more energy to get water into space from the Earth than it does from the moon.
Only if you ignore essentially all of the energy inputs into making the launch happen. The cost of the energy to send a payload into orbit is trivial - for a $100 million dollar Falcon launch the cost of the fuel is about $100,000, or 0.1% of the launch cost. Essentially all of the cost (and energy consumption) of putting something into orbit is the cost of manufacturing all that high-tech gear, and running the organization required to assemble and launch it.
Trying to do this from the Moon, without any facilities in place, is going to be far more expensive. How many contractors currently live on the Moon, and are ready for hire?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I don't know if it is just me or not, but the most fascinating thing would be the design and transport of construction machines. Automated perhaps? Most of the ideas I have read about a moon base involves being under ground. The primary reason being protection from solar radiation (unless they come up with some novel way of protection). That would mean earth moving and mining equipment, which isn't light or particularly delicate. Also because of a lack of weather system, moon dust is much more abrasive than here on Earth apparently, which may play havoc on maintaining any design.
Another method might be water shielding prefab modules. Then again the amount of water required would likely mean the structure would have to be very strong, and probably heavy. It would also require a large source of water, and even with that a method to extract it.
Then again without a local supply of water it would probably be cost prohibitive to truck it over from earth. Then again that is a job I want, Moon Water Trucker!
Anyway Moon base is maybe getting a bit far ahead of ourselves. Probes. Locate water source. Devise robotic autonomous extraction and storage. Then once you have a supply of water, then start talking moon base. However realistically I think all of that is MUCH longer than 4 years away.
The far side of the moon is indeed the dark side. Just not in the visible spectrum.
Earth gives off a fantastic glow in a certain (large) band of frequencies due to our love for omnidirectional RF transmissions. If your eyes could see 3m wavelength, you'd be arguing that it really is the dark side of the moon.
Considering the sun also gives off a large amount of omnidirectional RF transmissions too, the far-side of the moon is not really dark in that part of the spectrum either (except when it's also pointed away from the sun during a full-moon)...
Yes, let's rescue ourselves from the magnetosphere failing by migrating to bodies without magnetospheres.
Many of the costs you mention are fixed costs and are by definition ignored in asymptotic analysis.
To offer you a computer science analogy, you're arguing in favor of bubble sort because it's easier to implement.
When you look at total cost as a function of the amount of water put into orbit, as the amount of water approaches infinity, the cost of lunar water is asymptotically less than the cost of terrestrial water. Of course, this is even more apparent if we invest in some more fixed-cost infrastructure like a lunar space elevator.
Since I have no vested interest in promoting either side of this argument, I'll even play devil's advocate, since nobody has yet offered any viable objections to what I've said. Asymptotic analysis may be misleading in this scenario, since the moon does not have infinite water. While asymptotic analysis suggests that lunar water is indeed cheaper, it is possible that there might not be enough cheap water on the moon to offset the fixed costs of establishing a robust lunar infrastructure.
However, that still has no bearing on my original claim that in Earth orbit, lunar water is cheaper (in an asymptotic sense) than terrestrial water.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I remember when space was our destiny. The evidence that we are destroying our planet is only increasing, and people seem more and more content to just seal ourselves into this teeny little planet and kill everyone together.
Indeed, that's true. I was considering running the numbers, but realized I don't have sufficient data.
There's an oft-repeated adage that sunlight reaching Earth provides about 1kW/m^2. I'm not sure if this is just in the visible spectrum or total. I'm not sure what proportion of this radiation has longer wavelengths. I'm not sure what percentage of this longer wavelength radiation is filtered by the atmosphere, magnetosphere, etc.
Also, I have no idea how much radiation we blast out of our radio towers. They're high power, as far as manmade stuff goes, but they're no sun. However, there's a lot of them, and they're a lot closer to the moon than the sun is.
Let's just say that the far side of the moon is the only nearby place where it [occasionally] is very dark in that part of the spectrum. Also, simply not aiming the scope at sun (when the sun is up) should still be pretty nice for radio astronomy, as there's no atmosphere or magnetosphere on the moon to scatter/bend the sunlight across the whole sky.
Of course, I'm no astronomer, so that last part could just be bullshit.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I think H3 (tritium) was intended, though still, it's magical thinking that even an infinite free supply of the stuff solves our energy problems with either current or foreseeable tech.
We're not going to be building anything huge in orbit in the next 20-30 years. Going to the moon in 4 to acquire the materials for that project doesn't make any sense.
If we spent the same money on new technologies for getting things from Earth into space cheaply, like a space elevator, it completely removes the need for that moon step.
And in fact spending that money on better desalinization might be a far more effective project. It would save a lot of lives, and possibly even help stabilize some regions that are making us spend so much money on defense as it is.
And why would going back to the moon be worth the cost? Collect more rocks? Building an underground base would be a good project if we could come up with ways to provide the life support technologies needed for extended stays. Radiation shielding , power generation, atmosphere generation, water generation, and the construction materials and methods needed to protect structures in high radiation and vacuum conditions. All of these technologies are within our grasp but the one thing we are totally lacking is the courage to face the risks in such an endeavor. Sooner or later people will die in projects of this type and those who do die are fully aware of the risks and will do it anyway. On the other hand the general public is always more concerned with finding someone to blame when things go wrong and lives are lost. The gutless government willingly grab onto this public hysteria and milk the situation for all the attention they can to try and convince the public they actually give a shit about protecting lives. The only way to cut through all this bullshit is to make it a military project. The minute China even comes close to landing on the moon the US government has all the reason it needs to use the limitless defense budget to get there first. The same defense contractors that design and build high tech military hardware can leverage their knowledge and build the tech needed for a moon project. Things like EMP shielded electronics and computer chips (which a Chinese spy was just captured trying to steal), advanced rocket and guidance technology, miniaturization of nuclear reactors like those used in US subs and carriers for the last 25 years, material science advances developed during stealth research heat shielding technology developed for the old shuttle project, and advanced computer technologies that dwarf anything available to the general public today.
So, I'm sure that you'll have no problem coming up with a single concrete example where it's cheaper and easier to do this on, or from the moon, rather than Earth....
One. Just one real example.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The ISS is little more than a fragile tin can a couple hours away from the earth. Its only real value is research related to 0g environments. There aren't any raw materials there. So if your "exploration" of space looks a lot like the Apollo program, then its a logical step. AKA, send a man to mars for a couple weeks and then forget the whole thing happened for a few decades/centuries.
On the other hand if you want robust (heavy) long term environments in space, then there must be a source of raw materials to partially support them, and they must be built to withstand long term exposure without constant maintenance. Neither of those are possible when everything is built on earth and boosted up using extremely expensive chemical rockets, and there are political issues surrounding every launch with a RTG on-board.
Plus, a lot of things are easier in a weak gravity vs 0g. Imagine the difficulty in simply digging out a bucket of ore from the moon vs an asteroid. Its even worse if you consider crushing/separating/melting it.
In 0g you have to invent completely new processes, vs modifying existing ones. So its much harder.
Many of the costs you mention are fixed costs and are by definition ignored in asymptotic analysis....
Repeating the word "asymptotic" many times - without presenting any actual analysis - does not cut any ice -- here on Earth or on the Moon.
When you look at total cost as a function of the amount of water put into orbit, as the amount of water approaches infinity, the cost of lunar water is asymptotically less than the cost of terrestrial water
This is utter nonsense. The cost of lunar water is at a minimum the cost of operating an industrial mining operation in a vacuum, amid abrasive dust, 250000 miles from the nearest supply source. The cost of this - even "asymptotically" - is incredibly expensive.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
If China's economy gets all the air sucked out of it to build a moon base, they will be far less competitive economically with the US.
A win for the US, but I feel bad for the poor people in China.
FWIW, I couldn't find it.
site:foxnews.com "flu shot" autism
There's only one result that's close, and it warns about mercury.
And even then, the density of He3 in the lunar regolith is... not actually all that impressive.
Perhaps today, sure.
You're looking at incidental costs like maintenance. There's no law of physics that states that maintenance on the moon must be expensive. There's no law of physics that prohibits the existence of maintenance-free mining equipment on the moon.
There's only one real cost of getting water into Earth orbit: energy. There is a law of physics that puts a lower bound on the amount of energy required to get water there from inside a gravity well. If the water comes from earth, that lower bound is one order of magnitude greater than if the water comes from the moon.
Perhaps you're reading too much into what I'm saying?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
You do realize the last time this happened, humans were hunter-gatherers using stone tools, and we survived just fine. Why would you think that the world's gonna end the next time the magnetosphere collapses and reverses polarity?
Sure some of our societies and governments might collapse, but humans as a species are in no danger of extinction.
So basically, we just need to get Obama to adopt all the very worst right-wing policies
Seems reasonable. The right wingers have certainly adopted all the very worst left wing policies :-\
--- Mercutio was right.
Anyone who doesn't realize we don't have the tech to build a self sustaining off-world colony... is an idiot. We can't even build a closed loop ECLSS that will keep a handful of people in O2 indefinitely without outside support - let alone all the other infrastructure of an industrial society. We barely have a handle on the known unknowns. And given the example of terrestrial colonies, it's not at all clear it's even possible to build a fully self supporting colony. (And for a lunar colony, unlike terrestrial ones, dropping tech to survive isn't an option.)
Read this, and you'll see that the conservative Washington Times has a big problem with the Administration's decimation of NASA's planetary science problem.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Here's a very interesting account of the launch disaster at Xichang: http://www.airspacemag.com/his...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Finally somebody else who agrees with me! I have long advocated that we should have bases on the moon and mars just in case something bad happens on Earth.
I think it would be a noble goal to not only put a base on the Moon and Mars but to make them self sufficient. Beyond having a self sufficient base it should also have a repository of our institutional knowledge just in case something cataclysmic should happen on Earth. Speaking of eggs... I think that something that should go to these bases as well is a chunk of the eggs and sperm we currently have in cold storage that'll never get used. This would provide a safety net for genetic diversity and provide a starting place in case something bad happens on Earth.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
OR.... you could just put a radio telescope at earth-sun L2 and call it a day. That's where we seem to put all those new fangled telescopes these days...
Putting a telescope (radio or otherwise) on the far side of the moon might make it hard to relay the data back to earth (being able to be bathed in the RF light of the earth also implies the reverse that such a telescope could transmit its data back to us poor folks on earth using RF and not try to relay it back to earth through some other potentially unreliable means.
You would think both sides in the government would welcome a return trip to the moon because it would boost the sense of national pride and show that the government has not given up trying to show the US is still capable of doing things others would not dare try. The first moon mission created a sense of national pride that overcame the problems the US was dealing with at the time. The Vietnam and Cold War were temporarily moved to the background when the country became mesmerized by the spectacle of going to the moon. Even the costs are manageable if the project is funded as a military project. Even the companies that supply all the high tech systems and armaments can leverage their knowledge to create the technologies needed for a manned mission. The companies who benefit from military arms sales would have another revenue stream that is not so controversial.
Um... that's not even vaguely what "cold fusion" means. All the current large-scale reactor projects are "hot fusion". In fact, that's one of the main problems they're having: achieving fusion in the short term isn't too hard, but containing the plasmas that are generated is!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
That may be the point of the proposed program. When the Apollo Program was started, we didn't know how to navigate to the moon, enter orbit there, land on the lunar surface, roam around and do stuff, then join our space ships back together and return home. And I'm not sure how we would have learned if we hadn't tried to do it.
Oh! I've seen that movie! It's where the African-American astronaut finds the Nazi base on the moon that has been forgotten since the 40ies.
The one current use of He3 (as opposed to He4 which doesn't work as well) is as a refrigerant, as it is able to cool things down to a far colder temperature than any other gas based refrigeration system.
I don't know how many people need things cooled down to 3 degrees Kelvin, but there is indeed a market for bulk quantities of He3 even without any sort of fusion reactors using the substance. He3 also has a few other interesting properties that make it sort of unique for some researchers as well. Admittedly though it is the use of this material in fusion that is the real market that would pay for lunar mining operations all by itself.
If we fail as this generation's naturally selected intellectual alpha to propagate the universe, the universe will give life another shot in no more than 200.000 years.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
But what about if something really bad happens on the Moon? What if there are lots of explosions and the Moon gets hurled out of its orbit and goes sailing through space from one adventure to another?? After about a year we will have lost interest in them so an alien with amazing technology will suddenly show up on the moon base, but it will be too late and they'll never make it to a third year . . .
a NY pediatrician who was warning parents that the flu vaccine ... a different article written by Fox New's own Dr. Manny touting the benefits of the flu vaccine for everybody, including children.
Flu vaccine is an argument that genuinely is not clear cut, unless you are high risk. So publishing two opinions is fine. Its not like MMR where the two sides are clearly defined as science vs nut-jobs. (Are you sure the pediatrician mentioned autism, or was that your friend? )
All life in this universe is of this universe, and Life's list of things to do begins and ends with survive.
I can see this season's crop of damn dirty apes making the leap to whatever immortality our universe allows. We seem on the brink (40-80 yrs) of genetic manipulation. We send the tardigrades up until we get survivors at Splashdown, we map and extract the immunity trait(s) responsible for survival, booh-yah.... men on the moon. Full Disclosure: holders of political office on the lunar surface will be indistinguishable from their earthly peers.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Boys from the ignorant South, my people, leave home for an all expense paid trip to their death in a middle eastern country they can't find on a map. For honor and country.
We only need to redirect that boundless tribalism to a mission worthy of their supreme sacrifice.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If that's not off by more than a factor of 2,that means one president could get it done.
We could draft Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson to run in 2016, and be on the Moon by 2024!
The disturbing part is that I think you're as serious as you are clueless.
(And for the record, I'm Southern born and bred too - and I'm hardly ignorant.)
It would seem that space elevators would be much easier to construct on the moon for a variety of reasons, and dramatically lower the cost of getting stuff/people to and from the moon. Even if all we do is go around and scoop up asteroids it would be a worthwhile mining task...
However, you only need a millimetre or two of aluminium shielding to completely mask out Earth-origin signals. The remaining 2000 miles is redundant.
Actually, it's substantially darker on the farside, at night, without the reflected light from Earth. (Even more than the difference on Earth between a New Moon and a Full Moon, due to Earth's larger size and greater reflectivity.) Of course it's even better at ESL1 with a simple sun-shield.
If you need reassurance that Fox is still Fox, just peak at the side-bar. "Trending in Science: Noah's Ark - Did Hollywood Get It Right?"
We just announced a reduction of troops to the lowest number since before entering World War II
See, this is what happens when you listen to Fox News.
US defense personnel in 1940:
Army: 269,023 (Inc Army Air Corps, which had about 1800 planes total.)
Navy: 160,997
Marine Corps: 28,335
TOTAL: 458,355
Today, pre-cut:
Army: 522,973
Navy: 323,134
Marine Corps: 193,815
Air Force: 329,610 (Which has over 7000 drones)
TOTAL:1,369,532
If the number of Army personnel is cut to 440,000-450,000, it will be a few thousand below the total number of US defense personnel in 1940. Ohnoes. Of course, the newly slashed Army will still have 170,000 more personnel than it did in 1940. Hell, just the Marines and Air Force alone will have more personnel than the total number of defense personnel in 1940. (And the US defense budget is still more than the next 12 countries combined, and about 5 times China's, 8 times Russia's.)
I think you meant "will they speak Mandarin or English"
Sorry. That was in poor taste.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
MightyYar writes "But that shouldn't matter to those of us on the ground, since we have the atmosphere to protect us."
But: "The magnetosphere protect[s] the Earth from cosmic rays that would otherwise strip away the upper atmosphere, including the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation." (Source: Wikipedia)
you made me scratch myself
And BTW, regarding the poster child for criticism on Slashdot, Fox News ... a UCLA study of media bias found them to be in the top 4 news outlets for balanced reporting.
Jim Lehrer, CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC Good Morning America were the top 3.
Wall Street Journal and New York Times came in last at #19 and #20.
The author of the study asked for peer reviews of his methodology. Most peers found it sound except when they began to see the results, when suddenly many deduced it "couldn't be right". So the author kept going back asking for changes to make it more objective. He kept on adding or tweaking measures until they had nothing left to criticize.
A Measure of Media Bias by Tim Groseclose, Department of Political Science, UCLA, 2004.
Here ya go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Moonbase Hilton?
So, no use at all then.
If you want to build a (marine) ship for a long journey, you don't normally build it so that you have to lift it over several miles of busy roads to get it to the sea. Nor do you normally build it where you then need to cut it into pieces and DHL it to the assembly yard. You build it where it can sail out of it's building dock on the engines that it's going to use for the rest of it's life.
A ship for deep space transport, you build in deep space, not at the bottom of a gravitational hole, like on the Moon. (Yes, the Moon is a shallower gravitational hole than the Earth. But it's still a hole of 2.4km/s depth of escape speed, which you don't need to go down into if you can do your building in Lunar orbit and only 1.4km into the Earth's hole of escape speed.)
That said, you might have a basis for building a Mars lander/ take off unit on the Moon. Then you can test if it works by flying it on auto pilot before you commit a crew to it. Meanwhile, your transit vessel (you know - the one with the elbow room and radiation shielding) which you've built in space is proving it's reliability by shunting material from Earth-Moon orbit to Mars orbit. Lose a load of equipment to a hardware failure and you'll sing "Oh Wailey, wailey!" ; lose a crew of areonauts to an under-tested vehicle and you've got a much bigger problem.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
i mean, seriously....
potentially unreliable means.
Space carrier pigeon
Really long cable
Two cups connected via string
Neutrinos
Smoke signals?
What about moon launch via trebuchet?
I want a link to whatever it is you are talking about.
Space 1999 (I kid you not in how I described the plot. A lot of it is summarized in the title sequence). I watched all the episodes when they aired. It was very cheesy, but entertaining for me as a pre-teen, and remarkably good special effects for TV at the time. I also used to watch Mission Impossible reruns in the early 70's, and I knew Martin Landau from that. Later, when Landau won an oscar and he was receiving all the accolades for his career, I couldn't help but remember him from that cheesy show. To be fair, Space 1999 was pretty much where his career really bottomed out.
That'd have to be one hell of a trebuchet! But yeah, without an atmosphere to rapidly sap the kinetic energy pretty much anything that can get something up to escape velocity is potentially viable, the only question is whether it makes engineering sense compared to the alternatives.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually, your original post about the skyhook made me think about a space station named the "Hans Moravec" I read about in a scifi book. When I was just looking up information to reference it, it turns out they are exactly the same technology, made by Moravec himself.
I think the title of the book is "The Crimson Blood", it is primarily about nanotechnology.