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NASA Funded Study States People Could Be On the Moon By 2021 For $10 Billion
MarkWhittington writes: The Houston Chronicle reported that NextGen Space LLC has released the results of a study that suggests that if the United States were to choose to do space in some new and creative ways, American moon boots could be on the lunar surface by 2021. The cost from the authorization to the first crewed lunar landing would be just $10 billion. The study was partly funded by NASA and was reviewed by the space agency and commercial space experts.
when they originally announced the SLS and orion, the plan was for 2018 or 2019. but the funding got stripped out.
sadly nasa is the red headed stepchild, it is one of the few government orgs that i actually care about and it gets pennies compared to orgs who want to ensure that some mole that no one has ever heard of remains protected. Its wrong
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The reason is to learn how to do it again. Right now the US can't even put astronauts in orbit.
We like to think we *can* but just don't want to. Its a very comforting thought.
Of course if we don't want a future that includes space colonization, then I agree, there is no reason to go. Its nice up here in the trees - we can let someone else climb down and worry about the predators.
That's a lane widening of a major Interstate passing through a couple of large cities. It's peanuts. I'd rather do Mars, but if we can get back to the moon on that kind of budget...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What's there for us on Mars? Some ice, lots of dust and some caves. Nothing else. No atmosphere, no energy, no plants, no *nothing*.
Traveling 45 million miles for that is a completely *stupid* idea.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The proposal is to put a small base near a pole, mine water, turn it into fuel, and ship it up to a Langrange point. Outbound ships can refuel on their way to Mars (manned) or elsewhere (robotic). It sounds like a reasonable reason to go to the moon.
There's also some interesting things you could do with science experiments on the moon. Lots of hard vacuum, low gravity and radio silence on the far side.
Thus, it would really cost $30Bn.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The average lifetime productivity of an American is about $2 million. Why should we spend 5000 lifetimes worth of productivity to go to the moon? A place we've already been to before, and which is close enough that we can just carry all needed supplies from Earth. There's practically nothing left to learn from such an endeavor which we cannot already learn from the ISS. The only proposed moon project I've heard of worth a damn is to put a radio telescope on the far side, shielded from all the EM noise from Earth.
Manned space exploration already has a terrible return on investment compared to unmanned. But if we're going to do it, focus on solving new problems - long term space travel for a mission to Mars. The R&D into constructing a self-contained ecosystem and recycling water and oxygen will actually have some practical applications here on Earth.
Well for one thing Helium-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Pretty sure that would pay for itself pretty quickly. Instead of mining near earth asteriods I would think that starting on the moon and then launching from the moon to anywhere else would be the way to go forward.
Going there is not the problem. Staying there is. Just going there would be a colossal waste of time, energy and resources, as it accomplishes nothing. Robotic exploration is far, far cheaper.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Unless billionaires want to pony up the cost, and then some. Otherwise, no, huge waste of taxpayer money.
Medicare fraud alone makes $10 billion look like chump change. Complaining about waste of taxpayer money in the context of a lunar base for only $10B is the wrong argument against.
Why near a pole? On the equator. A Lunar space elevator could be made with existing materials technology.
The Moon is actually a harder test of habitat recycling. Mars has good amounts of CO2 which may be used for oxygen extraction (see the MOXIE experiment). Mars does have a minimal atmosphere (not a complete vacuum) and possibly easily accessible water ice resources.
If we can figure out how to live in orbit or on the Moon for long term, without resupply, then Mars should be a snap.
Note that they ARE working on a lot of self-sufficiency initiatives on the ISS - water recycling and such. Long term this is stuff that needs to be figured out cold for mankind to go anyplace in space. Similar initiatives on the Moon would allow use of the regolith and perhaps water ices for material needs.
We should not go to the moon every generation or so just for the glory of putting more prints in the lunar dust; we should use it as a boot camp to train to go to other, less hostile places in space.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Why near a pole? Water.
Of course there's good reason to go back to the moon. Having no atmosphere is advantageous for some things (eg solar panels and certain manufacturing processes), its lighter mass means it is easier to launch stuff from, its nearness makes it a nice practice colony, and several more. For example, you could build a railgun style cargo delivery system to deliver raw material into space. Certain future advances (like 3d printing and robotics) could make for a surprisingly small investment to colonize the entire moon.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You want to get people on the moon? Easy! Oh, you want them back too? Well...
In today's dollars, a single Saturn V launch was about $20 billion. So now we are saying we can do it for half of that, including all of the research and development? The entire Apollo project was estimated in 2005 dollars as $170 Billion.
I would bet it will cost more like $100 billion including research. A single shot could probably be done for $15 billion.
NASA today doesn't have the budget for this sort of endeavor. In 1966, NASAs budget was $5.2 billion, or in today's dollars, $38.2 billion. Today's actual NASA budget is only $18.3 billion.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Define, "defensible". Because I think you're full of it.
Living on the surface of an alien planet under hostile conditions is a pretty tricky affair. Maintaining a presence on the 'dark' side of the moon so you can have even better astronomy is pretty cool. A staging area to look at working towards more of space is something we don't have now. Because we fucking well can has always been a marvelous idea.
The problems we need to solve for Mars? We can wok on those problems before having to solve a 2 year travel time with no escape plan.
So when you say "no defensible reason" I say bullshit. There's plenty we could do on the moon which actually is of value, and is entirely defensible. And which actually helps us learn about what we'd do on the surface of Mars. Or any other planetary surface.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Skipping over the fact we have absolutely no technology to extract this He3 at the minute concentrations on the Moon, what, exactly, are we supposed to *DO* with it? Tell me, what 10 billion$ market is there for He3?
How about we bring all troops home, close all overseas bases, implement the Swiss defense system backed by crazy WMD's... Then spend the other 500 billion PER YEAR for manned exploration/colonization of anywhere/everywhere outside this planet...
In 2009, NASA looked back at the cost of the Apollo program in its entirety, and arrived at a figure of $170 billion in 2005 dollars (or around $200 billion in today’s money).
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
Yeah $10B, 20x cheaper.
sure, and we didnt have the tech to send us to the moon in the 60s...but we did it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Okay, but what happens when you add in the part about people getting back home?
Table-ized A.I.
Are you kidding? Most of that 10 billion will go to corporations, and the profit from that will be WAY more than any tax cut.
Of course, they'll probably double-down and do both as a "compromise".
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Maintaining a presence on the 'dark' side of the moon so you can have even better astronomy is pretty cool.
Not just better telescopes, or even bigger ones. Imagine how big you can make radio telescopes there, and how much more sensitive they'll be with the Moon insulating them from all of the Earth's radio output.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
medical equipment used he3 currently for scans. research into he3 powered potentially affordable fusion is blocked by the lack of the substance.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
sure, and we didnt have the tech to send us to the moon in the 60s...but we did it
So what are you trying to say here? He3 is only useful in a fusion reactor and we don't have a working design. People have been working on one ever since they invented the H-bomb and come up short, we have enough He3 here on earth to experiment/test with. Maybe we should see if we're able to do something useful with it before we spend billions trying to build a moon mining operation?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What good does going back to the moon do?
Other than inspire a generation's interest in math, science and engineering? Other than the dual use of much of the technology that will be developed for the space program?
Both of these things were major benefits of the original space race and you are materially benefitting from both at this very moment.
How are you going to get those spinoff benefits and discoveries without actually doing work in space, and just sitting around here and funding social programs? You're not. The Apollo program yielded enormous economic benefits for the US due to the new technologies created; those would not have happened if we just increased teacher pay.
I'm not saying social programs and teacher pay increases shouldn't be done, but if you want actual advancement in technology, you have to actually do things which require that advancement. You can't just wait until all social problems are cured. That isn't going to happen for generations.
applying those $10 billion to exploring alternative energy sources, solving diseases, or paying teachers and improving crumbling schools.
+1
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Yeah, that's a great idea. Think I'll trade my spot at the bottom of this gravity well for a different spot at the bottom of a significantly crappier gravity well. You might think "No problem! We'll do it as a penal colony! After they clean the joint up -- kill all the Mars spiders and Mars snakes, us civilized folks will move in!" Wrong! Those prisoners are the base of the hugely profitable prison industry and if you send 'em all off-planet, you greatly increase overall costs while losing all the extra profits from the massive recidivism rates. Nope, I was the first one to want to get off-planet as a kid, but until they come up with an idea that doesn't involve moving to some other shithole of a planet, I'm staying put!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
no, huge waste of taxpayer money.
Wrong. It would be one of the most effective ways to inspire interest in kids of STEM. Far more than $10B will be flushed down STEM oriented programs for kids that are far less effective.
Not to mention the technological spinoffs that will benefit people. Clue: You are greatly benefiting from the original space race as you are reading this.
sure, and we didnt have the tech to send us to the moon in the 60s...but we did it
So what are you trying to say here? He3 is only useful in a fusion reactor and we don't have a working design. People have been working on one ever since they invented the H-bomb and come up short, we have enough He3 here on earth to experiment/test with. Maybe we should see if we're able to do something useful with it before we spend billions trying to build a moon mining operation?
I completely agree with you and it is sad to see this tired old argument every time there is a moon story. There are plenty of good reasons to go to the moon, He3 isn't one of them. There is no reason to even bring up the subject given the numerous other reasons to go to the moon.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I appreciate it's not a zero sum one-or-the-other game, but there are limited resources we've got,and while $10b may be a drop in the bucket and there is plenty of condemnable waste-- as a parent post notes, it does represent many thousands of lifetimes of american labor and value. So... we've got billions of people on this planet and immeasurable mysteries to be answered and places to be explored and problems to be solved here. I ask not as a bad-faith challenge but as an opportunity to explain to me... why send people to the moon so we can send people to mars so we can send people to (undiscovered?) less hostile places?
The short answer is this...
We have all our eggs in one basket, Earth. Should anything happen to Earth, either from stupid humans or a very large rock hitting us, our whole race could be doomed and thus all that we have done and all that we could be is pointless...
It is spreading out the risk.
Actually most lunar space elevator designs I've seen have space elevators anchored at both the lunar equator and a pole, with cargo traveling to and from the pole.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
If we can't cough up the money to go to the moon, how in the hell does anyone think that we'll cough up the money to get to Mars?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sure... do you happen to know of one close by or something?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Conservatively, let's say we could earn 2.5% annually in real terms (i.e. after inflation) on $10B. That's the rate the economy is projected to grow at long-term. So, $250M/year in perpetuity. That'd fund a lot of basic research, if that's what you're into.
I'd also feel better about spending $10B on a manned moon mission if the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio wasn't about 70% higher than it was 8 years ago.
Putting 10 billion in to any kind of cure research doesn't guarantee a cure. They don't just magically materialize paste a certain threshold of money.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
There's enough for medical equipment and it isn't hard to make more (irradiate water to make tritium and let it decay). As for using it for fusion, it is much harder to fuse he3 then what they're currently experimenting with and they can't do it in an energy positive way with deuterium yet. Once we have working fusion reactors, then we can think about getting more he3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
why not say "Wow, we have achieved something of real practical benefit, A, which directly impacts billions of people and saves our planet.
Simple, because it's never worked that way before. You can't just invent things without a need for them; it rarely happens. Have you never heard of "necessity is the mother of invention"?
And conversely, it has worked the way I say before, namely with the Apollo program.
No one is going to invent great new technologies while working on social programs.
And finally, why do you think going to the Moon wouldn't have huge benefits at home? If it turns out we can mine resources there, that would be a huge economic boom. Or would you rather that we eliminate the EPA and destroy our environment in the pursuit of mineral resources? You don't think that would have huge economic consequences?
You're not an engineer, are you?
As soon as you crack faster than light travel,we'll get right on that.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
http://www.space.com/28189-moo...
There's definitely a reason to go back, because it's possible there's a lot of resources there which we could use here.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
http://www.space.com/28189-moo...
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Little-known fact about the T-Rex: it had a very small carbon footprint. Dudes went everywhere on foot.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Of course the money goes to corporations. Individuals that have the capacity, and capital, to pay for the design of a rocket ship capable of traveling round trip to the moon.would do so under a corporate umbrella anyway. Also, most of the money goes to infrastructure and employees. This isn't corporate welfare like giving money to oil companies that don't need it.
If we can make the colony sustainable, it's way past time for us to make a backup.
We either get ourselves to other planets and stay there, or we all die here on our single-planet graveyard.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I doubt that the USA wants China and India to be the first countries to discover whatever riches lie on the moon, or to colonize it first. Competition is not earthbound.
It's amazing that humanity has gotten here: that to find radio silence, we'd send people to the far side of the moon.
Water on the moon is a non-renewable resource. The rest of the world is likely to say "Hey, that belongs to all of us, not just to the nation who first has the technology to extract it."
The article says "Although NASA paid for the $100,000 report it is unlikely to immediately embrace its conclusions." $100,000 is perhaps half an engineer-year of analysis. It may be a good start, but I'd want to be a whole lot more thorough before deciding how to spend tens of billions of dollars.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Current US industrial consumption of helium-3 is approximately 60,000 liters (approximately 8 kg) per year;[28] cost at auction has typically been approximately $100/liter although increasing demand has raised prices to as much as $2,000/liter in recent years.
Let's spend it building a space elevator so future space exploration is much cheaper and easier!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Little-known fact about the T-Rex: it had a very small carbon footprint. Dudes went everywhere on foot.
Rocket packs.
(Also who used up all the oxygen of their time?)
Most expenses are not as much as your rent/mortgage. If you ignore those expenses, even though there are many of them, you'll go bankrupt in short order.
No you won't, unless you're living very very close to your means. Save the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves is probably the worst financial advice ever given.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
2 letters and a number: H1B
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True. But at least we have something else to put on train tracks now that surpasses the steam-powered locomotives.
Now please point to the superspecialawesome, new and improved moon rocket we have that dwarfs everything we put on the pad in the 60s.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I doubt it. H-1B is not quite the open flood-gate of workers some seem to think it is.
It's been asked time and again. Why? I mean, we've been there already. We learned that the moon ain't made of cheese and there's also none of that moon-gold lying about that some were hoping for. It's not made of silver as so many alchemists dreamed and it's barely sensible as a staging area for further exploration of the solar system, which would again raise the "why bother" question.
And I have to agree, there is really little, if anything, to be gained directly from going there. Or even establishing a more or less permanent residency on it. Pretty much anything we could probably do there we can already do on the ISS, some of it better (due to microgravity instead of the lower-than-earth gravity of the moon) some worse (since the moon is less affected by Earth's magnetosphere and hence some solar readings could be done better), but in general there are only a few things we can't already do on the ISS.
So why?
The benefits are actually outside the "mundane" fact of us going there. The moon is more a means to an end. One, more tangible, benefit that was already mentioned is that we have seen in the 60s how necessity is the mother of inventions, and how the US wanting to go to the moon caused a lot of rapid development in areas affected by that goal. Rocketry, propulsion, metallurgy, computing, electrical engineering. The list is long and diverse. The US remained on the pinnacle of the world's technology for nearly two decades, mostly due to the advantage it had from this program.
Another, often overlooked but in my opinion at the very least as important, if not even more important, effect was intangible and hard to grasp. It gave the US a huge boost in cohesion internally and status internationally. You may remember that this time of the moonshot was a rather tumultuous time for the US, and the world in general. The 1960s were certainly a decade that could have shook the nation apart. Kennedy assassinated. The civil rights movement fighting for the rights of the black population, with MLK shot as well. And let's not forget about the Vietnam war. Yet when you ask people, no matter the creed, color or origin, they will think back of the 1960s not as a decade of strife and turmoil, but as a great decade where everyone was thinking of great things, where anything was considered possible and where everyone thought that they can make it. After all, hey, if they can land a man on the moon, I can (insert goal in life here).
And we sorely lack this today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why stop at the moon? Let's see if someone can travel around the world in less than 80 days! Let's build a railroad that could stretch all the way from the east coast to the west coast! Let's try to reach the top of Mount Everest!
It doesn't impress me in any way, shape or form to listen to people debate about whether or not we can afford to re-invent 50 year old technology so that we can do the exact same thing.
Build a goddamned space elevator. Or a mass driver. Or let's have some talk about the progress in nanotech and biotech that might lead to a plausible mechanism of terraforming. Not this nostalgic shit. It is painful to watch.
Yea, let's stop employing people and just put everyone in the country on welfare.
What good does going back to the moon do? Well, other than lining the pockets of corporations.
For the betterment of mankind, obviously.
Tell me sending Trump and the Bushes there wouldn't be a good thing.
How does going to the moon do a better job of lining the corporate pocket than just gutting the NASA budget (and others) and giving a them a tax cut?
That's witling fool like you said about going to the moon the first time. Or are you still clinging to the belief that it didn't happen? Shirley McLaine wants says that's her tree.
This time it's about staying on the moon. Which will likely result in more technological development and scientific discoveries than the first mission. What - you can't think of any results? How did you post arrive here - by pigeon?
He3 isn't even usable in first-generation nuclear fusion, it's one of the less easy things to fuse. We probably won't even be able to begin using it until 25 years after we do finally get fusion working. Suggesting that He3 is a good reason to go back to the moon right now, especially as the first reason, is the clearest sign of a true space-nutter.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Such as?
Getting the nut-job moon landing deniers to shut the fuck up sounds like a good start.
I want us to go back to the moon as a first step to a permanent moon base. perhaps something similar to the International Space Station, only affixed to the Moon's surface instead of in low Earth orbit. It would be a good training ground for how to deal with living on another world while still being relatively close to Earth. (Mars shouldn't be the first place we try to build a permanently manned base.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Fusion won't work. Fission is on the way out. Fossils are running out. Renewables won't be enough.
Sounds like you just named 4 excellent reason why we need people that are smart in science and math.
The amount of money spent on healthcare in the USA was $3.8 trillion in 2014 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-healthcare-spending-hits-3-8-trillion/), about half of that paid for by government. So $10 billion is about 3/1000 of that. You don't think they can find the 0.3% of the total;for your $10 billion in additional research for cures within the existing medical system greed, fraud, and waste? You have to get it from NASA?
Then we all stay here and die. I can't fathom why science enthusiasts can't accept what science has been repeating for decades now: there is no place other than Earth for us in the Solar System and we can't reach other systems. You either accept science even when it brings bad news or you don't. There's no middle ground. And science says: there's a whole universe out there for us to see... But only to see.
We do things now that were impossible 100 years ago. You seem to think that we have discovered all about physics that there is to discover and that what was the case yesterday will be the case tomorrow. Science and history have shown both of those views to be incorrect. I think our aspirations should look beyond our current capabilities. After all, it was once thought that ships heavier than water could not float and craft heavier than air could not fly.
I do agree with your assessment of our leaving this planet, however. I think that given enough time we could manage to do it. But we don't have that time, in my estimation. The problems we must overcome on this planet to forge a sustainable civilization need to be addressed now. We won't have 1000 years to wait, or even 100. In fact I believe that we must produce that stable, sustainable, and peaceful society before we can reach for the stars. We won't be able to put forth such a concerted effort until we are no longer competing and fighting with each other. So saying we must find a new planet because this one will be all fucked up is foolish. We must take care of this one (which is fully within our power, we just have to re-prioritize) because it's the only one we'll have for the foreseeable future.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There are plenty of good reasons to go to the moon,
Such as?
Gravity wave detector.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
The reason is to learn how to do it again. Right now the US can't even put astronauts in orbit.
We like to think we *can* but just don't want to. Its a very comforting thought.
This is part of what I don't get. We were putting people on the moon every 6 months from 1969 to 1972. Now it's described as some huge undertaking, requiring all this money and R&D. I'm not saying it's not a huge undertaking. It's sitting a crew on top of a controlled explosion, hurling them into the void and then steering them across 239,000 miles to the moon. It's a big deal, no doubt. But like I said, we were doing it every 6 months for 3 years with 40-year-old technology and materials. So what's the trouble now? Is it simply funding priorities?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The psychological/inspirational aspect is important, but it's insanity to base an entire space program around that. Building a permanent moon base just as an exercise in "we can do it" is sheer insanity, and the He3 arguments pointedly ignore the lack of demand and cost-effectiveness. You know what happens when we build a moon base? We have a moon base. Until the next financial crisis comes around and congress cuts the funding. Build a giant white elephant and you get a giant white elephant that fiscal conservatives point to and laugh at for the next 100 years. Why not try and prove them wrong by actually venturing into new territory instead?
Focus instead on *new* tech, and you might actually get the spillover effects people on here keep talking about. And if you really want a challenge? Try building self-sustaining settlements in the arctic or antarctic, or in the middle of ordinary deserts. This is orders of magnitude simpler (and cheaper) than trying to build permanent settlements on other worlds, but it's still really hard.
Such as?
Getting the nut-job moon landing deniers to shut the fuck up sounds like a good start.
It will never work. You could take them on a guided tour of the moon, and show them the left-behind equipment at all the landing sites for all the Apollo missions, and they still won't believe you.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Gravity wave detector.
A gravity wave detector is disrupted by vibrations, and would benefit from NOT putting humans on the moon. A robotic mission would cost about 1% as much as a manned mission, and would actually be superior for this purpose.
You know, between Obama Care, and musk's EV push, lithium is now cheap and can help you.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Other than inspire a generation's interest in math, science and engineering?
That was one of the (few) justifications for the ISS. It didn't work. The kids were way more inspired by the robotic missions to Mars, which cost 1% as much, and actually engaged in real science.
The important technologies haven't advanced very much - there is little difference between a 2015 rocket engine and a 1965 rocket engine. Also, lots of technical details can be lost, so its expensive to rediscover them.
Space was societal focus in the 60's the best and brightest worked on it. Now it is a niche.
If we can make the colony sustainable, it's way past time for us to make a backup.
We either get ourselves to other planets and stay there, or we all die here on our single-planet graveyard.
If we can't make this planet sustainable, then we'd have no hope of making some other colony sustainable. While it's a reasonable goal, realistically, there are countless things that need to happen here on Earth first to make that goal possible.
A moon base would be a good spot to refine low gravity mining techniques that would easily transfer to asteroids. This would kick start orbital construction which is useful if you ever want to get further out than this single rock.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
On a defense contract? You are funny.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I think at this point it is -1 troll or -1 flamebait. There is no way someone is that ill informed.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
http://www.spacefuture.com/arc...
There is your product, or at least the source of the product. Next you do orbital manufacturing, and start building. Build what you say?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or even spacecraft, tugs, mining vessels, trading vessels
There are places to go as well, we could start moving out into this solar system, and begin the process of building interstellar spacecraft. Generation ships are the way to go to get to other stars, while we continue to work on the possibilities of superluminal travel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ). But of course, it is people who look to the future who build the technologies of the future, not those who constantly doubt, such as those who doubted we would ever reach space ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Skipping over the fact we have absolutely no technology to extract this He3 at the minute concentrations on the Moon, what, exactly, are we supposed to *DO* with it? Tell me, what 10 billion$ market is there for He3?
Isn't it for our fusion reactors which will be online in a few years' time?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Other than inspire a generation's interest in math, science and engineering?
That was one of the (few) justifications for the ISS. It didn't work. The kids were way more inspired by the robotic missions to Mars, which cost 1% as much, and actually engaged in real science.
Earth orbit is not as inspiring as a person standing on another celestial body. Yes robotic missions are inspiring, but nothing compared to a manned mission. Speaking as someone starting elementary school immediately after Apollo 11.
The Curiosity rover project cost 2.5B, 25% as much as the proposed project.
A human with some tools can do a lot of science. And repair equipment, and deal with unforeseen things, and deal with things in real time, etc. How many rock and soil samples have robots brought back? Robots are not more capable, they are merely on site for longer periods of time.
Robots are a great tool, but they are plan B, a concession to costs or technological limits. And for Mars that concession seems a necessity at the moment. But if a moon mission with a little more endurance than previous missions can be done for $10B -- 4x Curiosity, 2/3x an Apollo mission, and possibly less than the mostly failed STEM encouraging projects the Congress will devise -- its probably worthwhile. Apollo probably eventually paid off in terms dual use tech and basic research. It spurred many technological developments.
And it's good that all our eggs are in the basket, because what's outside the basket is really freaking harsh.
A base would offer something quite different than a three hour exploration of the surface. I think the Mars rovers demonstrate a continued interest in space exploration. However seeing a person on another celestial body offers something to aspire to be, unlike a robot. Take a survey of the scientists and engineers on those robotics teams and see how many had wanted to be an astronaut when they were very young and being first introduced to math and science.
Earth orbit is not as inspiring as a person standing on another celestial body.
It is unlikely that kids are going to be inspired by someone doing something that people older than their great-grandparents already did 50 years ago.
The people asking for manned missions to the moon are not young people looking for inspiration, but geezers trying to relive their childhood.
If we can reach other stellar objects, there is no need to make anything sustainable.
Just the resources available in our own solar system, heck just with what is available in the main asteroid belt is estimated to be able to support 10 QUADRILLION humans
http://nix.nasa.gov/search.jsp...
The way our current economic system works, it depends on infinite growth. However we are on a planet with finite resources. The moment our ability to increase production of one of key resources can no longer keep up with the growth in demand,the entire thing comes crashing down like a house of cards. New science and technology has so far kept this problem at bay (by either allowing us to use the resource more efficiently, or increases efficiency in extraction or both, but we are on borrowed time. WE NEED TO EXPAND TO THE STARS, or find another economic model, and we are running out of time. If the global economy comes to a crash before we do, there will not be a second chance (as we will have used up all cheap resources and it will likely takes millions, if not billions of years before the Earth can replenish them).
There's no fiscally sound plan based on the world current supply/demand for asteroid mining. The $10 billion (and let's not pretend that this figure won't go WAY up due to unforeseen cost overruns) would be better spent developing, let's say, the fusion technology that would cause He3 to be in-demand.Or if we absolutely have to have manned space flight so that we can inspire people, let's focus on making a shuttle replacement (that doesn't suck) instead of re-inventing the Saturn V just so we can mothball it again in 10 years when the next economic meltdown happens.
In other words, while I am all for getting off of this rock, I am a little worried that simply re-visiting old nostalgia is going to 1. Not have as much impact as it did the first time around, in the 60s, 2. Not give us as much spillover technological advances, because it's shit we've done already, and 3. Give the fiscal conservatives more ammunition.
im saying just because something seems impossible doesnt make it so. im not talking specifically about this idea, just the theory that we dont have a way to do it so we shouldnt try is a bad theory
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's more than that.
We have not found a way to monetize it.
Every major decision on this planet is made with $ in mind.
If corporations knew that by investing 10 billion they would get access to quasi-infinite resources with a value nearing infinity, you better believe that they would have somebody on the moon by next week.
However the has not been a huge breakthroughs in space travel since the 60's. It's been slow and incremental improvements, and they have yet to drop the cost down to where resource extraction in space makes economical sense.
The way I see it, this is going to pan out in 3 ways:
1 We discover a new resource with unique and useful properties that can only be obtained in space; Call it Unobtainium. This would lead to explosive growth in space travel practically overnight.
2 We make a huge breakthrough discovery in space travel tech, making space travel affordable and we start colonizing and extracting resources. This would lead to slow but gradual growth in space travel.
3 Neither 1 or 2 happens, our civilization keeps humming along like it has for the last 100 years, until we run out of cheap and readily available resources. After some highly destructive wars, we revert back to an agrarian society, until an extinction event finally wipes us off the face of the Earth.
Unfortunately I agree.
Sadly 1 is pretty unlikely, Its difficult to imagine anything of enough value that only exists in space
2 could happen, but as a society we are moving away from high energy density technology like nuclear because there are better options on earth. Rockets already make pretty efficient use of chemical energy. Other schemes like space elevators seem really improbable. (I hope I'm wrong).
So 3 seems the most likely.Eventually maybe some space-faring race will discover and catalog the ruins we left behind.
Only useful productive companies benefit from tax cuts, while this allows otherwise useless companies to consume resources without having to show that there is any cost benefit.
Resource constrained and unconstrained technology development will necessarily have different development paths.
Having less has a forcing function leading to more innovative solutions, but not always, and its a bit if a crap shoot. Having more leads to different optimums, see any car made in the 50ies. Beautiful, but not exactly fuel sippers. That said, with a few scarce resources with unique properties ( helium, PGMs, fissile elements ) its kinda obvious than having more is better.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
He's got a T-Rex size carbon footprint as shown here:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
Um, dateline 2006? I know this is slashdot and old new is good news, but do you have anything from this decade? IIRC, he's made a few serious changes to his house since then. Not that I'm a big fan of carbon offsets, but still, the world changes around you. And just because you don't like the messenger is no reason to ignore the message (which is pretty well documented.)
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
1 year of costs for our war on terror we could build a moon base?
Dear god, as a species we just dont have our priorities straight. Let's let the middle east eat it's self and watch from the moon.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is unlikely that kids are going to be inspired by someone doing something that people older than their great-grandparents already did 50 years ago. The people asking for manned missions to the moon are not young people looking for inspiration, but geezers trying to relive their childhood.
Easily disproven by the robotic missions to mars. The Viking robotic missions from the 1970s landed on Mars, took pictures, analyzed soil chemistry, searched for life. Sound familiar? Yep, much like the current rovers. And yet new generations are pretty damn interested despite the fact that geezers saw similar stuff in their teenage years.
The Apollo landings were also preceded by robotic mission, Surveyor, these tested surface soil and took pictures. Things the astronauts did a much better job at also. Plus the astronauts did some science the robots could not. For example removing the camera off of a surveyor lander they landed their lunar module "next to" and bringing the camera back to analyze how materials stood up to long time exposure on the lunar surface.
We can further disprove your notion with various "action sports". BMX, racing and freestyle, date back to the 1970s. Skateboarding in its more modern freestyle incarnation (vertical walls, tricks, etc), 70s. Snowboarding, 70s. Surfing in its more modern shortboard incarnations, 60s. Kids seem to enjoy some things their parents and grandparents also enjoyed.
They already get a massive amount of money.
Ahahahahahahahahahah hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Oh wait, you were serious?
Let me laugh even harder.
Sorry you have not quite understood the article.. firstly 60,000 litres of He3 is only 8 Kg - that's the total production per year. Worse most of this is produced by decay of tritium made by the nuclear industry, a lot from the decommissioning of old nuclear weapons.
In short He3 is already in very short supply and is very expensive and is due to become more expensive.. For the kinds of quantities needed for large scale fusion energy production mining it from the Moon is probably cheaper than making it on Earth, and doesn't involve the safety concerns of storing vast quantities of tritium.
He3 He3 fusion has the huge advantage that it doesn't produce free neutrons and only produces inert non-radioactive by-products.. its also possible to extract energy in a more direct method than thermal conversion making it potentially very efficient. These provide huge benefits, though the price is that He3 fusion requires much higher temperatures to make the reaction work.. If you want humanity to have a bigger future in space then He3 fusion looks like a very promising reaction for powering rocket engines..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Half a trillion, minimum.
"Fusion won't work. Fission is on the way out. Fossils are running out. Renewables won't be enough."
- Fusion already works, the problem today is basically just building big enough reactors to achieve commercial energy production.
- Fission will always be possible. Its only fools like you who tell people its dangerous and panic them like flocks of chickens that hold it back. Fission is 1000 times safer than coal - basic fact.
- Unfortunately fossil fuels are not running out, in fact there are enough of them to run the world for hundreds of years. - Its climate change that will get us first long before fossil fuels run out..
- Renewables are half a good idea and half garbage - the whole problem is that the whole system is run by people with no real grasp of the science - we need more scientists not less..
"Humans have been living for thousands of years without the technological craze and will go on living for more thousands of years when the technological craze has passed."
I have got bad news for you buddy, humans have got a natural expiration date. We live on a moral plane that is incompatible with evolution and its slowly killing us, and genetically we were already heading for a dead end..
We will survive though and you know what will save us? science and advanced genetic engineering.
The natural method you favour only works if you can 'achieve' a 50% plus child mortality rate. Doesn't that make you feel like an insect for attacking science?
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Take the money of a single year of the war in Iraq - 120 billion dollars. Now you have enough money to send men to the Moon, the asteroids, Mars, and Venus..
Its all about priorities - is a pointless war against someone who wasn't even a real enemy more important than humanity having a future in space? The problem is that we've allowed our politicians to become inbred and stupid, its time to replace them with something better.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
The US pays over twice as much to maintain the Interstate system....each year!
Yep, up to bullet point 3.
Stuff just keeps getting cheaper, for the most part.
Well, oil prices have gone up. Until the cost of petroleum rose so high it was almost cheaper to make it from turkey guts. (Much faster than waiting for geology to make petroleum, and the imitation crude oil made was almost good enough to use, as-is.) And new technology arose, then OPEC wised up.
That's the general trend line for natural resource costs. Down. Exceptions tend to be few, and temporary. Just ask Paul Ehrlich. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=paul....
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
How are you going to get those spinoff benefits and discoveries without actually doing work in space, and just sitting around here and funding social programs? You're not. The Apollo program yielded enormous economic benefits for the US due to the new technologies created; those would not have happened if we just increased teacher pay.
I'm not saying social programs and teacher pay increases shouldn't be done, but if you want actual advancement in technology, you have to actually do things which require that advancement. You can't just wait until all social problems are cured. That isn't going to happen for generations.
Well, we shouldn't have to be pitting teacher pay/social programs/etc.. against space exploration anyway (first off, teacher pay isn't in the same money bucket as NASA, they do not compete). Not when the sum total of all social programs, minus the core programs that no one will ever seriously think about getting rid of (social security, medicare), are peanuts compared to the Defense budget.
(first off, teacher pay isn't in the same money bucket as NASA, they do not compete).
This is totally incorrect. They're all part of the overall government budget. Yes, a lot of funding for schools is at local levels, but not all. And there's plenty of politicians who would love to eliminate one or the other, or better yet both, and use the savings to pay for tax cuts for the rich or for more bloated defense programs.
I am looking at this:
http://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Policy_and_Advocacy/files/SchoolBudgetBriefFINAL.pdf
Percent distribution of revenues for public elementary and secondary education 2006-07.
Federal was 8.5%, local and state made up the rest.
Graph 7 shows another chart by state. The highest that comes from the Fed is 18% and the lowest is 4.5%.
Am I missing something?
I think you're missing that that's still a bunch of money coming from the Federal government, even if it is a minority of their overall funding. The Republicans would just love to eliminate that expenditure altogether, and move it to the defense budget (even if it is puny in comparison already).