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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.
It'll probably take a bit more time than you kids have in office.
That is the whole point. Every president likes to make promises that don't come due till long after they have left office.
Unless the Trump administration is seeking increased NASA funding for this fiscal year, you can just ignore anything they say about space.
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.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
As discussed in the above, it's incredibly difficult to actually "sink" a Venus habitat. Beyond how slowly large airships actually leak, the vast majority of the habitat's lift is dedicated to lofting the propellant on the ascent stage and (depending on the design decisions) the ascent stage itself. Meaning in the worst case you can ditch your ascent propellant (or even the ascent stage itself) and stay aloft on a tiny fraction of your peak design lift.
The easiest expansion design is via the "airworm" layout, where you have individual envelopes joined one after the next, each acting as lift cells, but containing their own propulsion, power generation, etc, and being able to function fully on their own. Even in the event of the total loss of one cell, there's no effect on the remainder.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Is Trump just a moron, or is he complicit with Russia (or neither)? I think all the meetings and the appointments he's made say he's complicit. I suspect he views Putin as more friendly than Republicans or Democrats. More "his team". I'm expecting the next big scandal to involve the Russian owned Cyprus offshore bank, i.e. Dmitry Rybolovlev / Wilbur Ross / Paul Manasfort's black caviar. That was a Trump appointment that sent big big big red flags up in my head. Literally you're appointing the head of a known conduit for Russian black bribe money as your Commerce Secretary. WTF?!
Obamacare is a different issue, Obama was a middle ground politicians. Obamacare was the best he could get passed with Republicans. To be anti-Obamacare, Republicans had to be out on the fringes of politics. So you see the Republican party fragment into two parts. One part wants everyone to fend for themselves (the 'let old/sick people die' brigade), the other wants more coverage to dilute the risk pool (i.e. healthy people should get insurance now, ahead of when they get sick).
I don't think Trump understands any of the issues, and he doesn't seem to be in the loop on the legislation. It seems to be simply be a policy he hoped to stamp his authority over. i.e. if Trump overturns Obama, then Trump is bigger than Obama, thus has more 'power' than Obama. Some such nonsense logic.
Lots of Trumps issues are designed to divide groups, especially Republicans.
Iran Nuclear for example. Iran got nuclear fuel from Russia before the deal. Putin had Iran over a barrel because they were the only country that would supply Iran against US wishes. After the deal, Iran can get Uranium from world sources, as long as the spent fuel is returned afterwards and the UN monitors their nuclear power program. That weakened Putin's influence. I notice Trump stating out and out lies (i.e. Iran gave North Korea nukes is one of his claims, but that was 3 Russian companies that did that, not Iran), claiming it was the worst deal ever. No the worst deal ever was Iran getting fuel from Russia with zero controls and no UN monitoring. i.e. the situation Trump is trying to recreate.
He's trying, but he's so degraded as a speaker now, nobody really listens to his words, and more analyses the subtext of those words in terms of how it would affect Russia.
Then we get to the money, is he worth 3.5 billion dollars, and if so why is he borrowing $18 million against already over-leveraged assets. I think his company accounts lie as much as he does. I suspect he's kept afloat by a Russian money drip. Which is where the motive is. I look at what accounts I could find, and none of them matched his disclosure submission, lots of loss making projects held up by what money from where?
Unless the Trump administration is seeking increased NASA funding for this fiscal year, you can just ignore anything they say about space.
Normally I'd agree, but in this case I'm cautiously optimistic, if only because VP Pence seems to be a genuine NASA fanboi... he was nine years old for Apollo 11, and asked for a seat on the space sub-committee when he was elected to Congress. Pence was apparently the driving force behind Trump's decision to reconstitute the National Space Council which met yesterday for the first time.
Given the amount of disruptive innovation in the space industry lately (led by but not limited to SpaceX), now is a particularly opportune time to "innovate" on the policy side as well. Will the new NSC ever amount to anything more than a few high-profile meetings? Hard to say... As you rightly point out: No bucks, no Buck Rogers. But when a handful of billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Bigelow are investing their own cash to bring new capabilities to the market, you really couldn't ask for a better time for government to get on the bandwagon too.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I see three benefits:
1) Reinvigorate our Space capabilities. Every-shifting politics and evaporating budgets have left pretty far from what we were in our ability to actually field a viable space program. We have no shuttles, we rely on Russian equipment and/or to launch bother personnel and satellites.
2) Test runs for Mars. All the same challenges of landing a mars mission are present on the Moon, but being so much closer it makes a much better place to test out the systems. If we cant do the moon, a mars trip is suicide. We havent actually tried since the days where the most advanced piece of tech around was a hand-held calculator. It's probably worth trying again with today's tech.
3) Foundations of Industry. A trip to mars has a bunch of challenges that are specific to inter-planetary missions, while the R&D to get a working lunar base would have much broader and more local applications. I agree that the future of lunar travel is going to be in the private sector, but current private technologies (and current International Law) inhibit that for now. However, private companies working under government contract accomplishes much the same thing, without running afoul of legal implications of ownership and profit generation and whatnot.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
That's not something that can be catalyzed. That's not to say that there's not terraforming possibilities - there are. But that's not one of them. :)
That said, the sulfuric acid is much more of a resource than a curse, at least for the foreseeable future. It's readily scrubbed and separated. Heating first separates out the water, then decomposes the H2SO4 to H2O + SO3. The SO3 can either be used as a conditioning agent to help nucleate free water vapour for further capture, or heated further over a vanadium oxide catalyst to yield SO2 + 0,5 O2.
It'd actually be easier to establish a colony on Venus if there was more of it, not less.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."