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Vice President Pence Vows US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon (engadget.com)
Before astronauts go to Mars, they will return to the Moon, Vice President Mike Pence said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday and in a speech at the National Air and Space Museum today. He touts "humans exploration and discovery" as the new focus of America's space program. This "means establishing a renewed American presence on the moon, a vital strategic goal. And from the foundation of the moon, America will be the first nation to bring mankind to Mars." Engadget reports: There have been two prevailing (and opposing) views when it comes to U.S. endeavors in human spaceflight. One camp maintains that returning to the moon is a mistake. NASA has already been there; it should work hard and set our sights on Mars and beyond. The other feels that Mars is too much of a reach, and that the moon will be easier to achieve in a short time frame. Mars may be a medium-to-long-term goal, but NASA should use the moon as a jumping-off point. It's not surprising that the Trump administration is valuing short-term gains over a longer, more ambitious project. The U.S. will get to Mars eventually, according to Pence, but the moon is where the current focus lies.
If this is to be the new focus of NASA, how about shoveling the money they need their way?
... anywhere Obama didn't want to (and vice versa). If Obama was for it then Trump (or perhaps more precisely his supporters) are against it. It doesn't matter if it is right or wrong, they have PRE-judged the situation. Why? Because, and I'll be frank, they're racists or to use a softer word, bigots and PREjudice is what you'll get from them.
That "and vice versa" part became an anti-Trump rant pretty quick. My impression is that the way US politics works neither side can concede that the other side was right. Either an issue is born bi-parisan or it becomes a Democrat/Republican thing that the other side must reject and treat with disdain. At best they might fumble the ball like when Trump tried to abolish Obamacare but under no circumstances could the Republicans admit that that they'd rather it stays. It still has to be some kind of terrible solution that only lives because we couldn't agree on how to throw it out. You don't see Democrats saying "that was a great Republican idea, let's keep working on that" very often either.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The point still stands. On Mars if something goes to utter shit and everyone dies you can at least go back and start with almost the same resources before it failed. On Venus it just sinks to the surface, and the sulfuric acid rain ensures anything that cracks on impact is destroyed.
It's funny you say Democrats don't often say Republicans have good ideas. Obamacare was originally a Republican proposal. The Republicans are falling over themselves to kill a healthare bill they created only because the Democrats were the ones to pass it.
As far as long term goals go, I wish that Venus would be put on equal footing with Mars. It really is an excellent, and far too neglected, destination.
Long term Venus has an even bigger "But why?" problem than Mars. Neither Mars nor Venus is very human-friendly but Mars is far more robot-friendly. Opportunity is two days away from operating for 5000 days on Mars. Since you're on the surface you have the potential to start making fields of solar arrays, greenhouses, excavate underground structures, mining and refining, build roads and create a much more earth-like outpost or colony. Venus will essentially be an orbiting spaceship, you have what we send and it's very hard to see us ever expanding on that or utilizing the local resources on Venus.
At least not in any way that we couldn't do with remote control from earth, since it'd be remote control to the surface anyway. On Mars there's at least the potential for human/robot co-projects or mobile robot supervisors, you also don't need absurd equipment to get out and fix things or tow broken robots back to base for repairs. All of this is much further into the future than "just" sending a manned mission though. Not that we have a feasible plan to terraform either planet, so in that respect neither can become a new earth. But if the end goal is something the size of the base in Antarctica I'd go with Mars.
I'm hoping we'll start with something that's at least a semi-permanent presence like a new crew going every 2.5 years when the launch window is optimal, like if we've built the habitat and everything around it supporting it and all the technology to get people to and from Mars I hope we can use it more than once and it becomes more of a resupply/expansion. If we're doing it just to do it once it's a bloody expensive trip. With the Moon you could have people land, lollygag around a few days and leave, on Mars you're committed to make it work for years. And if you're doing years, then I think doing decades with resupply/rotation can't be that far off.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It wasn't connected to anything else in the article, just a bit of personal politics slipped in where it didn't belong. The editor should have stripped it out and explained the difference between journalistic and OpEd authorship.
Venus has over 2 orders of magnitude higher deuterium than Earth. Venus has much higher energy resources than Earth. Venus is located in a place with a strong Oberth effect (easier to launch probes to the outer solar system). Venus has fast transits to Earth. Venus is easier to live on than Mars (much more Earthlike) environment in the middle cloud layer). Venus's atmosphere acts like a "refinery" to some extent, baking / eroding chemicals out of rock and precipitating them at various layers of the atmosphere. Venus's surface has been exposed to very different (and generally favorable) enrichment processes relative to other places in the solar system. Venus has little to no overburden. Etc, etc, etc.
On Venus, your habitat is a solar array. Is a greenhouse. A truly massive one in both regards, with - unlike Mars - tons of sunlight and Earthlike pressures. There's no need to excavate anything. The planet "mines" itself of many numerous resources and passes them right through your propulsion.
**Facepalm**
Once again: We're not talking about the surface, and we're not talking about orbit. We're talking about the middle cloud layer.
There is a far better case to be made for local operators on Venus than on Mars, in that robots on the surface are much more time-limited on Venus than on Mars, so communications delays matter much more. On Mars, so what if your rover sits idle for a while? It's getting so little power from the sun that it needs time to charge (if it's solar powered) regardless. And speaking of rovers, both the habitat and its surface probes are vastly more mobile on Venus. With a Mars habitat, you're stuck using only the resources found near where you settled; the further away, the more onerous delivery of materials becomes. With a Venus habitat, the whole planet is yours from a single habitat (although it's easiest, in the beginning, to stick to the high latitudes of a single hemisphere).
Speaking of that, Venus has more frequent launch windows.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
whitewash history much?
it's not a myth. and iit was far more than "just a fragment". the tax penalty "punishment" came from them too.
really, the only things dems did was tack on minimum coverage, and a public optopn (that later got dropped).
you folks can try to whitewash the history all you want.
but no one is falling for it.
http://americablog.com/2013/10...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/h...
https://healthcarereform.proco...
and of course, the original document, in full, for your reading pleasure: http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws....
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.